PINNACLE BOOKS NEW YORK (12 page)

"Well
oiled, but they would do that."

"The
man positioned here, you mean, after the
gold
train went by," I exclaimed.

"Or
before, for that matter." The sleuth's attitude
was
casual and he seemed to have lost interest in
the
matter.

Our
walk back to the four-wheeler was made in
silence.
I had nothing to say nor had Dandy Jack,
who
had recovered his grin. Holmes was deep in thought, his hands clasped
behind his back and his
aquiline face
chin-down on his chest. In the convey
ance,
Dandy Jack headed back to Brent since there
were
no orders to do otherwise.

As
we approached the small village and its
station,
Holmes summoned himself from his rev
erie.
"I would appreciate your thinking more on
how
that wagonload of gold was removed
with no one the wiser. In daylight too, for the authorities found
the
boxcar before night fell."

Dandy
Jack indicated that he would give the
matter
due consideration, but there was little
enthusiasm
in his manner. Why our driver should
be
expected to come up with an answer eluded me.
At
the station, Holmes passed some bills to Dandy
Jack,
who did not bother to count them before
shoving
them into a pocket with a gesture of ac
knowledgment
that could have doubled for thanks.

As
he stood on the platform and waved us good
bye,
did I detect an expression of relief on his
weathered
face?

On
the train, I viewed Holmes with purpose. I
had
allowed him a lengthy period for meditation,
and
enough was enough. Questions were bubbling
on
my lips. I never had the chance to ask them;
Holmes
divined my thoughts.

"Dandy
Jack has led a not-uneventful life, and it
was
fortunate for our purposes that he was on the
scene."
Holmes removed his ostrich-skin pouch and
fueled
his short-stemmed briar. "For that matter,
the
sleepy village of Brent has seen more exciting times. It was once the
halfway house for a thriving
business."
My mouth opened with the obvious
question,
but Holmes continued: "A ring of brandy
smugglers
got their contraband cargo this far and
then
sent it in various directions, much in the
manner
that Dandy Jack mentioned."

"He
was, then, a part of the ring?"

"Very
good at his job, too."

"How
do you know of this, Holmes?"

"I
broke the ring."

"Ah,
then you knew Jack."

"Only
by reputation. There was a falling out
among
the thieves. The matter of greed you men
tioned
previously. There were two casualties,
which
did not sit well with one member of the
gang.
I was able to contact him, by post actually,
using
a code name. We transacted some business,
always
by the mails. The entire gang was captured,
including
a customs official in Yarmouth."

"But
they didn't all go to jail," I said with a wise
smile,
which his answer erased.

"Actually,
they did. However, one of the gang
escaped
after a brief period in a certain penal
institution.
He's never been found."

Holmes
puffed on his pipe for a considerable
moment,
his eyes harkening back to times gone by. Then he continued in a low
tone of voice which, on
occasion, served
as a tocsin for a confidential matter of importance.
"Dandy
Jack is a singular name and rather hard to forget. Old friend, we'd
best forget it just the
same."

During
our return to London, I viewed our
countryside
investigation in a new light. Small wonder that our unusual driver
had considered the matter of the stolen gold with a professional
interest. If a smuggler—who must have worked in collusion
with some of the local inhabitants at one
time—did
not know how the stolen gold was
removed,
then who would?

Chapter
7

The
Leaden Intruder

THAT
EVENING, our dinner at 221 B Baker Street
was
a quiet one. I was touched by the faith Holmes
had
evidenced by his revelation on the homebound
train
and did not wish to plague him with further
questions.
Many of my queries through the years must have smacked of the inane
to him. He frequently displayed irritation when others could not
match the mercurial speed of his
intellect, but
exhibited a singular
patience with me. On more
than one
occasion he had stated that I possessed an
intuitive
ability to center on a key fact, as though
gravitated
to the missing piece of a mosaic he was
attempting
to piece together. His words were sweet
music
and I invariably glowed when recalling
them,
but there was the lurking suspicion that he
might
have strained a point or two in this respect.
He
invariably referred to
our
investigation and the
problems
that
we
must
solve in a manner so
convincing that the
words were universally accept
ed,
fortunately for me. Had anyone dared to question Mr. Sherlock
Holmes or looked closely at the
façade
of our equal contributions to case-solving
that
he had created, they might have burst out
laughing.
When I allowed my mind to dwell on
this,
there was the recurring thought that Holmes could have hypnotized
himself into actually believing that I was an indispensable cog
in the
machinery that he had created. An
active weapon
like Slim Gilligan or,
perish the thought, the
awesome and
frightening Wakefield Orloff.

Holmes
seemed preoccupied and, as he so often
did
when involved in thought, busied himself in his
chemical
corner. When he was intent on beakers
and
retorts, conversation was impossible. I decided
to
bide my time relative to certain matters that still
puzzled
me about our afternoon expedition. I was attempting, without too much
success, to collect
and sort notes on a
case history that I hoped to
make
available to my readers, going through the
usual
exasperation involved in locating certain information and assembling
it in the proper order.
My friend had a
vial full of a dark liquid bubbling
furiously.
He removed the candle beneath it and placed it on the desk. Holmes
was turning back
toward his apparatus
when the upper pane of one
of our bay
windows was shattered. There was a
booming
sound, the candle was abruptly halved,
and
there was a resounding thud in the far side of
the
room. I sat transfixed, staring at the reduced
candle,
convinced that I had felt a disturbance in
the
air in front of my face, which may or may not
have
been true. Then I was galvanized into action.

"Holmes,
we are being fired upon," I cried,
dropping
from the desk chair to the floor and
making
for the window on all fours with the intent
of
drawing the blind.

"Calm
yourself, old fellow," said the sleuth in a
casual
tone as though asking for a dinner roll.

To
my consternation, he made for the door to our
chambers
with no attempt of concealment.

I
lunged back toward him with the half-formed
idea
of pulling him to the floor so that he would not
make
such a splendid target, but he was already at
our
outer portal and had it open.

"Billy,"
he called, "please inform Mrs. Hudson
that
naught is amiss. A slight miscalculation in one
of
my chemical experiments was the cause of the
disturbance."

I
assumed that the page boy acknowledged this
request
and made for our landlady's domain. I was, again, scurrying toward
the window and had man
aged to close the
drapes by the time Holmes
reentered our
quarters from the landing.

"Please,
Watson, do not be so concerned."

I
fear my reply was made with some heat.
"Bullets
flying through the air and you
. . ."

"
A
bullet," he interrupted. "Fired
with no intent
of doing us harm."

The
sleuth retrieved the upper portion of the
candle
from the floor.
"Remarkable piece
of shooting. Had the marks
man fired
at a human target, one of us would now
be
dead."

His
eyes went upward and, to my horror, he
crossed
to the window, pulling the blind partially
aside
to view the shattered pane of glass.
"See
the angle of the shot," he said, indicating upward.

"For
God's sake, Holmes, close that drape." I had
flattened
myself against the wall between the
windows.
"You may be interested in plotting a
trajectory,
but I'll have no part of your madness."

He
did let the material fall back into place and
there
was concern in his large eyes as he viewed
me,
frozen in my protected position.
"Good
fellow, the crash of a rifle bullet, fired from
an
elongated barrel I suspect, is a jarring note on a quiet evening at
home. Let me repeat that the man
behind
the gun did not have blood in his eye."

As
he spoke he was tracing an imaginary line
from
the window to the candle, which took him to a
point
in our floorboards where he squatted, after
securing
the clasp knife from the mantelpiece.

"Anyone
who could sever that candle so neatly could have found either of us
with ease had he so
wished."

He
rose to his feet at this point, displaying a
misshapen
piece of lead triumphantly.
"I
shall inspect this carefully, but other matters
claim
our attention." He was at the desk now, in the
chair
I had vacated so precipitously but a short
while
before, scrawling on foolscap. I could not remain pressed against the
wall forever. Drawing a
deep breath, I
crossed to the settee, casting a
nervous
glance back at the window through which
the
whisper of death had entered our sitting room.

"Forgive
me if I seem unduly concerned," I
began,
and there was a liberal touch of irony in my
voice.

"Reasonable,
of course," he stated with an airy
wave
of one hand. "Old fellow, the shot was fired
from
a height. Note the point of entry through the
window."

"I'll
take your word for it."