The Adventure of the Plated Spoon and Other Tales of Sherlock Holmes (31 page)

“Like something I'd expect to see at the races. Whatever possessed you to buy that suit in the first place?”

“You were away visiting a sick friend, and it seemed a bargain at the time.”

At the door she kissed me with particular affection and admonished me to be careful. I lowered one eyelid and patted the revolver in my pocket.

“I keep forgetting you were in the army,” she said.

“Would that
I
could.”

On this particular clandestine occasion, I had no trouble recognising Holmes when we met in his sitting room. Although a light dusting of freckles and a red wig altered his appearance enough to throw off the casual observer, I was surprised to see that he looked less shabby than I, in broad chalk stripes and a crushable hat with a feather in the band. He took one look at me, shook his head, and relieved me of my cravat.

“Fasten your collar and go without,” he said. “These men are low, not stupid.”

“I'm sorry, Holmes. This is all new to me.”

“Save your apologies, old fellow. Why should the salt of the earth develop a talent for dissembling?”

“But surely you can be recognised.”

“Our quarry is doubly suspicious than the ordinary culprit, and double more so since Snipe's close call. They'll be looking for tricks of theatrical magic, whilst the gay attire will throw them off the scent after the fashion of Poe's purloined letter. In any wise, I am counting upon that. This affair is heavy enough with false whiskers and cobbler's wax as it is.”

Osbert's parlour, we knew, had been padlocked by order of the superintendent of Scotland Yard. We ruled out the other places we'd visited, first because we'd have been recognised, second because we'd eliminated their personnel as suspects. Holmes, I was not surprised to learn, had acquired an encyclopedic knowledge of all the similar establishments in the city, but when we introduced ourselves to the people in charge—as the Messrs. Sherrinford and Sacker—they regarded with open bewilderment the spoon he produced from his pocket.

One, a burly Irishman, accused us of pinching it from his parlour and demanded its return. When Holmes refused, he tried to snatch it from his hand, much to his immediate regret, as presently we left him lying on the floor upon his back, no doubt wondering how he came to be in that position. In truth, it had all happened so fast I all but missed it, and on our way out I said, “Baritsu?”

“A refined version, which I picked up in Tibet.
Kung fu
is the name. It reaches back to the Zhou Dynasty, a thousand years before Christ.”

We had no success in the other half-dozen places we went to, and returned to Baker Street, where I removed my broken-down brogans and massaged my aching feet.

Holmes poured whisky. “I feared this. The Osbert business attracted too much attention for comfort, driving the other slavers to some other cover. There's an argument to be made in favour of allowing one or two known dens of iniquity to remain open, so that justice always has a place to fish.”

“Holmes, these creatures trade in human beings, not stolen watches.”

“You're right, of course. Meanwhile, we've foundered.”

“Perhaps the flesh pedlars were sufficiently frightened to abandon the practice entirely.”

“Good old Watson. If I could distill and bottle your optimism like these spirits, I'd be as rich as Gladstone.”

I finished my drink and left him in a brown study. I was concerned for him. He was like a horse with the bit in its teeth and no place to gallop, and I knew all too well where that might lead. It was ironic, then, that the most foul of all the foes we'd ever opposed should be the one to rescue him from the lure of the needle.

We were experiencing one of the hottest summers in memory, and the English being what they were, I was soon busy treating patients for sunburn and heat exhaustion, prescribing cocoa butter, salt tablets, and cold compresses to wretches more accustomed to overcast skies and declining mercury than sunshine and eighty-degree temperatures. Reverse the situation and imagine South Sea Islanders building snowmen in a freak blizzard, and you may have a fair picture of the epidemic of temporary insanity. As a result, it was a fortnight before I saw or heard anything of Holmes. When I did, it was he who initiated contact.

The telegram arrived as I was explaining to a sufferer that an umbrella was quite as necessary in an August such as we were having as in rainy November. He left, muttering something about a “dashed parasol,” and I slit open the envelope.

“Really, John,” said Dr. Anstruther, when I stopped at his office on my way to Baker Street. “I'm up to my knees as it is in patients scarlet as red Indians. I suppose you're off on another frolic with your friend the bloodhound. You're the only good physician I know who finds time for a hobby.”

“All the more reason to bless my good fortune to have such a generous colleague.”

I hastened away before he could protest further. As opaque as I find things Holmes regards as elementary, “a spoonful of adventure” to me meant only one thing.

My friend met me at the street door. He was dressed for the country, in his ear-flapped cap and tweeds, but waved off my reservations about my city dress with impatience. “Our client won't issue you any demerits. He's misplaced his daughter, and has engaged us to secure her return.”

I accompanied him to Baker Street station, where we caught the four o'clock train north. No sooner had the conductor announced the stops than I said, “Middlesex! It's Jane Chilton then.”

I shall treasure forever the look of astonished admiration that appeared upon his face. However, lacking his flair for theatre, I told him all, summarising the newspaper accounts of the search for the textile heiress. Disapproval displaced surprise.

“A chance strike. Five counties were announced, each with a bevy of country homes with grown daughters in residence.”

But I was too intrigued to be put off by his chiding. “The investigation was closed when Sir James Chilton received a letter telling him of her runaway marriage. He swore it was written in her hand.”

“He is no graphologist; and my own William Thackeray has taken in experts. One dabbles, Watson,” he said with a smile. “I had a sabbatical with a book forgery ring in Manchester. I may boast, but given the proper materials I could dash off a Shakespeare First Folio that would put me up comfortably in Sussex for the rest of my days, quietly tending to my bees.”

It was the second time in the process of this case he'd mentioned beekeeping and the Downs. In all the years of our association, I never knew when he was having me on.

He returned to the subject. “Sir James is no one's fool, or he should not have beaten out dozens of competitors for his contract with Whitehall. He engaged an American private enquiry agent to investigate the source of the letter posted in San Francisco. The man, whose reputation even I am aware of, could find no trace of the sender. Until convinced otherwise, I suspect some colleague of Osbert's, if not the man himself, had an accomplice in California forge the letter. How he obtained a sample of her script may prove the solution to the affair.”

“Still, the gulf between the girl's vanishing and the white slave trade is a long leap.”

“I concur. But when a knot reveals the end of the rope, one pulls upon it, on the off chance it's the authentic Gordian.”

After this pronouncement he changed the course of the conversation, drawing upon his pipe and directing my attention to some anomalies in the compositions of Sarasate.

We were met at the station by a grey-faced man with impressive white side whiskers, who wrung Holmes's hand, took mine in a grip less fervent, and introduced himself as James Harvey Chilton, Bart., founder of Chilton Mills and father of Jane. Beside him stood a young man, muscular but not bulky, in a sporty suit of a decidedly American cut with a pearl stickpin in his cravat and a tan bowler—
derby
, as it was called on that side of the pond—and displaying a broad handsome face with a determined chin. His slim hand mangled my knuckles in a steely grip.

“This gentleman is the enquiry agent I wrote you about,” said Sir James. “He was kind enough to cross the ocean at my request to consult with you.”

“How do you do?” said the stranger, in a pleasant, middle-register voice devoid of the broad, nasal tones I associated with American speech. “Nicholas Carter, at your service. Please call me Nick.”

Sir James's carriage conveyed us all to Chilton Hall, a sprawling manor of red and yellow brick laid in chessboard fashion in the midst of rolling green country, dotted with thatched tenant farmhouses and the inevitable sheep. Once ensconced in the library, surrounded by volumes shelved from the floor to the ceiling sixteen feet above, we sat in deep leather chairs and made free with the cigars offered by our host.

“I'm restless, I admit,” said Nick Carter, drawing with pleasure upon a dark Havana. “One may be absent from Paris for two or three years, and from London almost a lifetime, and find little changed on his return. But in a few months, New York City will have reinvented itself beyond recognition.”

“I can't decide whether you're casting aspersions or singing the praises of any of those places.” I was somewhat nettled by his ease of manner in what must have been intimidating surroundings for most of his countrymen.

“Neither, John; I hope I can call you John? We're informal in the States. It comes from twice sending you Brits packing bag and baggage back to Old Blighty.”

I felt the blood rise to my face; but Holmes assumed the role of diplomat.

“Gentlemen, we've drawn our lines in the sand. For myself, I envision a future in which the ghosts of our two Georges, Hanover and Washington, address each other as equals, and unite in the commonality of our shared language.”

“I'm swell with that.” Having delivered this puzzling declaration, Carter unstopped a grin of dazzling American workmanship and sincere good fellowship. “You must make allowances, John.” He hesitated. “John, eh?”

I nodded hesitantly.

“Where I come from, we test a man, probing for weakness. A thin skin often means a weak nature; which is nothing you want to take with you into a game of stickball where winner takes all.”

Holmes cleared his throat. “I can attest that while Watson may swing at a bad pitch, he can hit a fast ball over the fence.”

Carter blew a series of smoke rings. “But can he handle a curve?”

Silence ensued; broken by my own hearty laugh. “I've no earthly idea what a curve is, but show me one and I assure you I'll hit it.”

“How much of what this fellow says he can do can he do?” Carter asked Holmes.

“Watson never boasts, idly or otherwise. I trust him with my life, which he has returned to me upon several occasions.”

Our host, who had been listening without interrupting, coughed rumblingly. “Gentlemen. Fascinating as this game is, must I remind you that my daughter may be in great peril?”

“None of us has forgotten that for a moment,” said Holmes. “As Mr. Carter said, it's as important to familiarise oneself with a new partner as with a tool of recent purchase. Suppose you recount to us in your own words the circumstances of her vanishing.”

“And who else's words might I use?” the baronet put in testily. But he proceeded without further delay with a succinct report. The last time he saw Lady Jane was on her way out the door for a shopping excursion in Piccadilly. Her father had arranged to have her presented at Court, and she was determined to find the perfect ensemble to wear for the occasion. She had brought along Emma, her lady's maid, to avoid the impropriety of venturing out into the streets unescorted. In a dress shop with a seal announcing its service to the British royalty, the girl selected a frock and left Emma to wait whilst she tried it on in a dressing room.

She never emerged. When Emma investigated, the room was empty. There was no other door than the one leading into it from the shop, and that entrance was in plain view from where the maid had stood waiting.

“May we speak to her?” asked Carter.

“Of course. She has time on her hands, as I'm sure you can imagine.” Sir James rang for the butler, who appeared presently, bowed, and went off to fetch the maid.

Moments later we were joined by a plain-looking woman in livery, who curtseyed and faced her interrogators with hands folded at her waist.

Holmes deferred to the visitor from abroad, who asked her if she'd kept her eyes on the dressing-room door the whole time Lady Jane was gone.

“Yes, sir. I never looked away from it.”

“How long did you wait before you decided to see what kept her?”

“I should say half an hour, sir.”