The Mammoth Book of the New Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes
Page 58
In a moment we had lashed our prisoner’s arms and legs with a curtain-cord. Then Holmes bent down to the still, silent figure. ‘Let us see this villain’s face,’ said he. He grasped the black silk mask and pulled it away, to reveal the snarling, twisted features of Major Felgate.
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The evidence which Major Ullathorne had gathered before his death, together with certain information which Colonel Headley had lately managed to acquire, proved sufficient to break the power of Felgate’s criminal organisation, and to send everyone connected with it to trial. It was, we learnt, Colonel Headley himself who had visited Major Ullathorne’s cottage so mysteriously the previous summer to request his help, and we also learnt later that on the day we had seen the colonel at Woolwich station, he had been returning from Westminster where he had had a secret interview with the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for War, to brief them on the state of affairs at the Royal Medway’s headquarters. He had harboured strong suspicions of Major Felgate and one or two other officers for some time, and was determined that they did not learn of the steps he was taking to bring about their downfall, and cleanse the Royal Medway Regiment.
Alas for that famous old regiment, despite the trial and conviction of Felgate – whom Holmes declared to be one of the most plausible villains he had ever encountered – and Colonel Headley’s Herculean efforts to root out the wide-spread corruption, it survived little more than ten years as an independent regiment, being merged during the ’nineties into one of the larger Kent regiments. Major Loxley, I am glad to say, recovered fully from his wound, which was not so serious as at first appeared. In the court proceedings which followed the arrests, a lenient view was taken of his involvement in the matter, in consequence of numerous mitigating circumstances, and he was able at last to enjoy a peaceful and untroubled retirement as neighbour to the Potters, who, to the best of my knowledge, live still, to this day, at Juniper Cottage.