Page:His Last Bow (1917).djvu/107

 neither Mr. Warren, nor I, nor the girl has once set eyes upon him. We can hear that quick step of his pacing up and down, up and down, night, morning, and noon; but except on that first night he has never once gone out of the house.”

“Oh, he went out the first night, did he?”

“Yes, sir, and returned very late—after we were all in bed. He told me after he had taken the rooms that he would do so, and asked me not to bar the door. I heard him come up the stair after midnight.”

“But his meals?”

“It was his particular direction that we should always, when he rang, leave his meal upon a chair, outside his door. Then he rings again when he has finished, and we take it down from the same chair. If he wants anything else he prints it on a slip of paper and leaves it.”

“Prints it?”

“Yes, sir; prints it in pencil. Just the word, nothing more. Here’s one I brought to show you—SOAP. Here’s another—MATCH. This is one he left the first morning—DAILY GAZETTE. I leave that paper with his breakfast every morning.”

“Dear me, Watson,” said Holmes, staring with great curiosity at the slips of foolscap which the landlady had handed to him, “this is certainly a little unusual. Seclusion I can understand; but why print? Printing is a clumsy process.