An Ensuing Evil and Others (22 page)

“Mislaid!” The word was an explosion. “Dammit! Mislaid! Do you take me for a fool, sir? I demand that an interrogation of your employees begin at once. I suggest that you now send for the DMP!”

The mention of the Dublin Metropolitan Police had made the chairman slightly pale. “Your Grace, the reflection on our reputation—”

“Damn your reputation, sir! What about my hairbrush!” quivered the old man.

It was then I felt I should intervene. “Excuse me, Your Grace,” I began.

Rheumy blue eyes turned on me and assessed my youthful years. And who the devil are you, sir?”

“My name is Holmes. I might be able to help you.”

“You, you young jackanapes? What do you mean?”

I heard my brother tuttutting anxiously in the background at my effrontery.

“With your permission, I think I might be in a position to recover the lost item.”

Cloncurys eyes narrowed dangerously. “Do you have it, you impudent whippersnapper?” he demanded. “By God, if you are responsible…”

Mycroft came to my help. “Excuse me, Your Grace, this is my younger brother, Sherlock Holmes.”

Cloncury glanced up and recognized Mycroft, knowing him to have the ear of the viceroy. He looked slightly mollified. “Why didn’t he introduce himself properly then, hey? Very well, young Holmes, what do you mean by it?”

“With your permission, sir,” I went on, unperturbed, “I would like to put a few questions to the chairman of the club.”

The chairman began to flush in annoyance.

“Go ahead, then, Mr. Holmes,” instructed Cloncury. “I am sure that the chairman will be in favor of anything that stops the incursion of the police into this establishment.”

It seemed that the chairman, albeit reluctantly, was in favor.

“Well, sir, if I remember correctly, the washroom is next to the cloakroom, is it not?”

“Yes.”

“Is the washroom attended?”

“It is not.”

“And the cloakroom? Is it attended at all times?”

“Of course it is.”

“Your Grace, will you be so good as to show me where it was that you left your toilet box?”

We turned in a body, headed by the duke, and passed into the washroom. He pointed to one of the ornate marble washbasins at the far end of the room. It was one of a dozen such washbasins lining the entire lefthandside wall of the chamber, which was fronted by a series of mirrors for the use of the members. The righthandside wall was fitted with toilet cubicles in dark mahogany and brass fittings, except for a small area behind the main door. The marbletiled wall here was unimpeded by anything except for a small opening. It was about two feet square, framed in mahogany and with a hatch door.

I pointed to it. “I presume that this hatch connects the washroom with the cloakroom?”

“Naturally,” barked the chairman. “Now what is all this about?”

I turned and led them out of the washroom and into the cloakroom, where a uniformed attendant leaped from his chair, dropping a halfsmoked cigarette into an ashtray and looking penitently from one to another of us.

“Can I help you gentlemen?” he stuttered.

“Yes, you can,” I assured him. “You can bring me the garment that you are holding for Colonel Sebastian Moran. I think you will find that it is a heavy riding cloak or one of those newstyle long, loose coats which, I believe, is called an Ulster.”

The attendant returned my gaze in bewildered fashion.

The chairman pushed forward. “Good God, sir, what do you mean by it? Colonel Moran is a respected member of this club. Why are you presuming to ask for his coat?”

The Duke of Cloncury was looking at me with a frown of disapproval. “You’d better have a good explanation, young Holmes,” he muttered.

“I believe that you want the return of your toilet case?” I asked blandly.

“Gad, you know I do.”

I turned to the attendant. “Have you been on duty for the last half an hour?”

“That I have, sir.”

“A short while ago, Colonel Moran knocked on the hatch from the washroom side and asked if you could pass him his coat for a moment. Is that correct?”

The man’s jaw dropped in astonishment. “It is, sir. He said he wanted to comb his hair and had left the toilet items in his coat. And the coat was, indeed, one of those newstyle Ulsters, sir.”

“I believe the colonel then came around from the washroom, into the cloakroom, in order to hand you back the coat?”

“That is exactly what he did, sir.”

I turned and smiled at the astonished company, perhaps a little too superior in my attitude.

“How the hell did you know that?” growled the chairman.

“Now, my man,” I said, ignoring him but speaking again to the attendant. “Would you fetch Colonel Moran’s Ulster?”

The attendant turned, picked down the garment, and handed it to me in silence.

I took it and weighed it carefully with one hand before reaching into the inside lining. There were several large pockets there as was the fashion with such garments. The leather box was tucked neatly into one of them.

“How did you know?” gasped Cloncury, seizing his precious box eagerly.

“Know? I merely deduce from facts, sir. If you will open the box and check the brush? I think you may find that in the brush are some strands of dark black hair. The color of Colonel Moran’s hair, which is easy to spot, as it is dyed.”

It took the duke but a moment to confirm that I was right.

“I think the colonel is someone given to seizing opportunity. A chance taker,” I told them. “He followed His Grace into the washroom when His Grace had already entered the toilet. He saw the leather case there. He knew it had great sentimental value for His Grace. Perhaps he thought he might be able to blackmail Cloncury for its return, probably through an intermediary, of course. He seized the opportunity, asking for his Ulster to be passed through the hatch in order to conceal the box in order to get it out of the club. He chanced that members would not be searched….”

“It would be unthinkable that a member of this club would be searched,” muttered the chairman. “We are all gentlemen here!”

I chose not to comment. “He could not carry the box out of the washroom into the cloakroom without observation. When I saw the hatch, I knew that he had only to ask for his coat to be passed through, place the box in his pocket unobserved, and the theft was complete.”

“How did you know it was an Ulster or a riding cloak?” demanded His Grace.

“He would have to be possessed of a heavy coat such as an Ulster or riding cloak with large enough interior pockets to conceal the box in.”

“Why not pass the coat back through the hatch once he had hidden the box in the coat?” demanded Mycroft. “Why do you think that he came out of the washroom door, into the hall, and then into the cloakroom to return the cloak to the attendant?”

“Moran was cautious. Passing it back through the hatch might cause the attendant to feel the box and become suspicious, especially after Cloncury raised the alarm. So he carried it round and handed it to the attendant holding it upright by the collar. The extra weight would not be noticed. Is that correct?”

The attendant nodded confirmation.

“What made you think there would be hairs on the brush and that they would be his?” queried His Grace, staring dubiously at the black dyed hairs that were entangled on his silverbacked brush.

“Because Moran is a vain man and could not resist cocking a snoot at you, Your Grace, by brushing his own hair while you were within feet of him. It fits in with Moran s character, a demonstration of his nerve, for any moment you might have opened the door and discovered him. Chance is his adrenaline.”

“Holmes, this is amazing!” gasped Cloncury.

“It was another Trinity man who alerted me to the importance of careful observation,” I informed him. “Jonathan Swift. He wrote that a standerby may sometimes see more of the game than he who plays it.” I could not resist turning to Mycroft and adding, sotto voce, “And Trinity almost refused to give Swift a degree because they thought he was too lazy and undisciplined!”

The chairman of the club signaled the uniformed club doorman and his assistant. They looked exmilitary men.

“You will find Colonel Moran in the dining room,” he instructed. “Ask him to join us immediately. If he will not comply, you have my permission to escort him here with as much force as you have cause to use.”

The two men went off briskly about their task.

A moment later, the colonel, whose appearance suggested that he had polished off the rest of the wine, was firmly propelled into our presence.

His redrimmed eyes fell on his Ulster and on Cloncury holding his precious leather case. The mans face went white in spite of the alcoholic infused cheeks.

“By Gad, sir, you should be horsewhipped!” growled the Duke of Cloncury and Straffan menacingly.

“This is a fabrication!” bluffed Moran feebly. “Someone put the box in my inside coat pocket.”

I could not forbear a grin of triumph. “How did you know that it was the box which had been stolen? And how did you know it was found in your
inside
coat pocket, Colonel?”

Moran knew the game was up.

“Moran,” the chairman said heavily, “I shall try to persuade His Grace not to bring charges against you for the sake of the reputation of this club. If he agrees, it will be on the condition that you leave Ireland within the next twelve hours and never return. I will circulate your name in society so that no house will open its doors to you again. I will have you blackballed in every club in the land.”

The Duke of Cloncury and Straffan gave the matter a moments thought and then agreed to the conditions. “I’d horsewhip the beggar, if it were me. Anyway. I think we all owe young Mr. Sherlock Holmes our thanks in resolving this matter.”

Moran glowered at me. “So you tipped them off, you young interfering—” He made a sudden aggressive lunge at me.

Mycroft inserted his large frame between me and Moran. His fist impacted on the colonels nose, and Moran went sprawling back, only to be neatly caught by the doorman and his assistant.

“Kindly escort Colonel Moran off the premises, gentlemen,” ordered the chairman, “and you do not have to be gentle.”

Moran twisted in their grasp to look back at me with little option but to control his foul temper.

“I have your measure, Sherlock Holmes,” he glowered, seething with an inner rage as they began to propel him toward the door. “You have not heard the last of me.”

It was as Mycroft was sharing a cab in the direction of my rooms in Lower Baggott Street that he frowned and posed the question: “But I cannot see how you could have identified Moran as the culprit in the first place.”

“It was elementary, Mycroft.” I smiled. “When we left the luncheon room and passed behind Moran s chair, I saw that the colonel had dandruff on his shoulders. Now he had jetblack hair. But with the dandruff lay a number of silver strands. It meant nothing to me at the time, for I was not aware of the facts. When I discovered that the missing case contained a hairbrush and comb, everything fell into place. The duke not only had silver hair, but, I noticed, he also had dandruff to boot. By brushing his hair in such a foolhardy gesture, Moran had transferred the dandruff and silver hair to his own shoulders. It was easy to witness that Moran was a vain man. He would not have allowed dandruff and hair, if it had been his, to lie on his shoulders when he entered a public dining room. Indeed, I saw him rise from his table and go out, brushing himself as he did so. The sign of a fastidious man. He had, therefore, unknowingly picked it up during his short absence. Everything else was a matter of simple deduction.”

As Moran had been thrown out of the Kildare Street Club, he had called out to me that I had not heard the last of him. Indeed, I had not. But I could not have conceived of how our paths would meet at that time, nor of the sinister role Moran’s friend, Professor Moriarty, would play in my life. While Moriarty became my most implacable foe, Colonel Sebastian Moran was certainly the second most dangerous man that I ever had to deal with.

THE SPECTER OF TULLYFANE ABBEY

Somewhere in the vaults of the bank of Cox and Co., at Charing Cross, there is a travelworn and battered tin dispatch box with my name, John H. Watson MD, Late Indian Army, painted on the lid. It is filled with papers, nearly all of which are records of cases to illustrate the curious problems which Mr. Sherlock Holmes had at various times to examine.

—”The Problem of Thor Bridge”

T
his is one of those papers.

I must confess that there are few occasions on which I have seen my estimable friend, Sherlock Holmes, the famous consulting detective, in a state of some agitation. He is usually so detached that the word
calm
seems unfit to describe his general demeanor. Yet I had called upon him one evening to learn his opinion of a manuscript draft account I had made of one of his cases which I had titled “The Problem of Thor Bridge.”

To my surprise, I found him seated in an attitude of tension in his armchair, his pipe unlit, his long pale fingers clutching my handwritten pages, and his brows drawn together in disapproval. “Confound it, Watson,” he greeted me sharply as I came through the door. “Must you show me up to public ridicule in this fashion?”

I was, admittedly, somewhat taken aback at his uncharacteristic greeting. “I rather thought you came well out of the story,” I replied defensively. “After all, you helped a remarkable woman, as you yourself observed, while, as for Mr. Gibson, I believe that he did learn an object lesson—”

He cut me short. “Tush! I do not mean the case of Grace Dunbar, which, since you refer to it, was not as glamorous as your imaginative pen elaborates on. No, Watson, no! It is here”—he waved the papers at me—”here in your cumbersome preamble. You speak of some of my unsolved cases as if they were failures. I only mentioned them to you in passing, and now you tell me, and the readers of the
Strand Magazine
, that you have noted them down and deposited the record in that odious little tin dispatch box placed in Cox’s Bank.”