Sherlock Holmes & The Master Engraver (Sherlock Holmes Revival) (29 page)

I thought I detected a strong whiff of the same decayed odour on the counterfeit notes, but it may have been my imagination, in an entire world of decay.

Treading with some care through the mire of the streets, we eventually arrived at the rotting door of number 11 Narrow Street. A stained, peeling, crudely written scrap of card nailed to the door proclaimed in childish characters the proud occupant of this dire place to be:

DAISY GOODCHILD (Miss)
.

Holmes wrinkled his nose in distaste; cynically he muttered “It would seem that Daisy Goodchild, despite her apparently ardent admirer, still wishes casual passers-by to know that she is yet unattached...”

He made to knock upon the grimy, sagging door with his bare knuckles, thought better of it, and fastidiously rapped with the soiled ferrule-end of his walking cane. Within, a child mewled shrilly and was silenced with a harsh shout and what sounded like a sharp blow, after which there was silence for some moments, followed by cautious footsteps approaching the door. After a short pause the handle turned and the door creaked open a mere crack to reveal in the gloom within, a suspicious eye peering out at us... I gripped the comforting butt of the heavy piece hidden in the pocket of my Ulster. Querulously a woman spoke; “Who’s there? Sidney already paid the rent if that’s what yer come for.” Hearing a female voice I eased my grip on the revolver.

Abruptly the door started to close; Holmes’ foot moved swiftly to wedge it open. “Miss Goodchild – there you are in error! We are not come to ask for money, but to pay what you are owed. If I may explain...” The solitary eye peered out more hopefully, and slowly the door squealed fully open to reveal a not unappealing young woman, save that her other eye was quite as black-and-blue as both of Solomon Warburg’s had been after his savage attack. The sour odours of unwashed bodies, linen long overdue for laundering, stale food, tobacco and alcohol wreathed evilly out to assail us.

As the woman stepped forward I noted the silver bracelet looped around her left wrist.

Suavely Holmes continued: “Miss Goodchild I presume? I represent Kauffmann Brothers, the respected jewellers in Whitechapel where your friend recently purchased a gift for you – a Mr Sidney Belton I believe? Ah, I see it has already been delivered to you – is all to your satisfaction? It certainly looks charming if I may say so.” The creature essayed a coquettish simper, which appeared perfectly grotesque from behind the blue-black blood-engorged, discoloured eye. My friend resumed: “It appears that Mr Belton was inadvertently handed rather less change than was correct, to the amount of two pounds and fifteen shillings – a most unfortunate oversight on our part, for which I apologise. We are come to return it if you would be good enough to provide me with your friend’s address.”

Upon the instant a clever, cunning look passed across the woman’s face. “Two pounds and fifteen shillings you say Sir? A sizeable sum. Well you can hand that to me now if you please.” Holmes gave her a pained, apologetic smile. “Would that I could Miss, for it would save me valuable time of which I have very little to spare, but the fact of the matter is that the receipt is made out to Mr Sidney Belton, and it is our strict business policy that such returns may only be made to the purchaser. If you could just give me his address we can clear the matter up forthwith...” Cowed by Holmes’ authoritative tone, she yielded. “You’ll find him across the river on Jacob’s Island; number 30 Jacob Street, by the tannery, hard by Tan’s Yard.”

Gravely he thanked Miss Daisy Goodchild and we departed that vile place. The fog was once more closing in like an oppressive brown blanket falling from the murky sky; we decided to return for the night to the warmth, safety and comfort of our familiar rooms in Baker Street.

Mere days now remained until the criminals’ grave threat would be made real, and millions of pounds of counterfeit sterling currency fed like a sinister and lethal poison into the nation’s economy...

After a slower than customary journey through the thickening fog we eventually attained Baker Street somewhat after eight o’clock, where we wreaked hearty havoc upon a scratch supper of chicken broth and a cold game pie with buttered greens. Quietly Mrs Hudson entered, banked up the fire, cleared the remains of our meal and departed, uttering a small sigh of exasperation at the state of our boots which I had placed outside the parlour door for the boy to attend to.

In our customary chairs before the flickering coals once more, Holmes spread a large-scale map of South London across his knees and proceeded to examine it minutely, while I sought through the pages of Dickens’ ‘Oliver Twist’ for the passage I recalled which so vividly described our afternoon’s adventure in this seamy part of the Capital, for I found I was deeply affected by the abominable circumstances of that ghastly place, and the mean lives its denizens eked out there... I found the passage I sought:

“...crazy wooden galleries common to the backs of half a dozen houses, with holes from which to look upon the slime beneath; windows, broken and patched, with poles thrust out, on which to dry the linen that is never there; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem to be too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud and threatening to fall into it – as some have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations, every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage...”

Abruptly, Holmes set aside his map and turned to me. “You are much impressed by what we saw today Watson, for I observe you are deep in the works of one of our keenest observers of the criminal classes – Dickens’ ‘Oliver Twist’ if I am not much mistaken. Let me guess, might it be the passage where Sykes meets his gruesome but well-deserved end in the poisonous mud of Folly Ditch?” I nodded.

“Indeed Holmes. I confess I am depressed and startled at observing intimately, such deprivation, such degradation, at witnessing human beings living at the lowest believable level, faring no better than beasts of the field, and in this modern technical age of wonders, electric illumination, the telegraph, medical advances unparalleled... the rookeries of Seven Dials seem almost wholesome by contrast.”

“Then tomorrow dear friend, I fear we must steel ourselves for a far more unpleasant ordeal, for we go to hunt our quarry in his lair, and it is concealed in an environ considerably more dreadful than that which you witnessed this day.” I shuddered involuntarily, and then with a start, understood the full import of Holmes’ words. I realised that he now knew full well where the criminals were located!

“How long have you known this matter Holmes?”

He stepped to the mantel, retrieved his bulging Persian slipper and favourite foul briar, arrayed them alongside the vestas and cigarette box and reseated himself, now upon the soft old Turkey carpet before the mellowing fire.

I concluded that he was preparing for an all-night sitting;
‘quite a three-pipe problem’
as he had once pronounced to me. “How long? Well, I have had suspicions from the very moment we received the second proof. They were then reinforced by several apparently small but vital factors – among them, the precise time the blackmail demand appeared on the wall at Slater’s Yard after we encountered the two thugs, particularly the odour of the third proof presented to us by Mr May, and subsequently the yellow slip so fortuitously provided by young Mr Meyer; it is lying there upon my desk.”

He sat silent for a long moment, his long arms folded, chin sunk upon his chest. He appeared to be striving to recall something.

Suddenly and to my surprise he sombrely intoned:“Thirty pieces of silver burns on the traitor’s brain; thirty pieces of silver! Oh! It is hellish gain!” I eyed him with considerable curiosity and waited; Holmes was not a natural poet. “It occurs to me, Watson, that it is close to two thousand years since the last notable betrayal for a mere thirty pieces of silver.” He passed me the yellow slip. I read it and understood;

Sold to Mr Sydney Belton: One ladies’ silver bracelet, thirty roundels and links. Overall weight four ounces – £2.15s
.

Engraving: ‘To My Daisy from Her Sidney’ (4s.11d)

Cash received with thanks: £2.19s.11d

Deliver to: 11 Narrow Street (A.M.)

I looked back at Holmes. “Clearly Belton must have been so maddened by the sight of so much easy money that he secretly purloined a counterfeit note in order to indulge his romance, or perhaps to make amends for the consequences of his violence!

“Then his overweening greed has betrayed his master’s whereabouts for a paltry thirty pieces of silver! Surely Holmes, all we now need do is observe him at his lodgings and follow wherever he goes, for assuredly he must eventually lead us to the lair?”

My friend applied a match to his briar, puffed steadily for some moments, and at length, from within a dense cloud of pungent tobacco smoke uttered in a tone of the deepest satisfaction;

“Judas Silver...”

*        *       *

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Villains Are Taken!

I rose early the following morning – three days now remained until the ransom demand expired – only to discover that Holmes had breakfasted sparingly
and departed at what must have been a most ungodly hour. The measureless amounts of intellectual and physical energy he continued to invest in this most demanding of investigations surely could not be sustained with tea and toast alone, yet such appeared to have been his meagre repast that bleak and foggy morning. An egg and three rashers of bacon remained cold, congealed and quite untouched upon his plate.

In something of a reflective mood, and wishing for a quiet morning, I resisted the urge to call down to Mrs Hudson for breakfast; instead I buttered a round of toast, heaped the bacon and fried egg upon it and topped it with a second slice, generously spread with mustard. Ruminatively I munched my cold sandwich beside the fire, and pondered when and how this adventure might finish. That it would end soon seemed assured, for I was certain that Holmes now knew precisely where the chase would be concluded. As to the finish, I was by no means as confident.

It was clear beyond all doubt that at the final
dénouement
we would be confronting the most desperate of London’s villains, who had already furnished ample proof of their casual indifference to inflicting savage violence, pitiless torture and calculated murder upon those who stood in their path. These men, and we knew not how many they numbered, would stop at nothing to achieve their end.

Idly I wandered to the window and gazed down at the street below. There was little to divert me there; a cabbie appeared to be arguing good-naturedly with his newly-alighted customer – perhaps a disagreement about the fare; three elderly women stood gossiping in a group, apparently comparing their purchases; a pair of tough looking characters idled in a doorway opposite, talking behind their hands. I observed them sneaking swift furtive swigs from a shared spirit bottle, and none too covertly either. Were they, too, spying on 221B? I noted that the fog was now little more than a heavy mist, and the gas-lights had been extinguished.

Returning to the hearth, I perceived a drawer to Holmes’ desk was, rather unusually, left open; it was the one where customarily he kept his revolver; the drawer was empty. There was a further notable absence that morning; the walking stick that Holmes had elected to take with him was the silver-handled killer, the elegant medlar-wood cane which artfully concealed a slim and lethal razor-edged Solingen steel sword, a weapon of which he was a master, and to whose skill at least two men who foolishly had challenged him could testify.

I certainly did not have need of Holmes’ singular skills of observation and deduction to divine what dark manner of business he had embarked on alone this morning; clearly it was likely to be warm and perilous work.

(I will confess that I felt a little hurt that Holmes had ventured out and about on dangerous business without alerting me; I felt that natural concern for a valued friend and colleague who may perhaps, for the first time, have taken solely upon himself a danger better shared by two.) I resumed my study of Thomas Pickering Pick’s
Fractures and Dislocations
.

It was around a half after four in the afternoon that the parlour door opened to admit – quite unannounced – a thin, exceedingly grubby-looking, shabbily dressed and heavily bearded man. He wore a greasy, shapeless knitted Monmouth cap and a patch over his left eye. With a drunken belch he lurched unsteadily across the room and stretched out upon the sofa. He not only reeked of the sewer – the rank juniper-sharp stench of cheap one-shilling gin assailed my nostrils instantly. “Good God you dirty scoundrel!” I roared. “What the devil do you mean by this intrusion? Explain yourself this instant, else I shall summon an officer and have you arrested for trespass! This is the private residence of Mr Sherlock Holmes and unless you have a satisfactory explanation for this outrageous behaviour you will shortly find yourself spending the night in rather more confined accommodation and on something considerably less comfortable than that couch!”

This noisome, one-eyed, gin-sodden spectre lay slack-jawed and inert, a thin trail of saliva leaking from a corner of his mouth into the filthy beard, eyes closed and snoring coarsely; he appeared to have lapsed into complete unconsciousness. Now in a considerable fury I strode to the open door and bellowed down the stairs “Billy, down there! Fetch a constable upon the instant! Tell him a drunken vagrant has forced his way into Mr Holmes’ rooms!”

“Very good Doctor Watson!” he piped and I heard the street door open but before I could turn, a most familiar voice behind me murmured “You may call him back; forgive me my dear Watson, but you know my small
penchant
for the theatrical; however, I am reassured once again that if I can bamboozle my close friend, then I have remained safe from detection today!” In amazement I spun around, to see a smiling Sherlock Holmes now fully alert and sitting quite upright, eyes shining with excitement, eye-patch gone, peeling the remnants of the vagrant’s beard from his lean jowls and fastidiously wiping his chin and cheeks with a tattered, grubby kerchief; he made to stuff it back into the pocket of the grimy ankle-length overcoat, then with evident disgust he balled it up and hurled it upon the glowing embers.