The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (41 page)

Mr Abrahams laughed, like a child delighted by a Christmas conjurer.

‘You are correct in every detail, Mr Holmes. What you have said persuades me that you are the man whose help I need. Expense is no object, sir, for there is a good deal of money at stake. You might call it a fortune. I represent the interests of the Comtesse de Goncourt in England and would like your opinion on these documents.'

So saying, he handed my friend the two sheets of paper which I was to read so many years later. While Holmes perused them, the lawyer walked over to the bookshelves and learnt from their contents something of the man whose advice he sought. No one boasted so oddly-assorted a library as Sherlock Holmes. You would look in vain for volumes that were in half the families of England. But if you sought industries peculiar to a small town in Bohemia, or unique chemical constituents of Sumatran or Virginian tobacco leaf, or the alienist's account of morbid psychology, or the methods by which a Ming is to be distinguished from a skilful imitation, you had only to reach out a hand for the answer. In far more cases, however, Sherlock Holmes carried all those answers in his head.

‘Dear me,' he said presently, laying down the papers. ‘How far, Mr Abrahams, has this merry little swindle progressed?'

The lawyer swung round from his study of the bookcase.

‘You are sure it is a swindle?'

Holmes gave him the glance of the cold practical thinker.

‘Major Montgomery boasts that he is able to insure against losses on the turf, a proposition which I take the liberty of doubting. Of course, the terms of his offer suggest no more than a tawdry racecourse deceit. Yet I am much mistaken if this does not disguise a plot of quite remarkable scope and ingenuity.'

Mr Abrahams sat down again.

‘I had hoped you would tell me that you had heard of Major Hugh Montgomery.'

‘I have not,' said Holmes coolly, ‘nor I imagine has anyone else, for the very good reason that Major Hugh Montgomery does not exist. I ask, again, how far this lamentable matter has proceeded.'

William Abrahams drew out another sheet of paper, which he consulted but did not hand over.

‘I knew nothing of it, Mr Holmes, until a communication from Madame de Goncourt today. I went to call on the major at once. There was no news of him at the accommodation address he gives in City Road. Several weeks ago, however, Madame de Goncourt replied to him and offered to place his bets. She received by express a cheque, the names of three horses, and the address of a sworn bookmaker, Archer & Co., in Northumberland Street, Charing Cross. She forwarded these papers and in due course received a wire from Major Montgomery informing her that all three horses had won. Some days later came a cheque for herself and another to back two more horses.'

‘But you have not gone to the police? Nor has the lady?'

‘So far, Mr Holmes, we have no evidence that this man—swindler though he be—has swindled anyone. Must we wait until that happens? Impossible!'

‘But, Mr Abrahams, if that is all, why come to me? Madame de Goncourt places the money and the major continues to pay her when his horses win. What more is there?'

The lines of Mr Abrahams's face tightened, as if with embarrassment. He was silent for a moment while cabs and carriages rattled through the autumn dusk from Westminster Bridge to St George's Circus.

‘Madame has been much taken with the major's obvious skill and evident honesty. Why else should
The Sport
have come to his aid? In short, she has begged him to let her add a wager of her own.'

‘Ah,' said Holmes. ‘This grows warmer! And so soon! What then?'

‘The major wired her and swore he could not take the responsibility, if he were to fail her. She wired him back and insisted. He relented at last but begged her to bet only upon those horses of which he could be absolutely certain—while urging her to place whatever she could raise upon those.'

‘And she has done so?'

Mr Abrahams looked at him mournfully.

‘It is worse, Mr Holmes. She did it twice last week and won both times. A cheque came to her for her winnings. Then Major Montgomery wired her in great haste. He advised her to back two sure things, as he called them, Saucebox and Minerva at Brighton, with all the money she could raise or borrow. He swore they were the surest racing certainties of his career. He had confided this only to his most loyal friends, for fear of shortening the odds. Such a chance, he added, comes only once in a lifetime. She has done as he advised and waits the result. I have had only an hour or two to act upon my information. As you say, there is nothing as yet for the police. By the time there is, we shall be too late. So I have come to you. I confess my first instinct was to go straight to the sworn bookmaker and see if the money might be retrieved.'

‘On no account must you do that,' said Holmes sharply. ‘If this is the plot that I suspect, you would alert the conspirators before it matures.'

He stared at the lawyer for a moment longer and then said, ‘It is better that Madame de Goncourt should learn wisdom late than never. Her money is probably lost already, from what you tell me, but you may rely upon my doing all I can.'

Mr Abrahams looked very straight at him. ‘And what will you do, Mr Sherlock Holmes? I should like to know.'

Holmes stood up, plainly indicating to him that the time had come to leave.

‘It is better that you should know nothing, sir. It is also better that you should say nothing. Indeed, it is better that your visit here should be regarded for the next few hours as something that has never taken place.'

His visitor also stood—and looked decidedly uneasy.

‘I do not understand, Mr Holmes.'

‘I did not intend that you should. You, Mr Abrahams, are a professional man. You are not only amenable to the criminal law but to the Law Society, who may discipline or expel you for something much less than a crime. I, on the other hand, am answerable only to myself. Have no fear, I shall communicate with you at the earliest opportunity. Let us pray that we may yet save this lady from her most ruinous folly.'

II

An hour of the windy evening passed, while Mr Abrahams distanced himself from what was to come. Sherlock Holmes charged his pipe with strong black tobacco, lay back in the comfortable old-fashioned chair, which was his parents' sole legacy to him, and stretched his long thin legs towards the fire. From time to time, he began a slow chuckle at the preposterous ‘Society For Insuring Against Losses on the Turf' and the gullibility of its victims. Firmly in his mind, however, was the address of Archer & Co., Sworn Bookmakers, of 8 Northumberland Street, Charing Cross.

At half-past seven precisely, he buttoned himself into a long grey travelling cloak and close-fitting cloth cap. Turning towards Lambeth, he strode into a clout of icy air, then north into a razoring wind, where the river slapped against the steamboat pier and the wharves. The bell was ringing as he hurried through the toll-gate, paid his penny, and jumped aboard the paddle-boat a second before the plank was withdrawn. The pilot stood at the helm, the cable was cast off, and the paddle wash frothed against wooden piles. A few minutes later he was at Hungerford Stairs.

The broad boulevard of Northumberland Avenue lay lamplit but deserted. To one side, the dark lane of Northumberland Street led to the Strand, many of its old and shabby houses used for still darker purposes. The narrow front of number eight consisted of a house door with an uncurtained sash-window to one side. Of ‘Archer & Co., Sworn Bookmakers', there was no sign.

Yet, as Holmes had intimated to Mr Abrahams, the address to which money was sent must be the hub of the conspiracy. There was enough street-light to see through the sash-window that the office was a mere shell of an unfurnished slum house, a narrow stairway at the rear leading to the upper levels. A number of envelopes strewn on the floor behind the door was evidence of uncollected post. Yet since so many cheques might still be in transit, it seemed probable that the birds of prey had not yet flown.

At one end of the street, cabs and buses flashed by in the lamplight of the Strand. Along Northumberland Street, every window was dark and the narrow thoroughfare appeared deserted. Holmes required only a means of entry, for the lock on the house-door was one that would open easily from inside to let him out again. He touched his hand to the peak of his immaculate travelling cap, as if to straighten it, and drew a slim file from the lining of its brim. A casual inspection would detect only a wire frame that kept the cap-brim rigid. Now, however, this fine steel entered the division between two halves of a sash-window in an unlit side-lane and eased back the catch. In a moment more, he had crossed the sill, dropped down in the darkened room, and locked the window behind him. With the natural caution of the professional burglar, he put the house-door on the latch to ensure an immediate means of escape.

In the room lit by reflection of the street-lamps, he picked up from the door-mat eight letters addressed to ‘Archer & Co'. Seven had been through the post. Two of the stamps were French. The last envelope was addressed in pencil and delivered by hand. A trained observer would notice the slight movement of Holmes's fastidious nostrils. He breathed the air of each envelope in turn, as if searching for the boudoir fragrance of a billet-doux. He placed seven on the window sill and retained the eighth, with its pencilled address.

Slipping a hand into his cloak he drew out a small enamelled pocket-knife, chose a tiny blade and, with the delicacy of a surgeon excising a growth, eased open the envelope down an inch of its side, so that the top would remain intact. He drew from it a single folded sheet of paper. This he held to the light, and saw an advertisement. It displayed a tin of cleaning-powder and a row of sparkling dinner-ware on a sideboard, proclaiming the brilliance of Oakley's Silver Polish. It was Holmes's habit not to finish with any specimen of paper until he had looked for a watermark. He therefore examined the envelope and slipped the advertisement into his pocket.

The office of Archer & Co. had been almost stripped, like premises at the end of a lease or upon a bankruptcy. In one rear corner there remained a cheap plywood desk, on which he saw only a dried-out ink-bottle and a cardboard blotter. The drawers yielded nothing but a small quantity of envelopes and a few sheets of paper with the firm's letter-heading. Like the envelope he had opened, those in the desk bore an identical ‘Windsor Superfine' mark.

He tore one sheet of headed paper in half and inserted the blank lower half in the opened envelope. Then he returned to the desk, stooping over it with his long aquiline profile in silhouette. His fingers ran over the cardboard blotter with as much sensitivity as they ever touched the strings of his beloved violin.

Presently he took a twist of paper from his cigarette-case and struck a match. Holding the match to one side, he sprinkled a little graphite powder from the twist of paper and smoothed it on the blotter at one end. Shaking out the spent match, he struck another and saw, pale in the dark graphite, ‘Archer & Co., Most Immediate and Confidential'. Crossing back to the window, he picked up the pencilled envelope, and returned to the desk. Seeing that the handwriting on the envelope was identical to the imprint on the blotter, he slid the envelope out of sight beneath the cardboard square.

A second or two later, a chill at the nape of his neck caused the skin to contract and the hair to rise minutely. Only then did he hear a creak of the floorboards in the room behind him. In Sherlock Holmes, that uncanny sense which knows a sigh of timber or the movement of a rat in the wainscot from a human footfall, was super-naturally developed. He looked up at the door to the street and saw a shadow blocking the crack of light at its base. With his hypersensitive sense of danger and his acute perception, he could have sworn that no one had seen him as he entered the building. In any case, they would surely have made their move against him at once. Therefore, the alarm had been given by those who chanced to see the flare of a match in a darkened building—or perhaps heard his movements through the adjoining wall—and had now trapped him.

He afterwards claimed that in the few seconds of liberty remaining, he was struck by a lightning-bolt of inspiration, beside which the finest moments of the great poets appeared mundane. With scarcely time to reason, he took his pencil from his pocket and wrote by instinct in block capitals upon the blotting paper.
MOST URGENT
.
MEET ME UNDER THE ARCHES CHARING CROSS STATION OPPOSITE THE KING WILLIAM IN VILLIERS STREET TOMORROW
—
TUESDAY
3
PM SHARP
.

Then two of his assailants were through the unlatched doorway from the street. The older man with mutton-chop whiskers and a drinker's face was followed by a wiry bulldog of a young fellow with a lean body and grim features.

As he drew himself up to meet them, a third man ran into him from behind, knocking him against the desk. Holmes, though no lover of sport or exercise for itself, had been trained in his youth as boxer, swordsman and single-stick player. In a movement that a circus artist might have envied, he went forward in a tight roll across the desk, with such force that the man on his back was thrown over his head and landed sprawling on the bare boards. Holmes followed in a gymnast's fall and sprang up to face his two remaining antagonists. As he did so, he wondered if murder lay behind the humorists of the Society for Insuring Against Losses on the Turf. These men had the look of race-course roughs and he quite thought, as he said afterwards, that such desperadoes meant to have him at the bottom of the river in a few minutes more.

In that bare room, by reflected lamplight from the street, the confused and brutal struggle could have only one outcome. He was seized from behind again by his first attacker. The two men in front closed on him. Had they been the ruffians he imagined, Sherlock Holmes would have fought his last fight.