The Christmas Conundrum (20 Thrillers in One Edition) - Артур Конан Дойл

Скачать книгу

coming through jewelled glass, where yesterday had been a coarse rough-hung window, her father looked his last upon her lovely face.

      The colonel returned to his host and friends, and by-and-by the whole party sallied forth to see the after-glare of a fierce sunset swathing the hills in flames. It was not until they had gone some distance that Coll Dhu remembered to go back and fetch his telescope. He was not long absent. But he was absent long enough to enter that glowing chamber with a stealthy step, to throw a light chain around the neck of the sleeping girl, and to slip among the folds of her dress the hideous glittering burragh-bos.

      After he had gone away again, Pexie came stealing to the door, and, opening it a little, sat down on the mat outside, with her cloak wrapped round her. An hour passed, and Evleen Blake still slept, her breathing scarcely stirring the deadly bauble on her breast. After that, she began to murmur and moan, and Pexie pricked up her ears. Presently a sound in the room told that the victim was awake and had risen. Then Pexie put her face to the aperture of the door and looked in, gave a howl of dismay, and fled from the house, to be seen in that country no more.

      The light was fading among the hills, and the ramblers were returning towards the Devil's Inn, when a group of ladies who were considerably in advance of the rest, met Evleen Blake advancing towards them on the heath, with her hair disordered as by sleep, and no covering on her head. They noticed something bright, like gold, shifting and glancing with the motion of her figure. There had been some jesting among them about Evleen's fancy for failing asleep on the door-step instead of coming in to dinner, and they advanced laughing, to rally her on the subject. But she stared at them in a strange way, as if she did not know them, and passed on. Her friends were rather offended, and commented on her fantastic humour; only one looked after her, and got laughed at by her companions for expressing uneasiness on the wilful young lady's account.

      So they kept their way, and the solitary figure went fluttering on, the white robe blushing, and the fatal burragh-bos glittering in the reflexion from the sky. A hare crossed her path, and she laughed out loudly, and clapping her hands, sprang after it. Then she stopped and asked questions of the stones, striking them with her open palm because they would not answer. (An amazed little herd sitting behind a rock, witnessed these strange proceedings.) By-and-by she began to call after the birds, in a wild shrill way, startling the echoes of the hills as she went along. A party of gentlemen returning by a dangerous path, heard the unusual sound and stopped to listen.

      " What is that?" asked one.

      "A young eagle," said Coll Dhu, whose face had become livid; "they often give such cries."

      "It was uncommonly like a woman's voice!" was the reply; and immediately another wild note rang towards them from the rocks above: a bare saw-like ridge, shelving away to some distance ahead, and projecting one hungry tooth over an abyss. A few more moments and they saw Evleen Blake's light figure fluttering out towards this dizzy point.

      "My Evleen!" cried the colonel, recognising his daughter, "she is mad to venture on such a spot!"

      "Mad!" repeated Coll Dhu. And then dashed off to the rescue with all the might and swiftness of his powerful limbs.

      When he drew near her, Evleen had almost reached the verge of the terrible rock. Very cautiously he approached her, his object being to seize her in his strong arms before she was aware of his presence, and carry her many yards away from the spot of danger. But in a fatal moment Evleen turned her head and saw him. One wild ringing cry of hate and horror, which startled the very eagles and scattered a flight of curlews above her head, broke from her lips. A step backward brought her within a foot of death.

      One desperate though wary stride, and she was struggling in Coll's embrace. One glance in her eyes, and he saw that he was striving with a mad woman. Back, back, she dragged him, and he had nothing to grasp by. The rock was slippery and his shod feet would not cling to it. Back, back! A hoarse panting, a dire swinging to and fro; and then the rock was standing naked against the sky, no one was there, and Coll Dhu and Evleen Blake lay shattered far below.

      Chapter III.

       To Be Taken at the Dinner-Table

       Table of Contents

      Charles Allston Collins

      Does any one know who gives the names to our streets'? Does any one know who invents the mottoes which are inserted in the cracker-papers, along with the sugar-plums?—I don't envy him his intellectual faculties, by-the-by, and I suspect him to be the individual who translates the books of the foreign operas. Does any one know who introduces the new dishes, Kromeski's, and such-like? Does any one know who is responsible for new words, such as shunt and thud, shimmer, ping (denoting the crack of the rifle), and many others? Does any one know who has obliged us to talk for ever about "fraternising" and "cropping up"? Does any one know the Sage to whom perfumers apply when they have invented a shaving-soap, or hair-wash, and who furnishes the trade with such names for their wares as Rypophagon, Euxesis, Depilatory, Bostrakeison? Does any one know who makes the riddles?

      To the last question—only—I answer, Yes; I know.

      In a certain year, which, I don't mind mentioning may be looked upon as included in the present century, I was a little boy—a sharp little boy, though I say it, and a skinny little boy. The two qualities not unfrequently go together. I will not mention what my age was at the time, but I was at school not far from London, and I was of an age when it is customary, or was customary, to wear a jacket and frill.

      In riddles, I had at that early age a profound and solemn joy. To the study of those problems, I was beyond measure addicted, and in the collecting of them I was diligent in the extreme; It was the custom at the time for certain periodicals to give the question of a conundrum in one number, and the answer in the next. There was an interval of seven days and nights between the propounding of the question, and the furnishing of the reply. What a time was that for me! I sought the solution of the enigma, off and on (generally on), during the leisure hours of the week (no wonder I was skinny!), and sometimes, I am proud to remember, I became acquainted with the answer before the number containing it reached me from the official source. There was another kind of puzzle which used to appear when my sharp and skinny boyhood was at its sharpest and skinniest, by which I was much more perplexed than by conundrums or riddles conveyed in mere words. I speak of what may be called symbolical riddles—rebus is, I believe, their true designation—little squalid woodcuts representing all sorts of impossible objects huddled together in incongruous disorder; letters of the alphabet, at times, and even occasionally fragments of words, being introduced here and there, to add to the general confusion. Thus you would have: a Cupid mending a pen, a gridiron, the letter x, a bar of music, p. u. g. and a fife—you would have these presented to you on a certain Saturday, with the announcement that on the following Saturday there would be issued an explanation of the mysterious and terrific jumble. That explanation would come, but with it new difficulties worse than the former. A birdcage, a setting sun (not like), the word "snip," a cradle, and some quadruped to which it would have puzzled Buffon himself to give a name. With these problems I was not successful, never having solved but one in my life, as will presently appear. Neither was I good at poetical riddles, in parts—slightly forced—as " My first is a boa-constrictor, My second's a Roman lictor, My third is a Dean and Chipter, And my whole goes always on tip-ter." These were too much for me.

      I remember on one occasion accidentally meeting with a publication in which there was a rebus better executed than those to which I had been accustomed, and which mystified me greatly. First of all there was the letter A; then came a figure of a clearly virtuous man in a long gown, with a scrip, and a staff, and a cockle-shell on his hat; then followed a representation of an extremely old person with flowing white hair and beard; the figure 2 was the next symbol, and beyond this was a gentleman on crutches, looking at a five-barred gate. Oh, how that rebus haunted me! It was at a sea-side library that I met with it during the holidays, and before the next number came out I was back at school. The publication in which this remarkable picture had appeared was an expensive one, and quite beyond my means, so there was no way of getting at the explanation. Determined to

Скачать книгу