6 Mr. Abe Slaney

Chapter 6 Mr. Abe Slaney We stared at Sherlock Holmes in utter amazement. "Why should he come here?" I asked. "Because I invited him." "But wouldn't your invitation arouse his suspicions and cause him to take flight?" "Not if my calculations are correct... In fact, if I'm not mistaken, here he is right now." We looked out of the window to see a tall, handsome man with a black beard walking toward the front door. Dressed in a flannel suit and Panama hat, he swaggered up the drive as if the place belonged to him. The doorbell chimed with a loud confidence and Holmes said: "I think, gentlemen, we should position ourselves behind the door. Keep your handcuffs at the ready, Inspector, and leave the talking to me."

We did as advised and waited in silence for a minute—one of those minutes that seemed more like ten. Then the door opened and Abe Slaney stepped in. In an instant, Holmes appeared out of the shadows and pointed a pistol at him, and the inspector slipped the handcuffs over Slaney's wrists. It happened so quickly that Slaney was powerless before he fully knew what was going on. He glared at us with a pair of blazing black eyes, then burst into bitter laughter. "Well, gentlemen, this is a surprise," he drawled in an American accent. "I came here at

the request of Mrs. Hilton Cubitt. Don't tell me she's in on this. Did she help set a trap for me?" "Mrs. Cubitt is seriously injured and may not recover," said Holmes. The man uttered a harsh cry that rang through the house. "You're crazy!" he yelled. "It was the Englishman who got hurt, not Elsie. Who would've hurt little Elsie? I may have threatened her, God forgive me, but I'd never touch a hair on her pretty head. Now stop it with your lies. Tell me she ain't hurt!" "She was found badly wounded by her dead husband's side."

Slaney sank with a deep groan onto the sofa and buried his face in his manacled hands. For five minutes he said nothing. Then he raised his head and spoke calmly: "I have nothing to hide from you, gentlemen. I shot the man out of self- protection because he shot at me. But if you think I could've hurt that woman, then you don't know either her or me. You see, Elsie and me were engaged to be married. The Englishman had no business coming between us. She was promised to me, and I was only claiming my right." "She broke off her relationship with you when she found out what sort of man you are," said Holmes coldly. "She fled from America to get away from you. You followed her here and tried to force her to abandon the husband she loved. As a result, you caused the death of a good man and drove his wife to attempt suicide. That's what you've done, Mr. Slaney, and you'll answer for your actions before the law." "If Elsie dies, I don't care what becomes of me," said Slaney. Then he noticed the note lying crumpled in his palm and a gleam of suspicion entered his eyes. "Say, if the lady's that badly

hurt, who wrote this note?" He tossed it onto the table. "I wrote it to bring you here." "You? That's impossible. No one on Earth outside The Joint knows the secret of the dancing men." "What one man can invent, another can discover," said Holmes. "I brought you here with that message, and a police wagon will soon be arriving to take you to Norwich. Meanwhile, Mrs. Cubitt is suspected of having murdered her husband. The least you can do is make it clear to the world that she was in no way responsible for his tragic end."

"I'd be glad to," said Slaney. "As you say, it's the least I can do." Inspector Martin reached for his pad and pen as Slaney made his confession. "I've known Elsie since she was a child," he began. "There were seven of us in a Chicago gang called The Joint, and Elsie's dad was the boss. He was a clever man, was old Mr. Patrick. It was he who invented that writing, which looked like a kid's drawing unless you had the key to it. "Elsie grew to hate the business. She'd been engaged to me and would have married me if I'd got myself an honest job. I wouldn't do that though, and one day she gave us all the slip and