The Confidential Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (32 page)

Holmes face was still as marble. “It is not likely,” he said slowly. “If we did, Your Grace, it was long ago, and in another life.”

The duchess shook her head, disguised herself once again, then swept out, leaving Lady Randolph to turn her disapproving gaze on my friend.

“Randolph thought the world of you, Mr. Holmes. He said you could do anything. He had his faults, but he was rarely wrong about people. I wouldn't have talked Consuelo into coming here if I didn't think you could help her.”

Holmes flinched under that cool disdain. “Under other circumstances, Lady Randolph, I would be able to assist. In this case, I would recommend that the pawnbrokers and receivers of stolen goods be examined. If there had been a burglary, I would have been of more use, but in this case . . .” He shrugged.

With a toss of her head, Lady Randolph Churchill followed her young niece-in-law down to Baker Street. Holmes watched from the window as their carriage trotted away.

“Come, Watson,” he said. “Our train awaits, and we are already late. Let us hope we are on time, or our bird will have flown, and we shall have to lay our traps all over again.”

We were lucky enough to get a cab, and caught the train with seconds to spare. Once we were settled into our carriage, and I could breathe again without difficulty, I asked Holmes the question that had been nagging at me all during the interview.

“Holmes,” I began, not liking to take my friend to task, “you were almost rude to Her Grace the Duchess this morning. Could you not have given her some sign of hope? I know we are not free to assist her at the moment, but . . .”

Holmes held up a hand. “I know, Watson. I was abominably brusque with her. She is not more than a child, barely out of her teens, and she is not to blame for the sins of her elders, but I have my own reasons for avoiding the Vanderbilt family, and their connections. I believe I once mentioned the case of Vanderbilt and the Yeggman?”

“I have seen the name on your files,” I admitted.

“It was not one of my finer moments, Watson. However, the telling of it will while away the time until we get to Sussex, but I must request that you not reveal what I am about to tell you to anyone. It is a matter of personal honour.”

I was much mystified by this, and readily swore not to do more than jot down notes for my files. Holmes drew out his pipe, filled it, lit it, and leaned back to make himself comfortable before he chose to speak.

I
believe I have told you (Holmes said) that I spent my youth in restless pursuit of some employment that would suit my talents. I
finished University, and was somewhat at loose ends when a chance meeting led me to a brief career as an actor. I played in Shakespeare, as Cassius in
Julius Caesar
and Mercutio in
Romeo and Juliet
but I modestly admit my greatest role was as Malvolio in
Twelfth Night
. It was in this character that I appeared in New York City in the season of '79–'80, and it was during that period that I encountered both Vanderbilt and the Yeggman.

I played under the
nom de théâtre of William Escott, and it was as “Mr. Escott” that I was addressed by the young woman playing Maria, Miss Margaret Magill, a petite Irish beauty, of great verve, and a talented comedienne. She was later to become a great favourite in the United States. This was her debut, and she had made a great hit. Her dressing-room was always crowded with flowers, and her “stage-door Johnnies” filled the Green Room after each performance
.

One would think that such a charming young woman would have no troubles, but I could not but notice that on a particular evening during our run, in the middle of January, she was in difficulties. During the performance of
Twelfth Night
, she missed cues and nearly forgot her lines. Since my effectiveness as Malvolio depended in large part on her liveliness as Maria, I felt constrained to ask what was wrong, in hopes that it might be corrected before the next performance. I therefore approached her in her dressing-room.

“Are you decent?” I asked (this being the accepted greeting in the Profession).

She had obviously been crying. Her eyes were red, and several crumpled linen squares (usually used for removal of stage-paint) littered her dressing-table. “I'm sorry for what happened during the letter scene,” she apologized. “It's just that I got a note from my brother. He's been taken up and he's in the Tombs. Here's his note. They let him get word to me, so I can find him a lawyer, but I don't understand the American system of law . . .” She began to cry again. I took the note, written on coarse paper with a pencil that had obviously been sharpened with a knife:

Maggie, I'm in the Tombs, they say I cracked Vanderbilt's safe, but I swear on Ma's dear soul, I never did! Get a shyster, and get me out! I won't go down for something I didn't do.—Mike

“It seems your brother has gotten himself into a pickle,” I said. “Why would he be accused of cracking Vanderbilt's safe? And which Vanderbilt? There are a number of them, as I recall: Mr. William Henry Vanderbilt and his sons, Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt and Mr. William Kissam Vanderbilt. I have seen their names on the list of patrons using boxes at our performances.”

Miss Magill controlled herself long enough to repair the damage wrought to her complexion. Then she turned to me and explained: “Mike came over long ago, when I was just a wee thing. He was the eldest of us, you see, and when Pa died, he was to go to America and make his fortune, and send for Ma and the rest of us.”

“I presume he did not make his fortune,” I said.

“Oh, but he did, at first. He sent money back home, enough to let Ma send me and my brothers to the school, to learn to read and write and speak genteelly. Once my brothers Patrick and Antony were out in the world, they could take care of Ma and me, and a good thing, too, for the money from Michael stopped coming, and no word did we have from him at all.” In the press of her emotion, Miss Magill's brogue emerged from hiding.

“He seems to have surfaced again,” I noted, tapping the letter.

“That he did! He saw Magill on the stage-bills and came around to see if it was one of his own, and it was me! Oh, Mr. Escott, there's nothing like knowing you have family nearby!” Her face was radiant. I prudently kept my own thoughts on family connections to myself.

“Evidently, your brother has made some unsavoury friends,” I said, “or he would not refer to a lawyer as a ‘shyster' nor would he refer to a prison sentence as ‘going down.' That is thieves' cant. If you insist on seeing your brother, then I insist on accompanying
you. The Tombs is the New York City jail, where prisoners are held before being arraigned before the magistrate. As I understand the American system, according to their Constitution every prisoner has a right to see a lawyer. Of course, this may be more honour'd in the breach than in the observance, but I will be glad to assist you in any way I can.”

“Oh, Mr. Escott . . . William!” She leapt from her chair and threw her arms around me. “I know it's very late, but will you come with me now, and see Mike? I have to know he's all right! You hear awful things about American jails.”

I permitted the embrace (she was an extraordinarily pretty young woman, and I was quite young), but evaded the kiss she was about to plant on my cheek. We bundled up against the cold of January in New York City, where the wind sweeps over the island of Manhattan with a fury known only on the Steppes of Russia, and made our way from the Theatre District of Broadway downtown to the Tombs, a massive brick pile that dated from before the notorious Tweed Ring's depredations on the New York City treasury.

The Tombs was not only the City Jail but the Police Headquarters as well. We were forced to run a veritable gauntlet of uniformed warders and guardians of Public Safety before we were allowed into a barren cell, brick-walled and lit only with one flaring gas jet, containing two wooden chairs and nothing else.

A massively built policeman shoved Mike Magill into the room, and announced, “Yer got fifteen minutes!”

The accused burglar was not more than forty years old, small and wiry, with Miss Magill's quirky eyebrows that she used to such effect as Maria. On her brother, they appeared to be pasted on. There was enough of a family resemblance that I put aside the unworthy thought that he had imposed upon the successful young actress for his own ends. No, this was indeed a family reunion, and I had to make my presence known with a cough before the brother and sister would acknowledge that a third party was there.

“Mr. Magill,” I asked, “why should the police light on you as the one who, as you put it, cracked Vanderbilt's safe?”

He looked at the floor. “I was in the house,” he admitted. “On business,” he added. “I'm a trained locksmith.” He turned to Miss Magill. “When I come over, there was a man aboard who saw that I was clever with me hands, always making little toys and such for the children down in steerage with us. So, when we landed, he said he'd take me on as a ‘prentice, like. Only, it was a terrible temptation, seeing all that money going into those safes, locked up with my keys.”

“And you fell,” I said.

“I did. I was able to take a little here and there, not much, just to send to Ma and the rest of you.”

Miss Magill looked horrified. “You mean Pat and Tony and I all went to school on stolen money!”

Mike protested, “Them what I took it from never missed it! Most of 'em probably never even knew it was gone!”

“Then how did you, um, ‘go down'?” I asked.

“How did you know?” He turned to me in surprise.

“You stopped sending funds to your family. They did not hear from you. I can only assume that you were caught and sent to prison.”

He nodded and shook his head. “The only time I ever took anything but cash. It was a ring. I was going to give it to a certain girl I was seeing, but she took and hocked it. The coppers came and found me, but as I was a first offender, all I got was seven years, and that got cut down to five for good behaviour. I was able to set up my shop again thanks to Mr. Vanderbilt. He's not at all like his Old Man, the Commodore, is Mr. William Henry Vanderbilt. He came up to Sing Sing and read us a lesson on mending our ways, and offered to stake those who'd take the Pledge and swear never to break the law again.”

“And you took advantage of this generous offer,” I concluded. “Mr. Vanderbilt seems to be quite the philanthropist.”

Mike Magill grinned, and the resemblance to his sister was accentuated. It was with just such a grin that she hatched the plot that led to Malvolio's downfall. “Oh, the old Commodore was a character, I'll give you that. But Mr. William Henry's a gentleman.”

“Yer time's up!” the uniformed Cerberus at the door announced.

“One moment, please?” Miss Magill turned her piquant little face to the door.

“I don't understand. Which Vanderbilt safe are you supposed to have robbed?” I asked.

“Mr. William Henry's, which I was supposed to be putting in. See, Mr. Vanderbilt had me put in locks on the offices at the New York Central Railroad, and then he sent me over to his new house on Fifth Avenue to do the same. And I looked over the old safe, and made a few suggestions to Mrs. Vanderbilt, who was watching my work. I mean my boss's sister-in-law, Mrs. Alva, Mr. W K.'s wife,” he explained. “And then I was taken into the conservatory, which is a room where they keep all kinds of plants, right in the house! Fancy that!” He shook his head at the vagaries of the rich.

“And you put in the locks?” I prompted him, ever conscious of the policeman at the door.

“That I did, with a big bruiser in a red velvet coat looking on all the while, to see I didn't pinch one of the flower-pots, no doubt. And I went to the kitchen to have a bite of luncheon, and suddenly there was a screeching and Mrs. Alva come a-running and yelled that I'd been at the study safe!”

“Which you had just examined,” I said, to get the sequence of events straight.

“But I left it as I found it,” Magill stated. “When the copper came in from Fifth Avenue, the whole room had been turned upside down, and money and papers were all over the place. And the big bruiser, what they call a footman, looked inside my tool-kit and says he's found a packet of money in my tool-kit. But I swear to you, Maggie, and you . . .”

“Mr. Escott,” Miss Magill introduced me.

“I never touched that safe! I was downstairs in the conservatory, attending to the outside locks. I wouldn't treat a fine piece of machinery like that! Twisting the handle, breaking the hinges . . . sloppy, that is.”

“But the money in your tool-kit was in a neat packet?”

“So it was,” Magill said. “And I will swear up and down, I never put it there!”

There was a disturbance at the door. The guard was shoved aside, and four more men entered the cell, filling it to its capacity. I found myself being shoved into a corner, while a burly policeman in the uniform of a sergeant announced, “Mr. Vanderbilt is here to see yer, Magill!”

Mr. William Henry Vanderbilt was a stout man of middle years whose face was adorned with a pair of streaming side-whiskers, which by then were already out of fashion. He was dressed in evening clothes that were well made but not particularly flashy. One would never suspect by looking at him that he had nearly doubled his original patrimony, and was probably the wealthiest man in America at that date. He regarded Mike Magill with the look of one who had expected better things.

“Why did you do it, Magill? I thought you had turned from crime and become an honest man.”

Magill began to snivel. “I swear on me mother's grave . . .”

“Ma's still alive,” Miss Magill put in. Vanderbilt turned to look at her.

“My sister,” the yeggman introduced her. “She's on the stage. And this is . . .”

“Mr. Escott,” I said, with a bow. “I came to see no harm comes to Miss Magill. Mr. Vanderbilt, if I may put in a word for Magill, I think he is telling the truth. Miss Magill is a fine actress, but I do not think her skill is hereditary.”