



                       THE ADVENTURE OF THE VEILED LODGER

                               Arthur Conan Doyle



     When one considers that Mr. Sherlock Holmes was in active practice
     for twenty-three years, and that during seventeen of these I was
     allowed to cooperate with him and to keep notes of his doings, it
     will be clear that I have a mass of material at my command. The
     problem has always been not to find but to choose. There is the long
     row of year-books which fill a shelf, and there are the
     dispatch-cases filled with documents, a perfect quarry for the
     student not only of crime but of the social and official scandals of
     the late Victorian era. Concerning these latter, I may say that the
     writers of agonized letters, who beg that the honour of their
     families or the reputation of famous forebears may not be touched,
     have nothing to fear. The discretion and high sense of professional
     honour which have always distinguished my friend are still at work in
     the choice of these memoirs, and no confidence will be abused. I
     deprecate, however, in the strongest way the attempts which have been
     made lately to get at and to destroy these papers. The source of
     these outrages is known, and if they are repeated I have Mr. Holmes's
     authority for saying that the whole story concerning the politician,
     the lighthouse, and the trained cormorant will be given to the
     public. There is at least one reader who will understand.

     It is not reasonable to suppose that every one of these cases gave
     Holmes the opportunity of showing those curious gifts of instinct and
     observation which I have endeavoured to set forth in these memoirs.
     Sometimes he had with much effort to pick the fruit, sometimes it
     fell easily into his lap. But the most terrible human tragedies were
     often involved in those cases which brought him the fewest personal
     opportunities, and it is one of these which I now desire to record.
     In telling it, I have made a slight change of name and place, but
     otherwise the facts are as stated.

     One forenoon--it was late in 1896--I received a hurried note from
     Holmes asking for my attendance. When I arrived I found him seated in
     a smoke-laden atmosphere, with an elderly, motherly woman of the
     buxom landlady type in the corresponding chair in front of him.

     "This is Mrs. Merrilow, of South Brixton," said my friend with a wave
     of the hand. "Mrs. Merrilow does not object to tobacco, Watson, if
     you wish to indulge your filthy habits. Mrs. Merrilow has an
     interesting story to tell which may well lead to further developments
     in which your presence may be useful."

     "Anything I can do--"

     "You will understand, Mrs. Merrilow, that if I come to Mrs. Ronder I
     should prefer to have a witness. You will make her understand that
     before we arrive."

     "Lord bless you, Mr. Holmes," said our visitor, "she is that anxious
     to see you that you might bring the whole parish at your heels!"

     "Then we shall come early in the afternoon. Let us see that we have
     our facts correct before we start. If we go over them it will help
     Dr. Watson to understand the situation. You say that Mrs. Ronder has
     been your lodger for seven years and that you have only once seen her
     face."

     "And I wish to God I had not!" said Mrs. Merrilow.

     "It was, I understand, terribly mutilated."

     "Well, Mr. Holmes, you would hardly say it was a face at all. That's
     how it looked. Our milkman got a glimpse of her once peeping out of
     the upper window, and he dropped his tin and the milk all over the
     front garden. That is the kind of face it is. When I saw her--I
     happened on her unawares--she covered up quick, and then she said,
     'Now, Mrs. Merrilow, you know at last why it is that I never raise my
     veil.'"

     "Do you know anything about her history?"

     "Nothing at all."

     "Did she give references when she came?"

     "No, sir, but she gave hard cash, and plenty of it. A quarter's rent
     right down on the table in advance and no arguing about terms. In
     these times a poor woman like me can't afford to turn down a chance
     like that."

     "Did she give any reason for choosing your house?"

     "Mine stands well back from the road and is more private than most.
     Then, again, I only take the one, and I have no family of my own. I
     reckon she had tried others and found that mine suited her best. It's
     privacy she is after, and she is ready to pay for it."

     "You say that she never showed her face from first to last save on
     the one accidental occasion. Well, it is a very remarkable story,
     most remarkable, and I don't wonder that you want it examined."

     "I don't, Mr. Holmes. I am quite satisfied so long as I get my rent.
     You could not have a quieter lodger, or one who gives less trouble."

     "Then what has brought matters to a head?"

     "Her health, Mr. Holmes. She seems to be wasting away. And there's
     something terrible on her mind. 'Murder!' she cries. 'Murder!' And
     once I heard her: 'You cruel beast! You monster!' she cried. It was
     in the night, and it fair rang through the house and sent the shivers
     through me. So I went to her in the morning. 'Mrs. Ronder,' I says,
     'if you have anything that is troubling your soul, there's the
     clergy,' I says, 'and there's the police. Between them you should get
     some help.' 'For God's sake, not the police!' says she, 'and the
     clergy can't change what is past. And yet,' she says, 'it would ease
     my mind if someone knew the truth before I died.' 'Well,' says I, 'if
     you won't have the regulars, there is this detective man what we read
     about'--beggin' your pardon, Mr. Holmes. And she, she fair jumped at
     it. 'That's the man,' says she. 'I wonder I never thought of it
     before. Bring him here, Mrs. Merrilow, and if he won't come, tell him
     I am the wife of Ronder's wild beast show. Say that, and give him the
     name Abbas Parva. Here it is as she wrote it, Abbas Parva. 'That will
     bring him if he's the man I think he is.'"

     "And it will, too," remarked Holmes. "Very good, Mrs. Merrilow. I
     should like to have a little chat with Dr. Watson. That will carry us
     till lunch-time. About three o'clock you may expect to see us at your
     house in Brixton."

     Our visitor had no sooner waddled out of the room--no other verb can
     describe Mrs. Merrilow's method of progression--than Sherlock Holmes
     threw himself with fierce energy upon the pile of commonplace books
     in the corner. For a few minutes there was a constant swish of the
     leaves, and then with a grunt of satisfaction he came upon what he
     sought. So excited was he that he did not rise, but sat upon the
     floor like some strange Buddha, with crossed legs, the huge books all
     round him, and one open upon his knees.

     "The case worried me at the time, Watson. Here are my marginal notes
     to prove it. I confess that I could make nothing of it. And yet I was
     convinced that the coroner was wrong. Have you no recollection of the
     Abbas Parva tragedy?"

     "None, Holmes."

     "And yet you were with me then. But certainly my own impression was
     very superficial. For there was nothing to go by, and none of the
     parties had engaged my services. Perhaps you would care to read the
     papers?"

     "Could you not give me the points?"

     "That is very easily done. It will probably come back to your memory
     as I talk. Ronder, of course, was a household word. He was the rival
     of Wombwell, and of Sanger, one of the greatest showmen of his day.
     There is evidence, however, that he took to drink, and that both he
     and his show were on the down grade at the time of the great tragedy.
     The caravan had halted for the night at Abbas Parva, which is a small
     village in Berkshire, when this horror occurred. They were on their
     way to Wimbledon, travelling by road, and they were simply camping
     and not exhibiting, as the place is so small a one that it would not
     have paid them to open.

     "They had among their exhibits a very fine North African lion. Sahara
     King was its name, and it was the habit, both of Ronder and his wife,
     to give exhibitions inside its cage. Here, you see, is a photograph
     of the performance by which you will perceive that Ronder was a huge
     porcine person and that his wife was a very magnificent woman. It was
     deposed at the inquest that there had been some signs that the lion
     was dangerous, but, as usual, familiarity begat contempt, and no
     notice was taken of the fact.

     "It was usual for either Ronder or his wife to feed the lion at
     night. Sometimes one went, sometimes both, but they never allowed
     anyone else to do it, for they believed that so long as they were the
     food-carriers he would regard them as benefactors and would never
     molest them. On this particular night, seven years ago, they both
     went, and a very terrible happening followed, the details of which
     have never been made clear.

     "It seems that the whole camp was roused near midnight by the roars
     of the animal and the screams of the woman. The different grooms and
     employees rushed from their tents, carrying lanterns, and by their
     light an awful sight was revealed. Ronder lay, with the back of his
     head crushed in and deep claw-marks across his scalp, some ten yards
     from the cage, which was open. Close to the door of the cage lay Mrs.
     Ronder upon her back, with the creature squatting and snarling above
     her. It had torn her face in such a fashion that it was never thought
     that she could live. Several of the circus men, headed by Leonardo,
     the strong man, and Griggs, the clown, drove the creature off with
     poles, upon which it sprang back into the cage and was at once locked
     in. How it had got loose was a mystery. It was conjectured that the
     pair intended to enter the cage, but that when the door was loosed
     the creature bounded out upon them. There was no other point of
     interest in the evidence save that the woman in a delirium of agony
     kept screaming, 'Coward! Coward!' as she was carried back to the van
     in which they lived. It was six months before she was fit to give
     evidence, but the inquest was duly held, with the obvious verdict of
     death from misadventure."

     "What alternative could be conceived?" said I.

     "You may well say so. And yet there were one or two points which
     worried young Edmunds, of the Berkshire Constabulary. A smart lad
     that! He was sent later to Allahabad. That was how I came into the
     matter, for he dropped in and smoked a pipe or two over it."

     "A thin, yellow-haired man?"

     "Exactly. I was sure you would pick up the trail presently."

     "But what worried him?"

     "Well, we were both worried. It was so deucedly difficult to
     reconstruct the affair. Look at it from the lion's point of view. He
     is liberated. What does he do? He takes half a dozen bounds forward,
     which brings him to Ronder. Ronder turns to fly--the claw-marks were
     on the back of his head--but the lion strikes him down. Then, instead
     of bounding on and escaping, he returns to the woman, who was close
     to the cage, and he knocks her over and chews her face up. Then,
     again, those cries of hers would seem to imply that her husband had
     in some way failed her. What could the poor devil have done to help
     her? You see the difficulty?"

     "Quite."

     "And then there was another thing. It comes back to me now as I think
     it over. There was some evidence that just at the time the lion
     roared and the woman screamed, a man began shouting in terror."

     "This man Ronder, no doubt."

     "Well, if his skull was smashed in you would hardly expect to hear
     from him again. There were at least two witnesses who spoke of the
     cries of a man being mingled with those of a woman."

     "I should think the whole camp was crying out by then. As to the
     other points, I think I could suggest a solution."

     "I should be glad to consider it."

     "The two were together, ten yards from the cage, when the lion got
     loose. The man turned and was struck down. The woman conceived the
     idea of getting into the cage and shutting the door. It was her only
     refuge. She made for it, and just as she reached it the beast bounded
     after her and knocked her over. She was angry with her husband for
     having encouraged the beast's rage by turning. If they had faced it
     they might have cowed it. Hence her cries of 'Coward!'"

     "Brilliant, Watson! Only one flaw in your diamond."

     "What is the flaw, Holmes?"

     "If they were both ten paces from the cage, how came the beast to get
     loose?"

     "Is it possible that they had some enemy who loosed it?"

     "And why should it attack them savagely when it was in the habit of
     playing with them, and doing tricks with them inside the cage?"

     "Possibly the same enemy had done something to enrage it."

     Holmes looked thoughtful and remained in silence for some moments.

     "Well, Watson, there is this to be said for your theory. Ronder was a
     man of many enemies. Edmunds told me that in his cups he was
     horrible. A huge bully of a man, he cursed and slashed at everyone
     who came in his way. I expect those cries about a monster, of which
     our visitor has spoken, were nocturnal reminiscences of the dear
     departed. However, our speculations are futile until we have all the
     facts. There is a cold partridge on the sideboard, Watson, and a
     bottle of Montrachet. Let us renew our energies before we make a
     fresh call upon them."

     When our hansom deposited us at the house of Mrs. Merrilow, we found
     that plump lady blocking up the open door of her humble but retired
     abode. It was very clear that her chief preoccupation was lest she
     should lose a valuable lodger, and she implored us, before showing us
     up, to say and do nothing which could lead to so undesirable an end.
     Then, having reassured her, we followed her up the straight, badly
     carpeted staircase and were shown into the room of the mysterious
     lodger.

     It was a close, musty, ill-ventilated place, as might be expected,
     since its inmate seldom left it. From keeping beasts in a cage, the
     woman seemed, by some retribution of fate, to have become herself a
     beast in a cage. She sat now in a broken armchair in the shadowy
     corner of the room. Long years of inaction had coarsened the lines of
     her figure, but at some period it must have been beautiful, and was
     still full and voluptuous. A thick dark veil covered her face, but it
     was cut off close at her upper lip and disclosed a perfectly shaped
     mouth and a delicately rounded chin. I could well conceive that she
     had indeed been a very remarkable woman. Her voice, too, was well
     modulated and pleasing.

     "My name is not unfamiliar to you, Mr. Holmes," said she. "I thought
     that it would bring you."

     "That is so, madam, though I do not know how you are aware that I was
     interested in your case."

     "I learned it when I had recovered my health and was examined by Mr.
     Edmunds, the county detective. I fear I lied to him. Perhaps it would
     have been wiser had I told the truth."

     "It is usually wiser to tell the truth. But why did you lie to him?"

     "Because the fate of someone else depended upon it. I know that he
     was a very worthless being, and yet I would not have his destruction
     upon my conscience. We had been so close--so close!"

     "But has this impediment been removed?"

     "Yes, sir. The person that I allude to is dead."

     "Then why should you not now tell the police anything you know?"

     "Because there is another person to be considered. That other person
     is myself. I could not stand the scandal and publicity which would
     come from a police examination. I have not long to live, but I wish
     to die undisturbed. And yet I wanted to find one man of judgment to
     whom I could tell my terrible story, so that when I am gone all might
     be understood."

     "You compliment me, madam. At the same time, I am a responsible
     person. I do not promise you that when you have spoken I may not
     myself think it my duty to refer the case to the police."

     "I think not, Mr. Holmes. I know your character and methods too well,
     for I have followed your work for some years. Reading is the only
     pleasure which fate has left me, and I miss little which passes in
     the world. But in any case, I will take my chance of the use which
     you may make of my tragedy. It will ease my mind to tell it."

     "My friend and I would be glad to hear it."

     The woman rose and took from a drawer the photograph of a man. He was
     clearly a professional acrobat, a man of magnificent physique, taken
     with his huge arms folded across his swollen chest and a smile
     breaking from under his heavy moustache--the self-satisfied smile of
     the man of many conquests.

     "That is Leonardo," she said.

     "Leonardo, the strong man, who gave evidence?"

     "The same. And this--this is my husband."

     It was a dreadful face--a human pig, or rather a human wild boar, for
     it was formidable in its bestiality. One could imagine that vile
     mouth champing and foaming in its rage, and one could conceive those
     small, vicious eyes darting pure malignancy as they looked forth upon
     the world. Ruffian, bully, beast--it was all written on that
     heavy-jowled face.

     "Those two pictures will help you, gentlemen, to understand the
     story. I was a poor circus girl brought up on the sawdust, and doing
     springs through the hoop before I was ten. When I became a woman this
     man loved me, if such lust as his can be called love, and in an evil
     moment I became his wife. From that day I was in hell, and he the
     devil who tormented me. There was no one in the show who did not know
     of his treatment. He deserted me for others. He tied me down and
     lashed me with his riding-whip when I complained. They all pitied me
     and they all loathed him, but what could they do? They feared him,
     one and all. For he was terrible at all times, and murderous when he
     was drunk. Again and again he was had up for assault, and for cruelty
     to the beasts, but he had plenty of money and the fines were nothing
     to him. The best men all left us, and the show began to go downhill.
     It was only Leonardo and I who kept it up--with little Jimmy Griggs,
     the clown. Poor devil, he had not much to be funny about, but he did
     what he could to hold things together.

     "Then Leonardo came more and more into my life. You see what he was
     like. I know now the poor spirit that was hidden in that splendid
     body, but compared to my husband he seemed like the angel Gabriel. He
     pitied me and helped me, till at last our intimacy turned to
     love--deep, deep, passionate love, such love as I had dreamed of but
     never hoped to feel. My husband suspected it, but I think that he was
     a coward as well as a bully, and that Leonardo was the one man that
     he was afraid of. He took revenge in his own way by torturing me more
     than ever. One night my cries brought Leonardo to the door of our
     van. We were near tragedy that night, and soon my lover and I
     understood that it could not be avoided. My husband was not fit to
     live. We planned that he should die.

     "Leonardo had a clever, scheming brain. It was he who planned it. I
     do not say that to blame him, for I was ready to go with him every
     inch of the way. But I should never have had the wit to think of such
     a plan. We made a club--Leonardo made it--and in the leaden head he
     fastened five long steel nails, the points outward, with just such a
     spread as the lion's paw. This was to give my husband his death-blow,
     and yet to leave the evidence that it was the lion which we would
     loose who had done the deed.

     "It was a pitch-dark night when my husband and I went down, as was
     our custom, to feed the beast. We carried with us the raw meat in a
     zinc pail. Leonardo was waiting at the corner of the big van which we
     should have to pass before we reached the cage. He was too slow, and
     we walked past him before he could strike, but he followed us on
     tiptoe and I heard the crash as the club smashed my husband's skull.
     My heart leaped with joy at the sound. I sprang forward, and I undid
     the catch which held the door of the great lion's cage.

     "And then the terrible thing happened. You may have heard how quick
     these creatures are to scent human blood, and how it excites them.
     Some strange instinct had told the creature in one instant that a
     human being had been slain. As I slipped the bars it bounded out and
     was on me in an instant. Leonardo could have saved me. If he had
     rushed forward and struck the beast with his club he might have cowed
     it. But the man lost his nerve. I heard him shout in his terror, and
     then I saw him turn and fly. At the same instant the teeth of the
     lion met in my face. Its hot, filthy breath had already poisoned me
     and I was hardly conscious of pain. With the palms of my hands I
     tried to push the great steaming, blood-stained jaws away from me,
     and I screamed for help. I was conscious that the camp was stirring,
     and then dimly I remembered a group of men. Leonardo, Griggs, and
     others, dragging me from under the creature's paws. That was my last
     memory, Mr. Holmes, for many a weary month. When I came to myself and
     saw myself in the mirror, I cursed that lion--oh, how I cursed
     him!--not because he had torn away my beauty but because he had not
     torn away my life. I had but one desire, Mr. Holmes, and I had enough
     money to gratify it. It was that I should cover myself so that my
     poor face should be seen by none, and that I should dwell where none
     whom I had ever known should find me. That was all that was left to
     me to do--and that is what I have done. A poor wounded beast that has
     crawled into its hole to die--that is the end of Eugenia Ronder."

     We sat in silence for some time after the unhappy woman had told her
     story. Then Holmes stretched out his long arm and patted her hand
     with such a show of sympathy as I had seldom known him to exhibit.

     "Poor girl!" he said. "Poor girl! The ways of fate are indeed hard to
     understand. If there is not some compensation hereafter, then the
     world is a cruel jest. But what of this man Leonardo?"

     "I never saw him or heard from him again. Perhaps I have been wrong
     to feel so bitterly against him. He might as soon have loved one of
     the freaks whom we carried round the country as the thing which the
     lion had left. But a woman's love is not so easily set aside. He had
     left me under the beast's claws, he had deserted me in my need, and
     yet I could not bring myself to give him to the gallows. For myself,
     I cared nothing what became of me. What could be more dreadful than
     my actual life? But I stood between Leonardo and his fate."

     "And he is dead?"

     "He was drowned last month when bathing near Margate. I saw his death
     in the paper."

     "And what did he do with this five-clawed club, which is the most
     singular and ingenious part of all your story?"

     "I cannot tell, Mr. Holmes. There is a chalk-pit by the camp, with a
     deep green pool at the base of it. Perhaps in the depths of that
     pool--"

     "Well, well, it is of little consequence now. The case is closed."

     "Yes," said the woman, "the case is closed."

     We had risen to go, but there was something in the woman's voice
     which arrested Holmes's attention. He turned swiftly upon her.

     "Your life is not your own," he said. "Keep your hands off it."

     "What use is it to anyone?"

     "How can you tell? The example of patient suffering is in itself the
     most precious of all lessons to an impatient world."

     The woman's answer was a terrible one. She raised her veil and
     stepped forward into the light.

     "I wonder if you would bear it," she said.

     It was horrible. No words can describe the framework of a face when
     the face itself is gone. Two living and beautiful brown eyes looking
     sadly out from that grisly ruin did but make the view more awful.
     Holmes held up his hand in a gesture of pity and protest, and
     together we left the room.

     Two days later, when I called upon my friend, he pointed with some
     pride to a small blue bottle upon his mantelpiece. I picked it up.
     There was a red poison label. A pleasant almondy odour rose when I
     opened it.

     "Prussic acid?" said I.

     "Exactly. It came by post. 'I send you my temptation. I will follow
     your advice.' That was the message. I think, Watson, we can guess the
     name of the brave woman who sent it."









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