Death on a Pale Horse (37 page)

It was an unexpected time and place for such formalities, but we shook hands. Lieutenant Cabell was a slightly built and flaxen-haired young man, more German than French in appearance. I thought he was the last person to be taken for an intelligence agent—or, indeed, a royal valet. He indicated the little gate to the first-class promenade, which now stood open.

“Come, please, sir. His Highness wishes it.”

I should have been happier keeping watch according to my own rules, but I could hardly ignore a claimant to the throne of France.

Theodore Cabell repeated his invitation.

“You come this way, please. It is all right. His Highness merely wishes to receive you.”

The very thing I had been hoping to avoid was to be held answerable for the measures we had taken to protect Plon Plon and his possessions. I hardly knew what the measures were, in the absence of Holmes himself.

Lieutenant Cabell slid back the outer door at one side of the first-class saloon and stood aside for me to enter. He followed and pronounced my name in his own way. At the far end of the casually furnished saloon, a bowed figure in formal frock coat and silk cravat looked up from his easy chair. I might easily have mistaken him for the manager of an important branch of one of our London banks. To one side stood a man in the uniform of the French general staff. Next to him was a middle-aged and formally dressed civilian, who I assumed to be General Georges Boulanger. These made up the “royal” party, so far as I could see.

“Doctor Vastson,” the prince spoke as if in imitation of Cabell, holding out his hand but remaining seated, as befitted his rank.

I took the hand and inclined my head over it. It was a suitable compromise in acknowledging a man who did not yet wear the crown of France but might very well do so before the summer was out.

“Tell me,” he went on in his casual and slightly accented English: “I am a small bit puzzled. There was to be Mr. Sharelock Holmes. He was recommended to me by his brother, Sir Mycroft. Now there is you but, I think, no Mr. Holmes?”

“My colleague has run to earth those who were suspected of trying to board this steamer. They are safely detained in Brussels and no danger to us. I have myself examined every passenger who embarked at Ostend. Now there is no port of call until Dover. Inspector Lestrade or Inspector Gregson of Scotland Yard will be waiting for us there with an escort. Mr. Holmes has arranged all that.”

I hoped I was right.

“Run to earth?” Napoleon-Jerome, whom I continued to think of as Plon Plon, balanced the phrase delicately upon his tongue. “I much like that. Run to earth. I am pleased to hear it.”

Theodore Cabell looked at me with a deferential smile.

“Very pleased,” he said warmly.

Plon Plon looked up at him.

“Oh? Oh, quite so. Very pleased. I am very pleased. Since there is no Mr. Holmes, perhaps you would do a small thing for me, sir. I should like you to go downstairs for a bit. See that no one has opened the gate to the mailroom where my box is deposited.”

I wondered why Lieutenant Cabell could not go down and take a look. Presumably his instructions were never to leave the prince unprotected.

“Of course, sir.”

“You were brave in Afghanistan, monsieur. Sir Mycroft says so to me. A good deal brave.”

“I hardly think that, sir. I was present when the battle took place at Maiwand. Not as a fighting man.”

“But as a soldier!” He smiled as if at the comicality of my reply. “You must tell me everything about it soon. I should like that a great deal. I shall look forward to it.”

He shifted himself in his chair, looking aside slightly at the man I took to be General Boulanger. Lieutenant Cabell touched my arm and bowed before his prince, rather as if at the altar of a church. Plon Plon did not look at me again as I lowered my head briefly and respectfully. Then I withdrew in company with my escort. I knew, of course, that the prince and I would never discuss Afghanistan nor anything else.

I went down the steps of the companionway to the lower deck. It seemed most unlikely that any of the guards would open the mailroom door to me in the middle of the voyage, let alone would they permit me to inspect the so-called war-chest. In that case, I should allow myself a glass of Highland malt in the ship's bar.

Below-decks, a ship of this kind, with its engine-room on view from the passageways down either side, is a wonderland of mechanical devices. Amid the smell of warm oil and the glow of copper piping, two massive steel pistons drove the heavy shaft that connects the weighty paddle-wheels at port and starboard. Rising and falling, the two so-called diagonal cylinders with three hundred horsepower of steam behind them surged and retreated, rose and fell alternately, like captive beasts. No mere propeller could rival this display of mechanical might which had long ago conquered the ocean steamer routes to New York and Bombay.

Further aft, the port and starboard passageways came together at the glass doors of the dining-saloon. To one side was a steel grille or gate. Behind it were the “high-value” parcels and boxes, as well as the wicker baskets of registered post, bound for England from the Continent. The vertical steel bars of the gate were about six inches apart but connected by a redoubtable cross-piece and lock half-way down. This mailroom was a self-contained steel compartment in the stern of the ship. The three armed guardians of the Messageries Impériales were somewhere out of sight behind their partition.

Whether the prince's strong-box was secure, I could not yet see. A long curtain hung immediately inside the grille, cutting off most of the view. There was a small hatchway to one side, the barred guichet of the bureau de change. It seemed that its clerk had access only through the mailroom. But even that cubby hole was closed on this occasion and hung with a brusque notice—
Pas de service jusqu'au Douvres
.—closure until Dover.

There was no one in sight to answer inquiries. At one side, however, the curtain left a narrow gap. By taking a slant view, I could see most of the interior. Canvas bags of mail were ranged down one side. I made out a number of trunks, almost cabin-size, and a dozen or so wicker baskets which no doubt carried insured letters and small registered packets. Among the commercial consignments, there were a dozen or so wooden courier-boxes, reinforced by steel corner-pieces and lock-plates.

That was all, except for what at first I thought must be a coffin or casket carrying home the body of an unlucky Englishman abroad. The quality of the polished wood was infinitely superior to anything else in the room, probably made of oak. The other boxes had merely the agent's or banker's name painted in black on the lid. From this one, I swear I caught a glint of gold leaf. If that was not Plon Plon's “war-chest,” I was mightily mistaken.

There was no means of calling attention. This was as far as I should get—or wished to get. I would go back, explain the situation, and suggest that Lieutenant Cabell should come down with me. He, at least, could try to make a formal request. I had nothing but my steamer ticket, no credentials whatever. No one would unlock that steel grille just to please me.

As I passed the dials of the engine-room again, the pistons had settled to a crossing speed of thirty-three revolutions per minute, still driving us “Full Ahead.” The gleaming brass of the overhead telegraph dial, connecting the engine-room with the navigating-bridge, confirmed this. The engineers saw nothing of the outside world while on duty. A link that appeared like a bicycle chain connected the handle of the telegraph on the bridge with the hand on the repeater dial of the engine-room as the captain's orders jangled down here. The engineers themselves had now found their perches, one with a pipe, another with a newspaper, glancing up at the dials from time to time as if the ship would drive herself.

I put my hand on the steel wall to one side of this open view and snatched it off again. The heat would almost raise a blister. This was the partition of the passageway from the stokehold and the boilers. The crack of a metal door between the stokers and the engineers reflected an intermittent yellow flame-light.

Just then, the donkey-man was attending to the machinery with his oil-can and wad of cotton waste. The second engineer was reading his paper by the reversing gear, as they call it. The door of the stokehold opened. A man like a tall hobgoblin was standing in the alleyway that leads to the furnace. The engineer turned and shouted at him. I knew enough French to understand “Allez-vous en!” as the soot-faced scallywag was ordered back to his work. He was a tall rather bent fellow in vest and overalls, with a cap worn back to front. Truly he looked like something from the underworld. Soot covered his face until nothing was visible but the pink of his lips and the whites of his eyes. Very likely he had come aboard more than a little drunk. The engineer swore at him again and scouted him back to his duties, just at the moment all the stokers were needed to shovel up coal from the bunkers and toss it into the furnaces. I guessed that this malingering lout might be dismissed next day.

For a moment the man continued to defy the engineer, as if for the pure fun of the thing. It seemed he was demanding a “proper” drink, not the enamel jugs of water provided in the stokehold. He had presumably shovelled several hundredweights of coal into the furnaces since Ostend. But he was wasting his words. At length, having made his point, he shambled back down the narrow passage to the boilers, where reflected flames flickered on the white-painted iron. I thought after all that if I was condemned to work in such conditions—and for such wages—I might well take to the bottle.

I was so far away in my thoughts that I almost jumped like a cat at a sudden voice behind me.

“Dr.Vastson?”

I turned and found myself staring into the spectacled face of the man who had rowed his boat from Ostend harbour pier to collect our heavy mooring rope. He had carried it back to the jetty, looped it over a bollard, and waved us farewell as the winch in the stern of the steamer turned our bows seawards and the rope was cast off again. He still wore his greasy cap, bulky donkey jacket, and moleskin trousers with worn-out knees. But I had watched him wave us off from the harbour pier, across a hundred yards of open sea, as we steamed away. He could never row after us at the speed of the ship's engines! How was he here? The face with its eyes vastly magnified by his lenses was one I did not know—or so it seemed, until a slight change in his glance and the removal of the spectacles betrayed him by his smile as Sherlock Holmes!

He turned his head away.

“Listen carefully, Watson, and do not appear to notice me.”

Fortunately, we were leaning on the safety rail where the vibration of the engines made our words inaudible more than a few inches distant. I turned aside to survey the pistons.

“I watched every passenger up the gangway, Holmes. I swear you were not among them. The man who carried that rope back is still in Ostend.”

“Indeed he is,” Holmes said impatiently: “Sergeant Albert Gibbons of the Royal Marines is still in Ostend. It was I who rowed that cockleshell out to the ship to fetch the rope. I took it. While all eyes were on preparations for the ship's departure, I let my shell drift from the stern well-deck back to the platform of the paddle sponson at this level. A crewman climbed out to coil a sponson rope. A crewman climbed back. Not a glance came our way. It was Gibbons who rowed back with the mooring rope. Who notices the face of a dockyard scully? It was the easiest thing in the world, while the men at the winch gave that machine their full attention.”

“And then what?”

He shrugged and smiled again.

“In weather as thick as this, a man could become invisible in a dozen places on deck.”

“And the telegram? The code? What went wrong in Brussels?”

“I am happy to say, my dear fellow, that nothing went wrong. My coded message to you was betrayed in Brussels by a post office clerk for £100, just as we have been betrayed in London. That was essential. I would gladly have paid him myself to cheat us, though I fear the poor wretch may soon be lying somewhere with his throat cut after he has served his purpose. I have counted upon Moran or his underlings reading that telegram and deciphering it.”

Then he sighed.

“I trusted your powers of perception, Watson. Why was my cipher made so simple? A schoolboy game! A babe in arms could transpose each letter with the next one in the alphabet and decode the meaning. Did you believe I could do no better than that, if I had wanted it to remain secret? You cannot have believed that what it said was true? Oh, Watson, Watson! I tell you again, you see but you do not perceive. Please listen to me.”

I listened.

Holmes said, “I cannot find that Moran or anyone connected with him is on this ship. But there is an impostor.”

“Who?”

“Why do you think I am standing here? You have just seen him!”

“The insubordinate stoker?”

“That man is no stoker!”

“He came from the stoke-hold.”

“How long have we been at sea?”

“Almost an hour.”

“Correct. That man's face was so covered in coal dust that only the eyes and the mouth were visible. After an hour of shovelling coal in intense heat, did you see a single trace of perspiration running down his cheeks? for I did not! A ship of this capacity requires two furnaces to raise sufficient steam for its two boilers—fore and aft. Each furnace requires at least quarter of a ton to travel the distance from here to Ostend. Does he look like a man who has worked in that heat, at that pace, for an hour?”

“No,” I said reluctantly.

“Nor does he to me. He looks to me like a man who has applied soot to his face as an actor applies make-up, in this case to disguise himself beyond possible recognition. For the moment, however, his attempt to escape the stokehold has been frustrated. I shall watch him.”

“But there are stokers already. He cannot stand idle in front of the furnaces.”