The Confidential Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (18 page)

“And he has been following you ever since?”

“No. Even though I remained in Cherbourg through the winter months he made no effort to bother me. It was when I decided
to go to America and purchased my ticket on the
Titanic
that I saw him again. He wanted me to stay in Cherbourg.”

Over a dessert of Waldorf pudding I tried to learn more about the French detective's cases. “Were they all divorces?”

“No, no. Some involved confidence men trying to swindle wealthy widows. I remember a pair of them, Cozel and Sanbey, who operated as a team. We followed them to Paris once and I kept Mr. Cozel occupied in a café while Pierre searched his room.” She smiled at the memory. “We had some good times together.”

“Then why did you seek my protection?”

“He wanted more than I was willing to give,” she said with a sigh. “When I saw him on the ship I feared I would end up having to fight him off.”

“I will speak with him again before we dock in New York,” I promised. “Perhaps I can persuade him to leave you alone.”

We parted around eleven as the orchestra was playing
The Tales of Hoffmann
, and I decided to go up to the boat deck for a stroll. The temperature was just below freezing, with a mist that cut visibility sharply. I thought of the poor seamen in the crow's nest and shivered for them. Then I retreated inside to the first-class smoking room on A Deck. I could hear the orchestra still playing. May had already retired for the evening, but Futrelle was sitting alone enjoying a nightcap. I joined him and ordered one myself. We were having a lively conversation about detective stories when there was a faint grinding jar to the ship.

“Iceberg!” someone shouted. Several of us ran outside to look. We were in time to see a giant berg, almost as high as the boat deck, vanishing into the mist astern.

“That was a close call,” Futrelle said. “I think we actually scraped it going past!”

We went back inside to finish our drinks. After about ten minutes I observed that the level of liquid in my glass was beginning to tilt a bit toward the bow of the ship. Before that fact could register in my mind, Margo Collier came running in. “What is it?” I asked, seeing her ashen face.

“I've been seeking you everywhere, Mr. Holmes. My husband has fallen down the elevator shaft! He's dead.”

I
t was true. One of the first-class stewards had noticed the open gate on the top deck. Looking into the shaft, he'd been able to make out a body on top of the elevator car four floors below. Futrelle and I reached the scene just as the broken body of Pierre Glacet was being removed.

I stared hard at the body as it lay in the corridor, then said, “Let me through here, please.”

A ship's officer blocked the way. “Sorry, sir. You're too near the shaft.”

“I want to examine it.”

“Nothing to see in there, sir. Just the elevator cables.”

He was correct, of course. The top of the car had nothing on it. “Can you raise it up so I can see to the bottom of the shaft?” I asked.

Futrelle smiled at my request. “Are you searching for a murder weapon, Mr. Holmes?”

I did not answer, but merely stared at the bottom of the shaft as it came into view beneath the rising elevator car. It was empty, as I suspected it would be. Some first-class passengers came in to use the elevator, but the officer directed them to the main staircase or the aft elevator. “Why is the ship listing?” one of the gentlemen asked.

“We're looking into it,” the officer said. For the first time I was aware that we were tilting forward, and I remembered the liquid in my glass. From far off came the sudden sound of a lively ragtime tune being played by the orchestra.

Franklin Baynes, the spiritualist, was coming down the stairs from the boat deck. “What's going on?” he asked. “The crew is uncovering the lifeboats.”

Captain Smith himself appeared on the stairs in time to hear the question. “It's just a precaution,” he told them. “The ship is taking on water.”

“From that iceberg?” Futrelle asked.

“Yes. Please gather your families and follow directions to your lifeboat stations.”

Margo Collier seemed dazed. “This ship is unsinkable! There are waterproof compartments. I read all the literature.”

“Please follow instructions,” the Captain said, a bit more sharply. “Leave that body where it is.”

“I must get to May,” Futrelle said. I hurried after him. There would be time for the rest later.

Within minutes we were on the deck with May. She was clinging to her husband, unwilling to let go. “Aren't there enough lifeboats for everyone?” she asked. The answer was already plain. The
Titanic
was sinking and there was room enough for only half the passengers in the lifeboats. It was 12:25
A.M
. when the order came for women and children to abandon ship. We had scraped against the iceberg only forty-five minutes earlier.

“Jacques!” May Futrelle screamed, and he pushed her to safety in the nearest lifeboat.

“Now what?” he asked me, as the half-full lifeboat was being lowered to the dark churning waters. “Do we go back for our murderer?”

“So you spotted it too?” I asked, already leading the way.

“The missing cane. I only saw Glacet once but he walked with the aid of a stout walking stick.”

“Exactly,” I agreed. “And I'm told he used it regularly. It wasn't on top of the elevator car and it hadn't slipped down to the bottom of the shaft. That meant he didn't step into that empty shaft accidentally. He had help.” We were on the Grand Staircase now, and I spotted our quarry. “Didn't he, Mr. Baynes?”

He turned at the sound of his name, and drew a revolver from under his coat. “Damn you, Holmes! You'll go down with the ship.”

“We all will, Baynes. The women and children are leaving. The rest of us will stay. Glacet recognized you as a confidence man he'd once pursued, a man named Sanbey—a simple anagram for Baynes. Somehow you got him into your cabin tonight to stare at
your electric crystal ball. When the bright light had temporarily blinded him, you helped him to the elevator, then sent the car down and pushed him after it. Only you forgot his walking stick. That probably went over the side when you discovered it.”

The great ship listed suddenly, throwing us against the staircase railing. “I'm getting out of here, Holmes! I'll find room in a lifeboat if I have to don women's clothes!” He raised the revolver and fired.

And in that instant, before I could move, Futrelle jumped between us. He took the bullet meant for me and collided with Baynes, sending them both over the railing of the Grand Staircase.

S
omehow I made my way into the night air. It was just after one o'clock and the orchestra had moved to the boat deck to continue playing. The remaining passengers were beginning to panic. Suddenly someone grabbed me and shoved me toward a lifeboat. “Only twelve aboard starboard number one, sir. Plenty of room for you.”

“I'll stay,” I said, but it was not to be. I was pushed bodily into the boat as it was being lowered.

It was from there, an hour later, that I saw the last of the great
Titanic
vanish beneath the waves, carrying a victim, a murderer, and a mystery writer with it. Two hours after that a ship called the
Carpathia
plucked us from the water, amidst floating ice and debris. Margo Collier was among the survivors, but I never saw her again.

A
final note by Dr. Watson:
It was not until 1918, at the close of the Great War, that my old friend Holmes entrusted this account to my care. By that time, my literary agent, Arthur Conan Doyle, had embraced spiritualism. He refused to handle a story in which a spiritualist was revealed to be a sham and a murderer. This most dramatic of adventures has remained unpublished.

BY
C
AROLE
B
UGGÉ

W
e have received many unusual visitors in our rooms on the second floor of 221 Baker Street, but I cannot remember any appearance more unexpected than that of the personage who appeared at our door on a cold, wet November night in 1889. I was, in fact, left speechless for some time—though Holmes, displaying his usual
sang-froid
, calmly motioned our visitor towards the sofa.

“You realize, of course, my distaste in coming to you for assistance in this matter,” said our caller, settling his thin, bony frame into the depths of the sofa.

“Naturally,” Holmes replied, digging his long fingers into the Persian slipper which served as his tobacco tin.

I stood staring as foolishly as a schoolboy, until Holmes laid a hand gently on my shoulder.

“Please sit down, Watson; you are making me nervous.”

I sat slowly in my usual chair in front of the crackling fire,
never taking my eyes off our guest. I don't know what I thought he would do, but although I had never laid eyes on him before I was certain that this was a man you did not turn your back on.

Holmes was more sanguine, however, and deliberately turned his back to procure a match from the mantelpiece. At this our visitor chuckled.

“Always the showman, eh, Holmes?” he said in a low voice, hissing his
s
's, his grey eyes as hooded as a viper's. He turned his steely gaze on me, and it was then I first made eye contact with the late Professor James Moriarty.

“No more than yourself,” Holmes replied, lighting his pipe and turning to face the Professor.

“Now it is you who are making me nervous, Holmes—sit down, please,” I said, my eyes still trained on Moriarty; some instinct deep within me would not let me take my gaze off him. I had always thought of him as the personification of evil, and yet now what struck me about his face was how deeply pain was etched into every line, every crevice—as though someone had taken a sharp knife and carved out a mask of suffering. His eyes were dead, though, as cold and lifeless as the lidless eyes of a fish.

Holmes sat in the winged armchair opposite mine. “Now, then, Professor, what can I do for you?”

Moriarty gave off a long, slow exhalation of breath, which made a low hissing sound like air escaping from a tyre. There was a long pause as he rose and walked to the window, pulling aside the curtains to look out on the street below. I tensed in my chair, ready to spring, my mind racing—it occurred to me that he might be giving a signal of some kind. I glanced at Holmes, who appeared utterly unconcerned; he sat smoking peacefully, his eyes half closed, fingers folded in repose on his lap.

Finally Moriarty spoke.

“What a pitiful sight mankind is,” he said, still gazing out onto the street, “hurrying back and forth like so many ants, and all to what purpose? To work and spawn and die, with no more mind-fulness
than a doomed salmon swimming upstream towards his death.”

“You certainly did not come here to philosophize with me,” said Holmes. “May I ask—”

“You are unaware, perhaps, that I have a brother?” Moriarty interrupted, swivelling to face us, and again I was struck by the pain which had hardened into the lines of his face.

“I had heard something of it,” Holmes replied, “from my own brother.”

“Ah, yes, Mycroft,” Moriarty said, his thin lips curling into something resembling a smile.

“I believe he lives in Ireland, does he not?”

Again Moriarty sighed, but when he spoke his voice was a sneer. “If anyone could be said to actually ‘live' in Ireland. He is, in fact, a Catholic priest.”

If Holmes felt any surprise at this revelation he betrayed none of it. Moriarty, however, snickered. “Yes, it is ironic, isn't it? A brother who is a man of the cloth—when I have devoted myself to quite another kind of priesthood.”

“He is in trouble, your brother?”

Moriarty nodded, his large head swivelling precariously on its long, thin neck; it was as though the head of a bull had been set upon the body of a giraffe.

“We had a—falling out, shall we say—and have not spoken for some years, and yet, when I came by the information that I am about to tell you I had no choice but to intervene.”

“No choice—?”

Moriarty smiled, and though I would not say it was a warm smile, some of the hard lines on his face softened. “It may surprise you to know that even I have areas in my life which are—sacred, so to speak.”

“Not at all,” Holmes replied. “I would have assumed as much.”

“I am afraid that it is so unoriginal as to be a cliché, but I made a promise to my dying mother that no matter what came, I would
look after my younger brother, Sean. And I have kept that promise—until now, that is.”

“I see; pray continue.”

Moriarty walked back to sit upon the couch again; his gait swayed like that of a large flightless bird.

“You have perhaps heard of the Fenian Brotherhood?”

“I have heard of them, yes—they are essentially a terrorist organization bent on the eradication of British rule in Ireland. Is your brother mixed up with them?”

“On the contrary; he is their sworn enemy. I have reason to believe they have kidnapped him.”

“I see.” Holmes's face was as stoic as ever, but he could not conceal the gleam of interest in his grey eyes, which burned dark as coals in the dull November light.

“So you see your involvement in this case would be for the good of England as well. If you don't believe me, ask your brother Mycroft; he is privy to every bit of international intelligence, is he not?”