"Forget the whole analysis in between and back to the beginning and the end only..."
- Sherlock Holmes
The little
dancing men are at the heart of a mystery which seems to be driving his young
wife Elsie to distraction. He married her about a year ago, and until recently,
everything was well. She is American, and before
the wedding, she asked her husband-to-be to promise
her never to ask about her past, as she had had some “very disagreeable
associations” in her life, although she said that there was nothing that she
was personally ashamed of. Mr. Cubitt swore the promise and, being an
honor able English gentleman, insists on living by it, which is one of the
thing causing difficulty at Ridling Thorpe Manor.
The trouble
began when Elsie received a letter from the United States, which evidently disturbed her, then
she threw the letter on the fire. When the dancing men appeared, sometimes on a
piece of paper left on the sundial overnight, sometimes
scrawled in chalk on a wall or door, even a window sill. Each
time, their appearance has an obvious, terrifying effect on Elsie, but she won't tell her husband what is going on. Holmes tells Cubitt that he wants to see
every occurrence of the dancing men. They are to be copied down and brought or
sent to him at 221B Baker Street.
Cubitt duly does this, and it provides Holmes with an important clue. Holmes
comes to realize that it's a substitution cipher.
He cracks the code by frequency
analysis. The last of the messages conveyed by the dancing men is a
particularly alarming one.
Holmes
rushes down to Ridling Thorpe Manor only to find Cubitt dead of a bullet to the
heart and his wife gravely wounded in the head. Inspector Martin of the Norfolk
Constabulary believes that it is a murder-suicide, or will be if Elsie dies. She is
the prime suspect in her husband’s death. Holmes sees things differently. Why
is there a bullet hole in the windowsill, making a total of three shots, while
Cubitt and his wife were each only shot once ? Why are only two chambers in
Cubitt’s revolver empty? What is the large sum of money
doing in the room ? The discovery of a trampled flowerbed just outside the
window and the discovery of a shell casing therein confirm what Holmes has
suspected: a third person was involved, and it's surely the one who has been
sending the curious dancing-man messages.
Holmes know
certain things that Inspector Martin doeesn't. He seemingly picks the name
“Elrige’s” out of the air, and Cubitt’s stable boy recognizes it as a local
farmer’s name. Holmes quickly writes a message — in dancing men characters —
and sends the boy to Elrige’s Farm to deliver it to a lodger there, whose name
he has also apparently picked out of the air. Of course, Holmes has learned
both men's names by reading the dancing men code. While waiting for the result
of this message, Holmes takes the opportunity to explain to Watson and
Inspector Martin how he cracked the code of the dancing men, and the messages
are revealed. The last one, which caused Holmes and Watson to rush to Norfolk,
read “ELSIE PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD”.
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