Sherlock Holmes Stories of Edward D. Hoch (12 page)

We did as he suggested and, by the time our carriage had deposited us in a dimly lit alley off Frith Street, the three of us were cloaked and masked. Holmes and I followed Darrell Foster up the worn stone steps to a solid oak door that opened as if by magic as we reached it. A man in a black tie and mask had seen our approach through a peephole.

“Welcome to the Domino Club,” he said with a smile that accented a dimple in his chin. “We are masked because we are all equals here, and what happens here goes no further.”

Foster presented the admission passes for Holmes and me. “These are my guests. It is their first visit.”

“But not their last, I trust,” the doorkeeper said, standing by a small counter that offered cigars, snuffboxes and casino chips, all monogrammed with an intertwined “DC”.

“Let me take your coats. Then you may exchange your pounds sterling for chips here or at any of our gambling tables. Good luck to you, gentlemen.”

We entered the main room, a space so large that I judged the place to have been built originally as a warehouse or stable. Electric lights illuminated a dozen or more gaming tables, with roulette and chemin de fer attracting the most players. A few card games were in progress toward the back, and I could see a lounge and bar in an adjoining room. There must have been close to a hundred men at the various tables, most wearing evening clothes, with every head covered by a hood and mask. Though a low murmur ran through the room, it was surprisingly quiet for such a large group. “Holmes! This is unbelievable! All this in the center of London!”

“It is what I came to see, Watson. The anonymity afforded by these masks could shelter all manner of nefarious activity.”

We drifted over to one of the roulette tables, where Holmes wagered a few pounds and quickly lost it. We went on to the card tables before Holmes turned to our client and asked, “Mr. Foster, how is it possible for you to identity your friend in such a setting? Surely these gamblers are all male, or at least appear to be male.”

“I feel certain she is here tonight,” Foster assured us. He lowered his voice. “Miss Rutherford took an immediate liking to chemin de fer on our first visit. If she is here, she may be at one of those tables.” We followed him as he scanned the cloaked and masked gamblers. “She is tall and slender,” he told us. “And because her voice might give her away, she no doubt will remain as silent as possible.”

After a quarter-hour of searching, scanning the masked faces of the gamblers, it was Holmes who spotted her, seated at one of the chemin de fer tables, accepting a card from the dealer’s wooden palette.

“The shirt is tight across the chest,” he noted. “She has difficulty hiding her feminine figure in a man’s evening wear.”

“That’s Sarah,” Foster agreed. “Now, how do we get her away from that table?”

“We wait,” Holmes said. “And watch.”

I could see that the player they’d identified as Sarah Rutherford seemed to be winning. Unlike baccarat, where the casino provides a proper croupier, the role of banker rotates among players in chemin de fer. Just two hands are dealt, a bank hand and a non-bank hand, and bets can only be placed against the bank. Miss Rutherford, if that was indeed she, was locked in battle with a stocky man whose grey goatee showed beneath the domino mask. He seemed to be glaring at her across the table. From time to time, he puffed on a thick cigar and a half-empty glass stood near his right elbow. Presently she won the hand and the deal passed to the next player.

“Now!” Holmes said. “She’s leaving the table.”

They followed her into a rear corridor leading to the bar and lounge. Foster placed his hand on her shoulder and she whirled around.

“Darrell! I told you to stay away!” Her words were angry, but her voice was soft, almost a whisper.

“Sarah, I have brought Mr. Sherlock Holmes here to try talking some sense to you. This gambling obsession must stop.”

“Let us sit down,” said Holmes, “and discuss this matter. I believe there is another explanation for Miss Rutherford’s obsession.”

“What could that be?” the young man asked.

We sat at one of the small, round tables opposite the ornate bar. A hooded waiter offered us drinks, but Holmes waved him away. Then he spoke directly to the masked woman. “Miss Rutherford, Mr. Foster here is genuinely concerned about you.”

She met my friend’s gaze. “I am sorry he felt the necessity of bringing you into this. I assure you I have no gambling problem.”

“And I believe you. In explaining your apparent obsession with gambling, he mentioned that your father had been the victim of a similar obsession. I remembered something about a Colonel Rutherford, accused of cheating at cards some ten years ago, and I found an account of it in my newspaper files. The accusation, plus his staggering gambling losses, drove him to take his own life. I believe Colonel Rutherford was your father.”

“That is correct,” she answered grimly. “I have no reason to hide the fact.”

Watching her, listening to her words, I tried to picture what she must look like without the hood and mask. Her lips were pale, but attractive, and I could sense some of the charm that must have attracted Darrell Foster to her.

“And when you persuaded Mr. Foster to bring you to this club, you had something more in mind than mere gambling. The newspaper account states that your father lost a great deal of money to an Argentine gambler named Antonio Juarez.”

“Yes,” she readily admitted. “He ruined my father, then accused him of cheating at cards. If anyone cheated, it was Juarez, but the blemish on my father’s reputation drove him to suicide. I knew that Juarez returned often to London and, when I came here that first time, I recognized him at once. He always smoked thick Cuban cigars and he still wore that familiar grey goatee, which was visible beneath his mask.”

I remembered the man with the goatee whom she’d defeated at chemin de fer. At the time, I also noticed the thick cigar he was smoking.

“So you returned here in your hood and mask,” Holmes said, “intent on avenging your father at the gaming table. Chemin de fer was the perfect game to do it with, because it pits player against player, rather than roulette, where everyone plays against the house.”

“It was the only revenge I could take. My father taught me everything he knew about gambling.”

“And tonight you won,” Foster said. “You’ve had your revenge.”

There was a sudden commotion from the casino room. Voices were raised and one of the masked waiters ran to the bar. “A patron has been stricken. We need a doctor.”

I rose quickly to my feet. “I am a doctor. Where is he?”

I followed the waiter back to the main room, not waiting for Holmes and the others. My medical bag was back at our Baker Street flat and I would have to manage the best I could without it. I was led to the chemin de fer table, where we had been earlier and, suddenly, I knew what I would find there. The man with the goatee and the cigar was on the floor by his overturned chair. They had removed his mask and hood in an attempt to revive him, but after an instant’s examination, I knew it was hopeless.

Antonio Juarez was dead. I suspected he’d been poisoned.

The police had been summoned and I told my suspicions to Holmes and the others. “There are telltale signs,” I confided. “I am not sure what poison was used, but if it was in his drink, it was probably administered at the table.”

“We have to get Sarah out of here,” Foster said. “If the police learn her identity, they’ll be certain she killed him.”

Holmes turned to the young woman. “I must ask you this, Miss Rutherford, and I must have the truth. Did you do anything that might have caused Juarez’s death?”

“Certainly not! I took my only revenge by defeating him at the gaming table. Perhaps he was driven to suicide like my father.”

“I hardly think that to be the case. He would not know it was Colonel Rutherford’s daughter who had beaten him, and I doubt that he was the sort to carry poison on his person for such an eventuality.”

“The man might have had many enemies,” Foster said. “You cannot seriously suspect Sarah of this.”

“We shall see,” Holmes told him.

It was not until the police arrived and ordered everyone to unmask that Sarah Rutherford’s identity was revealed. The Scotland Yard man who had been called in was Inspector Lanner, one of Lestrade’s deputies. He took one look at her long brown hair as it tumbled free from the cloak and asked, “What have we here? I understood this was a gentleman’s club.”

“I doubt if you could arrest her for being here,” Holmes remarked. “You have a more immediate problem, there on the floor. Dr. Watson believes the man has been poisoned.”

Lanner examined the body briefly and turned his attention to the half-empty glass still on the table.

“I want everyone who was at this table to resume their seats,” he said, but only a few men responded to his request.

The chemin de fer table was an oval marked off for nine players. A tenth position halfway along one side was for the croupier, who shuffles and places the cards in their shoe and then passes it to the first banker for the game to begin. The croupier, a house employee, like the waiters and doorman, denied any knowledge of the dead man’s identity. It was left to Holmes to offer identification. “I believe he is a notorious Argentine gambler named Antonio Juarez.”

“Any number of people might have wanted him dead,” Darrell Foster added. He had stayed by Miss Rutherford’s side and, I think, only the fact of her masculine attire prevented him from placing a protective arm around her.

Holmes had bent down near the body and retrieved the cigar butt with its distinctive DC band. “A Havana blend,” he determined, briefly sniffing it and quickly placing it in an ashtray.

“How do you know that?” the Scotland Yard man asked.

Holmes merely smiled. “I have written a monograph on tobacco ash.”

Lanner ignored that and asked instead, “Which of you was seated to the dead man’s right, by this glass he was drinking from?” He turned his attention to Miss Rutherford. “Was it you?”

She shook her head. “I was across the table from him.”

“If this man was poisoned,” Lanner decided, “it could only have been by the person seated to his right.”

One of the unmasked men stepped forward. “I was seated there.”

“What is your name, sir?”

“Winston Fawkes. I am an attendant at the Houses of Parliament.”

“Do you come here often?”

He seemed embarrassed by the question. “Occasionally.”

“And did you know this man, Juarez?”

“I never saw him before.”

“But you were in a position to poison his drink,” Darrell Foster said. “You were seated next to him.”

The man from Parliament dismissed the accusation with a wave of his hand and, before we could stop him, he grabbed up the half-empty glass and drained it.

“I am left-handed,” he told us. “This glass was mine, and certainly non-poisonous.”

“Where does that leave us?” I asked Holmes, but he seemed unfazed by the man’s action.

“We must seek out the motive for this crime,” he said.

Lanner had summoned the manager of the Domino Club, a short Frenchman named DuValle, and Holmes asked if we might sit in while he questioned the man.

The Scotland Yard man hesitated, and then agreed. “I know you have helped the Yard in the past, Mr. Holmes, though our relations have not always been the best. I think Lestrade would welcome your help here.”

We sat down with DuValle in his office behind the bar area. “I run a respectable club,” he told the detective, ignoring Holmes and me for the moment.

“A club where illegal gambling is carried on by men in masks?”

The Frenchman sighed. “The very fact that it is illegal is what forces them to hide their faces. To gamble with one’s own money is no more immoral than spending it in other ways.”

“Did you know the dead man, Antonio Juarez?”

DuValle nodded. “He comes here from Argentina at least once a year for an extended visit. He was a customer of mine at our Paris establishment before I opened the Domino Club here. In France, it is different. Men sometimes wear masks for sex, but never for gambling.”

“But people have lost their fortunes, even their lives,” Holmes pointed out. “The young woman who was unmasked out there came to avenge her father’s suicide, caused by Juarez. I suspect there may be similar cases.”

That comment brought only a shrug from the club’s manager. “Losers will always find someone to blame. The first man to be ruined at these gaming tables by Juarez, a young chemist named Wallworth, was so upset that I took pity and gave him a job. There have been many more since then. The man was a devil with cards.”

“Even if there was an enemy bent on revenge,” Lanner asked, “how could he identify Juarez? The very nature of your club kept everyone anonymous.”

“Not quite,” Holmes interjected. “The domino masks cover only the top of the face. Antonio Juarez had a distinctive facial feature that was quite visible beneath the mask.”

“His grey goatee!” I exclaimed.

“Precisely. If Sarah Rutherford could recognize him in his hood and mask, so could anyone else who knew him.”

The Domino Club customers were milling around uneasily. Without their masks, none of them wished to remain on view in this place. They seemed to eye each other nervously, and I noted at least one case where a man recognized a friend who immediately turned his back, rather than admit his identity. Inspector Lanner announced that they would be allowed to leave after giving their name and address with some proof of identity, to the constables at the door. After that, a double line formed quickly. DuValle followed up with an announcement that the club would be closed until further notice, and employees began circulating through the room, retrieving glasses and emptying ashtrays.

A dust cover from one of the roulette tables had been placed over Juarez’s body and a constable stood guard by it. Foster had returned with Miss Rutherford to the bar area, waiting more questioning from Constable Lanner.

“Do we need to remain here, Holmes?” I asked, as he stood near the chemin de fer table.

“For just a few moments, Watson.”