The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (141 page)

The cricket match ended just after five o'clock that afternoon, the Navy winning by six wickets. Raffles excused us from the usual post-match carouse. We went straight to The Lord Nelson Inn and packed our valises.

I carried mine into Raffles's room, added it to his valise and cricket-bag on the fourposter bed where many a bygone seacaptain had slept. His grey suit immaculate, a pearl in his cravat, Raffles was standing in the window-bay with its wide-open leaded-paned casements. He was smoking a cigarette and gazing out over Portsmouth Harbour.

“Look at the old
Victory
, Bunny,” he said, as I joined him at the window, “lying peacefully at anchor out there—and keeping her secret.”

Horse's hooves clacked on cobbles, harness jingled, wheels ground. A hansom pulled up below. Two frockcoated, silk-hatted men stepped out—Dr. Conan Doyle and Mr. James Watson. They entered the Inn. We looked at each other.

“Can't be anything to do with us,” Raffles said.

But we waited tensely. A firm knock sounded on the door. I had a sense of doom. Raffles called, “Come in,” and the door opened. His silk hat, which he did not remove, almost touching the beams of the low ceiling, the Elm Grove doctor came in, followed by Mr. Watson.

“Just leaving?” Dr. Doyle said, noting instantly our luggage on the bed. “Mr. Raffles, there's a bill outstanding.”

“Doctor,” said Raffles, and I sensed and shared his relief as he glanced at his fingerstalled hand, “I'd clean forgotten this. How much do I owe you?”

“That depends. Watson, make sure that door is quite closed.” The big doctor, his blue, direct eyes fixed on Raffles, took pipe and pouch from his pocket. “Mr. Raffles, let's discuss the
Victory
crime. First, the enigma of the Admiral's hat. Why was it not taken? Reflection suggested to me that the large, stiff hat was not amenable, like the blood-stained garments, to being tightly rolled-up for concealment in some receptacle—a receptacle that would have to be very quickly spirited off of
Victory
, since a minute search of the ship would have been in progress even before the distinguished guests left her. Perforce, those guests had to be regarded as above suspicion. They were neither questioned nor searched. Yet, even had one of them been guilty, in what receptacle could the uniform have been concealed?”

“One of the distinguished ladies' reticules?” Raffles suggested.

“Not big enough. However, Mr. Raffles, recall the scene of the fallen sailor's rescue. When we saw him pulled into the whaleboat, a number of objects bobbed around on the water—objects flung from
Victory
and from several sightseeing craft, including the tug
Jezebel
. I refer to lifebelts.”

The doctor lighted his pipe, exhaling smoke
under his bushy moustache, his steady eyes always on Raffles.

“I came to the conclusion that Nelson's bloodstained uniform left his old flagship inside one of her own lifebelts—prepared beforehand by cutting out part of the cork, thus hollowing the lifebelt, then plugging the orifice with part of the cut-out cork and roughly stitching back the canvas cover. The prepared lifebelt was then concealed in
Victory
's wardroom. All the man who chloroformed the Marine sentry had then to do was slash the stitches of the canvas, pull out the cork plug, thrust the tightly-rolled uniform into the orifice, and replace the cork plug. Meantime, every eye on board
Victory
—except his own—was watching the Queen pass. But for that lifebelt to be thrown overboard by the man, almost certainly a member of
Victory
's crew, somebody had to fall into the water.”

“Able-Seaman John S. Hayter,” said Dr. Doyle's companion.

“Just so, Watson. The intrepid foretopman and his crewmate confederate coordinated their respective actions to the minute-guns of the royal salute, while other confederates, in one of the sightseeing small craft, watched for their fellow-conspirator, the chloroformer, to throw the relevant lifebelt, so that they could retrieve and make off with it in the confusion of the rescue.”

“Quite simple, really,” said Dr. Doyle's companion.

“When analysed, Watson, and explained.”

“I trust I did not, by my inadvertent remark—”

“By no means, Watson.” But the Elm Grove doctor's keen eyes remained fixed on Raffles. “Inquiry at the Navy Records Office provided me with the home address of Seaman Hayter, who proved to be a Portsmouth-born man, like many sailors. Mr. Watson and I visited that address, a small restaurant owned by his mother—a woman from the Greek island of Corfu. From 1815 until 1863 in this century, Corfu was under British jurisdiction, and Hayter's mother, a Corfu girl, married a British sailor, Hayter's late father. Their Portsmouth-born son, Able-Seaman Hayter, was brought up—due to the mother—with loyalties divided between Britain, land of his father, and Greece, the land of his mother. But these are simple people.”

The doctor puffed thoughtfully at his pipe.

“Seaman Hayter is still in Haslar Naval Hospital with a dislocated shoulder. Could a foretopman, certainly a physical type, have conceived and co-ordinated the
Victory
crime? Improbable. Could his crewmate confederate—no doubt a man of the same type and, on the evidence of the chloroformed Marine, remarkably strong—have conceived the crime? Improbable. No, Mr. Raffles, those men were
paid
by somebody. Whose was the
mind
behind the
Victory
crime?”

Raffles and I both knew. But we neither moved nor spoke.

“Our local newspaper, the
Portsmouth and Southsea Chronicle
,” said Dr. Doyle, “published a list of the distinguished persons invited to be present on board
Victory
on Navy Day. The newspaper published a second list—those invited guests who actually were on board
Victory
on that day. On comparing the lists, I noted that, of the yacht-owning visitors at Cowes, who had all received invitations to
Victory
, only one had not availed himself of the invitation.”

“Mr. Aristotle Andiakis,” said Mr. Watson, “of the S/Y
Achilleion
.”

“Precisely, Watson. Mr. Andiakis. A powerful mind—a Greek mind. A man, moreover, with seamen at his disposal—the crew of the
Achilleion
—to pose as sightseers and, in some hired boat, manoeuvre into a convenient position to pick up the lifebelt flung for them from
Victory
.”

Dr. Doyle tamped down the tobacco in his pipe.

“Why was Mr. Andiakis not on board
Victory
? Was it from fear of personal involvement in the crime he possibly had planned? I wondered. I noted an absence of violence in the crime. Seaman Hayter's dislocated shoulder was unforeseeable. The Marine sentry was not brutally
blackjacked, as would have been quicker and easier. He was harmlessly chloroformed. Was Mr. Andiakis, then, if his was in fact the mind behind the crime, a man of some nicety of scruple—sufficient nicety, perhaps, to decline to be a guest on board a ship he planned to rob? To you personally, Mr. Raffles, would such a scruple be comprehensible?”

I did not like the question. I could sense trouble coming. But Raffles said quietly, “Yes, Dr. Doyle, it would.”

“But if Mr. Aristotle Andiakis,” said the Elm Grove doctor, “were a man of scruple, what possible motive could he have for so drastic a deed as the illicit acquisition of a national treasure of the British nation?”

“I cannot imagine,” said Raffles. “Unless—” He stopped.

“Something has occurred to you?” said Dr. Doyle.

“The Thracian Marbles,” said Raffles.

“Ah!” said Dr. Doyle. “You read the London
Times
. So do I. And when I recalled a long-standing wrangle in its correspondence columns about the moral right of the British Museum to possess those ancient bas-reliefs commemorating a battle as important in Greek history as is the battle of Traflagar in British history, I felt sure of my ground.”

“Dr. Doyle,” said Mr. Watson, “immediately invited me to accompany him to the Isle-of-Wight.”

“To Cowes, Watson, to be precise. Millionaires! Millionaires were all around us there. But some things,” said Dr. Conan Doyle, “cannot be bought with minted money. We found Mr. Andiakis absent from his yacht. He was being granted the extremely unusual privilege of being received in audience by our Queen at her summer residence, Osborne House. Mr. Watson and I were invited on board the yacht to await his return. On his arrival, I immediately accused him of being in possession of the uniform in which Horatio Nelson died at Trafalgar.”

In this room, in this ancient waterfront inn, there was for a moment no sound.

“Realising,” Dr. Conan Doyle said, then, “that I had found him out, Mr. Andiakis immediately—under seal of secrecy—confided to me the outcome of his audience with Her Majesty. Mr. Raffles, the Nelson uniform is in due course to be returned to the Royal Navy Museum at Greenwich. In due course, in return, the Thracian Marbles will be restored to Greece, the ancient land of their origin. By command of Her Majesty, no explanation will ever be given. But, as to this—well, a danger exists.”

My heart thumped slow, stifling. I could not breathe.

“Mr. Raffles,” said the Southsea doctor, “Mr. Andiakis's possession of the Nelson uniform became known—last night—to an intruder. The safe on the S/Y
Achilleion
was opened.”

I stared at the floor. Raffles was as still as a statue.

“I asked Mr. Andiakis,” Dr. Doyle said, “if Mr. Watson and I might see the uniform. You've read, you told me, my story,
A Study in Scarlet
. Nelson's blood is not scarlet. Time has blackened those honoured stains. But I noticed a faint red blemish on Nelson's swallowtail blue epauletted coat. Blood, Mr. Raffles. Mr. Andiakis assured me that, when he set the combination of the safe just before leaving for his audience with the Queen, that blemish of fresh red blood was not on the coat.”

“Dr. Doyle,” said the big doctor's companion, “thereupon made a close examination of the safe's exterior—”

“And found on the carpet before it something that led me to the conclusion that the intruder had been wearing a fingerstall.” Coldly blue as an arctic iceberg, Dr. Doyle's eyes were fixed on Raffles. “For greater tactile sensitivity in the manipulation of that relatively simple combination-lock, the intruder took off his fingerstall. For greater sensitivity still, he removed from the finger, probably with his teeth, two surgical stitches and, with his tongue, flicked them from his mouth. I have them—together with my bill, Mr. Raffles—in this envelope.”

So it had come. Raffles was exposed. We were
finished. I could not swallow the great lump in my throat.

“Seaman Hayter,” Dr. Doyle said, “and his bosun confederate in
Victory
's crew will not be charged before a Court of Admiralty. They are no longer in the Royal Navy. They have been bought out by Mr. Andiakis and will be employed in his merchant-shipping fleet. Further, because a ban of silence has been imposed on every facet of the
Victory
crime, the intruder last night on S/Y
Achilleion
cannot be charged at Winchester Assizes. I don't know why you left the Nelson uniform where you found it, Mr. Raffles. Perhaps the devil looks after his own. You remain free to catch your train. But I, personally, have a bill to present. I shall hold it pending. If ever, traceable to you or your friend Manders, there comes to my ears any mention of what you know about Mr. Andiakis, I shall seek you out, Mr. A. J. Raffles, and infallibly present my bill—at a price a great deal higher than you will care to pay.”

The doctor of Bush Villas, Elm Grove, knocked out his pipe-bowl into an ashtray on the dressing-table.

“To each,” his strong voice said, “his own. To every nation, the mystery of its own soul, which is born of its past. Our Queen grows old. Her heart has known sorrow, but in that heart is the pride of kings. And the man who stood before her in Osborne House last night is a king among men—a self-made aristocrat, an Odysseus of our own century. He was confident of the lady to whom he spoke, and he knew how to present his case to her. He quoted to her four lines from one of her favourite poets, Lord Macaulay:

For how can man die better

Than facing fearful odds

For the ashes of his fathers

And the temples of his gods?

And that great Greek gentleman, Mr. Aristotle Andiakis, told me that the little, aging, indomitable Widow looked long at him. Then she turned to her Private Secretary and said, ‘In this matter of the Thracian Marbles, convey to Ten Downing Street this, Our Royal Command:
Let right be done
.' ”

Staring blindly at the floor, I heard the door open.

“Come, Watson.”

The door-latch clicked shut.

Neither Raffles nor I moved.

Through the open window-casements, the breeze from the sea blew cool and salty upon us. Thinly over Portsmouth Harbour floated the bugle notes of the day's end call, “Retreat.” The report of the sunset gun clapped across the water. From the masthead of H.M.S.
Victory
, as on all the Queen's ships at their anchors, the flag of her Realm fluttered down.

I heard Raffles draw in his breath, deeply.

“From now on, Bunny,” he said, “an unsettled bill hangs over us.”

“In account,” I muttered, “with Dr. A. Conan Doyle.”

“Or in account,” Raffles said, in a strange tone, “with the other name he uses for himself—in the pages of that story.”

On the fourposter bed, with our valises and Raffles's cricket-bag, lay the copy of
A Study in Scarlet
.

Not only does Mr. Manders's foregoing narrative, now at last become available, seem to explain the official silence which for so long has enshrouded the circumstances of the
Victory
crime, but it appears also to corroborate a perceptive remark made by Mr. John Dickson Carr on page 194 of his
Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
(Harper & Row, 1949).