"We have let this affair go far enough," said he.
"Is there a train to North Walsham to-night?"I turned up the time-table.The last had just gone.
"Then we shall breakfast early and take the very first in the morning," said Holmes."Our presence is most urgently needed.
Ah! here is our expected cablegram.One moment, Mrs.Hudson;there may be an answer.No, that is quite as I expected.
This message makes it even more essential that we should not lose an hour in letting Hilton Cubitt know how matters stand, for it is a singular and a dangerous web in which our simple Norfolk squire is entangled."So, indeed, it proved, and as I come to the dark conclusion of a story which had seemed to me to be only childish and bizarre I experience once again the dismay and horror with which I was filled.Would that I had some brighter ending to communicate to my readers, but these are the chronicles of fact, and I must follow to their dark crisis the strange chain of events which for some days made Ridling Thorpe Manor a household word through the length and breadth of England.
We had hardly alighted at North Walsham, and mentioned the name of our destination, when the station-master hurried towards us.
"I suppose that you are the detectives from London?" said he.
A look of annoyance passed over Holmes's face.
"What makes you think such a thing?"
"Because Inspector Martin from Norwich has just passed through.
But maybe you are the surgeons.She's not dead -- or wasn't by last accounts.You may be in time to save her yet -- though it be for the gallows."Holmes's brow was dark with anxiety.