Since you cannot solve the case without help, Watson is going to reconsider.
“Oldacre is alive and in this house right at this very moment. I will do my best to proof it to you.”
Five minutes later three policemen have assembled in the hall.
“In the outhouse you will find a considerable quantity of straw. I will ask you to carry in two bundles of it. Thank you very much. I believe you have some matches in your pocket, Sherlock. Now, Mr. Lestrade, I will ask you all to accompany me to the top landing.”
We're all going up to the corridor. At one end of it we are now all marshalled by Watson. He stands before us with the air of a conjurer who is performing a trick.
“Would you kindly send one of your constables for two buckets of water? Put the straw on the floor here, free from the wall on either side. Now I think that we are all ready. Might I ask you, Sherlock, to open that window, and then to put a match to the edge of the straw?”
He does so, and, driven by the draught, a coil of grey smoke swirls down the corridor, while the dry straw crackles and flames.
“Now, might I ask you all to join in the cry of ‘Fire!’? Now, then; one, two, three—”
“Fire!” we're all yelling.
“Thank you. I will trouble you once again.”
“Fire!”
“Just once more, gentlemen, and all together.”
“Fire!”
The shout must be ringing over Norwood. It is hardly dying away when an amazing thing happens. A door suddenly flows open out of what appeared to be solid wall at the end of the corridor, and a ittle, wizened man darts out of it, like a rabbit out of its burrow.
“Capital!” says Watson, calmly. “Sherlock, a bucket of water over the straw. That will do! Lestrade, allow me to present you: Mr. Jonas Oldacre.”
The detective stares at the new-comer with blank amazement. It is an odious face—crafty, vicious, malignant, with shifty, light-grey eyes and white eyelashes.
“What’s this, then?” says Lestrade at last. “What have you been doing all this time, eh?”
Oldacre gives an uneasy laugh, shrinking back from the furious red face of the angry detective.
“I have done no harm.”
“No harm? You have done your best to get an innocent man hanged. If it wasn’t for this gentleman here, I am not sure that you would not have succeeded. Take him down and keep him in the sitting-room until I come. Mr. Watson,” he continued, when they had gone, “I don’t mind saying that this is the brightest thing that you have done yet, though it is a mystery to me how you did it. You have saved an innocent man’s life. I was kind of surprised though, and a bit disappointed of my dear Holmes…
Well anyway, have a nice day, Sirs. See you soon.“
- End -