“One day—it was in March,1883—a letter with a foreign stamp lay upon the table in front of the colonel’s plate. It was not a common thing for him to receive letters, for his bills were all paid in ready money, and he had no friends of any sort. ‘From India!’ said he as he took it up, ‘Pondicherry postmark!What can this be?’ Opening it hurriedly,out there jumped five little dried orange pips,which pattered down upon his plate.I began to laugh at this,but the laugh was struck from my lips at the sight of his face.His lip had fallen, his eyes were protruding,his skin the colour of putty,and he glared at the envelope which he still held in his trembling hand, ‘K. K. K.!’ he shrieked, and then, ‘My God, my God,my sins have overtaken me!’
“‘What is it, uncle?’ I cried.
“‘Death,’ said he, and rising from the table he retired to his room,leaving me palpitating with horror.I took up the envelope and saw scrawled in red ink upon the inner flap,just above the gum, the letter K three times repeated.There was nothing else save the five dried pips.What could be the reason of his overpowering terror?I left the breakfast-table,and as I ascended the stair I met him coming down with an old rusty key,which must have belonged to the attic, in one hand,and a small brass box, like a cashbox, in the other.
“‘They may do what they like,but I’ll checkmate them still,’ said he with an oath.‘Tell Mary that I shall want a fire in my room to-day,and send down to Fordham, the Horsham lawyer.’
“I did as he ordered,and when the lawyer arrived I was asked to step up to the room.The fire was burning brightly,and in the grate there was a mass of black,fluffy ashes, as of burned paper,while the brass box stood open and empty beside it.As I glanced at the box I noticed, with a start,that upon the lid was printed the treble K which I had read in the morning upon the envelope.
“‘I wish you, John,’ said my uncle, ‘to witness my will.I leave my estate, with all its advantages and all its disadvantages,to my brother, your father, whence it will, no doubt,descend to you. If you can enjoy it in peace, well and good!If you find you cannot, take my advice, my boy,and leave it to your deadliest enemy.I am sorry to give you such a two-edged thing,but I can’t say what turn things are going to take.Kindly sign the paper where Mr. Fordham shows you.’
“I signed the paper as directed,and the lawyer took it away with him.The singular incident made, as you may think,the deepest impression upon me,and I pondered over it and turned it every way in my mind without being able to make anything of it. Yet I could not shake off the vague feeling of dread which it left behind, though the sensation grew less keen as the weeks passed and nothing happened to disturb the usual routine of our lives. I could see a change in my uncle, however. He drank more than ever, and he was less inclined for any sort of society. Most of his time he would spend in his room, with the door locked upon the inside, but sometimes he would emerge in a sort of drunken frenzy and would burst out of the house and tear about the garden with a revolver in his hand, screaming out that he was afraid of no man, and that he was not to be cooped up, like a sheep in a pen, by man or devil. When these hot fits were over, however, he would rush tumultuously in at the door and lock and bar it behind him, like a man who can brazen it out no longer against the terror which lies at the roots of his soul. At such times I have seen his face, even on a cold day, glisten with moisture, as though it were new raised from a basin.
“Well, to come to an end of the matter, Mr. Holmes,and not to abuse your patience,there came a night when he made one of those drunken sallies from which he never came back. We found him, when we went to search for him, face downward in a little green-scummed pool, which lay at the foot of the garden. There was no sign of any violence, and the water was but two feet deep, so that the jury, having regard to his known eccentricity, brought in a verdict of ‘suicide.’ But I, who knew how he winced from the very thought of death, had much ado to persuade myself that he had gone out of his way to meet it. The matter passed, however, and my father entered into possession of the estate, and of some £ 14,000, which lay to his credit at the bank.”
“One moment,” Holmes interposed, “your statement is,I foresee, one of the most remarkable to which I have ever listened.Let me have the date of the reception by your uncle of the letter,and the date of his supposed suicide.”
“The letter arrived on March 10, 1883.His death was seven weeks later,upon the night of May 2nd.”
“Thank you. Pray proceed.”
“When my father took over the Horsham property, he,at my request, made a careful examination of the attic,which had been always locked up.We found the brass box there,although its contents had been destroyed.On the inside of the cover was a paper label,with the initials of K. K. K. repeated upon it,and ‘Letters, memoranda, receipts,and a register’ written beneath. These, we presume,indicated the nature of the papers which had been destroyed by Colonel Openshaw. For the rest, there was nothing of much importance in the attic save a great many scattered papers and note-books bearing upon my uncle’s life in America. Some of them were of the war time and showed that he had done his duty well and had borne the repute of a brave soldier. Others were of a date during the reconstruction of the Southern states, and were mostly concerned with politics, for he had evidently taken a strong part in opposing the carpet-bag politicians who had been sent down from the North.
“Well, it was the beginning of ’84 when my father came to live at Horsham,and all went as well as possible with us until the January of’85.On the fourth day after the new year I heard my father give a sharp cry of surprise as we sat together at the breakfast-table. There he was, sitting with a newly opened envelope in one hand and five dried orange pips in the outstretched palm of the other one. He had always laughed at what he called my cock-and-bull story about the colonel, but he looked very scared and puzzled now that the same thing had come upon himself.
“‘Why, what on earth does this mean, John?’ he stammered.
“My heart had turned to lead. ‘It is K. K. K.,’ said I.
“He looked inside the envelope. ‘So it is,’ he cried.‘Here are the very letters.But what is this written above them?’
“‘Put the papers on the sundial,’ I read,peeping over his shoulder.
“‘What papers?What sundial?’ he asked.
“‘The sundial in the garden. There is no other,’ said I;‘but the papers must be those that are destroyed.’
“‘Pooh!’ said he, gripping hard at his courage.‘We are in a civilised land here,and we can’t have tomfoolery of this kind.Where does the thing come from?’
“‘From Dundee,’ I answered, glancing at the postmark.
“‘Some preposterous practical joke,’ said he.‘What have I to do with sundials and papers?I shall take no notice of such nonsense.’
“‘I should certainly speak to the police,’ I said.
“‘And be laughed at for my pains. Nothing of the sort.’
“‘Then let me do so?’
“‘No, I forbid you. I won’t have a fuss made about such nonsense. ’
“It was in vain to argue with him,for he was a very obstinate man. I went about, however,with a heart which was full of forebodings.