The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (145 page)

“I thought I heard a horse galloping away,” said Raffles. “He must have had one tethered down there in the mist somewhere.”

“But good God!” exclaimed the Assistant
Editor. “Don't you realize, Mr. Raffles? That must've been the man himself—‘Sirius'—the
Baskerville
hoaxer!”

“Indeed?” said Raffles, astonished. “Bunny, what a pity we lost him!”

The Assistant Editor, seeming rather nettled by our ineptitude, explained that he had been convinced from the first that the “Sirius” letter was a hoax. To prove it to Mr. Greenhough Smith, who still had been half inclined to let Dr. Doyle see the letter, the Assistant Editor had persuaded Mr. Smith to let him insert the reply—“Instructions awaited”—in
The Devon & Cornwall Gazette
.

On receipt by mail of a map tracing marked with the lair of the alleged whelps, he had come down from London by train, spent the night at Coryton, then hired a horse and set out across the moor to find the marked spot, the Stone Rows.

“Lucky to find the spot, with this mist coming on,” he said, not knowing how lucky he was not to have had his skull fractured, in mistake for Dr. Doyle's, and to have ended up in the mire that had swallowed the pony. “I borrowed this deerstalker and cape,” he said, “from the studio of our artist, Sidney Paget, who illustrates the Holmes stories. My idea was, if the hoaxer should show himself, to give the fellow the shock of his life by suddenly appearing before him as—Sherlock Holmes!”

“You gave
us
a shock,” said Raffles ruefully. “Eh, Bunny?”

“Absolutely, Raffles,” I said.

“Listen!” exclaimed the Assistant Editor. “What's that sound?”

From somewhere distant in the mist came, faintly, a prolonged, eerie howling. The Assistant Editor blenched, listening, a wild surmise in his eyes.

“It's all right,” said Raffles. “That, I think, comes from Dartmoor Prison. The convicts must have learned they have a certain visitor in the vicinity.”

From time to time, that night, we heard yowling and catcalling from the nearby prison.

Raffles mentioned it when we set off, very early next morning, in the dogcart, to return it to Missus and catch our train at Lydford. The Assistant Editor, who had also put up at Rowe's Duchy Hotel and who was to go up to London in the same train with us, was astride his hired horse, trotting a hundred yards ahead of us in the grey, foggy morning.

“The yowling from the prison didn't keep the Man with the Cat awake, Bunny,” Raffles said. “He was snoring when I paid his room a visit in the night. Have a look in my valise.”

Mystified, I unstrapped his valise and took out, in its hygienic wrappings bearing the seal of the Prison Commissioners, the Cat-o'-Nine-Tails.

“If sentence must be carried out within a prescribed time of its order,” Raffles said, “there's a chance we may have saved some poor devil a flayed back to-day. There's a nice little quagmire just ahead on the left.”

He reined in the horse, looked each way along the road, took the Cat from me and, standing up in the cart, hurled the Cat from him, overarm. It arched high through the air, fell in the green scum, remained for a moment upright like some sordid Excalibur, then was dragged under by its heavy stock.

“The other visit I paid in the night, Bunny,” said Raffles, as the horse jingled us on again, “was to the room of ‘Sirius.' We gave him a shock at the Stone Rows. He hadn't returned to the inn. He wasn't in his room. I think he must have left Dartmoor. So I now have in my pocket the £500 from his portmanteau.”

Raffles was mistaken, however. “Sirius” had not left Dartmoor, as I learned two days later, when I completed the cricket article to be signed “by A. J. Raffles” and took it round to his rooms in The Albany, just off Piccadilly.

He showed me a brief newspaper item. It stated that the finding of a riderless horse had led to the discovery on Dartmoor of a man, a guest at Rowe's Duchy Hotel, whose identity had not
been satisfactorily established. The horse evidently had had a fall. The man's neck was broken.

“That's what comes,” said Raffles, “of galloping a horse in a Dartmoor fog. Not really a clever man, Bunny—certainly not clever enough to catch the real-life Sherlock Holmes in a trap, even if Dr. Doyle had been shown the ‘Sirius' letter. Now, about this money. Tainted as its source is, we'll retain £100 to cover our expenses. For the rest, we have an account to settle. It's been outstanding since twenty-five Sherlock Holmes stories ago, so it's high time we squared the account, for the sake of our self-esteem.”

We jingled round in a hansom, in the springtime sunshine, to the bank mentioned to us by Mr. Greenhough Smith—Dr. Conan Doyle's own bank, the Oxford Street branch of the Capital & Counties, which he had named in his tales as the bank also of his fictional alter ego, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

“There is here,” Raffles said to the cashier at the counter, “the sum of £400—a contribution to the Fund for the translation into many languages and free world-wide distribution of Dr. Conan Doyle's book exposing the evil of slander between nations.”

“Very good, sir,” said the cashier, counting the currency notes with deft fingers. “To whom do you wish this handsome contribution to be attributed?”

“As amateur Sherlockians, keenly looking forward to the appearance, some day, of a sequel to
The Hound of the Baskervilles
, my friend here and I would like to honour the gentleman who inspired Dr. Doyle's tale of the Phantom Hound. So attribute this contribution, please, to Sir Richard Cabell, and post the formal acknowledgment,” said A. J. Raffles, “to his country seat—The Sepulchre, Parish of Buckfastleigh, Dartmoor, Devon.”

ALTHOUGH MOST AUTHORS
of mystery fiction have produced short stories, it has been virtually impossible for them to earn a living writing exclusively in this form. Edward D. Hoch (1930–2008) was a rare exception. He produced more than nine hundred stories in his career, approximately half of them published in
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
, beginning in 1962. In May 1973, Hoch started a remarkable run of publishing at least one story in every issue of
EQMM
until his death—and beyond, as he had already delivered additional stories.

Readers have never been able to decide which of Hoch's series characters is their favorite, as he created numerous protagonists, from the bizarre Simon Ark, who claims to be two thousand years old and is the central character of his first published story, “Village of the Dead” (1955), to Nick Velvet, the thief who steals only innately worthless objects (the first story in which he appears is “The Theft of the Clouded Tiger,” 1966), to Dr. Sam Hawthorne, who specializes in solving locked-room and other impossible crimes and makes his first appearance in 1974 in “The Problem of the Covered Bridge.”

Hoch also wrote numerous stories featuring Sherlock Holmes and was able to capture the sound of the nineteenth-century and English (as opposed to American) speech patterns, even though he was born and lived almost his entire life in the very American city of Rochester, New York. The Holmes tales were collected in
The Sherlock Holmes Stories of Edward D. Hoch
(2013).

“The Adventure of the Cipher in the Sand” was first published as a chapbook limited to 221 copies (New York, Mysterious Bookshop, 1999).

IT WAS A
fine autumn morning in late September of '99 when Sherlock Holmes and I received an unexpected visitor at our Baker Street lodgings. Accustomed as Holmes was to welcoming paying clients, it was rare indeed for Inspector Lestrade to visit us.

“Is this official business?” Holmes asked, pausing in the act of filling his pipe to study the lean, ferret-like countenance of the Scotland Yard inspector.

“It is indeed, Mr. Holmes.”

“I trust it has to do with a body discovered along the shore of the Thames River, near Wapping, within the last three hours.”

Lestrade seemed taken aback by his words. “My God, Holmes! Has one of your Baker Street urchins brought you news of it already?”

“I hardly need that,” he replied with the superior gaze I'd seen so many times. “You know my methods, Watson. Explain to the inspector how I knew the location of the killing.”

I studied him up and down for a moment. “Well, I can see moist sand dried to the knees of his trousers,” I suggested with some uncertainty.

Holmes finished lighting his pipe. “Of course! Moist sand in the city on a sunny September morning most likely comes from the banks of the Thames at low tide. That particular grade of sand is mainly found near Wapping. A man of your rank, Inspector, would only have been called out for the most serious of crimes. The fact that you knelt in the moist sand tells me you were examining a body.”

“You never fail to amaze me, Holmes,” the inspector said, brushing the sand from his knees. “The body of a man was indeed found near Wapping this morning. Some sort of message was left in the sand near his body. It appears to be a cipher, and I heard of your success last year with the problem of the dancing men. I hope you can come with me to view this message before it is washed away by the rising tide.”

Holmes glanced in my direction. “What say you, Watson? Is your calendar clear for the next few hours?”

“Certainly, Holmes.”

The area of Wapping near the Liverpool docks was made up mainly of four-story buildings with shops on the ground floors and lodgings above. Facing west, one could see the Tower of London looming in the distance. Holmes and I followed Lestrade down to the stretch of damp sand by the water's edge where a pair of bobbies stood guard. I could see that the tide had already turned.

“The body has been removed,” Lestrade told us. “It was sighted just after dawn by the Metropolitan Special Constabulary—the river police—and officers were dispatched to the scene.”

“What was the cause of death?” Holmes asked.

“Stabbed once in the back. The knife was still in the wound. The victim was dressed like a seaman, with black hair and a short beard. Perhaps
he was off one of the merchant ships at the Liverpool docks. He had no money or identification in his pockets, suggesting robbery as the motive. However the killer missed this.” He held out a white disk, apparently made of ivory, with the number 5 imprinted on it in gold ink.

Sherlock Holmes grunted, his attention taken by three rows of block letters in the damp sandy soil at our feet:

Y V I  Y A H

T O M I T

W A H T  Y H

“It's a cipher of some sort,” I agreed, “but hardly anything like the dancing men. Perhaps Roman numerals, mixed with other letters.”

“The letters are much too regular to have been made by a person's finger,” Holmes said thoughtfully, “certainly not by a dying man's finger. It looks more as if they were imprinted. Where was the body found, Inspector?”

“Right here by the message. There were some footprints, but by the time the body was discovered and the police arrived, I'm afraid the original tracks could not be determined with any degree of accuracy.”

Holmes shook his head hopelessly but still went through the motions of squatting down and examining the nearest footprints with his magnifying glass. He asked the two bobbies to lift their feet and examined the bottoms of their shoes as well. “I can find very little,” he admitted. “The area is too cluttered.”

Holmes jotted down the apparent cipher in his notebook and we left the scene as the rising tide began to fill some of the letters with water. “Did you see anything I missed?” Lestrade asked.

“Many things, Inspector, but nothing that points directly to the killer. Please let me examine that disk you showed us earlier.”

Lestrade handed over the ivory marker with the number 5 on it. “Could it be a coat check?” I suggested.

Holmes shook his head. “Coat checks usually have a hole in them. And they're not made of ivory. I would guess this is a roulette chip from a fashionable casino, in the amount of five pounds.”

“That was my thinking exactly,” the inspector said.

“The casinos for the affluent are to be found in the West End. Are there any places near here, in the East End, which might use such chips?”

Lestrade considered the question. “Certainly not in this area, with its wretchedly poor people.”

“Still, there is a fine row of eighteenth-century houses to be seen in Wapping High Street. I could easily imagine one of those as an illegal gambling establishment.”

“We have heard rumors,” he admitted.

Holmes nodded. “I will look into the matter.”

“But what of the cipher?”

“All in good time, Inspector.”

Holmes said very little about the case when we returned to our lodgings in Baker Street, but I noticed him more than once puzzling over the message in the sand that he'd copied into his notebook. After dinner, when I was giving some thought to retiring early, he suddenly roused himself from his favorite armchair and announced, “Come, Watson, it is time we visited Wapping High Street.”

“Now, Holmes? It's after nine o'clock!”

“This is just the time when London's night life begins to awaken.”

Holmes directed our hansom cab to the block he sought on Wapping High Street, and when we arrived he pretended he'd forgotten the number we sought. “What is it you're looking for, gents?” the driver asked from above.

“The casino.”

“Parkleigh's?”

“That's the one.”

The cab moved down a few houses and stopped before a three-story brick home of eighteenth-century design, where two gentlemen were just entering ahead of us. Holmes
paid the man and said as we alighted, “Lestrade should check with the hansom drivers for his information.”

Once inside the door of the establishment Holmes and I passed through a red velvet drape into a passage where a porter awaited us. “Welcome to Parkleigh's,” he said, and showed us into a large ballroom which must have occupied a large portion of the ground floor. An attractive blond woman played a piano at one end and there was a bar at the other end, with small tables and chairs along the walls. About a dozen couples were dancing to waltz music, and I expressed my surprise at the presence of women. “They are hostesses provided by the establishment,” Holmes explained.

We proceeded upstairs to the gambling room, which was much more crowded. Perhaps fifty young and middle-aged men were grouped around the gaming tables playing roulette and dice and
chemin-de-fer
. All were well dressed, some in formal evening attire. I saw at once that Holmes had been correct. The ivory disk in the dead man's pocket was indeed a roulette chip. In fact, the five-pound chip seemed to be the highest denomination in play. At the far side of the room was a glass-domed tape machine that supplied race results by means of a telegraph ticker. Apparently the establishment was open in the afternoons for wagering on horse races.

The murmur of conversation was low, broken only by an occasional shout or curse from an emotional player. Tobacco smoke hung heavy in the air, though there were no drinks served upstairs. We'd been observing the scene for some minutes when a short, thick-set man who might have been a former prize fighter came over to introduce himself. “I'm Jerry Helmsphere, the manager here. Can I help you gentlemen with anything?”

Sherlock Holmes smiled. “I had thought that I might help you. I understand that you have had some criminal activity here of late.”

The man seemed taken aback by his words. “Could you step into my office, please?” We followed him into a small office where Holmes introduced us. It was obvious at once that the man recognized the name. “Sherlock Holmes, the consulting detective?”

“The very same.”

“How did you learn of the theft of our tape machine?”

“I may have a clue to its whereabouts,” Holmes said, pointedly ignoring the question. “Would you care to hire me in an official capacity?”

The short man was hesitant. “How much are you asking?” Holmes mentioned a figure and the man sighed. “I am only the manager here. I don't possess that sort of money.”

“But you cannot request help from the police, since your entire operation is illegal,” Holmes remarked. “And you dare not report it to your owner.”

“The owner resides in Paris. He is better left undisturbed.” Helmsphere made a counteroffer. “That is as high as I can go.”

“Very well,” Holmes agreed. “Now tell me exactly what happened to your missing tape machine.”

“You may have noticed one machine against the opposite wall as you entered. Its ticker reports the results from Epsom, Ascot, and the other tracks. We had two such machines to accommodate more of our patrons who wished to read the results before they are posted. One was stolen overnight. I need not tell you that the tape machines are expensive, and illegal possession of one could lead to all manner of chicanery.”

I observed that beads of perspiration had collected on Jerry Helmsphere's upper lip as he spoke. Clearly the disappearance of the machine was a matter of grave importance to him. Holmes sensed it too, and asked, “What sort of chicanery?”

He wiped a hand across his lips. “Many of the smaller bookmaking establishments do not have tape machines like these. Whoever stole it could use it to place bets on winning horses before the official results reached those places. The other bookmakers might hold me responsible for their losses.”

His meaning was all too clear. The man feared for his life unless he could recover the stolen machine. “How heavy is it?” Holmes inquired. “Could one man have carried it out alone?”

“Not easily. Two would be much safer.”

“At about what time would the theft have taken place?”

“We close here at two a.m. I'm usually around until three checking the books and making certain the place is cleaned up. We open at one in the afternoon on race days, so it makes for long hours.” He paused, then added, “The theft would have taken place between three a.m. and noon, when I discovered it.”

“A man's body was found this morning down by the river. He was dressed as a seaman and had one of your roulette chips in his pocket. Do you remember anyone like that being in here last night?”

Helmsphere shook his head. “We generally attract a better clientele. A man in seaman's dress would not have been allowed upstairs. However he might have remained downstairs to mingle with the girls. Let me ask Frances.”

He sent someone downstairs to get her, and after a moment the blond piano player joined us. Her name was Frances Poole and she seemed to be in her late twenties. She eyed Holmes and me with some apprehension. My friend smiled, trying to put her at ease. “There is nothing to fear, Miss Poole. We are only inquiring about one of last evening's customers. This would be a man with black hair and a beard, dressed as a seaman.”

She nodded at once. “He danced with some of the girls and then he wanted to go upstairs, but Tim told him he wasn't dressed for it.”

“Tim?”

“That would be Tim Thaw, one of our croupiers. They often go downstairs on their breaks,” the manager told us.

“Could I speak to him?”

“Frances, have someone relieve Tim and tell him to come in here.”

She nodded and went off on her mission. Through the open door I saw her approach a sandy-haired young man at the roulette table. Presently he came in to join us, with someone else taking his place at the table. “How can I help you, Mr. Helmsphere?” he asked.

“I have invited this gentleman here to investigate the overnight theft of our tape machine.” Holmes shook Thaw's hand and said, “Miss Poole tells me a bearded seaman was downstairs last evening and spoke with you about coming up here for gambling.”

“I informed him that proper attire was needed for the gaming room and he remained downstairs with the ladies.”

“Did he mention his name, or his ship?”

“His name was Drexel, I believe, off one of the Liverpool ships. I didn't see him again after my break ended.”

“He left a bit later,” Frances Poole confirmed.

“Alone?”

“I believe so.”

We seemed to have learned all there was to learn, and as we left the office we walked out with young Thaw. “Have you worked here long?” I asked.

He shrugged. “A few months. I owned a country pub near Henley but couldn't make a go of it. I think I was always meant to live in London. This is a nice place to start out.”

Holmes and I watched him for a time at the roulette table, then went back downstairs. Frances Poole was at her piano. Some of the ladies had disappeared from the dance floor and I wondered aloud to Holmes where they might be. “Good old Watson,” he said. “That needn't concern us. We have quite enough, with the murder by the river and the stolen tape machine.”

“Do you think the two are linked, Holmes?”

“Almost certainly. The thief needed help to carry the stolen machine out of here and hired this seaman. They had a falling-out, no doubt over money, and the thief stabbed him.”

“But if that's true, Holmes, what happened to the killer and the stolen machine? And what was the meaning of that cipher message?”