Locked Rooms (37 page)

He was not, however, speedy.

Holmes explained what he was hoping for. He described the document they had found in the fireplace, and its possible meanings (leaving aside the potential interpretation that implicated Charles Russell as the author of blackmail—undue complications were not for the moment) and then pulled up the stack of Mrs Russell’s journals, one for each year, to show Dr Ming the drawings they contained. He presented his theory that Charles Russell, most likely with the knowledge of his wife but certainly with the assistance of the gardener Long, had concealed something of considerable importance in his garden before he had died: the garden that, as Dr Ming could see, was now so hugely overgrown as to be unreadable, and very nearly impenetrable.

When he had explained all this, he asked his question: Knowing that the man in charge of the garden, Tom Long’s father, was devoted to the precepts of feng shui, and knowing that Mr Long would have wished to help conceal and protect this important article, could a comparative study of the garden before and after 1906 suggest to Dr Ming where precisely the item might have been buried?

Dr Ming asked, “Is this an item of importance, or one of value?”

“It could be either, although I suspect to Charles Russell, its importance would not have lain strictly in its monetary value. He was a wealthy man.”

Dr Ming tucked his hands into their invisible sleeves and meditated on the open journal before him, that with the date of March 1906. He meditated for so long, and sitting so still, that Hammett began to think the old fellow had drifted into a nap, and Russell found herself wondering if, despite his earlier fluency, he actually understood English as well as he had seemed to.

Finally he took his hands apart and looked into Holmes’ eyes. “It may be possible,” he pronounced. He turned to Long to suggest that another pot of tea be assembled, began to unpack a collection of papers and writing implements, and asked the room in general, “I shall need the precise time of birth of the owner of the garden.”

Fortunately, Holmes had come across just such a document in his search through the family papers, or all might well have been lost before it began. The aged scholar merely accepted the information as if such knowledge was a given, and pulled the first of the garden journals towards him.

After an hour of studying the sketches and journals, he began to transfer certain pieces of information to the sheets of paper he had brought, using as reference a drawing that looked like a highly complex cross between a compass and maze. He murmured from time to time in his own language. Long sat on the edge of his chair, unwilling to relax in the great man’s presence. Little else happened.

After two hours, Holmes directed Hammett to an upstairs bed for a rest while he and Russell strolled down to the Italian café, bringing back an assortment of food. Dr Ming plucked curiously at a plate of noodles with a pair of chop-sticks he pulled from his case, but seemed unimpressed with what the Italians had done with the product. Another hour after that, and Dr Ming was on his third pot of tea (“Quite a three-pot problem,” Russell had murmured to Holmes), frowning slightly with the intensity of his excitement, and giving tiny nods of the head from time to time.

Finally, four and a half hours after he had begun, he raised his head to Holmes and said, “Yes.”

“You know where it is?”

But he would answer the question in his own way. “When my friend here explained your problem, it was of interest to me, this matter of anticipating how another man might read the energies. Of course, it simplified matters considerably when I found that the woman whose garden this was left the country shortly after the item was buried. Therefore I could assume that the considerable changes made between her drawing of 1906 and her subsequent one of 1912 would reflect entirely the work of Mr Long Kwo. You see where he has extended the pond a few feet here, and planted a red-flowering bush there?

“You no doubt wonder at this superstition,” he said, carefully not looking at Hammett, who had been sprawling back in his chair for several minutes, as if to put as much distance as possible between himself and this nonsense. “It seems to the Western mind absurd to believe that the manipulation of material objects can change the nature of human emotions, expectations, and perceptions. Yet a room with walls the colour of a peach will make a person feel entirely differently from an identical room whose walls are pale blue. That is a minor example of the precepts of feng shui. In a painting, a small brush-stroke, a specific shape and colour placed in a key position, can change the balance of the whole; in life, a small adjustment in precisely the right place and time may have more effect than an enormous effort elsewhere and later. We use a, hm, mythological language to speak of these adjustments and effects, but that does not mean we believe that there are actual dragons living under the earth.”

Under the force of those sparkling eyes and sensible words, even Hammett had to withdraw his scepticism. He pulled back his out-stretched legs and sat nearer upright in his chair, and Dr Ming went back to his notes.

“The difficulties—your difficulties—arise with the question of whether the item you seek was considered important, or if it was valuable. If he was seeking to protect a thing of monetary value, the adjustments made would reflect that, whereas if, for example, the thing he concealed could be detrimental to the public reputation of the family if it were found, then the adjustments would stem from an entirely different set of considerations.”

Holmes controlled his impatience, for scholars must be allowed their full explanations. However, it seemed that Dr Ming’s caveats were brief.

“I believe, looking at what Long Kwo has done, you will find he shared with his employer the attitude that the matter’s importance lay not in its monetary value, but in how it affected the family’s welfare and social standing—what is called ‘face.’ If it
is
a thing merely worth money, you may find it in this area.” His silver pencil darted out to add a neat little square to the drawing he had made of the garden’s bones. “However, if its power lies in its preservation of face, it should be in this place.” The second square was on the other side of the drawing. Just where the worst of the bramble thicket lay.

Holmes saw Long and the scholar of feng shui out to the car that had waited at the kerb for them all this time. He bowed to the old man, thanked him, asked Long to have the bill for the services sent to the St Francis, and went back inside.

“Too bad Conan Doyle didn’t meet that man,” he muttered. “It might have made him think differently about San Francisco’s psychic energies.”

Russell looked up from the desk where she was collecting the journals and scraps of paper. “Sorry?”

Holmes shook his head to indicate it was nothing of importance, and began to transfer the used cups and glasses onto a tray. With an armful of journals, Russell paused in the door-way and said, “It is too dark to go bashing around in the garden.”

“I agree,” he said to her obvious relief. “We shall return at first light. However, let us bring the good doctor’s treasure maps with us.”

If their opponents were so set on whatever might or might not lie out in that wasteland that they would tackle it in the dead of night at the cost of much bloodshed and injury, Russell would almost have been inclined to let them have it. Almost.

When she had returned her mother’s journals to the front parlour, she folded Dr Ming’s map into her pocket. They walked back to the hotel by a circuitous route of Holmes’ devising, reached it without interruption, and took their leave of Hammett.

Early in the morning, Holmes dressed and went to see to his Irregulars. He found their interest flagging, but they bounced back with an infusion of cash and the reassurance that it would be either that day, or not at all. Young Mr Garcia assured him they wouldn’t take their eyes off the place, an assurance rather spoilt by his subsequent discovery that the very young lad who was supposed to be watching at that moment was instead standing at his elbow, unwilling to miss anything. However, as Hammett had not yet left the apartment, no harm was done.

By seven o’clock, the two detectives-turned-archaeologists were at the house. Both were dressed in their toughest, most impenetrable clothing, but the bramble thicket laughed at them, inflicting a thousand scratches and punctures. Hammett appeared shortly after eight, and although he expressed his willingness to pitch in, he seemed not unhappy to be assigned a seat and the position of look-out. Later in the morning, Long came walking down the drive, although he, too, ended up sitting in the sun while Russell and Holmes took turns with the saws, branch clippers, and spades they had found in the garden shed. Hammett rolled and smoked one cigarette after another and began to tell them about a story he was writing, its protagonist an operative in a detective agency rather like that of the Pinkertons, only more efficient and ethical. Long contributed suggestions from his own broad reading of the literature of the masses, while the other two sweated and cursed and drew themselves mental goals, after which they swore to move the hunt over to the other marked square, the one where Dr Ming had suggested mere money might lie.

Well past several of those mental goals, but before the final one could be reached, Russell’s spade hit something metal.

All four of them went still. Without taking up the tool, Russell squatted and brushed at the crumbly soil. She slipped off the leather gloves (also from the shed, and half eaten by mice, but better than nothing) to feel around the base of the spade. In a minute, she tugged at an object a foot long and half that wide: a biscuit tin, surprisingly heavy, freshly dented and rusty around the corners. She handed it to Holmes, who most manfully waited as she dug around to see if there was anything else. Almost immediately, her fingers encountered a second such object, equally weighty, this one advertising the contents as chocolates, which she wrestled out of the ground and gave to him. Two seemed to be all, and she followed Holmes along the path-way they had hacked and to the kitchen door, where they kicked off their dirt-encrusted shoes and went into the scullery to scrub the worst of the grime from their hands while Hammett and Long spread one of the house’s dust-cloths over the table.

Russell sat down before the two tins, sucking absently at a bleeding place on the side of her hand. Holmes clattered around in the kitchen drawers until he had found utensils to prise and rip, and did so.

Although they had been digging in the place indicated for something of importance, the first box contained money. Some of it was paper, tied together in three bundles, but the weight came from the coins, mostly silver but a few of very old gold. Hammett whistled; Long sat back in surprise; Holmes and Russell looked inscrutable and turned to the other tin.

This one held money as well, but in addition to coins it had a white cloth with bright red markings on it. This was wrapped around what proved, upon unfolding the cloth, to be a fist-sized tangle of jewellery—a dozen or more gold chains, four completely plain gold rings, three loose diamonds, two rubies, and half a dozen sapphires, of various sizes and conditions. Holmes tugged the cloth free and spread it out, revealing it as an arm-band with a red cross painted onto it. He dropped it back into the box, and poked at the knot of chains, saying, “I should think that finding the original owners of these would be extremely difficult. Particularly as some of it appears to have been taken from people who were bleeding.”

They studied the brown stains clotting a couple of the chains, all four faces registering various degrees of distaste. Then Russell nudged the valuables and Red Cross arm-band to one side to prise with her finger-nail at the flat oil-cloth shape that lay beneath, tugging its corner to work it loose from the jewellery, laying it on the dust-cloth to unfold the wrapping.

Inside lay the carbon copy of a letter, typed on an Underwood machine with a crooked lower-case
“a”:
her father’s type-writer; her father’s words.

Chapter Twenty-three

August 22, 1914
San Francisco, Calif.

To whomever this may concern,

At the end of October, I, Charles David Russell, intend to enter into the employ of the United States Army. However, to do so without having cleared my conscience of the events of April 1906 would make me and the work I intend to do vulnerable to the sorts of pressures often considered blackmail.

I have kept silent for the past eight years. The events involved two other men as well, and the contagion of a felony would have blighted their lives and honors. Since neither man has chosen to come forward under his own initiative, I feel I may not reveal the names here. I shall merely refer to them as Good Friend—GF—and PA—Petit Ami.

GF and I had been friends in our youth, almost as close as the brothers we were sometimes taken for. And although like brothers we went our separate ways under the complications of maturity, I retained an affection for him, and felt that I owed him a considerable debt, for his friendship and his stalwart assistance when I needed both friend and help. I say this to explain the call the man had upon me, although we had not been close in the years since my marriage, or even seen each other for some considerable time.

I need not describe the general happenings of that day in April. My family was shaken from its beds shortly after five o’clock in the morning as the rest of San Francisco was, although—being blessed with a heavily built house with its foundation on rock—we did not suffer as much as those in the lower areas. Nonetheless, the house was a disaster and a highly dangerous place for children, being now carpeted with broken glass and with gaping cracks in the walls and ominous sags in the heavy plaster ceilings over our heads. Along with most of our neighbors, we moved out of doors on that first day, and when the tents began to reach us the following day, Thursday, we moved into Lafayette Park until such a time as our house could be declared either safe or unliveable.

I spent the three days of the fire in the same way that most of the able-bodied men did, namely, providing transport to the wounded while my supply of gasoline lasted, and afterward digging through rubble for survivors and helping the professionals to battle the flames. We rescued those who were trapped, collected the bodies of those who were beyond mortal help, and attempted to make a path down the streets for vehicles and carts to pass, to carry the injured or possessions.

As far as I can determine, the mayor’s order to shoot looters on sight was announced within a few hours of the earthquake—an irony, considering how much the man had himself stolen from the city coffers. Official numbers of those looters actually executed were ludicrously low—I myself witnessed three such shootings, none of which were in the least justified. The police and soldiers were as maddened as the rest of us, the difference being that they were armed and had received orders to be free with their bullets.

The first afternoon, Wednesday, having spent the bulk of the day laboring downtown, I drove back as far as Van Ness, left the car there, and walked the rest of the way into Pacific Heights to assure myself that my family was well and to see if I could find something to eat. I found my wife and children in good spirits, and she told me that PA had been by shortly before that, to see if we were well and to reassure us that his own family was uninjured. She had told him where I had gone, and he said he would be back later to talk with me.

I retrieved food and drink from our damaged home and helped my wife build a fire-pit in the front garden out of the overly plentiful fallen bricks from our chimney, then returned to the house for bedding, which we spread among the trees in the garden. The house creaked and groaned as one walked across the floor, and I was not at all certain that it would endure another major shaking.

We ate our meal, settled the children beneath the stars, and then, very late, PA returned. Completely exhausted, he was, badly shaken by an experience he had endured. A soldier, seeing him walk down the middle of the street, had turned his rifle on PA and declared that he must be a looter. When PA protested that he had gone nowhere near any shop, the soldier prodded him with the gun, then put him to work in a gang clearing a fallen hotel. PA was willing to do the work, but he was not a young man, and the labor was harsh.

Eventually, long after dark, the soldier was replaced and PA could slip away. He was becoming extremely concerned about his family, but as the fire was traveling in that direction, he made his way back into Pacific Heights to rest before trying to circle the flames for home. He fully expected to be accosted at any moment by one of the roving bands of soldiers, many of whom, it should be said, were drunk, having themselves looted nearby liquor stores and taverns. But he made it to us, looking half dead with exhaustion.

We fed PA and urged him to stay with us that night, for the soldiers and self-appointed vigilantes among the population would surely be even more aggressive under cover of darkness than they had been in daylight. I pointed out that although it looked as though the fire was nearing his part of town, in the darkness and without identifiable landmarks, it could easily have been a mile to one side. I assured him that surely the flames would be extinguished during the night, and that his wife and son, intelligent and capable individuals, would without a doubt be safe until the morning—safer than he would be were he to set off then and there. He did not wish to remain, but as I was making my argument, we heard a volley of shots from down the hill, and he had to concede my point. We gave him blankets and went to sleep ourselves, certain that in the morning a degree of normality would have been restored.

Instead, of course, matters deteriorated. The fire spread, the air was rent by the sound of explosions as building after building in its path was brought down, gunshots were heard throughout the day. My own family was safe, being in an area far from the fire and with sufficient numbers there to drive off intruders (official or otherwise). I talked it over with my wife, and we decided it best that I accompany PA across town, thinking that two responsible individuals might stand forth against the mob. We set off, intending to reassure ourselves as to the state of PA’s family (whom he had not seen since the previous afternoon). The view from the Heights was other-worldly: to the east, the fires of Sheol, to the north, all appeared completely normal. We made our way north along Franklin, so as to put off as long as possible the hell that waited for us on the other side of Van Ness. Eventually, however, we had to turn east, but we only made it as far as Larkin before we were shanghaied again and put to work on a rescue attempt.

It was a toppled apartment building, and we could hear the weak cries of women and children from its depths, trapped there for more than twenty-four hours. I regret to say that, although we succeeded in rescuing several from their living tombs, some of the wretches were still trapped inside when the flames came.

We were forced to retreat from the intense heat, and I for one was grateful that the roar and crack of the burning building obscured the feeble cries of its victims. Still, it is that moment of failure that lives with me, in memories of that terrible time. That, and one or two others, which I will come to soon.

PA and I collapsed for a time and poured water down our parched throats, turning our backs on the fire as if we could deny its existence. Only then did we notice the angle of the sun through the smoky pall, and found to our astonishment that we had been fighting that doomed apartment building for going on six hours. It was nearly two o’clock—I had to put my pocket-watch to my ear to be certain it was going—and we had not come anywhere near PA’s home. Again we set off to the north, giving wide berth to the hotly burning mansions on Nob Hill, but climbing to the top of Russian Hill in order to determine where the flames were, that we might avoid them—neither of us wished to be pressed yet again into fire-fighting duties.

The vision of the city stretched before us was like something from Dante, an ocean of ruin set with broken towers that clawed their way upwards like skeletons attempting to rise from their graves. Great pillars of smoke gathered over several places, the highest with hot red fires at their base, others low and wide above smouldering wreckage.

I commented to my friend that the pillars of smoke must be visible for a hundred miles, but when he did not answer, I saw that he had attention only for his home.

It was no longer there. From our feet to the sea, only Telegraph Hill remained, and it appeared embattled. PA would have run straight down to the smoking ruin that was his home had I not brought him down in a flying tackle, and shook him hard, repeating over and over again that he should think: His family would not have been taken unawares by the flames. They would have moved before it, as tens of thousands of others were doing. We needed only find whether they had gone north, or east.

Flames were working their way towards the north. The only thing to do was to go that way as well, as far as we could, and hope we met neither flames nor press-gangs. We nearly ran down the side of the hill, until I seized PA’s arm and pointed out to him that two men walking might appear less criminous than two men sprinting away from the wealthy neighborhood.

We walked, quickly, working our way towards our destination. My friend knew all the paths and short-cuts here, as it was a route he traversed daily, and he led me surely through delivery alleys and the foot-paths that cut through hillside gardens. Twice we heard shouts behind us, but with a twist and a turn we would be out of sight again.

We came to an area of pleasant homes between the Italian district and the docks, homes in the process of being emptied by their owners under the watchful eyes of a pair of soldiers. We nodded to them, keeping our hands in our pockets and walking straight down the center of the street to show our innocence, and although we ran the gauntlet without coming to harm, the two soldiers adjusted their long rifles over their shoulders and sauntered after us. We turned a corner and had just stepped into a rubble-strewn alley when there was a rapid and surreptitious movement ahead.

We both stopped dead, caught between some unknown threat and the two soldiers at our backs. PA was turning to ask my opinion when I heard my name being called from ahead.

It is at this point that my “Good Friend” enters the story. I had not seen him in two or three years, was not even certain that he was still living in the city, but we were brought face-to-face here in this deserted alley. He walked up to me and offered his hand.

I took it, said his name, and asked him if he lived here now, but something about the way he answered, or rather took care to avoid answering, led me to interrupt his glib reply with the warning that soldiers were probably on their way to ascertain that we were up to no harm.

Immediately, he grabbed my arm and pushed me down the alley towards where he had come, doing the same with PA, hurrying us ahead of him. His urgency coupled with the awareness of the rifles at our backs proved contagious, and PA and I stumbled over the bricks and tiles until he jumped ahead of us and slipped into an invisible hole between a wall and a shed that had been thrown against it. It was pitch black inside, and GF hissed at us to be silent.

In a minute or so, we heard voices outside, and the two soldiers came down until they were standing just at the entrance to our lair. In the end, they decided that there was nothing here worth stealing anyway, and went back the way they had come.

GF collapsed into nerve-taut giggles, only pulling himself out of the state when I told him that we would be on our way.

“But you mustn’t,” he told me. “I need your help.”

“With what?”

“Hiding some stuff.”

I somehow knew in an instant what his attitude of mischief meant. Although we had not been close for years, I knew him of old, known him as a brother when we were both careless youths. In that setting, and being fully aware of what was going on in the city, it took no great leap of imagination to see that the “stuff” was not something rightfully his, that in the confusion and turmoil he had helped himself to the contents of some abandoned shop or jewelery box, and stashed them here. That my old friend was a common thief and a looter.

I pulled myself away and led PA away without saying another word to GF. PA and I did not speak about what we had seen, merely went on through the disorder until we came near to his home.

His neighborhood was aflame. We stood staring, as if we had never seen such a thing before, and gaped at the firemen struggling to coax a trickle out of the hoses. Then PA saw a friend of his, and pounced on him, demanding where the residents had gone.

“To the docks,” the man replied, and we set off again, circling around until we found the refugees of my friend’s neighborhood, thousands of them milling about with their meager possessions.

PA turned to me and told me that he could find them from here, that I had to leave and see to my own family. I refused to go until we had some news of his wife and son, but it was not until nightfall that we found a man who had seen them settled into a tent in the nearby Army base. This time PA was adamant: He would not have me accompany him, but told me that he would find them, and send word to me that they were well. He turned his back and walked off, and reluctantly I went my own way.