The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (42 page)

To his astonishment, his arms were wrenched behind his back and his wrists were circled by steel. He heard a click of handcuffs. A freckled giant with ginger hair said in a Scots brogue, ‘So y'would, would you, my dandy?'

A bullseye lantern illuminated the scene as the shutter was drawn back and the older man in the loose-fitting flannel suit said, ‘I am Inspector Clarke, Metropolitan Police. Now, my fine fellow, we'll have some account of who you are and why you might be on these premises.'

Holmes contrived to be unruffled.

‘I am here to inquire after Major Montgomery, on behalf of the Comtesse de Goncourt, not to be set upon like this by footpads. You can see for yourself that the door is unlocked. Montgomery had presumably gone out for a few minutes, so I came in to wait for him. He owes me money.'

As he spoke, he knew that he staked everything on his belief that they had not seen him come in but had been attracted by the intermittent light of the matches. His explanation that Major Montgomery owed him money must do for the present.

As they studied him by the lantern and heard him speak, they became a little less sure of themselves. Sherlock Holmes was more dangerous to civil order than a regiment of Fagins or Artful Dodgers, but he did not look it. Clarke stepped up and stared him hard in the face.

‘Your name, if you please.'

‘By all means,' said Holmes equably, ‘William Sherlock Scott Holmes, of Westminster Road, South-East.'

The contempt of a police functionary for the born gentleman was plain in Clarke's face.

‘Very well, Mr William Sherlock Scott Holmes, I think it best if Sergeant Lestrade and I were to escort you a little way down the street to the rear gate of Scotland Yard. We shall have a talk about this story of yours. See if you feel quite as frisky then! What have you to say to that? Eh?'

‘I think it an entirely admirable suggestion,' said Holmes politely, as they still scrutinized him by the light of the bullseye lamp. ‘Indeed, I should have insisted upon that, had you not proposed it yourself.'

Inspector Clarke was unmoved by this suavity. He gave a light snort of contempt.

‘I daresay you may find it less admirable when you are charged as being found on enclosed premises with intent.'

Sergeant Meiklejohn was left to secure the premises. As Holmes walked in handcuffs the short distance towards the river, between Clarke and Lestrade, he said cheerfully, ‘With intent to commit a felony, to give the phrase its full value, Mr Clarke.'

‘As a burglar,' Clarke said indifferently.

‘Oh, I think not a burglar. Not when the night is still so young. I have always understood that the crime of burglary begins at one minute past nine, when house-breaking ends. Not before.'

‘Housebreaking, then,' said Clarke abruptly.

‘But I think it cannot be housebreaking where nothing is broken. Can it? You found the door on the latch, why should not I? A civil action might lie for trespass, of course, if Major Montgomery can be found. I expect he was just called away for a moment.'

This continuing chaff rattled Inspector Clarke, as Holmes intended it should. They came to a halt in the street and the inspector turned upon his captive.

‘In a moment, while we are among ourselves, I may teach you to learn better than to come the letter of the law with me, Mr William whatever-it-was Holmes.'

‘William Sherlock Scott,' said Holmes pleasantly. ‘But it is not I who will come the letter of the law with you, Mr Clarke. The law itself will do that. Upon the bookstalls you will find, newly-published, Mr Justice Stephen's admirable compendium,
A Digest of the English Criminal Law
. You would find it a rewarding and, if I may say so without offence, an instructive volume.'

Clarke aimed a vigorous clout of his open hand at the side of Holmes's face. But where the face had been half a second before, there was only space. Disconcerted by the speed of his victim's response, the inspector swore at him, and walked on.

Lestrade later confessed that he was appalled by the incident. Though George Clarke boasted of giving many a felon a ‘fat lip' for less insolence than this, he had seldom exhibited such an abrupt loss of self-control. Lestrade dreaded being a witness to an assault on a man of Holmes's calibre. He must either deny the truth or live as a traitor to his colleagues for having told it. Perhaps Holmes sensed this, for he kept silent. However, as they approached the rear of Scotland Yard, he said, ‘When we arrive, Mr Clarke, perhaps you would present my compliments to Superintendent Williamson of the Detective Police. Pray inform him that I should like an interview at his earliest convenience. He will know who I am.'

Clarke's fists tightened as he walked but he said nothing more. The two detectives brought their prisoner to the charge-room and stood him before the desk-sergeant, among the drunkards and pickpockets called to answer before the night-court of the Westminster magistrates. Clarke withdrew to confer with the night-inspector. When his name was called, Holmes stepped up with a quick nervous smile to hear the decision in his case. The sergeant looked at his sheet.

‘Police bail of ten guineas in your own recognizances to appear here three days from today.'

‘I shall appear,' said Holmes quietly, ‘you need have no fear of that.'

Then he dangled his handcuffs for the sergeant's attention.

‘Perhaps you would care to have these back. I trust I shall have no further use for them.'

‘Who took those off?'

‘I did,' said Holmes amiably. ‘There is no trick to it, I assure you. Merely art.'

III

Sherlock Holmes was not in general an admirer of the press, whose practitioners he was apt to describe in the good old phrase as ‘lice upon the locks of literature'. He was fond of remarking that newspapers exist ‘to promote the interests of those of whom one has never heard before and of whom, in all probability, one will never hear again. Of whom, I may add, one is vexed to have heard at all.'

In this condemnation of the daily press, however, he made an exception of the criminal news and the agony column. ‘The latter is particularly instructive.'

He had just finished this column next morning at the end of a leisurely breakfast, following his late return the night before, when there was a knock at his door. His landlady announced Mr Abrahams. Holmes had already set aside thoughts of the chemical laboratory that day and admitted to a lifting of the spirits at the sound of the lawyer's name. William Abrahams came bustling upstairs in the landlady's wake, his face drawn in lines of vindictive satisfaction. Without ceremony, he threw down his hat and burst out, ‘Well, sir, she has done it! Such utter stupidity never was! By God, Mr Holmes, I have had a fool or two as a client but this beats them all!'

Holmes raised his eyebrows inquiringly and gestured his visitor to a chair.

‘May I take it that Madame de Goncourt has had another little flutter?'

Mr Abrahams looked a shade grimmer.

‘Give or take a few centimes, she has placed the equivalent of five thousand pounds with Archer & Co., upon those two horses of Major Montgomery's. God knows how many other idiots have done the same!'

Holmes pushed the silver cigarette-box towards his guest.

‘I take it that these unfortunate animals lost their races—or not?'

It seemed to the lawyer that his detective quite failed to understand him.

‘They neither won nor lost, sir. They did not exist. I cannot find that Saucebox or Minerva ever ran at Brighton. Nor did the races take place in which they were said to be entered. As for the cheques, it appears, there never was a Royal Bank of London, whose spurious notes were used to pay the victims their first winnings. Then, as I ascertained this morning, there has never been anything known to English jurisprudence as a sworn bookmaker. It was a swindle, start to finish, as anyone less foolish and rapacious than my client would have seen.'

In his agitation, he crossed to the window and stared over the cold wastes of the Westminster Road. Then he turned round.

‘Mr Holmes! These criminals not only forged cheques for a nonexistent bank, they fabricated a page from a well-known racing newspaper. Therefore they have a printing press. A press that may even print bank stationery! This is larceny on the grand scale. What might they do next?'

Holmes brushed a fleck of cigarette ash from his waistcoat.

‘As to that, Mr Abrahams, I believe I know precisely what they will do next. I know when and I know where. Almost to the minute.'

This quite took the wind out of the lawyer's sails.

‘How can you possibly know that?'

Holmes tried to calm him.

‘Let us return for the moment, if you please, to Archer & Co.'

In his agitation to deliver the news from Paris, William Abrahams had so far given Holmes no chance to describe the events of the previous night. When he heard them, the lawyer turned quite pale.

‘Arrested for housebreaking? You might go to prison for fourteen years!'

Holmes tossed his cigarette into the fire.

‘I think not,' he looked up at Mr Abrahams. ‘I am not charged with any offence so far but released on bail for lack of motivation or a witness. I am a little curious as to the speed with which Mr Clarke and the night inspector sent me on my way, but we may return to that matter in a while. As for the evidence against me, I should imagine the police will find witnesses of Major Montgomery's calibre remarkably shy. I went to the firm's premises in a legitimate response to his advertisement as a tipster. I found my way open, I broke nothing. The police can hardly prosecute if Major Montgomery declines to appear. As Madame de Goncourt now knows, the major is only a name, a ghost. While I am disposed to allow that spectres may sometimes trouble our sleep, I recall none materializing in the witness-box of the Central Criminal Court.'

He took Oakley's ‘Silver Polish' advertisement from the table.

‘When I was brought to the charge-room last night, my pockets were turned out and a most shoddy search carried out. My little pocket-knife was remarked upon but it was so clean and slight that it could not be evidence against me. This advertisement, quite the most important clue in the case, was ignored. Such, I fear, is the blinkered mentality of Scotland Yard.'

Mr Abrahams looked up at him.

‘Oakley's! Why the devil should they concern themselves with an advertisement for silver polish?' A tic of ill-temper teased the lawyer's mouth as he handed the paper back. Holmes smiled.

‘It lay with the post, just inside the door, where it would attract no particular attention. It was addressed in pencil and appeared to be delivered by hand.'

‘Is that so unusual with tradesmen's circulars?'

‘I observed the blotter on Messrs Archer's desk,' Holmes said evenly. ‘The softness of blotting paper takes a remarkably good impression. The mere fingertips of a criminal expert may trace the more forcible indentations. A skilful application of graphite will highlight anything of that kind. Of course, my practice excludes the matrimonial tragedies of the divorce court. However, I can assure you that pencil impressions have dissolved many a happy marriage.'

‘And what are we to conclude?' Mr Abrahams sat stiff-necked and sceptical.

‘That someone came with an urgent and secret message to Northumberland Street. The person to whom he wished to speak was not there. I daresay no one was there. However, the visitor had been able to enter the office—believe me, it is not difficult. The circular in his pocket was already prepared for such a situation. But it must reach the right person. What then? He put it in an envelope and addressed it in pencil. He slipped it among the letters on the floor. It would attract no notice from anyone, except the man who expected it. Even a policeman would drop it in the dustbin.'

‘I daresay,' Mr Abrahams began impatiently but Holmes held up his hand.

‘The visitor was plainly agitated, however. His pencil indentation went through both sides of the envelope, through the folded sheet of the circular, and deep into the blotting-paper. Haste is also evident to the trained eye. I noted the breaking of a pencil point on the first down-stroke of “Northumberland”.'

‘All for a silver-polish advertisement?'

Holmes chuckled. ‘For the message it may carry. A prearranged code depending on certain letters from Messrs Oakley's well-known slogans is too fanciful. No, sir. As I picked up the letters, I sensed an odour from this envelope. There are certain chemical and aromatic scents which the criminal expert should be able to identify. Household bleach or ammonia is among the most common. It is also one of the most significant, being the most easily perfected form of invisible writing.'

‘Then you have read a secret message?'

Holmes shook his head.

‘I was tempted. However, I require a witness to testify as to what I do.'

‘As a policeman might have done last night.'

‘Not a policeman, I think. If you will draw closer, I will hold this paper before the fire. As the vulgar saying has it, if some phantom script does not manifest itself in a minute or two, I shall be quite prepared to eat my hat.'

The two men watched. For a moment they saw only the glow of flames playing behind the printed pattern of silver vessels. Then a brownish edge appeared on the blank margin at the foot of the paper, as though it might scorch and burn. Pale marks on the tawny patches began to take the form of letters. In a moment more they ran round the margins of the circular like figures on a frieze.

Dear Bill,—Important news. Tell the young ones to keep themselves quiet and be ready to scamper. I must see you as early as possible. Bring this note with you under any circumstances. I fancy the brief is out for some of you. If not, it soon will be. So you must keep a sharp look-out
.

‘There you have it,' said Holmes softly.