The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (29 page)

“Little dog catches big cat.”

I flashed a glance at Pons. “If that's a message, certainly it is in code.”

“Surely a limited message, if so,” demurred Pons.

“But it's nothing more than child's play,” I protested. “It can have no meaning.”

“Little, indeed,” agreed Pons. “Yet I fancy it may help to establish the identity of the gentleman who brought about Idomeno Persano's death.”

“Oh, come, Pons, you are having me!”

“No, no, the matter is almost disappointingly elementary,” retorted Pons. “You know my methods, Parker; you have all the facts. You need only apply them.”

With this he came to his knees at the wastebasket, where he sought diligently until he found a box six inches square, together with cord and wrapping paper.

“This would appear to be the container in which the worm arrived,” he said, examining the box. “Well filled with packing, so that the specimen should not be jolted, I see. Does that convey nothing to you, Parker?”

“It is the customary way of sending such specimens.”

“Indeed.” He looked to the wrapping. “The return address is plainly given. ‘Fowler. 29 Upper Brook Street.' Yet is was posted in Wapping, a little detail I daresay Persano overlooked. Some care for details is indicated. Fowler will doubtless turn out to be a known correspondent in matters entomological, but most definitely not the source of this remarkable worm.”

At this moment Mrs. White returned, somewhat out of breath. At her heels followed the young
locum tenens
she had evidently gone to fetch after telephoning Scotland Yard; and, bringing up the rear, came Inspector Walter Taylor, a feral-faced young man in his thirties who had more than once shown an unusual aptitude for the solution of crime within his jurisdiction.

With his arrival, the Inspector immediately took charge, and soon Pons and I were on our way back to 7B Praed Street, Pons bearing with almost gingerly care, with Inspector Taylor's permission, a little parcel containing the extraordinary worm which had sent Idomeno Persano to madness and death.

In our quarters once more, Pons carefully uncovered the remarkable worm and placed it, still in its match-box, under the light on his desk. Thus seen, it was truly an imposing sight. It was furred, like a caterpillar, but also horned, like some pupal stages, with not one horn, but four, one pair rising from the back close to its head, the other facing the first pair, but rising from the other end of the worm. Its head was bare of fur and was featured by a long proboscis, from which uncoiled a slender, thread-like tongue. It appeared to have no less than four rows of feet, double rows extending all the way along its length, as multitudinous as those of a centipede, and very similar in construction. Double antennae rose from back of its head, reaching to the height of the horns, while its tail was thick and blunt. It was perhaps four inches in length, and at least two inches in diameter.

“Have you ever seen its like before?” asked Pons delightedly, his eyes twinkling.

“Never. How could I, if even science does not know it?”

“Ah, Parker, do not be so ready to take someone's word for such a judgment. There is no such thing, technically, as a worm unknown to science. Any worm discovered by a scientist can be readily enough classified, even if not immediately identified with precision.”

“On the contrary,” I retorted with some spirit. “It lies before us.”

“Let me put it this way, Parker—if the worm is unknown to science, there is no such worm.”

“I'm afraid we are reversing roles, Pons,” I said with asperity. “Is it not you who scores me constantly for my didacticism?”

“I am guilty of the charge,” he admitted. “But in this case, I must give you no quarter. This worm is unknown to science for precisely the reason I have stated—there is no such worm.”

“But it lies here, refuting you!”

“Pray look again, my dear fellow. I submit that the head of this interesting creature is nothing less than the head of a sphinx moth—commonly known also as a hawk moth or humming-bird moth—quite possibly the common striped sphinx,
Deilephila Lineata
. The elaborate legs are nothing more than complete centipedes cunningly fitted in—six of them, I should say; these appear to be a centipede commonly found in the northern part of North America,
Scutigera forceps
. The antennae
apparently derive from two sources—the furred pair suggest the
Actias Luna
, or common Luna moth; the long, thin green pair are surely those of
Pterophylla camellifolia
, the true katydid. The fur is as equally a fabrication, and the horns—ah, Parker, the horns are little masterpieces of deception! This is a remarkable worm indeed. How closely did you examine the wound in Persano's finger?”

“I examined it with my customary care,” I answered somewhat stiffly.

“What would you say had caused it?”

“It appeared to be a gash, as if he had run his finger into a nail or a splinter, though the gash was clean.”

“So that you could, if pressed, suggest that Persano had come to his death by venom administered through a snake's fang?”

“Since my imagination is somewhat more restricted, of scientific necessity, than yours, Pons…,” I began, but he interrupted me.

“Like this,” said Pons.

He seized hold of a tweezers and caught the remarkable worm of Idomeno Persano between them. Instantly the four horns on the creature's thick body shot forth fangs; from two of them a thin brown fluid still trickled.

“Only one of these found its mark,” said Pons dryly. “It seems to have been enough.” He gazed at me with twinkling eyes and added, “I believe you had the commendable foresight not to include snake venom in that list of poisons you were confident had not brought about Persano's death.”

For a moment I was too nonplussed to reply. “But this is the merest guesswork,” I protested finally.

“You yourself eliminated virtually all other possibilities,” countered Pons. “You have left me scarcely any other choice.”

“But what of the dog?” I cried.

“What dog?” asked Pons with amazement he did not conceal.

“If I recall rightly, Mrs. White said that Persano spoke of a dog. A dog's tooth might well have made that gash.”

“Ah, Parker, you are straying afield,” said Pons with that air of patient tolerance I always found so trying. “There was no such dog. Mrs. White herself said so.”

“You suggest, then, that Mrs. White misunderstood her employer's dying words?”

“Not at all. I daresay she understood him correctly.”

“I see. Persano spoke of a dog, but there was no dog,” I said with a bitterness which did not escape Pons.

“Come, come, Parker!” replied Pons, smiling. “One would not expect you to be a master of my profession any more than one could look to me as a master of yours. Let us just see how skillfully this is made.”

As he spoke, he proceeded with the utmost care to cut away the fur and the material beneath. He was cautious not to release the spring again, and presently revealed a most intricate and wonderfully wrought mechanism, which sprang the trap and forced the venom from small rubber sacks attached to the fangs by tubes.

“Are those not unusually small fangs?” I asked.

“If I were to venture a guess, I should say they belonged to the coral or harlequin snake,
Micrurus fulvius
, common to the southern United States and the Mississippi Valley. Its poison is a neurotoxin; it may have been utilized, but certainly not in its pure state. It was most probably adulterated with some form of alkaloid poison to prolong Persano's death and complicate any medication Persano may have sought. The snake belongs to the Proteroglyphs, or front-fanged type of which cobras and mambas are most common in their latitudes. The ‘worm' was designed to spring the fangs when touched; it was accordingly well packed so that its venom would not be discharged by rough handling in transit.” He cocked an eye at me. “Does this deduction meet with your approval, Parker?”

“It is very largely hypothetical.”

“Let us grant that it is improbable, if no more so than the worm itself. Is it within the bounds of possibility?”

“I would not say it was not.”

“Capital! We make progress.”

“But I should regard it as a highly dubious method of committing murder.”

“Beyond doubt. Had it failed, its author would have tried again. He meant to kill Persano. He succeeded. If he tried previously to do so, we have no record of it. Persano was a secretive man, but he had anticipated that an attempt would be made. He had had what was certainly a warning.”

“The post-card?”

Pons nodded. “Let us compare the writing on the card with that on the wrapping of the package.”

It required little more than a glance to reveal that the script on the wrapping of the package which had contained the lethal worm was entirely different from that on the post-card. But if Pons was disappointed, he did not show it; his eyes were fairly dancing with delight, and the hint of a smile touched his thin lips.

“We shall just leave this for Inspector Taylor to see. Meanwhile, the hour is not yet nine; I shall be able to reach certain sources of information without delay. If Taylor should precede my return, pray detain him until I come.”

With an annoyingly enigmatic smile, Pons took his leave.

It was close to midnight when my companion returned to our quarters. A fog pressed whitely against the windows of 7B, and the familiar sounds from outside—the chimes of the clock a few streets away, the rattle of passing traffic, the occasional clip-clop of a hansom cab—had all but died away.

Inspector Taylor had been waiting for an hour. I had already shown him the remarkably ingenious instrument of death designed by the murderer of Idomeno Persano, and he had scrutinized the post-card, only to confess himself as baffled as I by any meaning it might have. Yet he had an unshakable faith in my companion's striking faculties of deduction and logical synthesis and made no complaint at Pons's delay.

Pons slipped so silently into the room as to startle us.

“Ah, Taylor, I trust you have not been kept waiting long,” he said.

“Only an hour,” answered the Inspector.

“Pray forgive me. I thought, insofar as I had succeeded in identifying the murderer of Idomeno Persano, I might trouble also to look him up for you.”

“Mr. Pons, you're joking!”

“On the contrary. You will find him at the ‘Sailor's Rest' in Wapping. He is a short, dark-skinned man of Italian or Spanish parentage. His hair is dark and curly, but showing grey at the temples. He carries a bad scar on his temple above and a little retracted from his right eye. There is a lesser scar on his throat. His name in Angelo Perro. His motive was vengeance. Persano had appeared against him in the United States a dozen years ago. Lose no time in taking him; once he learns Persano is dead, he will leave London at the earliest moment. Come around tomorrow, and you shall have all the facts.”

Inspector Taylor was off with scarcely more than a mutter of thanks. It did not occur to him to question Pons's dictum.

“Surely this is somewhat extraordinary even for you, Pons,” I said, before the echo of Taylor's footsteps had died down the stairs.

“You exaggerate my poor powers, Parker,” answered Pons. “The matter was most elementary, I assure you.”

“I'm afraid it's quite beyond me. Consider—you knew nothing of this man, Persano. You made no enquiries….”

“On the contrary, I knew a good deal about him,” interrupted Pons. “He was an expatriate American of independent means. He dabbled in entomology. He lived alone. He had no telephone. He was manifestly content to live in seclusion. Why?—if not because he feared someone? If he feared someone, I submit it is logical to assume that the source of his fear lay in the United States.”

“But what manner of thing did he fear that he could be upset by this card?” I asked.

Pons tossed the card over to me “Though it may tell you nothing, Parker, manifestly it conveyed something to Persano.”

“It could surely not have been in the address. It must be in the picture.”

“Capital! Capital!” cried Pons, rubbing his hands together. “You show marked improvement, Parker. Pray proceed.”

“Well, then,” I went on, emboldened by his enthusiasm, “the picture can hardly convey more than that a big fat man is running away from a little dog who has broken his leash.”

“My dear fellow, I congratulate you!”

I gazed at him, I fear, in utter astonishment. “But, Pons, what other meaning has it?”

“None but that. Coupled with the suggestion of the holiday which appears in the commercial lettering, the card could readily be interpreted to say: ‘Your holiday is over. The dog is loose.' A fat man running to escape a dog. Persano was corpulent.”

“Indeed he was!”

“Very well, then. The post-card is the first incidence of a ‘dog' in the little drama which is drawing to a close at Inspector Taylor's capable hands in Wapping. Mrs. White, you recalled to my attention only a few hours ago, told us that her late employer muttered ‘the dog' several times before he lapsed into silence. That was the second occurrence. And then, finally, this match-box cover announces ‘Little dog catches big cat.' My dear fellow, could anything be plainer?”

“I hardly know what to say. I have still ringing in my ears your emphatic pronouncement that there was no dog in the matter,” I said coldly.

“I believe my words were ‘no such dog.' Your reference was clearly to a quadruped, a member of the Canis group of Carnivora. There is no such dog.”

“You speak increasingly in riddles.”

“Perhaps one of these clippings may help.”

As he spoke, Pons took from his pocket a trio of clippings cut from
The Chicago Tribune
of seven weeks before. He selected one and handed it to me.