The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (22 page)

‘Concluded,' Holmes said and closed his eyes. I thought it best to let it go at that.

VI

I had almost finished my surgery on the following evening. At any rate, I was told that there remained only one patient still waiting to see me. I looked up as he came through the doorway of the consulting room.

‘Lestrade? What brings you to Paddington? Surely not a need of medical advice from me, of all people?'

He sat down across the desk from me, an unfamiliar sight among the bottles and sterilising dishes. His face expressed a mingled anxiety and anger.

‘What's going on, Dr Watson? That's what I want to know. What the devil's up?'

‘Nothing so far as I know. What should there be?'

‘Mr Charles Augustus Howell!'

My heart sank at the revelation that Lestrade so much as knew of the man.

‘What of him?'

‘He wouldn't have been Mr Holmes's visitor last night, would he?'

‘I have not the least idea. You must ask Mr Holmes.'

‘Oh!' Lestrade's eyebrows shot up, almost humorously. ‘I'll be asking Mr Holmes that, all right, the first chance I get. What concerns me just now is whether you and I might not have been used as an alibi.'

‘An alibi for what?'

‘You haven't heard then? An hour after Mr Holmes's visitor left last night, Charles Augustus Howell was found in the gutter outside the Green Man public house in Chelsea. His throat had been cut and a half-sovereign was wedged between his teeth.'

‘The sign of vengeance on a slanderer …'

‘The sign of something that has to do with Mr Holmes,' Lestrade said fiercely. ‘They think a soldier did it, a Colonel Sebastian Moran who wrote letters to a young woman—letters that Howell was trying to sell back to him, for what that matters now. There's a tale from two informants that Mr Holmes put Colonel Moran on Howell's track last night, even that he was there. That's as much murder as if he did it himself! I'll tell you something worse, doctor! They took Howell to St Thomas's Hospital. He was dead by the time he got there, if not before. A murder inquiry was to begin this morning. Then I'm told, Dr Watson, there's to be no inquiry. Not a question to Colonel Moran! Someone very important—friend of Mr Holmes, I daresay—put a stop to a Scotland Yard investigation. I wasn't going to hold for that, so I inquired at the hospital. I asked what was on his death certificate. Do you know what it says? It says he died of pneumonia! Pneumonia! Did you ever hear the like?'

‘No,' I said, half to myself. ‘No, Lestrade, I don't think I ever did.'

‘Pneumonia!' Lestrade said self-pityingly. ‘That leaves nothing to investigate. But he didn't have time to die of pneumonia, Dr Watson. I saw him with my own eyes, lying there with his windpipe slit and looking like a real Robin Redbreast, if ever a man did. I'd like to know what's going on, that's all.'

But poor Lestrade was never to learn the half of that.

VII

‘But if Howell is dead, we have lost the scent!' I repeated with greater exasperation. What was the matter with him? Could he not see it? Holmes lit his pipe with a spill from the fire of the Baker Street sitting-room. He shook the flame out in a flick of his wrist and puffed smoke over the room.

‘I have observed several times of late, Watson, your tendency to over-dramatise the commonplaces of life. Even making allowances for the burdens that fall upon you as a married man, I cannot applaud it.'

I cut him short. ‘This is not a common event. The heir to the throne is blackmailed. Howell is the one man who might have led us to the heart of the conspiracy. Howell is dead and so is the scent. Where shall we begin again? There is a good chance now that we shall never know where the documents concerning Prince George and his brother have been secured.'

He looked at me in genuine surprise, unable to believe I could be so dull.

‘But, my dear fellow, since the day after I met Howell by the Serpentine I have known where they are. According to my best information, they have not been moved since.'

‘But you cannot have known.'

‘They are in Walkers Repository, the Cornhill Vaults at 63, Cornhill. I have been occupied with other matters or I should have had them out before now. Your new life has softened—blunted—your detective instinct. Did you suppose that I should go to meet Howell unprepared? Did you truly believe that I might not prove a match for such a petty trickster as he?'

‘That does not explain it,' I said with some little asperity.

‘Very well,' said Holmes in a more conciliatory manner. ‘I will only say that I expected something of what happened. Suppose a man has goods to sell, stolen goods in this case. He must prove that he has them. I did not know whether Howell would bring them or fetch them. I thought he would fetch them in order that he and his friends might see if he was followed. His accomplice spotted you from the start, I fear.'

‘I saw no one!'

Holmes waved his hand generously.

‘It matters nothing, Watson. They were seduced by their own cleverness. When Howell returned with the paper in the attaché case, you were standing at a little distance. Perhaps you noticed a paper slip from my hand—a
résumé
of the stolen documents? It was carried several yards by the breeze in the park. As I hoped, Howell went after it like a hungry pigeon after a breadcrumb. It was only for a few seconds but his back was, necessarily, turned to me.'

‘Of what use was that?'

Holmes stood up, walked to the table and picked up a small and tightly sealed bottle.

‘It is a modest preparation of my own, slow-drying, colourless when wet, setting like a semi-luminous coat of white paint. Like many albumens it forms a white layer as it coagulates. Seen through a magnifying glass, it appears speckled with silver and aluminium grey from its other constituents. I do not think I would mistake even the smallest spot of it for any other compound. It was the easiest thing in the world to daub the bottom corners of the attaché case before Howell turned to me again. The back of the seat and my own coat concealed the movement of my hand from any other observation. The white smudges would not show on the leather until it dried hours later. Even if it was remarked, it would seem like some accidental blemish imparted during their use of the case.'

‘So that was it!'

‘I quite believed Howell when he told me that he and his confederate would keep the stolen documents in a strong-room—and that only he and the other man knew the contents of those documents. When one enters a bank, there is generally a special booth to one side of the counter at which to apply for access to such a vault, partitioned from the other clerks for privacy. It would be the most natural thing in the world for Howell or his confederate to lay an attaché case upon that counter, while his business was attended to. Of course, in those banks where they merely played their little game of one man going in and two men coming out, there would be no trace of my patent compound on the varnished wood. They would not go to the counter in such a place for they had no business there. Sooner or later, however, they would reach their destination. I flattered myself that, as it lay upon that counter, the attaché case would leave a mark that would be visible at once to the trained eye.'

‘You could not be certain.'

Holmes sighed philosophically.

‘Nothing, Watson, is certain. If it were, I should find it impossible to earn my bread. Let me say I thought it inconceivable that it should not be so. The following day I visited every counter of every bank vault and safe repository in the City of London that I thought at all likely. I was an inquirer after the facilities that they offered. At Walkers Vaults in Cornhill, there was a blemish on the polished wood, as if a brush loaded with white paint had touched it carelessly. Under the pretence of imperfect sight, I was able to examine it through my glass as I glanced at a paper. The characteristic specks of silver and aluminium grey were unmistakable.'

I shook my head.

‘It will not do, Holmes. Even if you are right so far, you do not know where, in an entire bank vault, the papers are to be found.'

He did not reply directly.

‘Do you recall, Watson, that two men came out of Drummonds Bank, when you followed Howell there a second time?'

‘Distinctly.'

‘Do you recall the second man, tall and thin, stooping as if from long hours of study, pale and sunken-eyed, a head so heavy with intelligence that it hangs—or lolls—as if it were too heavy for his neck to carry?'

‘I should know him again at once.'

‘I hope you will, Watson. That is Professor James Moriarty of mathematical celebrity, the man I describe in my notes as the Napoleon of Crime. When I told Sir Arthur Bigge that I felt I almost knew the name of our blackmailer, I already thought it was he. This plot bears the hallmark of his demented genius—for genius he is, in his way. He uses no alias and employs no disguise, believing that the brilliance of his mind alone is proof against all detection or arrest. Scotland Yard might find him at any time, for what good that would do them. His appearance on the steps of Drummonds Bank proves me right. Professor Moriarty is the “client” of the late Charles Augustus Howell, a man who might hold Howell in the palm of his hand and crush him with a clenching of his fingers, as I picturesquely described it to Sir Arthur.'

‘But who is he? How can he be a professor of anything?'

‘Oh, he is, Watson, or rather he was until proceedings for moral turpitude put an end to his career. The ruin of that poor young woman walks the
pavé
of the Haymarket to this day. Moriarty had won international fame at twenty-one for his paper on the binomial theorem. He is the first man in two centuries to prove Fermat's Last Theorem, the first in a hundred years to demonstrate the truth of the Goldbach Conjecture. He has no scruples, no morals, no pity. He is a genius, Watson, a criminal genius, and without doubt the most dangerous man in all Europe. Nothing would please him better than the prestige of having laid low a great royal house and a great nation. Think what his threats might command after that!'

‘How do you connect him so positively with the Cornhill Vaults?'

Holmes smiled rather wanly. ‘I did not trust to a smudge of paint alone, my dear fellow. When I made my inquiry as to the possibility of renting a strong-room drawer, I assured them that I could provide whatever references they needed. I offered your name, Watson, and I fear they shook their heads, for they had never heard of you as a healer of the sick in Paddington Green. I then offered the name of Professor James Moriarty and their faces radiated confidence. He is, they tell me, one of their most valued customers.'

‘Then you will compromise with him? If you know where the papers are, you surely have him cornered.'

‘I would shoot him like a rabid dog before I compromised with him,' Holmes said with some little heat.

‘Then what are we to do?'

‘This morning is Friday,' Holmes said. ‘By Monday, our adversary may have discovered that his agent did not die of pneumonia, after all. Therefore, Watson, you will spend Saturday with a tray round your neck, selling matches for the benefit of a truly charitable cause. What shall we say—what heroes shall we commemorate? I have it! You shall sell matches for a group of old and forgotten soldiers. The Last of the Light Brigade, as Mr Kipling has it in the verses which he kindly read at our recent meeting.'

‘And you, Holmes? What of you?'

He took the pipe from his mouth. ‘Dear me,' he said. ‘I see nothing for it but to turn safe-breaker and visit the Cornhill Vaults.'

VIII

A madcap scheme if ever there was, or so it seemed. However, as readers of our other narratives will recall, Sherlock Holmes had the arts of the cracksman at his fingertips and was not averse to using them when justice required it.

The Cornhill Vaults stood on one of the busiest streets in London, until the traffic dwindled at noon on Saturday and the city lay quiet over the weekend. The premises were equipped with a series of safes, Milner's Quadruple Patent, described as ‘Violence, Robbery, and Fraud-Resisting', and steel drawers for documents. These were also fire-resisting chambers, the safe doors of half-inch wrought iron and the bodies quarter-inch. The stacked document drawers and the safes themselves were ranged against the iron-lined walls of the room.

A curiosity of the room was that it was on constant display to the public. Iron shutters were drawn down to the pavement whenever the premises were unoccupied but these shutters were pierced by holes, whereby pedestrians, including policemen on the beat, might look through narrow apertures into the strong-room. The interior was brightly lit by gas, day and night. It was a novel form of security, simple as it was ingenious, and was coupled with a reward of £500 to any member of the public who provided information of an attempt upon the safes. To facilitate this, several mirrors had been arranged in the vaults by which every approach to the safes and the stacks of steel document drawers would be visible through the holes in the iron shutters.

From 2
P
.
M
. on Saturday afternoon, it was my duty to stand by the iron shutter with my tray of matches and wooden collecting box. By then the business of the week was over for the banks and offices of the City of London. Cornhill would lie as empty as a country road until Monday morning. At the approach of a pedestrian, I was to rattle my collecting-box loudly enough for Holmes to hear on the other side of the aperture, also calling out, ‘Last of the Light Brigade!' When the pedestrian had passed, I was to rattle the box again but without speaking.

From the start, I feared that it would go wrong. Next to the Cornhill Vaults, at street level, was a tailor's shop. There were other business premises on the upper floors—a watch-maker, an insurance agent, a re-coverer of umbrellas—which were reached by going through a narrow arch to the rear of the building and up the courtyard stairs. All the premises, like the tailor's shop, closed for the weekend at 1
P
.
M
. on Saturday or before. Holmes had reconnoitred the building the previous day by taking an umbrella for repair.