The Secret Files of Sherlock Holmes (21 page)

‘And now,’ Holmes announced, having fastened up the grip, ‘I should like to examine the room where the burglary took place.’

It was while we were walking along the passageway towards the drawing-room that Sir Edgar suddenly remarked, ‘The port glasses have reminded me, Mr Holmes. Yesterday you asked if any strangers had been to the house. At the time, I could think of nobody. But seeing the glasses again, I have just remembered that there was a visitor although it was so long ago, I doubt if he has anything to do with the burglary. I offered him a glass of port after luncheon and he remarked on the excellence of its quality.’

Holmes lifted his head, his expression alert and keen-eyed, like a gun dog scenting game.

‘How long ago was this visit, Sir Edgar?’

‘Let me see. It must have been last November. He was an American professor who wrote asking to look over the place. He said he was an expert on Tudor architecture.’

It was Holmes’ habit to become very tense and still when he had reached a significant stage in an investigation, as if all his attention were concentrated on this one point although, under the apparently calm exterior, one could feel the energy vibrating like a finely-tuned engine.

I was aware of that hidden power when in a quiet voice he inquired, ‘Do you happen to have the letter?’

‘It may still be among my papers. If you wish, I can look for it while you examine the drawing-room,’ Sir Edgar replied, throwing open a door.

While Sir Edgar departed to search for the correspondence, Holmes and I stepped inside the room. It was a large chamber, beamed and panelled like the dining-room, and with three long windows overlooking the garden. Even from the doorway, it was possible to see the circular hole which had been cut in one of the panes immediately above a window-catch, large enough to admit a man’s hand.

Holmes strode across the room to examine both the hole and the window-ledge.

‘Neatly made, Watson, with a diamond-tipped glass-cutter; the sign of an expert. Observe also the marks on the sill where our villains climbed in and out. No footprints in the flower-bed below the window,’ he continued, opening the casement and leaning his head out, ‘apart from some heavy trampling in the surrounding area which I assume is the work of Inspector Biffen and his subordinates. But aha! What have we here? Kindly pass me the tweezers, there’s a good fellow.’

I did as he requested, eagerly stepping forward to observe the object which he had retrieved.

‘It is just a small piece of fluff,’ I remarked.

‘Fluff? Nonsense, Watson! If you examine it with the aid of the lens, you will see that it consists of fibres torn from a piece of brown felt. They were caught on a splinter of wood on the lower frame of the window. You can also observe, can you not, the earth which has been trodden into them? No wonder our villains were so silent and left no shoe-prints. They were careful to encase their feet in felt slippers. It is all so highly professional that it is a privilege to observe their methods. And now,’ he concluded, depositing the fibres in an envelope which he placed inside his pocketbook, ‘let us examine the cabinets from which the art treasures were taken.’

The cabinets stood in the chimney alcoves on either side of a large stone fireplace. Both were glass-fronted and the doors,
which had been fitted with strong, brass locks, had been left ajar. Inside, gaps between the objects displayed on the shelves showed where the missing items had once stood.

It was while Holmes was kneeling on the floor, examining the key escutcheons, that Sir Edgar entered the room, a sheet of paper in his hand.

‘I have found the letter,’ he announced, handing it to Holmes who, having read it, passed it to me. It was written on paper which bore the printed heading, ‘The University of Chicago, Department of History’, and the date October 6th of the previous year.

It read:

It was signed ‘Jonas T. Vanderbilt, Professor of History’.

‘You wrote to him and arranged a visit?’ Holmes inquired of Sir Edgar.

‘Indeed I did. I sent a letter to his London hotel, suggesting he should come on November 10th by the same 10.15 train that you caught. But you are surely not implying that he was behind the burglary? He seemed most respectable. Why, I even sent the carriage to meet him at the station!’

‘What was his appearance?’

‘He was a tall, elderly, white-haired gentleman; a little stooped in the shoulders; spoke, of course, with an American accent and was highly knowledgeable about Tudor architecture.’

‘He was shown over the house?’

‘Not all of it but, yes, I conducted him round the main rooms, including this one, the dining-room where we had luncheon,
and some of the bedrooms. He was most grateful for the opportunity and wrote me a charming letter of thanks.’

Sir Edgar broke off at this point as the butler entered to announce that Inspector Biffen had arrived and was waiting in the hall. Having conducted us there, Sir Edgar introduced us to the man before excusing himself on the grounds of some matter of urgent estate business which had to be completed before luncheon.

Biffen, who was accompanied by a police constable, was a lean, narrow-eyed and thin-lipped man who clearly resented Holmes’ presence and mine for he shook hands stiffly, remarking in a sneering manner, ‘Sir Edgar has every right to call in whom he pleases, Mr Holmes. But for all your reputation, you will not have any success with this case. The clues are too few. In fact, I have this very morning sent a telegram to Scotland Yard, requesting assistance. I am expecting a reply at any moment. Not that we have been exactly idle. Only half an hour ago, my men, continuing the search of the gardens under my express orders, have discovered the place where the villains entered the grounds. I doubt if you would have found it.’

‘Probably not, Inspector,’ Holmes agreed suavely. ‘I should like, however, to be shown where it is.’

With bad grace, Biffen conceded and we followed him across a large sweep of lawn, surrounded by carefully tended herbaceous borders, to a shrubbery at the far side of which he halted in front of a high brick wall.

‘That’s where they got in, Mr Holmes,’ Biffen announced with an unpleasantly triumphant air. ‘You can see where the ivy has been disturbed on the top of the coping.’

‘But how’, Holmes inquired, ‘did they manage to scale the wall? It is all of fifteen feet high.’

Biffen’s smug smile immediately faded, to be replaced by a much more chastened expression. It was quite clear that the question had not occurred to him. The mystery, however, was soon solved, at least to Holmes’ satisfaction.

The constable was despatched to fetch a ladder and, when he returned with it, Holmes leaned it against the brickwork and,
mounting the rungs, carefully parted the strands of ivy before examining the stone coping with the aid of his powerful pocket lens.

‘Most satisfactory!’ he remarked, descending and dusting off his hands. ‘As I had expected, Watson, it is yet another example of the high degree of efficiency with which this pair of thieves operates. But come! We must return to the house and complete our examination of the scene of the crime.’

Deliberately ignoring Biffen, he set off through the shrubbery although, once we were out of earshot of the Inspector, he remarked to me in a low voice, ‘Judging by the two parallel marks in the coping, our villains used a rope ladder fitted with hooks. By such means, it would be a matter of a few minutes for them to enter and leave the grounds. I wonder if Biffen will come to the same conclusion? I admit I could not resist the temptation to goad him a little by withholding the information. He is such an insufferable fellow.’

He turned to look back and, following his glance, I saw Biffen hastily scrambling up the ladder, shouting to the constable who remained below to hold it steady. At the sight, Holmes gave a chuckle of sardonic amusement.

On our return to Whitestone Manor, Holmes resumed his minute scrutiny of the cabinet locks, finally laying down his lens with the remark, ‘Whoever picked these was an expert, Watson. Apart from a few tiny scratches, the brass escutcheons are barely marked.’

At this juncture, luncheon was announced and we joined Sir Edgar in the dining-room where our host informed us that only minutes earlier Inspector Biffen had received an answer to his telegram, brought from Great Walden by a constable on a bicycle, its message being that a Scotland Yard detective would be arriving on the two minutes past three train from London.

‘Did Biffen happen to mention the name of this Inspector?’ Holmes inquired with an offhand air.

‘A Letrade or Lestrade,’ Sir Edgar replied.

Holmes exchanged a glance with me.

‘In that case, Sir Edgar,’ he said in his blandest manner, ‘I think it better that Dr Watson and I should leave before he
arrives. We should not wish to cramp the style of the official police. Besides, we have completed our investigation here for the time being. No doubt you will be sending the carriage to meet this Scotland Yard detective at the station? Then, to save a double journey, Dr Watson and I shall take the opportunity of travelling in it to Great Walden.’

‘But the next train to London does not leave until twelve minutes past four!’ Sir Edgar protested. ‘You will have a wait of nearly an hour.’

‘The time will not be wasted,’ Holmes assured him. ‘There are several inquiries I wish to make in Great Walden before returning to town.’

‘What inquiries, Holmes?’ I asked when, the carriage having arrived, we had taken leave of Sir Edgar and seated ourselves inside it.

‘At the George inn, my good Watson.’

‘Oh, yes! I remember now you asked the coachman when we first arrived which was the best hostelry in the town and he recommended the George. At the time, I wondered why you should be interested.’

‘Is it not obvious, Watson? We have already deduced that it is more than likely that our villains travelled down by train from London. As it is also highly probable that they would not have arrived on a late train which would have few passengers, thus making their presence conspicuous, we may further deduce that they would have chosen one which arrived in the late afternoon or early evening. Now even burglars have to eat, so I have assumed that they would have dined somewhere in Great Walden. Hence the inquiries I propose to make at the George.’

‘Wait a moment, Holmes,’ I put in, perceiving a flaw in his chain of reasoning. ‘Why are you so convinced they dined at the George and not at some other hostelry in the town?’

‘Because, my dear fellow, it is the best, as the coachman indicated, and Vanderbilt, as we have learned from Sir Edgar’s evidence, has a taste for the good things of life. No man who can appreciate a glass of ’67 port is likely to dine anywhere except at the finest inn a town can boast of.’

The George, where on Holmes’ instructions the carriage
deposited us before continuing its journey to the railway station to meet Inspector Lestrade’s train, was a large, well-appointed inn, probably dating back to the days of the stage-coach, if not earlier.

Inside the hostelry, Holmes sought out the head-waiter, inquiring of him, after a half-crown had exchanged hands, about any gentlemen who had dined there on the Friday evening, the night before the burglary at Whitestone Manor.

‘There were two of them,’ Holmes concluded, ‘one of whom was carrying quite a large bag, such as a portmanteau.’

Yes, the head-waiter did indeed remember two gentlemen dining together that evening, one a tall, well-built man with a brown beard and eyeglasses. His companion who was much shorter, with a pale face and a dark moustache, had been in charge of a carpet-bag.

They had arrived at about quarter to eight and had left shortly after ten o’clock, the taller of the two, who had paid the bill and had done all the talking, announcing that they intended to catch the 10.20 train to Ipswich.

‘Although I doubt if that was their destination,’ Holmes remarked as we set off on foot for the railway station.

Here, further inquiries of the porter established the fact that the down train from Liverpool Street station arrived at Great Walden at seven thirty-five on a weekday evening, although the porter had not remarked on any individual passengers, there being too many arrivals.

‘And what is the first train to London on a Saturday morning?’ Holmes asked.

‘The twelve minutes past five,’ the porter replied.

After further questioning on Holmes’ part, we learned that only a few individuals had travelled on that train the previous Saturday, among whom had been two men, one a tall, clean-shaven, grey-haired gentleman, the other much shorter, dressed like a working-man in a cap and corduroy trousers and carrying a carpet-bag which the porter had assumed contained the tools of his trade. But, the porter added, they were not together and had stood at opposite ends of the platform as they waited for the London train.

At this point, our own train arrived and Holmes and I climbed into a first class carriage where my old friend threw himself down on the seat with a chuckle of satisfaction.

‘A most satisfactory day’s work, Watson! We have uncovered a great deal of useful and pertinent information and shall still be back in time for dinner.’

‘Yes, I suppose it has been successful,’ I replied.

‘“Suppose”, my dear fellow? There is no “suppose” about it! We are now in possession of a large number of facts, particularly those concerning Professor Jonas T. Vanderbilt, which no doubt is an alias but which will serve as his name until such time as we discover his real one. Not only is he a master of disguise but he is a man who plans these burglaries in meticulous detail. He has even gone to the trouble to have some writing-paper printed with the University of Chicago’s letter-heading. You noticed, I assume, how he changed his appearance from the elderly, white-haired professor who visited Sir Edgar last November to the gentleman with the brown beard who dined at the George, and again to the grey-haired, clean-shaven passenger who caught the early train to London? Three separate disguises designed, of course, to throw the police off the scent! He and his accomplice were also careful not to make the return journey together but appeared to be travelling separately. But height is less easily concealed and Vanderbilt is invariably described as being a tall man. He is almost certainly the brains behind these burglaries. His companion, who is much shorter, is probably what is referred to among the criminal fraternity as a yeggman.’
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