The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

It pulled up at our door, and our

friend, the vicar, sprang from it and rushed up our garden path.

Holmes was already dressed, and we hastened down to meet him.

Our visitor was so excited that he could hardly articulate, but

at last in gasps and bursts his tragic story came out of him.

“We are devil-ridden, Mr. Holmes! My poor parish is devil-

ridden!” he cried. “Satan himself is loose in it! We are given

over into his hands!” He danced about in his agitation, a

ludicrous object if it were not for his ashy face and startled

eyes. Finally he shot out his terrible news.

“Mr. Mortimer Tregennis died during the night, and with exactly

the same symptoms as the rest of his family.”

Holmes sprang to his feet, all energy in an instant.

“Can you fit us both into your dog-cart?”

“Yes, I can.”

“Then, Watson, we will postpone our breakfast. Mr. Roundhay, we

are entirely at your disposal. Hurry–hurry, before things get

disarranged.”

The lodger occupied two rooms at the vicarage, which were in an

angle by themselves, the one above the other. Below was a large

sitting-room; above, his bedroom. They looked out upon a croquet

lawn which came up to the windows. We had arrived before the

doctor or the police, so that everything was absolutely

undisturbed. Let me describe exactly the scene as we saw it upon

that misty March morning. It has left an impression which can

never be effaced from my mind.

The atmosphere of the room was of a horrible and depressing

stuffiness. The servant had first entered had thrown up the

window, or it would have been even more intolerable. This might

partly be due to the fact that a lamp stood flaring and smoking

on the centre table. Beside it sat the dead man, leaning back in

his chair, his thin beard projecting, his spectacles pushed up

on to his forehead, and his lean dark face turned towards the

window and twisted into the same distortion of terror which had

marked the features of his dead sister. His limbs were convulsed

and his fingers contorted as though he had died in a very

paroxysm of fear. He was fully clothed, though there were signs

that his dressing had been done in a hurry. We had already

learned that his bed had been slept in, and that the tragic end

had come to him in the early morning.

One realized the red-hot energy which underlay Holmes’s

phlegmatic exterior when one saw the sudden change which came

over him from the moment that he entered the fatal apartment. In

an instant he was tense and alert, his eyes shining, his face

set, his limbs quivering with eager activity. He was out on the

lawn, in through the window, round the room, and up into the

bedroom, for all the world like a dashing foxhound drawing a

cover. In the bedroom he made a rapid cast around and ended by

throwing open the window, which appeared to give him some fresh

cause for excitement, for he leaned out of it with loud

ejaculations of interest and delight. Then he rushed down the

stair, out through the open window, threw himself upon his face

on the lawn, sprang up and into the room once more, all with the

energy of the hunter who is at the very heels of his quarry. The

lamp, which was an ordinary standard, he examined with minute

care, making certain measurements upon its bowl. He carefully

scrutinized with his lens the talc shield which covered the top

of the chimney and scraped off some ashes which adhered to its

upper surface, putting some of them into an envelope, which he

placed in his pocketbook. Finally, just as the doctor and the

official police put in an appearance, he beckoned to the vicar

and we all three went out upon the lawn.

“I am glad to say that my investigation has not been entirely

barren,” he remarked. “I cannot remain to discuss the matter

with the police, but I should be exceedingly obliged, Mr.

Roundhay, if you would give the inspector my compliments and

direct his attention to the bedroom window and to the sitting-

room lamp. Each is suggestive, and together they are almost

conclusive. If the police would desire further information I

shall be happy to see any of them at the cottage. And now,

Watson, I think that, perhaps, we shall be better employed

elsewhere.”

It may be that the police resented the intrusion of an amateur,

or that they imagined themselves to be upon some hopeful line of

investigation; but it is certain that we heard nothing from them

for the next two days. During this time Holmes spent some of his

time smoking and dreaming in the cottage; but a greater portion

in country walks which he undertook alone, returning after many

hours without remark as to where he had been. One experiment

served to show me the line of his investigation. He had bought a

lamp which was the duplicate of the one which had burned in the

room of Mortimer Tregennis on the morning of the tragedy. This

he filled with the same oil as that used at the vicarage, and he

carefully timed the period which it would take to be exhausted.

Another experiment which he made was of a more unpleasant nature,

and one which I am not likely ever to forget.

“You will remember, Watson,” he remarked one afternoon, “that

there is a single common point of resemblance in the varying

reports which have reached us. This concerns the effect of the

atmosphere of the room in each case upon those who had first

entered it. You will recollect that Mortimer Tregennis, in

describing the episode of his last visit to his brother’s house,

remarked that the doctor on entering the room fell into a chair?

You had forgotten? Well I can answer for it that it was so.

Now, you will remember also that Mrs. Porter, the housekeeper,

told us that she herself fainted upon entering the room and had

afterwards opened the window. In the second case–that of

Mortimer Tregennis himself–you cannot have forgotten the

horrible stuffiness of the room when we arrived, though the

servant had thrown open the window. That servant, I found upon

inquiry, was so ill that she had gone to her bed. You will

admit, Watson, that these facts are very suggestive. In each

case there is evidence of a poisonous atmosphere. In each case,

also, there is combustion going on in the room–in the one case a

fire, in the other a lamp. The fire was needed, but the lamp was

lit–as a comparison of the oil consumed will show–long after it

was broad daylight. Why? Surely because there is some

connection between three things–the burning, the stuffy

atmosphere, and, finally, the madness or death of those

unfortunate people. That is clear, is it not?”

“It would appear so.”

“At least we may accept it as a working hypothesis. We will

suppose, then, that something was burned in each case which

produced an atmosphere causing strange toxic effects. Very good.

In the first instance–that of the Tregennis family–this

substance was placed in the fire. Now the window was shut, but

the fire would naturally carry fumes to some extent up the

chimney. Hence one would expect the effects of the poison to be

less than in the second case, where there was less escape for the

vapour. The result seems to indicate that it was so, since in

the first case only the woman, who had presumably the more

sensitive organism, was killed, the others exhibiting that

temporary or permanent lunacy which is evidently the first effect

of the drug. In the second case the result was complete. The

facts, therefore, seem to bear out the theory of a poison which

worked by combustion.

“With this train of reasoning in my head I naturally looked about

in Mortimer Tregennis’s room to find some remains of this

substance. The obvious place to look was the talc shelf or

smoke-guard of the lamp. There, sure enough, I perceived a number

of flaky ashes, and round the edges a fringe of brownish powder,

which had not yet been consumed. Half of this I took, as you

saw, and I placed it in an envelope.”

“Why half, Holmes?”

“It is not for me, my dear Watson, to stand in the way of the

official police force. I leave them all the evidence which I

found. The poison still remained upon the talc had they the wit

to find it. Now, Watson, we will light our lamp; we will,

however, take the precaution to open our window to avoid the

premature decease of two deserving members of society, and you

will seat yourself near that open window in an armchair unless,

like a sensible man, you determine to have nothing to do with the

affair. Oh, you will see it out, will you? I thought I knew my

Watson. This chair I will place opposite yours, so that we may

be the same distance from the poison and face to face. The door

we will leave ajar. Each is now in a position to watch the other

and to bring the experiment to an end should the symptoms seem

alarming. Is that all clear? Well, then, I take our powder–or

what remains of it–from the envelope, and I lay it above the

burning lamp. So! Now, Watson, let us sit down and await

developments.”

They were not long in coming. I had hardly settled in my chair

before I was conscious of a thick, musky odour, subtle and

nauseous. At the very first whiff of it my brain and my

imagination were beyond all control. A thick, black cloud

swirled before my eyes, and my mind told me that in this cloud,

unseen as yet, but about to spring out upon my appalled senses,

lurked all that was vaguely horrible, all that was monstrous and

inconceivably wicked in the universe. Vague shapes swirled and

swam amid the dark cloud-bank, each a menace and a warning of

something coming, the advent of some unspeakable dweller upon the

threshold, whose very shadow would blast my soul. A freezing

horror took possession of me. I felt that my hair was rising,

that my eyes were protruding, that my mouth was opened, and my

tongue like leather. The turmoil within my brain was such that

something must surely snap. I tried to scream and was vaguely

aware of some hoarse croak which was my own voice, but distant

and detached from myself At the same moment, in some effort of

escape, I broke through that cloud of despair and had a glimpse

of Holmes’s face, white, rigid, and drawn with horror–the very

look which I had seen upon the features of the dead. It was that

vision which gave me an instant of sanity and of strength. I

dashed from my chair, threw my arms round Holmes, and together we

lurched through the door, and an instant afterwards had thrown

ourselves down upon the grass plot and were lying side by side,

conscious only of the glorious sunshine which was bursting its

way through the hellish cloud of terror which had girt us in.

Slowly it rose from our souls like the mists from a landscape

until peace and reason had returned, and we were sitting upon the

grass, wiping our clammy foreheads, and looking with apprehension

at each other to mark the last traces of that terrific experience

which we had undergone.

“Upon my word, Watson!” said Holmes at last with an unsteady

voice, “I owe you both my thanks and an apology. It was an

unjustifiable experiment even for one’s self, and doubly so for a

friend. I am really very sorry.”

“You know,” I answered with some emotion, for I have never seen

so much of Holmes’s heart before, “that it is my greatest joy and

privilege to help you.”

He relapsed at once into the half-humorous, half-cynical vein

which was his habitual attitude to those about him. “It would be

superfluous to drive us mad, my dear Watson,” said he. “A candid

observer would certainly declare that we were so already before

we embarked upon so wild an experiment. I confess that I never

imagined that the effect could be so sudden and so severe.” He

dashed into the cottage, and, reappearing with the burning lamp

held at full arm’s length, he threw it among a bank of brambles.

“We must give the room a little time to clear. I take it,

Watson, that you have no longer a shadow of a doubt as to how

these tragedies were produced?”

“None whatever.”

“But the cause remains as obscure as before. Come into the

arbour here and let us discuss it together. That villainous

stuff seems still to linger round my throat. I think we must

admit that all the evidence points to this man, Mortimer

Tregennis, having been the criminal in the first tragedy, though

he was the victim in the second one. We must remember, in the

first place, that there is some story of a family quarrel,

followed by a reconciliation. How bitter that quarrel may have

been, or how hollow the reconciliation we cannot tell. When I

think of Mortimer Tregennis, with the foxy face and the small

shrewd, beady eyes behind the spectacles, he is not a man whom I

should judge to be of a particularly forgiving disposition.

Well, in the next place, you will remember that this idea of

someone moving in the garden, which took our attention for a

moment from the real cause of the tragedy, emanated from him. He

had a motive in misleading us. Finally, if he did not throw the

substance into the fire at the moment of leaving the room, who

did do so? The affair happened immediately after his departure.

Had anyone else come in, the family would certainly have risen

from the table. Besides, in peaceful Cornwall, visitors did not

arrive after ten o’clock at night. We may take it, then, that

all the evidence points to Mortimer Tregennis as the culprit.”

“Then his own death was suicide!”

“Well, Watson, it is on the face of it a not impossible

supposition. The man who had the guilt upon his soul of having

brought such a fate upon his own family might well be driven by

remorse to inflict it upon himself. There are, however, some

cogent reasons against it. Fortunately, there is one man in

England who knows all about it, and I have made arrangements by

which we shall hear the facts this afternoon from his own lips.

Ah! he is a little before his time. Perhaps you would kindly

step this way, Dr. Leon Sterndale. We have been conducing a

chemical experiment indoors which has left our little room hardly

fit for the reception of so distinguished a visitor.”

I had heard the click of the garden gate, and now the majestic

figure of the great African explorer appeared upon the path. He

turned in some surprise towards the rustic arbour in which we

sat.

“You sent for me, Mr. Holmes. I had your note about an hour ago,

and I have come, though I really do not know why I should obey

your summons.”

“Perhaps we can clear the point up before we separate,” said

Holmes. “Meanwhile, I am much obliged to you for your courteous

acquiescence. You will excuse this informal reception in the

open air, but my friend Watson and I have nearly furnished an

additional chapter to what the papers call the Cornish Horror,

and we prefer a clear atmosphere for the present. Perhaps, since

the matters which we have to discuss will affect you personally

in a very intimate fashion, it is as well that we should talk

where there can be no eavesdropping.”

The explorer took his cigar from his lips and gazed sternly at my

companion.

“I am at a loss to know, sir,” he said, “what you can have to

speak about which affects me personally in a very intimate

fashion.”

“The killing of Mortimer Tregennis,” said Holmes.

For a moment I wished that I were armed. Sterndale’s fierce face

turned to a dusky red, his eyes glared, and the knotted,

passionate veins started out in his forehead, while he sprang

forward with clenched hands towards my companion. Then he

stopped, and with a violent effort he resumed a cold, rigid

calmness, which was, perhaps, more suggestive of danger than his

hot-headed outburst.

“I have lived so long among savages and beyond the law,” said he,

“that I have got into the way of being a law to myself. You

would do well, Mr. Holmes, not to forget it, for I have no desire

to do you an injury.”

“Nor have I any desire to do you an injury, Dr. Sterndale.

Surely the clearest proof of it is that, knowing what I know, I

have sent for you and not for the police.”

Sterndale sat down with a gasp, overawed for, perhaps, the first

time in his adventurous life. There was a calm assurance of

power in Holmes’s manner which could not be withstood. Our

visitor stammered for a moment, his great hands opening and

shutting in his agitation.

“What do you mean?” he asked at last. “If this is bluff upon

your part, Mr. Holmes, you have chosen a bad man for your

experiment. Let us have no more beating about the bush. What DO

you mean?”

“I will tell you,” said Holmes, “and the reason why I tell you is

that I hope frankness may beget frankness. What my next step may

be will depend entirely upon the nature of your own defence.”

“My defence?”

“Yes, sir.”

“My defence against what?”

“Against the charge of killing Mortimer Tregennis.”

Sterndale mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. “Upon my

word, you are getting on,” said he. “Do all your successes

depend upon this prodigious power of bluff?”

“The bluff,” said Holmes sternly, “is upon your side, Dr. Leon

Sterndale, and not upon mine. As a proof I will tell you some of

the facts upon which my conclusions are based. Of your return

from Plymouth, allowing much of your property to go on to Africa,

I will say nothing save that it first informed me that you were

one of the factors which had to be taken into account in

reconstructing this drama–“

“I came back–“

“I have heard your reasons and regard them as unconvincing and

inadequate. We will pass that. You came down here to ask me

whom I suspected. I refused to answer you. You then went to the

vicarage, waited outside it for some time, and finally returned

to your cottage.”

“How do you know that?”

“I followed you.”

“I saw no one.”

“That is what you may expect to see when I follow you. You spent

a restless night at your cottage, and you formed certain plans,

which in the early morning you proceeded to put into execution.

Leaving your door just as day was breaking, you filled your

pocket with some reddish gravel that was lying heaped beside your

gate.”

Sterndale gave a violent start and looked at Holmes in amazement.

“You then walked swiftly for the mile which separated you from

the vicarage. You were wearing, I may remark, the same pair of

ribbed tennis shoes which are at the present moment upon your

feet. At the vicarage you passed through the orchard and the

side hedge, coming out under the window of the lodger Tregennis.

It was now daylight, but the household was not yet stirring. You

drew some of the gravel from your pocket, and you threw it up at

the window above you.”

Sterndale sprang to his feet.

“I believe that you are the devil himself!” he cried.

Holmes smiled at the compliment. “It took two, or possibly

three, handfuls before the lodger came to the window. You

beckoned him to come down. He dressed hurriedly and descended to

his sitting-room. You entered by the window. There was an

interview–a short one–during which you walked up and down the

room. Then you passed out and closed the window, standing on the

lawn outside smoking a cigar and watching what occurred.

Finally, after the death of Tregennis, you withdrew as you had

come. Now, Dr. Sterndale, how do you justify such conduct, and

what were the motives for your actions? If you prevaricate or

trifle with me, I give you my assurance that the matter will pass

out of my hands forever.”

Our visitor’s face had turned ashen gray as he listened to the

words of his accuser. Now he sat for some time in thought with

his face sunk in his hands. Then with a sudden impulsive gesture

he plucked a photograph from his breast-pocket and threw it on

the rustic table before us.

“That is why I have done it,” said he.

It showed the bust and face of a very beautiful woman. Holmes

stooped over it.

“Brenda Tregennis,” said he.

“Yes, Brenda Tregennis,” repeated our visitor. “For years I have

loved her. For years she has loved me. There is the secret of

that Cornish seclusion which people have marvelled at. It has

brought me close to the one thing on earth that was dear to me.

I could not marry her, for I have a wife who has left me for

years and yet whom, by the deplorable laws of England, I could

not divorce. For years Brenda waited. For years I waited. And

this is what we have waited for.” A terrible sob shook his great

frame, and he clutched his throat under his brindled beard. Then

with an effort he mastered himself and spoke on:

“The vicar knew. He was in our confidence. He would tell you

that she was an angel upon earth. That was why he telegraphed to

me and I returned. What was my baggage or Africa to me when I

learned that such a fate had come upon my darling? There you

have the missing clue to my action, Mr. Holmes.”

“Proceed,” said my friend.

Dr. Sterndale drew from his pocket a paper packet and laid it

upon the table. On the outside was written “Radix pedis diaboli”

with a red poison label beneath it. He pushed it towards me. “I

understand that you are a doctor, sir. Have you ever heard of

this preparation?”

“Devil’s-foot root! No, I have never heard of it.”

“It is no reflection upon your professional knowledge,” said he,

“for I believe that, save for one sample in a laboratory at Buda,

there is no other specimen in Europe. It has not yet found its

way either into the pharmacopoeia or into the literature of

toxicology. The root is shaped like a foot, half human, half

goatlike; hence the fanciful name given by a botanical

missionary. It is used as an ordeal poison by the medicine-men

in certain districts of West Africa and is kept as a secret among

them. This particular specimen I obtained under very

extraordinary circumstances in the Ubangi country.” He opened

the paper as he spoke and disclosed a heap of reddish-brown,

snuff-like powder.

“Well, sir?” asked Holmes sternly.

“I am about to tell you, Mr. Holmes, all that actually occurred,

for you already know so much that it is clearly to my interest

that you should know all. I have already explained the

relationship in which I stood to the Tregennis family. For the

sake of the sister I was friendly with the brothers. There was a

family quarrel about money which estranged this man Mortimer, but

it was supposed to be made up, and I afterwards met him as I did

the others. He was a sly, subtle, scheming man, and several

things arose which gave me a suspicion of him, but I had no cause

for any positive quarrel.

“One day, only a couple of weeks ago, he came down to my cottage

and I showed him some of my African curiosities. Among other

things I exhibited this powder, and I told him of its strange

properties, how it stimulates those brain centres which control

the emotion of fear, and how either madness or death is the fate

of the unhappy native who is subjected to the ordeal by the

priest of his tribe. I told him also how powerless European

science would be to detect it. How he took it I cannot say, for

I never left the room, but there is no doubt that it was then,

while I was opening cabinets and stooping to boxes, that he

managed to abstract some of the devil’s-foot root. I well

remember how he plied me with questions as to the amount and the

time that was needed for its effect, but I little dreamed that he

could have a personal reason for asking.

“I thought no more of the matter until the vicar’s telegram

reached me at Plymouth. This villain had thought that I would be

at sea before the news could reach me, and that I should be lost

for years in Africa. But I returned at once. Of course, I could

not listen to the details without feeling assured that my poison

had been used. I came round to see you on the chance that some

other explanation had suggested itself to you. But there could

be none. I was convinced that Mortimer Tregennis was the

murderer; that for the sake of money, and with the idea, perhaps,

that if the other members of his family were all insane he would

be the sole guardian of their joint property, he had used the

devil’s-foot powder upon them, driven two of them out of their

senses, and killed his sister Brenda, the one human being whom I

have ever loved or who has ever loved me. There was his crime;

what was to be his punishment?

“Should I appeal to the law? Where were my proofs? I knew that

the facts were true, but could I help to make a jury of

countrymen believe so fantastic a story? I might or I might not.

But I could not afford to fail. My soul cried out for revenge.

I have said to you once before, Mr. Holmes, that I have spent

much of my life outside the law, and that I have come at last to

be a law to myself. So it was even now. I determined that the

fate which he had given to others should be shared by himself.

Either that or I would do justice upon him with my own hand. In

all England there can be no man who sets less value upon his own

life than I do at the present moment.

“Now I have told you all. You have yourself supplied the rest.

I did, as you say, after a restless night, set off early from my

cottage. I foresaw the difficulty of arousing him, so I gathered

some gravel from the pile which you have mentioned, and I used it

to throw up to his window. He came down and admitted me through

the window of the sitting-room. I laid his offence before him.

I told him that I had come both as judge and executioner. The

wretch sank into a chair, paralyzed at the sight of my revolver.

I lit the lamp, put the powder above it, and stood outside the

window, ready to carry out my threat to shoot him should he try

to leave the room. In five minutes he died. My God! how he

died! But my heart was flint, for he endured nothing which my

innocent darling had not felt before him. There is my story, Mr.

Holmes. Perhaps, if you loved a woman, you would have done as

much yourself. At any rate, I am in your hands. You can take

what steps you like. As I have already said, there is no man

living who can fear death less than I do.”

Holmes sat for some little time in silence.

“What were your plans?” he asked at last.

“I had intended to bury myself in central Africa. My work there

is but half finished.”

“Go and do the other half,” said Holmes. “I, at least, am not

prepared to prevent you.”

Dr. Sterndale raised his giant figure, bowed gravely, and walked

from the arbour. Holmes lit his pipe and handed me his pouch.

“Some fumes which are not poisonous would be a welcome change,”

said he. “I think you must agree, Watson, that it is not a case

in which we are called upon to interfere. Our investigation has

been independent, and our action shall be so also. You would not

denounce the man?”

“Certainly not,” I answered.

“I have never loved, Watson, but if I did and if the woman I

loved had met such an end, I might act even as our lawless lion-

hunter has done. Who knows? Well, Watson, I will not offend

your intelligence by explaining what is obvious. The gravel upon

the window-sill was, of course, the starting-point of my

research. It was unlike anything in the vicarage garden. Only

when my attention had been drawn to Dr. Sterndale and his cottage

did I find its counterpart. The lamp shining in broad daylight

and the remains of powder upon the shield were successive links

in a fairly obvious chain. And now, my dear Watson, I think we

may dismiss the matter from our mind and go back with a clear

conscience to the study of those Chaldean roots which are surely

to be traced in the Cornish branch of the great Celtic speech.”