The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures (59 page)

Traill and I stared at each other, lost in a mental darkness deeper than that of any photographic darkroom. Infuriatingly, I knew that to Holmes this night-shrouded terrain of crime was brilliantly lit by the invisible rays of his deductive power.

Nor was I much the wiser when morning came. Holmes, dancing-eyed and evasive, had bundled Traill into a homeward-bound hansom and directed him to return to Baker Street after breakfast, when the case would be resolved. Then he had settled into his favourite chair with his pipe and a pound of the vilest shag tobacco: I found him in the identical position when I arose from sleep.

Over breakfast, he unbent a trifle. “Well, Watson, what do you make of our case?”

“Very little … I had thought,” I ventured, “that you would dissect or analyse the leech itself and perhaps identify its toxins.”

“The naked eye sufficed.” He pulled the red thing from his dressing-gown pocket and tossed it casually on to my plate of kippers, causing me to recoil in horror. “As you may readily discern for yourself, it has been artfully made from rubber.”

“Good heavens!” I studied the ugly worm more closely, and was struck by a thought. “Holmes, you suspected this artificial leech from the outset, or the excursion to Hampstead Heath would have been futile. What gave you the clue? And has Traill deceived us – are we the butts of some youthful jest?”

Holmes smiled languidly. “In a moment you will be telling me how obvious and elementary was the reasoning that led me to distrust that repulsive object. Look again at the newspaper cutting.”

I took it from his hand and examined it once more, to no avail.

“Setting aside the fact that the type fount does not correspond to that of any British newspaper known to me (the work of a jobbing printer, no doubt) … setting aside the extreme unlikelihood that such a striking report should have escaped my eye and failed to be pasted into our own celebrated index volume … may I direct your attention to this red leech’s scientific name?”

“
Sanguisuga rufa,
” I repeated. “Which I should say means something like ‘red bloodsucker’.”

“You are no taxonomer, Watson, but you are a doctor – or, as some country folk still call the profession, a leech. Can you bring to mind the Latin name for the leech once used in medicine?”

“
Hirudo medicinalis,
of course. Oh! That is strange …”

“In fact,
Sanguisuga
is not a scientific class name. It is poetic. It was used of leeches by Pliny. Our villain, who may or may not be ‘Dr James’, knows his Latin but not – if I may so phrase it – his leechcraft.”

I said: “How obvious and elem … that is, ingeniously reasoned!”

Holmes inclined his head ironically. “Here is our client at the door. Good morning, Mr Traill! Dr Watson has just been explaining with great erudition that your red leech is a fake – a rubber toy. And now the chase leads us to Theobald’s Road, to the law office of Jarman, Fittlewell and Coggs, where today you will at last claim your inheritance. Watson, that excellent revolver of yours might well be of use.”

“My reconstruction,” said Holmes as our cab rattled through a dismal London fog, “is a trifle grisly. There you were, Mr Traill, arguably somewhat drowsy from the compounded effects of warm weather, literary reveries and a bottle of Bass. Your habit of picnicking near the Highgate Ponds is well known to your friends – even, I dare say, your sister?”

“That is so. In fact, Selina has publicly twitted me more than once for what she calls my shiftless habits.”

“Thus the miscreant ‘Dr James’, whose appearance is a transparent disguise but whose true surname I fancy I know, had little difficulty in locating you. It was easy for him to approach you stealthily from behind and drop or place this little monstrosity upon the back of your hand as you sprawled on the grass.” He displayed the leech once more.

“The thing still revolts me,” Traill muttered.

“Its underside seems to have been coated with dark treacle: that would provide a convincingly unpleasant-looking and adhesive slime. But in addition, the ‘mouth’ section was dipped in some corrosive like oil of vitriol – see how it is eaten away? That was what you felt.”

Again Traill convulsively massaged the back of his hand. “But, Mr Holmes, what was the purpose of this horrid trick? It strikes me that your investigations have made matters worse! Before, I could blame my hand’s infirmity on the leech poison. Now you have eliminated that possibility and left me with nothing but madness.”

“Not at all. You will be pleased to hear that the apparatus of Röntgen pronounces you sane. We have eliminated the impossible story of the leech. There remains another, highly improbable explanation, which we will shortly confirm as true. By the way, may I assume that either Wilfrid Jarman or his brother was present on the occasion when that planchette spelt out such a disquieting message?”

“Yes, Basil was there. The brother.”

“The brother who dabbles in electrical devices. I wonder if he applied his ingenuity to enlivening those séances. In any case, according to my researches, it is far from difficult for a determined hand to influence the oracle of the ouija board. But here we are! Watson, I am sure you have change for the cabman.”

Jarman, Fittlewell and Coggs, solicitors and commissioners of oaths, occupied a fourth-floor set of offices. Without a great deal of ado we were shown into the large, dim room where Wilfrid Jarman awaited. He was a plump and kindly looking man in late middle age, whose baldness and pince-nez spectacles were slightly reminiscent of Mr Pickwick. A frowsty legal atmosphere exuded from numerous shelves of books bound in dull brown calf. Holmes’s nostrils widened like a hound’s as he keenly sniffed the air. I unobtrusively followed suit, and thought to detect a trace of not unfamiliar chemical whiff.

Jarman was greeting our client, saying, “I am most pleased, Martin, that you feel equal at last to your little ordeal. So many people take fright at a simple affidavit or conveyance! But you must introduce your friends.”

The formalities over, Jarman indicated the bulky document that lay on his desk. “A tiresome necessity,” he said with a shrug. “Believe me, my dear boy, I would readily dispense with it – but we lawyers must live by the law, or where would we be?”

The question being unanswerable, Traill muttered something suitably meaningless.

“
Look!
“ cried Holmes suddenly. “That face at the window! We are being spied upon!”

Our heads jerked around to the large office window, which showed only the dim and fog-shrouded skyline across Theobald’s Road. The solicitor even took a ponderous step or two towards the window, before turning back and stating acidly: “Mr Holmes, we are on the fourth floor. And expert cat-burglars do not commonly risk their necks for legal paperwork.”

Holmes made some feeble apology and mentioned trouble with his nerves. I recognized the signs of a ruse, and on reflection thought that – out of the corner of my eye – I had seen his hand dart to the broad desktop. But all seemed unchanged.

“Let us deal with the business at hand,” said Jarman, placing a finger on the thick paper where the signature was to go.

Traill took up the quill pen and dipped it in ink. He hesitated. His trembling hand moved forward, back, and then resolutely forward again. The air seemed suddenly charged with menace. From behind the desk Jarman smiled indulgently, and seemed to shift his weight a little to one side. For an instant I thought I felt, rather than heard, a faint sourceless whining.

Simultaneously, Traill snatched his hand back with a cry, and there was an explosion of blinding, dazzling light from the desk. Jarman’s thick voice uttered an oath. I clapped my hand to my revolver, but the room was blotted out by coruscating after-images. White smoke swirled. Slowly some shreds of vision returned.

“ ‘Tis sport,” Sherlock Holmes quoted, “to have the engineer hoist with his own petard.”

“I felt my hand burning again,” said Traill. “But that great flash was not my nerves, nor spirits either.”

The fat solicitor’s hand seemed burnt as well, from the flare; he cursed in a low, filthy undertone.

Holmes said briskly, “Forgive my theatricality. It seemed a useful notion to slip a flat packet of magnesium flash powder, appropriately fused, underneath that interesting document. Mr Jarman’s office may appear old-fashioned, but it conceals some thoroughly modern equipment – specifically, a high-frequency Tesla coil within the desk, which is activated when Mr Jarman chooses to step on a particular floorboard. Within a limited area, its rapidly fluctuating electromagnetic field has the effect of heating metals to a painful temperature. This heat detonated my little flash charge.”

“Metal?” said Traill, now still more puzzled. “I wear no rings.”

“True enough. But your right hand contains a steel needle, inserted there by the false Dr James under the pretext of removing the poisoned mouth-parts of the red leech.”

I was thunderstruck as I realized the fiendish ingenuity of the plot. Even the quill pen was part of the design, for a steel nib would instantly have given the game away. And of course that faint smell in the air was the sulphuric-acid reek of hidden wet-cell batteries. Meanwhile, Jarman uttered a forced laugh. He appeared to be sweating profusely. “What a farrago of nonsense! Such a thing would be impossible to prove.”

“On the contrary, I have photographed it by means of X-radiation.” Holmes drew something from one of his capacious pockets. “This shadowgraph shows the bone structure of Mr Traill’s right hand. Bone, being less previous to the rays than flesh, appears as nearly white. Here is the solid white of the needle, lying between the metacarpal bones.”

Traill shuddered again.

“No doubt we will find that Mr Jarman cannot account for his time on that Tuesday six months ago when you had your famous adventure on Hampstead Heath … ah, Mr Jarman, you are smiling. Therefore you have an alibi, and the deed was done by your good brother Basil, who likes to experiment with electricity. What, no smile now?”

I had belatedly trained my revolver on Jarman.

“What was the purpose of this terrible charade?” asked Traill.

“It is possible,” said Holmes gently, “that you are no longer heir to a great estate. If the assets or a large part of them have somehow slipped through the fingers of Jarman, Fittlewell and Coggs, then it naturally became necessary to delay – by fair means or foul – your legal acquisition of Sir Maximilian’s fortune. We shall find out when, as Mr Jarman very nearly put it, those who lived by the law shall perish by the law.”

“Mr Sherlock Holmes, you are an officious meddler,” stated Jarman, gazing intently at my friend. “And you over-reach. Your remarks are slanderous, sir. A true accounting of the estate’s affairs lies here upon my desk, and will show no defalcation: perhaps you would care to glance through the record?” The lawyer tapped his scorched index finger upon the book in question, a heavy ledger with a tarnished brass clasp that lay askew upon a mound of papers near the desk’s far edge. “Within, all your questions are answered.”

For half a minute, Holmes’s right hand had lain concealed within the folds of his bulky Inverness cape. Now he reached forward to the ledger, but did not flick open the clasp as I had anticipated. Instead he swiftly lifted the entire tome clear of the papers, and two oddities were made manifest. First, from the underside of the book’s brass clasp there trailed a long, springy, shining copper wire which vanished into the artfully disarrayed papers. Second, Holmes’s hand was seen to be sheathed in a heavy, rubber glove.

“How many volts, Mr Jarman?” he enquired pleasantly. “Hundreds? Thousands? I presume this jest was ultimately intended for Mr Traill, whose death would have bought you yet more time. My admiration for your ingenuity increases.”

WIlfrid Jarman’s composure was broken at last, and with an inarticulate cry of rage he stepped to one side, reaching into a drawer. Even as I realized that his hand now held an old-fashioned pistol, he had dextrously placed himself so that Holmes lay in my line of fire. I flung myself uselessly forward, to see Jarman aiming at point-blank range while Holmes flung the ledger in what seemed a futile shielding gesture. Blue-white sparks flew. The pistol’s flash and bang echoed with dread authority in the musty room. Then a heavy body fell to the floor. There was a long silence.

“I suspect that our friend did not finish pulling the trigger,” said Holmes, whose austere face was now very pale. “His infernal electricity exploded the shell in the breech, even as it struck him dead. Gun-barrels, as well as copper wires and brass clasps, are excellent conductors of electrical current. – Watson, I must trouble you to bind up my shoulder. The bullet did not go entirely astray.” He bent over to scrutinize the corpse more closely. “As he truly said, that ledger contained the answer to all questions. The
rictus
of his features is characteristic of electrically-induced spasms and convulsions. Best not to look, Mr Traill. Some things are even less pleasant to gaze upon than the red leech.”

Some time afterward, at the trial which concluded with the sentencing of the co-conspirator Basil Jarman to a long term of hard labour, we learned that almost half of the Traill estate still remained. Thus our client continued his life of idle literary dabbling, while his blameless sister Selina presumably receives a sufficient allowance to fritter away on psychic mediums.

Besides his own substantial fee, Holmes somehow contrived to retain a small souvenir of the case. To this day, our untidy mantelpiece in 221b Baker Street boasts a matchbox best not opened by the unwary, for its coiled rubber occupant is repulsive to the eye. The box is labelled in Holmes’s own neat hand:
Sanguisuga rufa spuriosa
. I have my doubts about the Latin.

The Adventure of the Grace Chalice

Roger Johnson

“Watson,” said Mr Sherlock Holmes from the bow-window, where he had stood for the past half-hour, gazing moodily down into the street, “if I mistake not, we have a client.”