The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (108 page)

Kaolin-and-Opium of Hackney Downs and Propter's Nicodemus Pills of Fortess Road, Kentish Town, both contained a leaflet of praise from various invalids throughout the country whose health, if not their lives, had been saved by resorting to these concoctions. Propter's added a circular to long-established clients, accompanying a complimentary box of twenty ‘improved' capsules, ‘designed to prevent the nighttime restlessness that may previously have been consequent upon their use. To obtain this effect, it is of the utmost importance that the capsules should be taken in the order indicated, twice daily.'

‘At any rate,' I said, looking into the box, ‘he can come to no harm from these, for he has taken eighteen of the twenty already and there is another box unopened.'

We went back to the sitting room and occupied the two armchairs. It was close to the hour when Gurney might safely be left to sleep off the remaining effects of the chloroform. I proposed to read a lecture to him in the morning on the folly of meddling with anaesthetics.

‘As for that last letter of Chamberlain's,' I said to Holmes, ‘we can hardly discuss it with Gurney, unless you choose to confess to having broken open his bureau.'

‘There was no breaking,' he said indifferently. ‘However, as you say, it is not a matter for discussion. I think we must take the fight to the enemy. Tomorrow morning we shall have Chamberlain's lodgings at the Marine Parade apartments in our sights and we shall not lose him from that moment on. I require to know everything about him—where he goes, what he does, who keeps him company. For that, I shall need your assistance. It is too easy for a man to give the slip to a single pursuer. Chamberlain is a most dangerous, I would almost say pathological, villain. I do not believe that he would stop at murder, if it truly suited his purposes. Do not tell me, Watson, that I am neglecting Miss Effie Deans. I swear that the solution to that poor girl's difficulties lies somewhere in all this.'

It was almost two o'clock in the morning before we summoned the manager to assure him that Edmund Gurney was in no danger and might safely be left. The courteous Italian was effusive in his thanks and assured me that whatever was in his power by way of obliging me for my help should be done. Prompted by Sherlock Holmes, I said there was one thing. On no account must Mr. Gurney be asked to leave the hotel until I had had the chance of a serious discussion with him. I undertook that I would settle the matter before the following night and would, I trusted, put paid to his pernicious habit of self-anaesthesia. I think the gaunt
maitre d'hotel
, with his pale features and black suiting, was a little uneasy at this, but he assured me that everything should be done as I instructed.

4

Holmes and I returned to our suite at the Royal Albion a little after two in the morning. I had earned a night's rest and wanted no assistance in dropping off into a profound sleep as soon as my head touched the pillow. It seemed to me that this had lasted for no more than an hour or so when I was roused by a sudden tugging at my shoulder. I woke to find the electric light full on and Holmes standing over me, his face shining with energy. Before I could ask him whether Gurney had taken a turn for the worse, he said:

‘Come, Watson! It is gone six o'clock and we must be up and doing! If the game is being played as I suspect, our birds will have flown before long.'

He was talking about Professor Chamberlain and Madame Elvira, of course. Despite the ungodly hour, he had already been downstairs, roused the night porter, and sent a further telegram to Inspector Gregson at Scotland Yard, to follow his letter as soon as the post offices should open.

‘We ourselves cannot wait for such offices to open, my dear fellow. We must be on the Chain Pier as soon as its gates are unlocked for the seven o'clock steamer to Boulogne.'

‘They surely cannot be going to Boulogne. Their last performance is tonight.'

‘I have just taken the precaution of walking a little distance down to the theatre billboard. Another flyer was pasted across it late last night or early this morning. There is to be no more mesmerism nor mindreading. The Aquarium management regrets that tonight's performance is cancelled in consequence of the indisposition of Madame Elvira. If they attempt to take the steamer, we shall catch them. More to the point, the deck of the pier looks diagonally across to those apartments on the Marine Parade. They cannot leave without our seeing them.'

I was wide awake now and soon ready for the pursuit of our suspects. A little before seven o'clock, we were at the pier, where the steamer for Boulogne was alongside and the first passengers were filing aboard over her paddlebox. It was a fine cool morning, the mist still clinging over the sea and a band of pale sun along the eastern horizon. None of the passengers was recognizable as Chamberlain or Madame Elvira. Presently the ropes were thrown off, the gangway was pulled aboard, and the paddles of the
Sea Breeze
churned the green channel water to a hissing froth as she went astern and swung round towards the French coast.

Holmes and I were the first to take deck chairs on the pier that morning. I had with me my neat Barr & Stroud precision field-glasses in their military leather case, with which he could almost have read a newspaper headline on the promenade. We waited, under the pretext of reading our copies of the
Times
and the
Morning Post
, as the sunlight grew warmer and the first prom-enaders appeared on the esplanade. I was about to say pessimistically that we might sit there all day and see nothing, when Holmes exclaimed quietly,

‘There he is! And so is she! I would say that she looks worried but not indisposed.'

He handed me the glasses. I saw that Chamberlain and the girl had come out of the doorway of the apartments and were standing on the pavement in earnest conversation. Holmes snatched the glasses back and adjusted the focus a little.

‘He is going, I think, and she is staying. Let us be thankful there are two of us. She is giving him a pair of books.'

‘I daresay he will find a chair in the sun and spend the day reading.'

‘No, Watson, no! One book might be for reading. If he has two, the odds are that he is taking them somewhere.'

‘At this hour of the day? The libraries will not be open, nor will the bookshops.'

‘Then his destination is evidently a place where such institutions will be open by the time of his arrival. There is, I think, a label pasted on the cover of one book. An orange oval with black writing. We have him!'

I was intrigued by this, but still far from understanding how we had him!

‘The St. James's Street Library, in the shadow of the great palace, founded by John Stuart Mill and his friends for the public good almost fifty years ago. A treasure house of learning and the arcane, a scholar's paradise. For many years I have been a member. So it seems has friend Chamberlain, though I imagine he has only temporary privileges there. You may depend upon it, Watson, he is going to London—and so are we.'

It was hard to realise that we had only left London two days before. Yet every instinct told me that Holmes was right. Chamberlain was opening a Gladstone bag and adding the two books to whatever else it might contain. Then he swung round, striding toward West Street and the long climb that leads to the railway station at the top.

‘Watson! Quick as you can! Cut through the little streets to the side, past the Royal Pavilion! Book two first-class returns to London before he can get to the railway ticket office and see you. I doubt whether he will recognise us among so many of his audience, but we must not take the chance. I shall follow him, in case he should have other plans, but I swear that Gladstone bag has the look of the London and Brighton railway about it.'

I did as he asked, Holmes following the fugitive westward while I strode at my best pace past the lawns and Georgian houses of the Steyne, the oriental onion domes of the Prince Regent's palace by the sea. My years of playing rugby for Blackheath have served my constitution well. I cut through quickly by way of the little streets where our client Mrs. Deans and her family lived. I came out at the lower level of the station, the smoky air leaving a gritty deposit of soot between the teeth. The booking hall was empty when I arrived and took our tickets for London. I had beaten Chamberlain to it! I saw him approach up the long slope of Queens Road, and by loitering I overheard him take one single ticket for London. Holmes was right. Professor Chamberlain had no intention of coming back to Brighton. What of Madame Elvira?

There was no sign anywhere of Holmes as the pursuer. Only when I walked toward the departure platform did I hear a quiet voice behind me.

‘The ticket, if you please, Watson. We shall travel as strangers and meet at the far end in an hour's time.'

And so it was. I chose a compartment on one side of Chamberlain with Holmes on the other. He could not leave the train without being seen by us both. As our train crossed the Thames below Chelsea Bridge and began drawing into Victoria Station, our quarry was on his feet, the bag in his hand, ready to be one of the first to alight.

Then the chase began, though it was one in which we must not allow our fugitive to suspect that he was followed. Chamberlain had commandeered the only hansom cab just then upon the station rank. By the time that another had arrived and we swung ourselves aboard, his had turned away down Victoria Street and taken the corner into the long curve of Grosvenor Place. Holmes lifted the little trap in the roof and shouted to our driver, ‘Follow that fare in front! As hard as you can go down Grosvenor Place! Five sovereigns for you if you still have him in sight when he reaches his destination!'

Happily for us, we had a sportsman on the driver's perch. Wrenching the horse's head round, he drove it at a hand-gallop after the receding hansom. He slowed briefly as the observant eye of a policeman glanced in our direction, then picked up speed as we turned the corner. We were nearly done for at the next junction, as a lumbering railway van pulled out in front, but we carried on round the stern of it. Then we were bumping and bouncing over the cobbles towards Hyde Park Corner. Unless Chamberlain looked back, for which there was no occasion, he would have no idea of our cab swaying and lurching in his wake.

We seemed to be in a mad stampede, in and out of the vehicles as we careered round the busy crossing of Hyde Park Corner with the grand park trees and handsome terraces to either side. Once or twice in our zigzag course the horse's hooves slipped on the greasy cobbles, but we came to no harm. Once a man, taking the horse for a runaway, tried to grab its bridle. Then a bread delivery van came out of a side street. But now we were in Piccadilly. If we were blocked in among the traffic, so was our quarry. For a moment I thought we had lost him, but our driver shot through a gap, almost grazing the pole of an omnibus. As Chamberlain turned into the Haymarket, we were very nearly on his tail. His cab stopped at the bottom, opposite the Duke of York's Place, and I went after him on foot while Holmes emptied seven golden sovereigns into the cabman's palm and I heard the cry of, ‘You're a toff, sir, you are! A real gent!'

Unaware of all this, Chamberlain had entered the offices of the Messageries Maritimes, whose vessels link metropolitan France with North Africa, Indo-China, Southampton, and New York. Holmes gestured to me to enter, while he remained outside. Under the pretext of consulting the company's timetable, I was able to hear Chamberlain claiming the ticket that he had booked for the next day's sailing from Southampton to Cherbourg and New York.

As he emerged, Holmes and I observed our usual routine for keeping a fugitive in sight without alerting him. I do not think I had been recognised by Chamberlain but, in any case, I now hung back, and it was Holmes who kept pace at a steady distance behind him as we moved westward down the handsome avenue of Pall Mall towards the ancient brickwork of St. James's Palace at the far end. Chamberlain still carried his Gladstone bag.

Our little procession went the entire length of Pall Mall and then turned into St. James's Street. About halfway up, Chamberlain stopped, looked about him, and then went up the steps of the St. James's Street Library. Holmes followed him discreetly. Through the window, I saw Chamberlain standing in the vaulted entrance hall, which might have graced one of our larger banks, and handing a clerk the two volumes from his leather bag.

He came out and walked away down the street. What was Holmes doing? Why were we not in pursuit? Presently he appeared on the steps and looked at the disappearing figure.

‘We can find him when we need to,' he said quietly. ‘Our first task must be to save Edmund Gurney.'

I then noticed that he had, under his arm, a volume borrowed from the library on whose steps we stood. It was a slim book in royal blue cloth stamped with gold, which Chamberlain had handed to the library clerk a few minutes before. The author's name meant nothing to me at first. Comte Henri-Gratien Bertrand. Then I remembered dimly that he had been an aide-de-camp of some kind to the Emperor Napoleon. Even in the labyrinthine world of Sherlock Holmes's scholarship, this seemed far removed from the matter in hand. I saw the title:
Journal Intime: Recueil de pieces authentiques sur le captif de Ste.-Helene
. I was none the wiser, beyond gathering that Bertrand had kept a private journal as a companion of the emperor in his last years of exile on St. Helena. Abstruse works of this kind were meat and drink to Holmes. Among other readers, I doubt if one in ten thousand had heard of the Comte Bertrand.

Then he opened the pages and I saw a slip of paper with writing on it. It appeared to have been left there inadvertently by a previous reader of the book and so, presumably, was Professor Chamberlain's. ‘Pages 464 & 468. The whole worth reading twice. 19A + 1C. 19th to the 28th June.' The pages referred to were toward the end of the book and presumably described the emperor's last days. The 28th of June was today's date.