he real family, for their travel about
together, and Henderson is a great traveller, always on the move. It
is only within the last weeks that he has returned, after a year's
absence, to High Gable. I may add that he is enormously rich, and
whatever his whims may be he can very easily satisfy them. For the
rest, his house is full of butlers, footmen, maidservants, and the
usual overfed, underworked staff of a large English country house.

"So much I learned partly from village gossip and partly from my own
observation. There are no better instruments than discharged servants
with a grievance, and I was lucky enough to find one. I call it luck,
but it would not have come my way had I not been looking out for it.
As Baynes remarks, we all have our systems. It was my system which
enabled me to find John Warner, late gardener of High Gable, sacked in
a moment of temper by his imperious employer. He in turn had friends
among the indoor servants who unite in their fear and dislike of their
master. So I had my key to the secrets of the establishment.

"Curious people, Watson! I don't pretend to understand it all yet, but
very curious people anyway. It's a double-winged house, and the
servants live on one side, the family on the other. There's no link
between the two save for Henderson's own servant, who serves the
family's meals. Everything is carried to a certain door, which forms
the one connection. Governess and children hardly go out at all,
except into the garden. Henderson never by any chance walks alone.
His dark secretary is like his shadow. The gossip among the servants
is that their master is terribly afraid of something. 'Sold his soul
to the devil in exchange for money,' says Warner, 'and expects his
creditor to come up and claim his own.' Where they came from, or who
they are, nobody has an idea. They are very violent. Twice Henderson
has lashed at folk with his dog-whip, and only his long purse and heavy
compensation have kept him out of the courts.

"Well, now, Watson, let us judge the situation by this new information.
We may take it that the letter came out of this strange household and
was an invitation to Garcia to carry out some attempt which had already
been planned. Who wrote the note? It was someone within the citadel,
and it was a woman. Who then but Miss Burnet, the governess? All our
reasoning seems to point that way. At any rate, we may take it as a
hypothesis and see what conse