Sherlock Holmes & The Master Engraver (Sherlock Holmes Revival) (23 page)

At this second reference – to pitch and asphalt – Holmes shot me a brief, meaningful glance. I took his import upon the instant. The landlord sighed, “But for those who prefer easier, swifter gains, there’s always thieving, black villainy and grievous violence and sadly this locality is becoming a bad place to be because of it.”

All this while I was thinking longingly of the familiar, reassuring, gently-faded comfort of 221B Baker Street with its cosy flickering fire, mis-matched easy chairs, eclectic clutter, and my favourite old burgundy-velvet smoking jacket; Holmes murmured our thanks along with a few comforting valedictory words to our gloomy host, upon which we hastily departed his small oasis of comparative civility, which he plainly felt was drowning in an ever-deepening morass of impoverishment and social evil.

I would have been hard-pressed to disagree with him.

We departed the inn and its doleful landlord shortly before three and after threading our way uncertainly through some singularly insalubrious side-streets – I noted in passing a large establishment on the corner of Manchester Street called The Cubitt Arms – we arrived at our destination around a quarter after three in the afternoon. Dusk was already approaching as we neared the gates.

Slater’s Yard was an unkempt, dismal acre of muddy scrubland, enclosed by a high dilapidated wooden paling fence, broken down in places, within which stood a two-storey brick-built warehouse, apparently derelict and chained shut, with a crudely hand-painted sign proclaiming ‘DANGER – KEEP OUT’. It was fringed with the desiccated skeletons of last year’s nettles and thistles, witness to years of neglect.

Adjoining the warehouse to the right was a large, shabby lean-to tar-painted shed or workshop affair; its sagging wooden doors hung drunkenly open. Beyond it was a brick-built shelter, open to the yard on one side and surmounted by a rusty tin smoke-stack; within sat a small antiquated steam engine on a brick pier, beside which was a large wooden bunker filled with coal. The slack canvas drive-belt appeared to run from the engine’s pulley through a hatch in the wall into the main building.

Outside on the broken pavement, thorny tentacles of leafless winter bramble groped blindly through gaps in the rotten palings as if seeking to snare unwary passers-by and drag them inside the gloomy place; a large emaciated yellow dog, ribs protruding like a toast-rack, rooted through a pile of rotting waste, but slunk reluctantly away at our approach. On the street outside, a cold and bored-looking Policeman, the same PC Clarke we had encountered outside 64 Chiswick High Road, stood guard.

“Good Day Constable Clarke” Holmes addressed him; “I may tell you that I am now working officially with Inspector Lestrade in this little matter – and a pretty grim business it is too from all accounts?”

“Grim enough Mr Holmes if you count beating a man nearly to death with a four-pound hard-wood block and tackle and sticking him with some kind of Chinee knife. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if this hasn’t become a murder scene by nightfall. It’ll be a miracle if the poor fellow lives out this night – you’d need the constitution of an ox to survive a hammering like that, Mr Holmes.”

“Indeed, Clarke” replied my colleague sombrely. “And let us hope that that is exactly what the redoubtable Mr Warburg possesses. Now with your permission Constable, I will examine the scene where you first found Warburg. It will be inside yonder large workshop I believe?”

“That is quite correct Mr Holmes. Nothing has been disturbed, nothing removed except poor Warburg, and it’s been under guard since we arrived last night.”

Holmes nodded approvingly; we set off across the squalid, rutted yard, where Holmes paused several times and carefully studied the ground between the workshop doors and the pavement, which to me appeared no more than a maze of footprints and wheel-ruts of varying depths. But from his intent, preoccupied expression, I knew he had observed something of significance. We entered the dilapidated building, the scene of last night’s murderous attack. A dirty amber glow penetrated through the open doors, leaching reluctantly from the nearby flickering gas-lamp on the street.

Once within and when our eyes became accustomed to the winter-afternoon gloom, two things immediately struck me most powerfully: the first was the scene of complete chaos – mute witness to the violent brutality of the attack and the desperate resistance offered by the mighty Warburg. Clearly he had been aware that he was fighting for his very life.

The second, immediately striking thing was the overpowering, all-pervading, resinous stench of pitch. Barrels and black-crusted buckets lay overturned, brushes and shovels were scattered like fallen boughs after a violent storm; a substantial pulley and tall iron tripod of some sort lay across all like a fallen tree, and tangled coils of hempen rope writhed like vines throughout the wreckage of the battlefield; a heavy wooden bench lay on its side. Embedded in a puddle of fast-setting tar was an overturned Irwin paraffin lamp and also a darkly discoloured heavy wooden block-and-tackle attached to a length of stout rope. I examined it closely, and swiftly realised that the crusted stains were not tar, but the dried red-brown of a man’s life-blood.

“I advise you to have a care where you place your feet Watson.” I glanced down, and sure enough there were several large pools of the still-hardening sticky stuff all around, already starting to form a wrinkled skin in the dry chill atmosphere of the building. I stood silent while Holmes surveyed the scene at length. After some time he turned to me. “What may we learn here Watson?”I looked carefully and minutely around the entire space and composed my observations.

“I would say, Holmes, that the wreckage and disorder testifies to the extreme brutality of the struggle, and further, I would suggest that in view of Warburg’s obvious strength and prowess as a boxer, there were very likely more than two assailants – perhaps three or even four, two of whom we probably encountered earlier this afternoon, and were possibly the couple of heavies that the landlord saw leave the public house last night and follow Warburg, after overhearing his enquiries as to the whereabouts of Mustachios and Wall-Eye.

“They set about him and in the ensuing desperate fight, occasioned this...” – and I indicated the shambles there before us. “In conclusion I suspect that he found the scrap of the Portals wrapper hereabouts, which suggests that the printing press, plates and paper are also probably nearby, most likely in the warehouse, which Lestrade so negligently ignored.”

I concluded “In short, I am suggesting that the missing plates and paper may very likely be within our grasp!” There was no answer.

I became aware that Holmes’ attention was entirely elsewhere – he appeared to be perfectly transfixed by something at the other end of the building.

Abruptly, and now without regard to the tar-pools, he clambered over the wreckage to the far corner of the workshop and snatched a white envelope from where it was pinned to the wall.

I had overlooked this incongruously pristine object entirely.

With great scrupulousness he examined it and without lifting his eyes from it for a moment he replied “You are right in all of your deductions Watson, except for one – the plates, paper and press, and the criminals responsible are gone.” He pulled aside an old tarpaulin which hung across far wall.

“How can you be certain Holmes? We have yet to examine the warehouse!” He looked around impatiently. “Of course they are gone Watson! The floor in here, the tracks on the ground outside yield a more reliable and account than any eye-witness might offer. They are without a shadow of doubt gone, and I have suspected it from the moment we entered the workshop. However, that they were here is in no doubt. “But where are they now I wonder, that is the question?” and with this he picked up an empty, shiny tin canister from a small discarded pile in the far corner and tossed it to me. It contained a pungent, syrupy black residue.

But it was not pitch. It was something else entirely. I peered closely at the stained paper label. It was the highest-quality German black printing ink.

After peering once more behind the tar-stained tarpaulin hanging against the far wall for some minutes, Holmes carefully picked his way back through the tangle of debris, delicately holding the envelope aloft by one corner. He held it before my eyes. “By thunder Holmes – it’s addressed to you!”

“Indeed it is Watson; I expected it to be so the moment I espied it. I warned you that they would know we are closing with them and here is the proof.

“It seems we were expected, but how came Lestrade to overlook this I wonder... unless it has been introduced to the scene since his departure last night?

“I doubt not I shall solve that little conundrum soon enough – meanwhile, let us see what our unknown correspondent has to say to us.” He opened his small bone-handled, razor-sharp penknife and carefully slit along the top edge of the envelope.

To my surprise he did not immediately examine the contents, but stepped from the workshop into the yard where, outside in the chill early-evening air, he plunged his beak-like nose within the envelope and, eyes closed, inhaled deeply several times. He grunted softly, but whether with satisfaction or disappointment I could not immediately determine.

He turned his back toward the dull street-lamp so that its sullen glow fell weakly upon the two items he had extracted from the envelope.

One was a ten-pound note. The second was a letter, clearly much lengthier than the note Petch had received. In a low voice, lest the Constable overheard, he read:

Sherlock Holmes

I know full well that you are meddling in my affairs. You have caused me considerable inconvenience. However, you now know what grave misfortunes tend to befall those who interfere in my plans – your presence here means you know of the sad accident that blighted your blundering accomplice’s attempt to spy on me. You will find a proof of that which you know we possess, indelibly marked on his corpse. You have been duly warned. Desist from your interference, and you and your scribe may just live to enjoy a long and fruitful life. I warn you not to attempt to trace me further – you will be endangering your health and wasting your time, of which commodity you now have precisely five days, within which period you will arrange with The Bank of England to deposit in a private account at the Bank Leu AG in Zurich, the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds Sterling, or the equivalent in bullion. You will appreciate that this is a mere ten-percent of the amount of money we are even now manufacturing and can distribute at will. Failure to meet these terms will result in the market being flooded with perfect counterfeit notes, and the consequences will be your responsibility. The account number is recorded upon the enclosed bank-note. Upon confirmation that the money has been deposited in Zurich, you will be contacted with the whereabouts of the plates and paper, when they may be retrieved. Then our business will be concluded. I am certain that The Bank of England will see the wisdom of complying...

Asa Bormanstein

I was silent for some moments as I digested this astonishing intelligence. It would appear that all along the villains had never intended to pursue the risky business of circulating vast amounts of forged currency, but rather, to hold The Bank of England to ransom for a single massive payment in the sum of a quarter of a million pounds of real sterling or gold, using the crude but powerful threat of flooding the economy with a huge injection of false notes.

Unless Holmes knew considerably more than he was revealing, a possibility I would not necessarily discount, I could envision no other route available to the Bank except to submit to this blunt demand forthwith – in effect, to be compelled to buy back their own printing plates and two and a half million pounds in false money for ten percent of its face-value, in real notes or bullion.

My immediate thought was that the modest cost of complying – though still a perfectly staggering sum of money – seemed to me a small enough price to avert the unimaginable economic consequences of defiance. I was on the point of sharing these thoughts with Holmes, when quite unexpectedly, he strode swiftly to the gateway of the yard, where the bored, shivering PC Clarke stamped his feet on the pavement under the wan glow of the gas-light; the yellow dog had sneaked back to rummage in the rotting midden.

For just the briefest moment, it seemed to me that the unlikely trio, dimly illuminated in the dismal pool of pallid light, composed the most improbable
tableau
– an emaciated yellow dog seeking sustenance, a shivering red-nosed policeman seeking warmth, and a pale, gaunt detective seeking an unknown correspondent.

“Ah, there you are again Mr Holmes. Seen everything you need? Something of a battlefield in there eh?”

“Indeed PC Clarke – it clearly was a most violent confrontation. Tell me Clarke, you have been on duty here since attending with Inspector Lestrade last night?”

“Yes Mr Holmes and I’ll be powerful pleased when Wickham and Langridge show up to relieve me – indeed they’re late now” and he stamped his cold feet for emphasis. Holmes fixed the shivering policeman with a steady gaze. “That is well Constable. I take it then that no strangers have entered the yard or buildings, you have had this crime-scene under surveillance continuously?” The policeman shrugged uneasily. “Well, more or less Mr Holmes...”

“Hmm... tell me more about the ‘less’ Constable.”

The burly constable looked vaguely embarrassed.

“Well Mr Holmes, you know... I had to answer an urgent call of... well, nature.”

He gestured helplessly at the wide-open, privacy-denying wasteland around us. His voice took on a slight edge of unease, no doubt because of his knowledge of Holmes’ familiar relationship with his senior officer, Lestrade.

“Honestly Mr Holmes, I was only away for a few minutes. About half after two I regret to say I was compelled to run to The Cubitt Arms to ah... answer the call and I thought there would be no harm done if after, I warmed up with a swift glass of Porter by the stove. I was back here at my post in twenty minutes, and not a second more, I swear it Mr Holmes.”