Sherlock Holmes Stories of Edward D. Hoch (9 page)

“There’s no sign of anyone waiting,” I observed as we walked toward Westminster Bridge.

Holmes’ eyes were like a hawk’s as he scanned the passersby.

“It is only five to the hour, Watson. But I suggest, Mr. Dodgson, that you walk a bit ahead of us. If no one attempts to intercept you by the time you reach the bridge, pause for a moment and then walk back this way.”

“Do you have a description of Moriarty?” I asked, as Dodgson walked ahead of us as instructed.

“He will not come himself. It will be one of his hirelings, and all the more dangerous for that.”

“What should we look for?”

He seemed to remember the poem. “An old lady, Watson.”

But there was no old lady alone, no one who paused as if waiting for someone, or attempted to approach Charles Dodgson. He had reached the bridge and started back along the sidewalk, stepping around a small boy who was chalking a rough design on the sidewalk.

It was Holmes whose curiosity was aroused. As the boy finished his drawing and ran off, he paused to study it.

“What do you make of this, Watson?”

I saw nothing but a crude circle drawn in chalk, with clocklike numbers running around the inner rim from one to thirty-one. An arrow seemed pointed at the number twenty-six, the day’s date.

“Surely no more than a child’s drawing,” I said.

Dodgson had returned to join us and, when he saw the chalked design, he gave a start of surprise.

“It’s the Mad Hatter’s watch, with dates instead of the time. Who drew this?”

“A young lad,” said Holmes. “No doubt paid and instructed by Moriarty. He’ll be blocks away by now.”

“But what does it mean?” Dodgson asked.

“‘Come by here at one, on the Mad Hatter’s clock,’” Holmes quoted from memory. “There is no time on the clock, only dates. The phrase ‘on the Mad Hatter’s clock’ must be taken literally. You must stand on the chalk drawing of the clock.”

Dodgson did as he was told, attracting the puzzled glances of passersby.

“Now what?”

It was I who noticed the box, about the size of my medical bag, carefully wrapped and resting against the wall to the east of the Big Ben tower.

“What’s this?” I asked, stooping to pick it up. “Perhaps they’re your pictures.”

“Watson!”

It was Holmes who shouted as I began to unwrap the box. He was at my side in a flash, yanking it from my grasp just as I was about to open it.

“What is it, Holmes?”

“One o’clock!” he yelled, as the great bell above our heads tolled the hour. He ran several steps and hurled the box with all his strength toward the river. He had a strong arm, but his throw was a good deal short of the water when the box exploded in a blinding flash and a roar like a cannon.

Two strollers near Westminster Bridge had been slightly injured by the blast and all of us were shaken. Within minutes, police were everywhere, and somehow I was not even surprised when our old friend Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard arrived on the scene about fifteen minutes later.

“Ah, Mr. Holmes. They said you were involved in this. I was hoping for a peaceful holiday.”

“The Christmas box held an infernal machine,” Holmes told him, having recovered his composure. “I glimpsed a clock and some sticks of dynamite before I hurled it away. It was set to go off at one o’clock, exactly the time that Mr. Dodgson here had been lured to Big Ben.”

Lestrade, lean and ferret-like as always, stepped forward to brush a speck of dirt from my coat.

“And, Dr. Watson, I trust you weren’t injured in this business?”

“I’m all right,” I answered gruffly. “Mr. Dodgson here was the target of the attack, or so we believe.”

People were clustered around, and it was obvious Lestrade was anxious to get us away from there.

“Come, come. Here is a police carriage. Let us adjourn to my office at Scotland Yard and get to the bottom of this matter.”

I was concerned for Charles Dodgson, who seemed to have been in a state of shock since the explosion.

“Why should he want to kill me?” he kept asking. “I was willing to pay him his hundred quid.”

“Professor Moriarty is after bigger game than a hundred quid,” Holmes assured him.

“But what?”

The police carriage was pulling away as Lestrade shouted instructions to the driver. Holmes peered at the vast number of bobbies and horse-drawn police vehicles attracted by the explosion.

“You have a great many men out here on a holiday.”

“It’s Big Ben, Mr. Holmes…one of London’s sacred institutions! We don’t take this lightly. It could be some revolutionary group behind it.”

“I doubt that,” Holmes responded with a smile.

He said no more until we had reached the dingy offices at Scotland Yard.

“Our new building will be ready soon,” Lestrade informed us a bit apologetically. “Now, let us get down to business.”

Charles Dodgson told his story somewhat haltingly, explaining how he’d come to Holmes on Christmas Day after being roughed up at Paddington Station. He tried to treat the episode with the young girls with some delicacy, but Lestrade gnawed away at the story until he grasped the full picture.

“You are being blackmailed!” he said with a start. “This should have been reported to the Oxford police at once.”

“More easily said than done,” the white-haired man responded. “A hundred is not a bad price to save my reputation and my honor.”

It was here that Sherlock Holmes interrupted. “Surely, Lestrade, you must see that the plot against Mr. Dodgson is merely a diversion, a red herring. And if it is a diversion, why cannot the bomb at Big Ben also be a diversion?”

“What are you saying?”

“We must return to Moriarty’s cryptic message. All has been explained in the final two lines: ‘The Old Lady’s Done, And Gone Neath The Block.’”

“A nonsense rhyme,” Dodgson insisted. “Nothing more.”

“But your own nonsense rhymes usually have a meaning,” Holmes pointed out. “I admit to a sparse knowledge of your work, but I know a great deal about London crime. I ask you, Lestrade, which Old Lady could the verse refer to?”

“I have no idea, Holmes.”

“Robbing an old lady would be akin to blackmailing a retired Oxford professor. Unless it was a particular old lady.”

Lestrade’s face drained of blood. “You can’t mean…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “…Queen Victoria?”

“No, no. I refer to the playwright Sheridan’s quaint phrase, ‘The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street.’”

Lestrade and I spoke the words in the same breath. “The Bank of England!”

“Quite so,” Holmes said. “The Big Ben bombing brought out virtually all the police on duty today. The financial district, closed for the holiday in any event, is virtually unguarded. I would guess that at this very moment, Moriarty’s men are looting the Bank of England and escaping back through their tunnel ‘Neath The Block.’”

“My God!” Dodgson exclaimed. “Is such a thing possible?”

“Not only possible, but probable for Professor Moriarty. Lestrade, if you will bring me a large-scale map of the area, I will show you exactly where to find this tunnel.”

“If you do that,” said Dodgson, “you are truly a wizard.”

“Hardly,” Holmes said with a smile. “If you are tunneling under a street between buildings, you naturally would choose the shortest route.”

Less than an hour later, while I watched with Holmes and Dodgson from a safe distance, Lestrade’s men took the tunneling bank robbers without a struggle. Moriarty, unfortunately, was not among them.

“One day, Watson,” Holmes said with confidence. “One day we will meet. In any event, Mr. Dodgson, I believe your troubles are over. All this blackmail business was a sham, and now that you have made a clean slate of it to the authorities there is nothing to be gained by blackmail.”

“I cannot thank you enough, sir,” the white-haired author said. “What do I owe you for your services?”

“Consider it a Christmas gift,” Holmes announced, with a wave of his hand. “Now, if I am not mistaken, you have just time to catch the next train back to Oxford. Let us escort you to Paddington Station and wish you an uneventful journey home.”

O
UR VISITOR TO BAKER
Street that fine June morning in 1894 was a certain Dr. Harold Addleton, a well-dressed man who appeared to be in his forties and carried a worn leather document case. He announced at once that he was an acquaintance of Junius Carlyle, whom Holmes and I both knew on a casual basis.

“And how old is Junius?” Sherlock Holmes asked. “Do you see him often?”

“He is well. We have a group that meets each month for dinner and an informal discussion of our various fields of study, and he enthralls us with his memories of the late Sir Richard Burton. My own field is archaeology, most recently as it concerns an ancient barrow in the region bordering the Salisbury Plain.”

“I am unfamiliar with that,” Holmes admitted, “though certainly the area around Stonehenge is ripe for study.”

“I have recently made a remarkable find in that barrow, one which I have communicated to the other members of our little group.” He reached for the document case by his side. “May I show you?”

“By all means, do!”

He removed from the case a small speckled egg which he placed upon our table with all the care one might afford to an uncut diamond. The sight truly astounded me and I expected a similar reaction from Holmes, but he merely glanced at it, tapped it with a fingernail and observed, “It could well be the fossilized egg of some serpent. You found this in your barrow at Salisbury, Dr. Addleton?”

He moistened his lips, trying to hide his obvious agitation. “I did indeed, sir. I mentioned my find to our little group last week and planned to show it to them at our next dinner but, this morning, I was grabbed in the street by a strange fellow who warned me that my life was in danger should I pursue my study of the barrow. He spoke of an ancient Druidic curse.”

“What was strange about him?” Holmes asked.

“He was well over six feet tall. I took him to be some sort of ruffian and my encounter with him was most unpleasant. He lifted me bodily from the pavement. I thought of calling a bobby, but he dropped me and disappeared into the crowd. That was when I remembered that your address was only a few blocks away.”

“Surely you did not take him seriously?” I said, shocked that such a threat could have upset an educated man.

I was certain that Holmes would dismiss it out of hand and, thus, I was somewhat taken aback when he merely loaded his clay pipe with a fresh supply of shag from the Persian slipper and said, “I perceive that you are unmarried, Dr. Addleton.”

“Archaeology is not a profession that makes for a happy marriage and family life. But how did you know that I am unmarried?”

“Your habits are those of a bachelor, sir. A good wife would have replaced your worn leather document case with a new one, and she surely would not have allowed you out of the house with a food stain—a breakfast egg, perhaps?—on your cravat.”

Addleton glanced down, brushing against the silk, but did not succeed in removing the offending stain. “I have no aversion to the opposite sex, and am quite fond of a few women I know. In fact, a young woman historian, Professor Emma Lakeside, is a member of our dinner group.”

“No doubt. Where do you live?”

“I have taken a flat in Great Russell Street to be near the British Museum. I am often in need of their resources in my work. I am on the first floor above a tobacconist’s shop. A bachelor’s flat, as you so correctly guessed.”

“Go back there now and rest. I believe your fears are groundless, but if anything out of the ordinary should occur, please contact me at once.”

“Very well,” he agreed, getting to his feet and returning the egg to the document case.

Holmes and I watched his departure through the window as he crossed Baker Street and headed south toward Oxford Street. It was a long walk back to his flat, especially in his shaken condition.

“I trust he will hail a cab,” I said.

“Yes, he is doing that very thing,” Holmes observed. But I saw that he was troubled when he resumed his seat. “What do you make of all this, Watson?”

“He is a fool or a madman. How can one give credence to his story?”

“Still, it is not without its points of interest.”

In the days that followed, the wind had changed. Our fine early June weather gave way to rain and mist once again, especially in the evenings. Political news occupied the front pages of the papers, and it was not surprising that a small item regarding a death on Great Russell Street was relegated to the back pages. Sherlock Holmes himself took a feeble interest in politics, so it was my reading of the paper that elicited the item.

“Holmes!” I nearly shouted. “Listen to this! ‘Tragedy on Great Russell Street. Archaeologist Dies in Fire.’”

He was out of his chair in an instant, taking the paper from me as we read the brief account together:

Dr. Harold Addleton, London archaeologist, died last night when a fire swept through his furnished room in Great Russell Street. Police and fire officials have no clue as to the fire’s cause, which is believed to have started around ten o’clock. A passerby reported seeing flames through a window of the flat. The fire seems to have been confined to the body of Dr. Addleton and there was little damage to the flat. Police are continuing their investigation.

“The poor man,” I said. “What a terrible way to die.”

“What a terrible way to be murdered,” corrected Holmes.

“Certainly you cannot believe this business about a Druidic curse!”

“Where murder is involved, I look for human agencies first. Perhaps, if no solution is forthcoming, we should lend Inspector Lestrade a hand.”

I realized at once that the news of Dr. Addleton’s death had been a greater shock than he cared to admit. The man’s life had been in danger and both of us had rejected him in our own ways; I by ridiculing his story and Holmes by postponing any action on his part.

“Do you think Junius Carlyle might know something?” I asked.

“Anything is possible, Watson. Will you be dining at your club tonight?”