Sherlock Holmes (18 page)

“But how did you…?” I said, keeping my voice low.

Holmes smiled, amused. “I should have thought the ‘how’ was obvious, Watson,” he said. “The Trojan Horse.”

“Yes, yes, the box,” I said, irritated that he might take me for such an imbecile. I realised now that it must have been his mode of entry, but I wasn’t entirely clear on precisely how he’d managed it – or, indeed, why. “But I checked it, Holmes. I opened it up and rifled through the papers. So did the clerk.”

“Oh, Watson,” said Holmes. He ran a hand through his hair. “It was, of course, by means of a false bottom that I effected entry. A most simple feat to engineer. I was curled up within a small compartment beneath the papers. Damned uncomfortable, but quite necessary.”

“Well, those men did comment that it was deuced heavy,” I said.

Holmes laughed. “No doubt a result of those grilled kidneys you’ve been feeding me with, Watson.”

I grinned. “But look here, Holmes. What’s your game? Breaking and entering into a bank – and the vault, no less – if anyone catches us here we’ll be done for. Locked up in a flash.”

“Then the key, my dear Watson, is not to get caught,” said Holmes. “Come on, quickly. This way.” He started off toward the other end of the foyer. “Keep to the shadows and try not to make a sound. We don’t know who else might be lurking here, or due to pay a visit.”

“But what exactly do you hope to achieve, Holmes?” I said as we walked.

“I have a suspicion that the reason for Underwood and Baxter’s little visit here yesterday evening will soon become abundantly clear.” He crossed to the door. “Now, to the vault,” he said.

I followed Holmes as I had followed the clerk just a few hours earlier, exiting the foyer into the loading area at the rear of the bank. The lights remained off, and there were no windows here, meaning we were navigating in near darkness.

I felt my way around one of the pallets and across to the other door, guided by a narrow sliver of light that emanated from beneath it.

The darkness here was so pure and impenetrable that I couldn’t help but consider what Holmes had said, imagining the hulking shapes of other people concealed in the shadows, waiting for us to shuffle past. Waiting to strike. The hairs on the nape of my neck prickled with fear, and I clutched my cane a little more tightly.

Holmes reached the door and prised it open with his fingers. The pale electric lights had been left on in the passageway beyond. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust.

“How did you get out of the vault?” I whispered. It had occurred to me, standing at the mouth of this passageway leading down to the vault itself, that I had seen the heavy metal doors locked behind me as I’d left. There was no way Holmes could have forced his way out from within, not without a key, or at least some assistance.

“Elementary, Watson,” replied Holmes. “There is an opening mechanism on the inside, a safety feature to prevent people from being accidentally trapped within. The door is designed to keep people out, not the other way around.”

It occurred to me that he had taken quite a gamble in this. If the mechanism had not opened from the inside, then he might have been trapped until morning, at which point he would no doubt have been discovered and arrested.

In the small chamber at the end of the passageway, the vault door stood open. “What now?” I said. There were no other exits from the room, and I was still not entirely clear what he hoped to achieve. “Are we looking for something in the vault?”

“In a sense,” said Holmes, as he disappeared through the heavy steel door.

“I wish you’d share a little more, Holmes,” I said. “I can hardly help you to look if I have no idea what I’m actually looking for.”

“It’ll only take a moment, Watson,” he said, by way of reply. “Here, help me with the trunk.”

I crossed to where Holmes’s trunk stood open against the back wall. Papers were scattered all around it, and a shallow wooden tray – of almost exactly the same perimeter as the trunk itself – was propped upright against the wall. This I took to be the false bottom beneath which Holmes had concealed himself. He must have lifted it out from below, tipping the papers over the floor as he forced the lid of the trunk open from within.

“Quickly, Watson. Help me to replace the contents.” Holmes grabbed the false base and lowered it carefully into the trunk, as I gathered an armful of papers. I hurriedly stuffed them back into the box. Two further armfuls saw the remaining papers collected and returned to their rightful place, if a little haphazardly.

Holmes pulled the lid shut, grabbed the edges of the box, then indicated I should help him to slide it to one side. It was considerably lighter than it had been earlier, when I’d tested its weight at my house, and together we shifted it easily.

Holmes then approached the back wall, stood before it for a moment, and began running his fingers over its roughly plastered surface.

“What the devil are you doing?” I said.

“Shhh!” came his response. He knocked lightly on the wall, drumming his fingertips and leaning closer to listen intently. Then, moving a few inches to his left, he did the same again, then again, then a third time, repeating the action until his knocking returned a different sound altogether – the sound of a hollow behind the wall.

“Ah, here we are,” he said. He glanced back over his shoulder, grinning. “Stand ready, Watson. I’m not entirely sure what we’re going to find down here.”

He pushed at the wall and there was a quiet, mechanical
click
, as a panel in the wall shifted beneath his weight. He stood back, and a small door revealed itself, standing proud of its sunken frame. It was an ingenious piece of concealment – a door blended almost seamlessly with the rear wall of the vault.

Holmes took hold of the edge of the door and pulled it open toward him, revealing a dark passageway beyond. From what I could see, the brickwork in the tunnel was undressed, and thick with cobwebs.

“However did you fathom we’d find this here?” I said.

“Simplicity itself, Watson,” remarked Holmes. “I carried out a brief study of the plans of this building earlier this morning at the British Library. They revealed that the Tidwell Bank, as well as several other buildings on this street, sits atop a large, fifteenth-century undercroft, which originally belonged to one of the many churches destroyed during the Great Fire. After emerging from my hiding place a short while ago, five minutes of exploration suggested that any obvious means of gaining access to the undercroft from inside the bank had long since been blocked. However, the space presents the perfect venue for a clandestine gathering, and it seems only logical that this long-forgotten venue is where our small group of German sympathisers would meet. Where else would you hide something in a bank, away from the prying eyes of others? The door had to be somewhere in the vault.”

“German sympathisers!” I said, a little too loudly. “Is that what you believe to be going on?” I was quite taken aback by this new development. Was he inferring that Baxter and Underwood were traitors to the Crown?

“Quite so, Watson,” he confirmed. “There are traitors in our midst, and more besides. Come; let us see what we might glean from below. Be on your guard.”

Ducking my head, I followed Holmes into the narrow passage, pulling the door to behind me. It was dank and dirty, and the floor continued to slope down on a gradient similar to that of the passageway we had previously traversed to reach the vault. It was at least a hundred foot long, and all the while my back remained stooped as I fumbled along in the dark, following the sound of Holmes’s shuffling footsteps.

Presently, a dim light became visible at the end of the tunnel – the glow of firelight or candles, rather than the sharp electric light of the rooms above. Tense, I slowed my approach, listening for any sign of activity. I could hear nothing, other than the sound of my own breathing and the scuff of Holmes’s boots.

A few moments later, we emerged into a large underground chamber. It was shrouded in gloom, but I could see that the ceiling was vaulted and the bricks undressed, the floor nothing but impacted dirt and stone chippings. The space was huge, and, as Holmes had suggested, I had the impression that it extended beyond the boundaries of the bank and beneath the adjoining buildings, too. Supporting pillars stood like sentries, propping up the floor above. Much of the chamber remained in shadow.

The only source of light – that which we had seen from the mouth of the tunnel – emanated from four large church candles, each positioned on a bronze candelabra around the four corners of a rectangular wooden table. Above the table hung the black, white and red flag of the German Empire. Two marble statues of women in the classical mode, their faces pale and serene in the candlelight, stood to either side of the arrangement, garlands of holly draped around their necks.

The table’s surface was covered with a red silk cloth, upon which rested an unusual array of paraphernalia, including what looked to be a ceremonial dagger with a jewelled handle; a golden chalice; strange pyramidal structures made from bound twigs; a sprig of holly; and a mouldering old book, bound in black calf’s leather.

There didn’t appear to be anyone else around, but the burning candles served as a warning – someone had been here very recently.

I crossed to the table, noticing a spread of photographs laid out beneath the dagger. I tugged a sheaf of them free, sorting through them, taking in the blank, expressionless faces of the men captured in each shot. They were spectrographs, taken from Underwood’s machine. Some of the subjects were identifiable – Herbert Grange and Professor Angelchrist. There were others, too, men I recognised from Foxton’s party.

I felt a cold sensation spreading through my gut. “What do you make of this, Holmes?” I said, holding them up for him to see. He was pacing about, taking it all in.

He came over and took the photographs from me, leafing through them. Then, dismissively, he cast the spectrographs upon the table. “One might imagine these are the accoutrements of some devilish ritual,” he said, with a wave of his hand, “some occult nonsense perpetrated by Baxter.”

“And the German flag,” I said, my mouth dry. “It seems you were right.”

“Quite so, Watson,” said Holmes. “The root of this mystery has never been about spiritualism and the search for the human soul, but about political allegiance and the war.”

I could hardly conceive of what had been going on down here, right beneath our noses, right in the heart of the capital. “Nevertheless,” I said, “look at all of this stuff, Holmes. There’s something ungodly being carried out down here, and it might well prove to be the means by which the perpetrators are influencing their victims.”

“Perhaps,” said Holmes, although I could tell he did not believe it. “But to my eyes this place feels more like a stage than the true lair of a cult.”

“There’s still the matter of this ‘spirit box’, too,” I said. “Whatever it might prove to be.”

Holmes tapped his finger against his lips thoughtfully, but didn’t reply.

“I can hardly warrant it,” I continued, “Baxter and Underwood, German sympathisers. Do you think Foxton’s involved?”

Holmes shook his head. “No, Watson. I do not. It’s Baxter I believe to be the true villain here. Underwood is a naïve and desperate young man, suffering from a broken heart and a desire to find reason in an unreasonable world. He’s fallen in with Baxter, who I’d wager has manipulated him, turned him into an instrument, a means by which the members of this distasteful group might gain access to Foxton’s associates.”

“Good Lord,” I said. “It’s a despicable business. Who knows how many other men Baxter has under his power.”

“More to the point, Watson, is why,” said Holmes. “What is Baxter hoping to achieve? There has to be more to this than a simple matter of encouraging a Member of Parliament to throw himself in the river. Why are there pictures Professor Angelchrist and others on this table? What information is Baxter trying to get at?”

I was about to urge Holmes to continue, when I heard the scuff of a footstep behind me, and whirled round to see a wiry young fellow charging towards me from the shadows, his lips curled back in a savage snarl, his fists raised.

“Look out, Holmes!” I cried, as I brought my cane up in one swift motion, in the manner of swinging a cricket bat, as the man launched himself at me. The stick collided squarely with his jaw, sending a painful shudder up my arms, and without a sound, the man collapsed unconscious to the floor.

There was little time to congratulate myself, however, as I heard Holmes grunt and cry out, and I turned to see him grappling with a second assailant, as a third charged in from behind him, intending to join the fray. I was not, of course, about to stand for that, and with a war cry that would have made the ancients proud, I charged headlong at the man, once again wielding my walking stick as a club.

He turned, wild-eyed, at the sound of my howling approach, bringing both fists up to his face to form a defensive shield as I swung my club hard at his head. It rebounded off his forearms, and the man grunted something in German before swaying, first left, then right, then lashing out with his fist before I’d had a chance to recover from my swing.

He caught me hard in the jaw and I staggered back, reeling from the blow. I felt warm blood streaming down my chin from a split lip. A second blow, this time in the gut, doubled me over. I was old and out of practice, no longer used to trading blows, particularly with a man less than half my age.

I heard Holmes issue a cry of pain and my resolve hardened. I gripped my cane firmly, still bent double, and as the man came close, preparing to strike me upon the back of the neck to put me down, I lurched upwards, thrusting the cane up as hard as I could and catching him under the chin.

He was caught off guard, and dropped to the floor, choking. A second blow across the temple laid him out upon the floor, suddenly limp.

Holmes and the third man were standing, but Holmes had the upper hand, pinning the attacker’s arms behind his back. As he struggled to get free I came around to stand before him. He grinned inanely, lurching forward in Holmes’s grip so that his face was close to mine, and spat.