Death on a Pale Horse (31 page)

I will not say that I was too frightened to reply to this sudden warning. I simply could not bring myself to do it. In any case, the invisible corridor beyond the partition was now silent again. It did not mean the coast was clear. The man was a hunter. What was it Mycroft Holmes had said? Randy Moran could cross the floor of a forest by night and never let a single twig crack under his foot. To be sure, he would not risk the explosion of a gun in a place like this—but Joshua Sellon had died without a sound. Moran would expect me to go onwards to the exit of the maze. In that case, my best chance was to go back, retracing my route to the entrance. Even with an air weapon, he would hardly dare use it while the gypsy woman was a witness. I tried to withdraw silently, the grotesque mirrored distortions of my appearance weaving back at me on either side. I stumbled once as I neared the pay-booth. Blinking in the sun, I saw only the head-scarved woman preparing to close her till.

“The gentleman who came out just now, a moment ago. Which way did he go?”

She looked up at me, strangely as I thought.

“No gentleman came out, sir. Not since you went in. Only two ladies and their little boys. There's no one in there now. I always make sure of that before we close up.”

I glanced back. There was no sign of anyone behind me. Was he still in there?

“There's no one there, sir,” she insisted. “You've missed your friend.” She chuckled. “If he was in there, once it's locked, he'd be inside until tomorrow morning.”

Had he found some other way through a gap in the canvas—found it or made it? But what a fool I had been. It now seemed plain that Rawdon Moran had had me watched every movement and every minute. The hunter always has the upper hand over the prey, and he had lived all his life as a hunter. Equally at home in the streets of London or the tracks of the African jungle. Holmes and I would do well to remember it.

As for Lestrade and Scotland Yard, what an idiot I should be to talk of a voice in a fairground maze without a shred of evidence to confirm that I was not inventing or imagining the whole thing!

I walked carefully back towards the waiting drag. Though it was probably too late to be cautious, I kept behind the shelter of canvas booths and fun-fair galleries on the shadowed grass. From time to time, I retraced my steps and took new angles. I dodged and ducked past the fairground structures of roundabouts and helter-skelter slides. At last there was nothing but one stretch of open ground between me and the ancient vehicle in which my friend must be waiting. The crowds were going home and Colonel Moran was nowhere to be seen. I crossed by the rails of the racecourse, looking back and seeing no one, concealing myself on the far side of the carriage before I entered it. Yet I was still haunted by the certainty that he watched me every step of my way.

*
“Silver Blaze,” in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

6

I
said nothing to Holmes as we rode away from Epsom
Downs in our drag or on the train, partly because I felt rather shaken. To tell the truth, I was fast coming round to a view that these events were a matter for the resources of Scotland Yard or the Provost's Special Investigation Branch rather than for a pair of consulting detectives. Unfortunately, I hesitated too long. By the end of the evening, it seemed too late to describe my experience just then. And if I revealed the encounter with Moran belatedly, it might sound to my friend as though I were making a confession of having stupidly got into a scrape. That was true. I thought that I still did not know Holmes well enough to predict at what point he would think himself better off without such a foolish partner as I was proving to be.

In one corner of my mind, I even thought that Rawdon Moran might be right. I hope I am no coward; but, repulsive though the man was, had he not at least been correct when he said that by our present conduct we should only hurt ourselves? And what of danger to those who might be near and dear to us? There was a certain young lady in my life. Though fate was to play us false, I could not know it at the time. I could not tell what forces we were up against. Of course Holmes and I were partners and must act together. Yet the reader may bear in mind that our partnership was still relatively recent. I must be allowed a degree of discretion and independence in personal matters. I was sufficiently of two minds that I decided to sleep on the matter. Tomorrow should be the day of decision. I could just as well tell him my story then as now.

Next morning, uncharacteristically, it was Sherlock Holmes who was first at the breakfast table. I appeared at my usual time, having slept wretchedly, to find him already at the stage of toast and marmalade. His copy of the
Morning Post
had been read and laid aside. Against the polished silver of the milk jug stood an open copy of
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
, chosen from the volumes of the Complete Novels of George Meredith which had long stood upon his shelves. He closed the book and looked up at me.

“I thought it best that you should sleep well, Watson. I trust you have done so, for you may not find it so easy tonight.”

“Indeed?”

“I fear so. Colonel Rawdon Moran is back in England.”

I could only play the part I had imposed upon myself: “Since when?”

“He has been here for a day or two at least. He did not, as expected, sail from Madeira to Antwerp. Masquerading as Sebastian Moran, I made urgent and brotherly inquiries for him by telegraph to the shipping agents in Leadenhall Street. Their passenger lists show that he disembarked at Lisbon last week and took the Iberian Express for Medina del Campo and Paris. He had only to travel a little further and board the steamer from Calais to Dover. He has stolen something of a march upon us.”

“He has left France, then?” I asked awkwardly.

“Indeed. He was at the Epsom Spring Meeting yesterday afternoon.”

If I looked astonished, it was for reasons which I hoped my friend would not find obvious. It was an unenviable experience to fence with him over truth and falsehood.

“You did not see him for yourself?”

“He was seen, my dear fellow. I hope it will not distress you to hear that he was closer to you than you imagined. You had not emerged from the Hall of Mirrors when he entered it.”

“I did not see you there.” That at least was true.

“I daresay not. You might, however, have noticed a young scamp of twelve or thirteen, wearing a braided jacket with a cap and muffler, loitering about the amusements.”

“There were dozens of young rips like that!”

“Precisely. This one, however, was acting as a runner for an itinerant fairground photographer and was there at my request. ‘Shadowing us' is, I believe, the vernacular expression. The boy is one of my young Baker Street friends who rejoices in the title of Skiver Jenkins of Lisson Grove. A promising lad. I should call him at least a sergeant-major in our Baker Street Irregulars.”

“So that was it!”

“I fear so. Rawdon Moran is an habitué of the racecourse as surely as the card-table and would never miss the Epsom meeting if he were in England. I put him to the test. I can only apologise for turning you loose as a scapegoat with two of our young gentlemen keeping distant observation. I count upon the colonel's continuing interest in our movements. I can assure you that you were followed from the military rifle range by a pair of bullies until our friend Moran was able to detach himself from his party. He was on your track for at least twenty minutes. Skiver Jenkins was able to identify him from my description and a lamentably amateur copy that I had produced for the occasion from Mycroft's photograph.”

“And what do you propose to do?”

“Nothing,” he said with a shrug. “Our adversaries are impatient. Their intention is that we should now scuttle about like startled rabbits. By doing nothing, we draw them on a little further.”

Though he had not so far mentioned his correspondence, there was one letter by his plate. It must have appeared of some importance and he had apparently reserved it for his full attention. I contrived to read upon its envelope a return address. It was the Ravenswood Hotel, Southampton Row. Major Putney-Wilson had evidently thought it necessary to prevent his message being tampered with surreptitiously: there was a red wax seal on the back of the envelope.

Holmes finished his second cup of coffee.

“Our friend has written to us,” I said helpfully.

“It would seem so.”

He folded the
Morning Post
and with the envelope in his hand went over to his crowded and disreputable “chemical table.” There he struck a match, lit a Bunsen burner at low heat, filled a glass retort with water from a bottle and placed the vessel on the flame. He watched until the water began to bubble gently. A cloud of steam drifted from the nozzle of the retort. He held the unopened letter so that the warm vapour played gently upon the hardened wax. A moment later, the wax began to soften. Judging the exact point at which to ease open the envelope, he took a fine steel blade and prised the flap of paper from its pouch. He drew out a card with the message upon it, read it, and then handed it across the table to me.

You are quite right, of course. I have taken your advice and am returning to India. I shall pass what remains of my summer leave in the cool hills of Simla. My passage is booked on the P & O liner
Himalaya
at the end of next week. Whatever is still to be done in England, I believe you are the only man to do it. I regret only that my foolish attempt to intervene may have served to make your task more difficult.

I remain, sir,

Yours faithfully,

H P-W

“He has bitten the bullet, then!” I said as I passed the card back. Without replying, he took up a magnifying lens and began to examine the wax as it cooled and hardened again. After murmuring something to himself, he slapped his knee and turned to me.

“Excellent! Admirable! Putney-Wilson has done as I told him; I do believe they have fallen for it!”

“Fallen for what?”

“My dear fellow, I had rather counted upon Colonel Moran or one of his satraps intercepting any letter which came via the postal service to this address from Major Putney-Wilson—let alone from Samuel Dordona!”

“But that envelope has not been intercepted, surely? The seal was unbroken. Had the envelope been slit open at its edges?”

“No. A Scotland Yard amateur would recognise that at once.”

“What then? There are no broken fragments of wax, as there must be if a seal is removed. Do you mean that they have steamed it open as you have done?”

He shook his head.

“The wax seal has been replaced. Once it has been opened, it cannot be re-sealed with the original wax alone. It requires a new seal with a little extra wax on top of what was there before. To look convincing, the new seal must overlap the original wax imprint, however slightly. It is a serviceable method of deception—but for one thing: the old wax will have been heated twice and is therefore darker in colour; the new wax is melted only once and is therefore lighter. To those who know where to look—and how to look with an examining lens or a microscope—the slight discrepancy between the two layers betrays the secret interception. That discrepancy is here, as you may see if you care to borrow this glass. In other words, we are not the first people to read the contents of this note. Putney-Wilson has done as I told him. That is most, most gratifying, is it not?”

He handed me the magnifying glass and the envelope. As always, he was correct.

“How did you learn that trick?”

He smiled reminiscently.

“My investigation of the Maida Vale blackmail mystery, involving a fortune-teller and a private secretary to the Prince of Wales, pre-dates the happy occasion when you and I first made one another's acquaintance. In the course of that earlier investigation, I was introduced to the ‘Black Chamber' of the General Post Office at St. Martin's-Le-Grand.”

“The Black Chamber?”

He smiled.

“My dear Watson! Every government has such an office, of necessity. In our case it is a room where, for reasons of state, letters posted by suspected persons are opened by government officers on the authority of the Attorney-General and under the direction of an Official Examiner. They are scrutinised and then resealed and put into a special basket for the evening deliveries of the same day. The Examiner forwards a report to the Treasury Solicitor who normally requests the interception. Never make the mistake, Watson, of believing that a letter addressed to you has not been read by someone else first. Especially if it arrives by the evening post, rather than in the morning.”

I handed back the lens and the envelope.

“Then our adversaries know that Major Putney-Wilson has withdrawn from the fray. Perhaps he may be safe, once he leaves England.”

“We have time to save him. Unless they choose to settle accounts with him in Simla or on board the
Himalaya
. I think that is unlikely. They may do it at their leisure, though one must never underrate the sheer spite of such people. As for the story he might tell of Captain Brenton Carey's death, they must believe he has told it already, as is the case. So, my dear fellow, it is you and I alone who must now account for Colonel Moran.”

Now I was quite prepared to tell him of my encounter with the colonel in the Hall of Mirrors at Epsom; but he seemed pressed for time just then, and the incident appeared less important. It could wait until after dinner.

It was a relief to be excused the duty of acting as nursemaid to Putney-Wilson. Holmes was to be otherwise engaged that day, and I felt unexpectedly liberated. The Army and Navy Club, to which I had belonged since the day of my first military commission, stands in St. James's Square just off Piccadilly. It is quite as selective in its way as the Diogenes. A serving officer who wishes to become a member must find a proposer and a seconder. He may be blackballed during the election by any member who knows of something to his discredit. No reason for this need be given, and the objector's identity is not revealed.