[SPEAKER_00]: Hello and welcome to the Sherlock Holmes Bedtime Stories podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Each episode is a section from a classic Sherlock Holmes story with relaxing music to help you fall asleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you love the podcast and never miss an episode, please follow us on Spotify and Apple podcasts and leave a five star rating.
[SPEAKER_00]: If our podcast has become a part of your bedtime routine, please consider supporting the show by clicking the link in the show notes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our show is completely free.
[SPEAKER_00]: In part, thanks to support from listeners like you.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are options to give one time or on a monthly basis.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, sleep easier by clicking the, support this podcast link in the show notes and become a supporter today.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as always, if you're enjoying the pod, please spread the word.
[SPEAKER_00]: sharing with friends and family really does help.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for joining us this evening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it's time to relax.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let your body fall into a comfortable position in your bed and drift gently into a state of total relaxation with tonight's story.
[SPEAKER_00]: The adventure of the Devil's Foot
[SPEAKER_00]: Part 1.
[SPEAKER_00]: In recording from time to time some of the curious experiences and interesting recollections which I associate with my long and intimate friendship with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I have continually been faced by difficulties caused by his own aversion to publicity.
[SPEAKER_00]: to his somber and cynical spirit, all popular applause was always apparent, and nothing amused him more at the end of a successful case than to hand over the actual exposure to some orthodox official, and to listen with a mocking smile to the general chorus of misplaced congratulation.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was indeed this attitude upon the part of my friend, and certainly not any lack of interesting material which has caused me of late years, to lay very few of my records
[SPEAKER_00]: My participation in some of his adventures was always a privilege, which entailed discretion and reticence upon me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was then with considerable surprise that I received a telegram from Holmes last Tuesday.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has never been known to write where a telegram would serve in the following terms.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why not tell them of the Cornish horror?
[SPEAKER_00]: Strangers case I have handled.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have no idea what backward sweep of memory had brought the matter fresh to his mind, or what freak had caused him to desire that I should recount it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I hasten before another canceling telegram may arrive, to hunt out the notes which give me the exact details of the case and to lay the narrative before my readers.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was then in the spring of the year 1897 that homes his iron constitution showed some symptoms of giving way in the face of constant hard work of a most exacting kind, aggravated perhaps, by occasional indiscretions of his own.
[SPEAKER_00]: In March of that year, Dr. Moore Agar, of Harley Street, whose dramatic introduction to Holmes, I may someday recount, gave positive injunctions that the famous private agent lay aside all his cases and surrender himself to complete rest if he wished to avert an absolute breakdown.
[SPEAKER_00]: The state of his health was not a matter in which he himself took the faintest interest
[SPEAKER_00]: for his mental detachment was absolute, but he was induced at last on the threat of being permanently disqualified from work to give himself a complete change of scene and air.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thus it was that in the early spring of that year, we found ourselves together in a small cottage near Poldo Bay at the further extremity of the Cornish Peninsula.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a singular spot and one peculiarly well-suited to the grim humor of my patient.
[SPEAKER_00]: From the windows of our little white-washed house, which stood high upon a grassy headland, we looked down upon the whole sinister semi-circle of Mount's bay.
[SPEAKER_00]: That old death trap of sailing vessels, with its fringe of black cliffs and surge swept reefs, on which a new mubble seaman have met their end.
[SPEAKER_00]: With a northerly breeze, it lies placid and sheltered, inviting the storm-toss craft to tack into it for rest and protection.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then come the sudden swirl round of the wind, the blistering gale from the southwest, the dragging anchor, the lee shore, and the last battle in the creaming breakers.
[SPEAKER_00]: The wise mariners stands far out from that evil place.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the landside, our surroundings were as somber as on the sea.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a country of rolling mors, lonely and done coloured, with an occasional church tower to mark the site of some old world village.
[SPEAKER_00]: In every direction upon these moors there were traces of some vanished race which had passed utterly away and left as its sole record strange monuments of stone, irregular mounds which contained the burned ashes of the dead and curious earthworks which hinted at prehistoric strife.
[SPEAKER_00]: The glamour and mystery of the place with its sinister atmosphere of forgotten nations appealed to the imagination of my friend, and he spent much of his time in long walks and solitary meditations upon the more.
[SPEAKER_00]: The ancient Cornish language had also arrested his attention, and he had, I remember, conceived the idea that it was akin to the Caldean, and had been largely derived
[SPEAKER_00]: He had received a consignment of books upon filology, and was settling down to develop this thesis, when suddenly to my sorrow and to his unfained delight, we found ourselves even in that land of dreams, plunged into a problem at our very doors, which was more intense, more engrossing, and infinitely more mysterious than any of those which had driven us from London.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our simple life and peaceful, healthy routine were violently interrupted,
[SPEAKER_00]: and we were precipitated into the midst of a series of events which caused the utmost excitement, not only in Cornwall, but throughout the whole West of England.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many of my readers may retain some recollection of what was called at the time the Cornish Horror, though a most imperfect account of the matter reached the London Press.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, after 13 years, I will give the true details of this inconceivable affair to the public,
[SPEAKER_00]: I have said that scattered towers marked the villages which dotted this part of Cornwall.
[SPEAKER_00]: The nearest of these was the hamlet of Tridanic Wallace, where the cottages of a couple of hundred inhabitants clustered around an ancient moss-grown church.
[SPEAKER_00]: The vicar of the parish, Mr. Roundet, was something of an archaeologist, and as such homes had made his acquaintance.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a middle-aged man, portly, and affable, with a considerable fund of local law.
[SPEAKER_00]: At his invitation we had taken tea at the Vicarage, and had come to know also Mr. Mortimer Trugenis, an independent gentleman, who increased the clergyman's scanty resources by taking rooms in his large, straggling house.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Vicar being a bachelor was glad to come to such an arrangement, though he had little in common with his lodger, who was a thin, dark, spectacle man, with a stoop which gave the impression of actual physical deformity.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember that during our short visit we found the Vicar garalace, but his lodger strangely reticent, a sad faced introspective man, sitting with theverted eyes, brooding apparently upon his own affairs.
[SPEAKER_00]: These were the two men who entered abruptly into our little sitting room on Tuesday March the 16th, shortly after our breakfast hour, as we were smoking together, preparatory to our daily excursion upon the moors.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mr. Holmes said the vicar in an agitated voice.
[SPEAKER_00]: The most extraordinary and tragic affair has occurred during the night.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is the most unheard of business.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can only regard it as a special providence that you should chance to be here at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: For in all England, you are the one man we need.
[SPEAKER_00]: I gled at the intrusive vicar with no very friendly eyes, but Holmes took his pipe from his lips and sat up in his chair like an old hound who hears the view helloer.
[SPEAKER_00]: He waved his hand to the sofa and our palpitating visitor with his agitated companion sat side by side upon it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mr. Mortimer Treganis was more self-contained than the clergyman, but the twitching of his thin hands and the brightness of his dark eyes showed that they shared a common emotion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shall I speak or you?
[SPEAKER_00]: He asked of the vicar.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, as you seem to have made the discovery, whatever it may be, and the vicar to have had its second hand, perhaps you had better do the speaking, said Holmes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I glanced at the hastily-clad clergyman with the formally dressed lodger seated beside him, and was amused at the surprise which Holmes' simple deduction had brought to their faces.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps I had best say a few words first," said the Vicar.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you can judge if you will listen to the details from Mr. Treganis, or whether we should not hasten at once to the scene of this mysterious affair.
[SPEAKER_00]: I may explain then that our friend here spent last evening in the company of his two brothers, Owen and George, and of his sister, Brenda, at their house of Tridanic Watter, which is near the Old Stone Cross upon the Moor.
[SPEAKER_00]: He left them shortly after 10 o'clock playing cards around the dining room table in excellent health and spirits.
[SPEAKER_00]: This morning, being an early riser, he walked in that direction before breakfast and was overtaken by the carriage of Dr. Richards, who explained that he had just been sent for on a most urgent call to Tridanic water.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mr. Mortimer Trugenis naturally went with him.
[SPEAKER_00]: When he arrived at Tridanic Warther he found an extraordinary state of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: His two brothers and his sister were seated round the table exactly as he had left them.
[SPEAKER_00]: The card still spread in front of them, and the candles burned down to their sockets.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sister lay back stone dead in her chair, while the two brothers sat on each side of her laughing shouting and singing.
[SPEAKER_00]: The senses stricken clean out of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: All three of them, the dead woman and the two demented men, retained upon their faces and expression of the utmost horror, a convulsion of terror which was dreadful to look upon.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no sign of the presence of anyone in the house except Mrs. Porter, the old cook and housekeeper, who declared that she had slept deeply and heard no sound during the night.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing had been stolen or disarranged, and there is absolutely no explanation of what the horror can be, which is frightened a woman to death and too strong men out of their senses.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is the situation Mr. Holmes in a nutshell, and if you can help us to clear it up, you will have done a great work.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had hoped that in some way I could coax my companion back into the quiet which had been the object of our journey, but one glance at his intense face and contracted eyebrows told me how vain was now the expectation.
[SPEAKER_00]: He sat for some little time in silence absorbed in the strange drama which had broken in upon our peace.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will look into this matter, he said at last.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the face of it, it would appear to be a case of a very exceptional nature.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you been there yourself, Mr. Round-hey?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, Mr. Holmes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mr. Trigene is brought back the account to the Vicarage, and I had once hurried over with him to consult you.
[SPEAKER_00]: How far is it to the house where this singular tragedy occurred?
[SPEAKER_00]: about a mile inland.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we shall walk over together.
[SPEAKER_00]: But before we start, I must ask you a few questions, Mr. Mortimer Trigenes.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other had been silent all this time, but I had observed that his more controlled excitement was even greater than the obtrusive emotion of the clergyman.
[SPEAKER_00]: He sat with a pale, drawn face, his anxious gaze fixed upon homes, and his thin hands clasped convulsively together.
[SPEAKER_00]: His pale lips quivered as he listened to the dreadful experience which had befallen his family, and his dark eyes seemed to reflect something of the horror of the scene.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ask what you like Mr. Holmes, said he eagerly.
[SPEAKER_00]: tell me about last night.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well Mr. Holmes, I sat there as the vicar is said, and my elder brother George proposed a game of whist afterwards.
[SPEAKER_00]: We sat down about 9 o'clock.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a quarter past 10 when I moved to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: I left them all around the table as merriys could be.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who let you out?
[SPEAKER_00]: Mrs. Porter had gone to bed so I let myself out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I shut the whole door behind me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The window of the room in which they sat was closed, but the blind was not drawn down.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no change in door or window this morning or any reason to think that any stranger had been to the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet there they sat, driven clean mad with terror, and Brenda lying dead of fright,
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll never get the sight of that room out of my mind so long as I live.
[SPEAKER_00]: The facts as you state them are certainly most remarkable, said Holmes, I take it that you have no theory or self which can in any way account for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Its devilish Mr. Holmes devilish cried Mortimer Treganis.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is not of this world, something has come into that room which has dashed the light of
[SPEAKER_00]: What human contrivence could do that?
[SPEAKER_00]: I fear, said Holmes, that if the matter is beyond humanity, it is certainly beyond me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet we must exhaust all natural explanations before we fall back upon such a theory as this.
[SPEAKER_00]: As to yourself, Mr. Trugan, as I take it, you were divided in some way from your family, since they lived together and you had rooms apart,
[SPEAKER_00]: That is so Mr. Holmes, though the matter is past and done with.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were a family of tin miners at Redruth, but we sold our venture to a company, and so retired with enough to keep us.
[SPEAKER_00]: I won't deny that there was some feeling about the division of the money and it stood between us for a time, but it was all forgiven and forgotten and we were the best of friends together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Looking back at the evening which you spent together does anything stand out in your memory as throwing any possible light upon the tragedy, think carefully Mr. Trigenez, for any clue which can help me.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is nothing at all, sir.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your people were in their usual spirits.
[SPEAKER_00]: Never better.
[SPEAKER_00]: Were they nervous people?
[SPEAKER_00]: Did they ever show any apprehension of coming danger?
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing of the kind.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have nothing to add then, which could assist me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mortimer Tragan is considered earnestly for a moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is one thing that occurs to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Said he had last.
[SPEAKER_00]: As we sat at the table, my back was to the window, and my brother George, he being my partner at cards, was facing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw him once look hard over my shoulder, so I turned round and looked also.
[SPEAKER_00]: The blind was up in the window shut, but I could just make out the bushes on the lawn, and it seemed to me for a moment that I saw something moving among them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't even say if it was man or animal, but I just thought there was something there.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I asked him what he was looking at, he told me that he had the same feeling.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is all that I can say.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you not investigate?
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: The matter past is unimportant.
[SPEAKER_00]: You left them then without any premonition of evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am not clear how you came to hear the news so early this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am an early riser and generally take a walk before breakfast.
[SPEAKER_00]: This morning I had hardly started when the doctor in his carriage over took me.
[SPEAKER_00]: He told me that old Mrs. Porter had sent a boy down with an urgent message.
[SPEAKER_00]: I sprang in beside him and we drove on.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we got there, we looked into that dreadful room.
[SPEAKER_00]: The candles and the fire must have burned out hours before, and they had been sitting there in the dark until dawn had broken.
[SPEAKER_00]: The doctors said, Brenda must have been dead at least six hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were no signs of violence.
[SPEAKER_00]: She just lay across the arm of the chair with that look on her face.
[SPEAKER_00]: George and Owen were singing snatches of songs and gibbering like two great apes, oh it was awful to see.
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't stand it, and the doctor was as white as a sheet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Indeed he fell into a chair in a sort of faint, and we nearly had him on our hands as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remarkable, most remarkable, said Holmes, rising and taking his hat.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think perhaps we had better go down to Tridanic Warther without further delay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I confess that I have seldom known a case which at first sight presented a more singular problem.
[UNKNOWN]: You
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you very much.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
[UNKNOWN]: You
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.