The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (116 page)

‘Every lock, surely, is different.'

‘Very few keys and locks are unique. Each firm has quite a small number of patterns. The odds that your door key will open another particular one are many thousands to one. You would not know which to try. That is of no use to a criminal. Yet every pin removed shortens those odds. When three have been removed and a fourth can be manipulated with a needle-probe, a man with a hundred keys of general stock pattern could probably open a lock. Indeed, the latchkey of 221B Baker Street came within an ace of moving the lock that separates the anteroom from the garde-robe.'

Behind us, on the stairs rose a hubbub of voices as the minor courtiers returned to be robed. The Lord Mayor's chamberlain in black breeches and buckles, lace cuffs and collar, passed us with Inspector Jago in uniform and a City of London police superintendent. The chamberlain presented a key to the captain of the provost guard. The captain unlocked the oak double doors, than pushed them inward and wide to either side. The first dozen dignitaries whose cloaks or robes were mounted on the tailor's dummies made their way into the anteroom, among them the tall and dignified Lord Holder and the stout gray-mopped figure of Lord Adolphus Longstaffe. The two provost sergeants who were to unlock the garde-robe at the far end and hand out the garments followed them respectfully.

Holmes motioned me onward, while he hung back. I kept to one side, in a corner of the anteroom by the window. The sergeants had unlocked the next door and now brought forward the robes, one at a time, and handed them to the chamber-grooms who would assist their patrons to put them on.

There were still fifteen or twenty minor courtiers in tunics and breeches, awaiting their cloaks or robes. To one side stood a belted earl and two attendants in scarlet with black braid. One of them caught my attention, as I watched from a little behind him and out of his present range of vision. He was tall, thin, no more than fifty, but with a dry look to him and the skin-texture of a wrinkled prune. It was not this that held my gaze, but rather the way his reddened forehead seemed to curve outwards, the look of his sunken eyes, and his manner of letting his head turn slowly from side to side, as if in time to some inner music or the demands of a deep intellectual problem. I had seen such movements before and knew that they betrayed concealed agitation. They had been a compulsion of the late Professor Moriarty, whose bulging forehead and sunken eyes I seemed to see before me now. There was only one man in that room who could be Colonel Moriarty.

How easy it would be for Colonel Lemonnier, whom nobody knew, to masquerade at lunch as Colonel Moriarty, whom nobody knew either, while there was one guest fewer, unnoticed, in the crush of the champagne buffet. I turned away, sure that he had not noticed me, and went to find Holmes, who was standing next to Jago. I noticed that the inspector's color was rather high, his moustache appeared to bristle, and he had withdrawn into a dignified silence.

‘Thanks to official incompetence,' said Holmes to me behind his hand, ‘Lemonnier left the Venetian Parlour unobserved, before luncheon was over, and has disappeared. Nonetheless we will wait here, if you please, and be ready to move quickly. If you wish to witness my
pièce de resistance
, keep your eyes on Lord Holder.'

Lord Holder stood an inch or two taller than anyone in his immediate vicinity. He was walking towards us, smiling contentedly, and the little crowd of courtiers drew back a little before his regal person. He was escorting the bowed figure of Lord Adolphus Longstaffe. The whole appeared to have been staged so that among the front rank of onlookers was Colonel Moriarty. As if by instinct, my fingers closed on the cold metal of the revolver butt in the pocket of my black morning coat. What followed took only a few seconds and seemed like a lifetime.

Lord Holder and his protégé came on, their heads and necks visible above the others. As they drew closer, their epaulettes and then their lapels came into view. When I stared at Lord Longstaffe, I felt the wonder of a small child witnessing the first miracle of a birthday conjurer. There, on his left lapel, blazed a white diamond fire and a deep indigo of surrounding sapphire. The outline of the Queen of the Night, an irreplaceable treasure that Holmes had assured me was on its way to Paris, shone brilliantly among us.

My gaze swung to the gaunt but inflamed face of Colonel Moriarty, whom I quite expected to draw a gun and tear the gem from Lord Longstaffe's breast. But if my face reflected utter astonishment and disbelief, the colonel's betrayed only the deepest horror. He did not reach forward to snatch the jewel but recoiled at the sight of it.

At that moment Sherlock Holmes beside me doffed the black cocked hat of the uniform that he had borrowed and made an exaggerated and eye-catching gesture. Colonel Moriarty, with a stony fear still flooding his sunken eyes, for all the world as if Don Giovanni's devils were dragging him down to hell, turned his heavy head and saw us. He knew well enough who we were. Beside us he saw the unmistakable figure of Inspector Jago in his ceremonial uniform, flanked by a superintendent of the City of London Police. My revolver was halfway out of my pocket before our adversary could reach for his. I did not doubt that he was carrying a gun, but, to my surprise, he made no attempt to reach for it. Instead, he turned and ran, pushing aside those behind him, and disappeared down the marble corridor with Jago and the superintendent in pursuit.

‘Jago!' Holmes's voice rang out like a parade-ground command. ‘Let him go but lay a trail for us!'

My friend now pushed through the crowd of astonished onlookers. In a few strides he was through the anteroom and the garde-robe, swooping into the post-room, opening a cupboard with a key that Lord Holder had given him. The cupboard contained a machine of some kind, a cast-iron box with a brass-framed, airtight lid, inset with a glass panel. To one side of this rose a white porcelain handle, like a small beer pump. Inside the box I saw through the glass a three-inch bell-mouthed opening at one end, an incoming air pipe at the other. Lightweight envelopes of black rubbery gutta-percha in felt covers lay to hand, ensuring that each exactly fitted the tube.

Thought I had never seen such a thing before, I knew what this apparatus must be. This was a house tube connecting the office in the Mansion House with the pneumatic dispatch system—the system that carries telegrams and small post through forty miles of London's underground postal system. The pipe at one end of the box would exert a pressure of some ten pounds to the square inch on sending, or a vacuum of six pounds on receiving. It could transport bundles of seventy-five telegrams in a gutta-percha envelope, and would cover a mile through a three-inch tube in about two minutes. The diamond and the surrounding sapphires, unclipped, would be light enough to fit into two envelopes.

Sherlock Holmes checked the list of possible destinations framed on the inside of the cupboard door.

‘I hardly think he will have communicated with the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, or Scotland Yard. I prefer Charing Cross Station! That is quite another matter. I will bet a pound to a penny on the next ferry train to Paris.'

He scrawled a message on a dispatch form, inserted it into a fold of gutta-percha, and addressed it. Over his shoulder, I saw the words, ‘Lestrade. Scotland Yard.' All this, which takes so long to tell, occupied less than a minute in reality!

‘I have had my doubts,' I gasped as we raced down the stairs to the courtyard, ‘but I confess them ill-founded. The manner in which you have duped this last Moriarty rivals the best you have done. I shall never forget his face when he stared at Lord Longstaffe's lapel and knew he had stolen the fake that you planted for him!'

He stopped dead at the turning of the staircase and looked at me.

‘Have you understood nothing? That bauble on Longstaffe's lapel was the fake! The Moriarty family knows a counterfeit when it sees one plainly. However, in the half-light of the passageway, he could not tell. He thought he saw the very thing he had stolen half an hour before, as a murderer sees a ghost. It shook him! By God, you saw how it shook him! Then he turned his head to find the two of us and two policemen staring at him. After that, it mattered nothing whether the bauble was a fake or not. Your revolver was half out of your pocket and he knew he was almost caught.'

We flew through the doorway into the courtyard and Holmes shouted at a constable for a closed brougham to follow Inspector Jago. As we clattered out of the courtyard, he turned to me more calmly.

‘I will borrow your revolver, old fellow, if I may.'

I handed him the cold butt of the gun.

‘Charing Cross?' I said.

‘Think of it. Moriarty easily contrived to be locked in the anteroom or garde-robe, and quite possibly hid himself in the post-room, when everyone else had left. Colonel Lemonnier represented him in the Venetian Parlour. Within five minutes, the colonel came out of hiding and removed the Queen of the Night from the lapel of Lord Longstaffe's cloak, unclipped the diamond center from the sapphires, and dispatched two small envelopes in the pneumatic tube. When the minor courtiers returned, what was easier than for the thief to stand back against the wall behind the open doors or step out from the concealment of a long curtain when the coast was clear and mingle with them. Up to that time, there was no cause for alarm. When that alarm was raised, there would not be a shred of evidence against him.'

‘The hunt would be up as soon as the theft was discovered.'

‘Those cloaks were brought out one by one. Half the people there would have drifted away. Colonel Moriarty would have ample time to slip away before Lord Longstaffe noticed his loss. He might prefer to stay. The Queen of the Night would not be found on him, whereas any one of the twenty or thirty people who had left might have it. Colonel Lemonnier would be the first to reach Charing Cross. Have no fear, his freedom is important to our plans.'

‘And our colonel?'

‘He must bolt for home, among the apaches of the Place Pigalle and the street women of the Avenue de Clichy. You may be sure that his rooms at the Hellfire Club are deserted—and the bill unpaid! The next ferry train for Folkestone and Boulogne, I think, Watson. He need only collect two small and unremarkable packages from the telegraph office, assume the style of a boulevardier, and dine tonight beyond the reach of the English law, while Jago and Lestrade are still searching the Mansion House!'

We were pelting downhill toward Ludgate Circus, the great dome of St. Paul's and its pillared portico at our backs.

‘The game is altered for him,' Holmes said grimly. ‘He believes he has seen the very jewel he stole and dispatched half an hour before. It could not by any means be where he saw it now unless he was betrayed. In his place, how would you respond to that?'

‘I should go straight to wherever I expected it to be—to see what trick had been played upon me.'

‘Exactly.'

Our driver, a uniformed constable, saw ahead of him a barrier across Fleet Street and the Strand, routes reserved that afternoon for the royal procession.

‘With any luck,' said Holmes softly, ‘our fugitive will have been delayed by that.'

We swung right towards Blackfriars Bridge. In a moment we were racing along the Embankment towards Westminster, the river sparkling on our left, penny steamers trailing banners of black smoke; on our right, the trees and lawyers' chambers of the Temple. We swung again, up the narrow canyon of Villiers Street, Charing Cross Station on a vast undercroft of sooty brick rising massively above us.

Holmes was out of the carriage first, racing for the departure platforms. We found Inspector Jago, still in black uniform with gold piping, pacing the concourse, studying the passengers who filed past the ticket-collectors. I saw Holmes signal to him and they drew back cautiously behind a corner of the bookstall, where they could keep watch on the post and telegraph office.

As I joined them, Holmes was saying earnestly, ‘Twenty past two. There is a ferry train at three and calculate the packages were collected from the office half an hour ago. You may be sure the name on them will not be Moriarty. It may be Lemonnier. It may be anyone.'

He strode across the busy concourse in full view and entered the office while Jago and I watched. I saw him at the counter, confronting the manager, a man of middle age, no doubt accustomed to dealing with postal fraud. Their conversation continued until I saw Sherlock Holmes shout something at the unfortunate guardian.

There was a pause during which the man may have replied. Then he very slowly raised his hands in the air. I guessed that Holmes had drawn—or threatened to draw—my revolver from his pocket. There were moments of passionate anger in him when he might certainly be capable of shooting a postal official who obstructed his investigation.

Fortunately, Inspector Jago was looking in the other direction just then, watching the crowds who pressed homewards from their day of celebration along the royal route. The postal manager stepped to one side. Holmes had him covered with the gun in one hand and was rifling the rows of wooden pigeonholes in which messages and small packages awaited collection. He drew them out by handfuls, glanced at them, and threw them on the floor. Finally he shouted at the terrified postal official, received a reply, threw open the door, and strode in our direction again.

‘For God's sake, Holmes!'

‘I am told that I have seen every telegram or package that is awaiting collection. Not one! Not one item here that is bulky enough to be what we seek. Someone has got them!'

‘Not Colonel Moriarty,' I said reassuringly. ‘He could hardly have been here long enough before we arrived to enter the office and leave again. Lemonnier, under whatever name they have agreed, is another matter.'

Inspector Jago had evidently paid little attention to what Holmes was saying. He now spoke without turning to us.

‘Well now,' he said quietly, ‘there's a thing!'