The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (44 page)

The two brothers were seldom so united in their views and purposes. When they were, I truly believe that no power on earth could stand against them.

V

Sergeant Lestrade's secondment was to begin that evening. Meantime, Holmes went alone to Villiers Street in the afternoon, lightly disguised by snow-white hair and whiskers, shoulders stooped like an older man, so that his posture and movements took two or three inches off his height. When he told me the story of the Racing Certainty, he chuckled over that message, written in block capitals the night before on the blotter of Archer & Co., a moment before he was seized. It seemed to him one of the neatest things he had ever done.
MOST URGENT. MEET ME UNDER THE ARCHES CHARING CROSS STATION OPPOSITE THE KING WILLIAM IN VILLIERS STREET TOMORROW
—
TUESDAY
—3
PM SHARP
.

Who would read it? And who would the reader believe the author to be? It was ten minutes to three when he took a table in the window of the saloon bar of the King William, from where he might survey that narrow street running down to the river. On the far side, station arches supported the booking-hall and the platforms, where the South-Eastern Railway runs out across Hungerford Bridge. Below the station, Villiers Street with its little shops was like a busy canyon in perpetual shadow.

The crowds that flowed between the Strand and the Embankment would have daunted any man who lacked the trained eye of Sherlock Holmes. He had practised his art until, if you had filled Trafalgar Square with as many people as it would hold, he could pick out a single face in an eagle's sweep.

A few minutes before the hour, a man appeared at the top of the street. This was a burly fellow dressed in a dog's-tooth check suit that belonged to the enclosure at Epsom or Newmarket, a sporting fashion-plate from the
Winning Post
or the
Pink 'Un
. Holmes did not suppose for one moment that this uncouth figure was the likeness of Major Montgomery. The tout waited for a moment, looking down the street, and then said something over his shoulder to another man who was still out of view round the corner. Then his companion appeared, a dapper dark-haired man of slight build in a frock-coat, grey trousers, spats, and lemon-yellow waistcoat. This ill-assorted pair began to walk slowly down Villiers Street towards the arches. The racing-man had a rolling gait, like a sailor ashore, the other walked with the precise steps of a dancing-master. Sherlock Holmes uttered to himself that quiet chuckle which usually boded ill to someone. He recognized his quarry.

The two strollers were looking at a man who was walking carefully towards them from the Embankment. Holmes watched this tall figure with ginger hair and pale freckled face. He heard in his mind the words spoken behind him the previous evening, as he was seized in the offices of ‘Archer & Co'.

‘So y'would, would you, my fine dandy!'

Sergeant Meiklejohn walked slowly towards the other two men. He came to a halt before them. The dapper dancing-master engaged him in conversation, while the heavily-built tout scanned the street as if to see whether they were observed. At this distance, watching them through the interstices of the moving crowd, it would be impossible to gather much of their exchanges. Yet Holmes saw all that he needed from the expressions on their faces. He knew that Meiklejohn and the natty dresser were each asking whether the other had left a message in pencil on the blotter, an urgent appeal which brought them together now. And now each was shaking his head to deny it. Presently they were asking one another how it came to be there. They were looking about them as they spoke, trying to do so unobtrusively, waking too late to the trap that had been laid for them. Then something else was being discussed. Holmes guessed that it was the blank half-sheet of paper found by one man in the envelope where the other man had left a different message.

They were taking leave of one another now, carefully but quickly. Holmes stood up behind the barroom window, watching through the crowds, intending to follow the dapper little man and the racecourse tout. Meiklejohn was nothing to him now. As he stepped into the street, however, he glanced down towards the river and saw a fourth man, Inspector George Clarke. Whether Clarke had been in company with Meiklejohn it was impossible to say. He was nowhere near Meiklejohn, as he handed a copper to the newsboy, took his paper, and walked slowly down to the Embankment and Scotland Yard.

The two men whom Holmes had in sight used every familiar tactic to shake off an unseen pursuer. They stopped, walked back, then turned and walked on again, to see if this would make their shadow reveal himself. Holmes outflanked them, watching from the eminence of the stairs to the railway platforms. They could not be sure there was anyone on their trail at that moment but, for safety's sake, they now split up and went in opposite directions. Holmes had expected this and had decided long before that the dapper fellow was the one he would track. By now, however, Holmes bore less resemblance to the man who had tracked his quarry from the King William. His coat was reversed to show the shabbiest gabardine waterproof and his natty cap had undergone a transformation into a working-man's ‘cheese-cutter'. He wore heavy spectacles whose lenses had the thickness of a counting-house clerk's with failing sight. Most of all, however, it was the metamorphosis of the upright carriage of Sherlock Holmes into a pathetic round-shouldered drudge which concealed him most effectively.

At first, the game was played out in Charing Cross Station. For twenty minutes, there was a curious hide-and-seek as the dancing-master performed a pattern of turns and diversions to shake off any possible pursuer, leading the way round the busy platforms, over the footbridge, down to the washroom, through the booking-hall where he purchased a ticket and walked at once past the barrier on to a platform. Holmes watched, sure that a man who intended catching a train would not have bothered to lead him such a dance beforehand. He was proved wrong as the quarry opened a carriage door of the first train to pull in.

Now it was the turn of Sherlock Holmes to stride across the booking-hall and take a ticket for Dover. With a moment to spare, he passed the ticket-barrier and entered the last carriage. The train rumbled slowly across the iron span of the long river bridge and pulled in at Waterloo. There was a slamming of doors and then a pause. By use of a pocket-mirror, Holmes surveyed the length of the train without showing his head outside the carriage. The whistle blew. At the last moment, a door at the far end flew open and the dapper man sprang out. Holmes leapt for the concealment of a laden luggage-trolley before the other could finish closing the carriage door and turn to look at him.

Cat and mouse began their game again, the cat never quite seen by the mouse but scented none the less. For a moment, Holmes lost his man yet knew the way he must have gone. Striding up the covered stairs of the footbridge, two at a time, he reached the top and to his surprise found the crossway empty above the tracks below. There had surely been time only for his prey to reach the first stairs down to the next platform. Holmes sprinted and then descended cautiously, alarmed to find the platform also empty. On the far side of the next railway track, however, a train was pulling out on the return to Waterloo. The dapper man was waving to him from behind the window of the first carriage.

Another hunter might have lost the game in that half-hour. For Holmes, so much had been won. His quarry had striven with ill-concealed desperation to shake off his tracker. Most important to him was the determination of the quarry to return to Charing Cross. Why such resolve? What bound him to that railway station? Was there a train to be caught to another destination in London—or England? No, for every train that leaves Charing Cross goes to Waterloo. Was there a confederate to be met? No, because the half hour when that might have happened was now gone. What else? Why must he return, as if to his home? Because it was his home! What place could be more useful to a man who links the City of Paris Loan and insures against losses on the English turf in Northumberland Street? Where was closer to the phantom Royal Bank of London in the Strand—even to Scotland Yard?

Like a grand excrescence in the mind of Sherlock Holmes blossomed the Parisian opera-house splendour of the Charing Cross Hotel.

Twenty minutes later, his appearance restored to dignity and with a newspaper in his hand, Sherlock Holmes was reflected by a gilt-columned mirror between pillars of raspberry-coloured marble. In a moment more the reflection was gone and he sat patiently near the door of the writing-room, behind the wide concealing pages of the
Morning Post
. Yet his eyes never left the mirrors. Almost an hour passed, before he caught a momentary reflection of a man tipping his hat to an elderly woman in black velvet, as she walked forward with the aid of a stick. There was no mistaking the trim, chivalrous figure in his suit of cream linen, the moustache neat and the eyebrows trim. If he had been holding a cane just then, he might have swung it with the air of a boulevardier.

From behind a pillar, Holmes caught the murmurs at the reception-desk.

‘The Marquis Montmorency …'

‘“Poodle” Benson, as I live and breathe,' said Holmes softly, for his own benefit.

VI

‘They tell me, Lestrade, that you are an honest man.'

‘I hope that I may prove so, Mr Holmes,' said the Scotland Yard officer without a flicker of resentment.

‘Quite. To prove the truth of that hope is the reason for your presence. You are also said to be an intelligent and resourceful detective officer. Too many of your colleagues are apt to give the alarm everywhere and discover nothing.'

‘That must be for others to judge, sir,' Lestrade said guardedly.

‘You may depend upon it that they will.'

Such were the first words spoken directly between Holmes and the future Inspector Lestrade of the Special Branch and the Criminal Investigation Department, as the two men occupied a cab in the forecourt of the Charing Cross Hotel that evening. It was dark and a light drizzle was falling through the mist. Wet cobbles caught the lamplight in wavering pools. Through this gloom, the profile of Lestrade's face appeared still leaner and grimmer. Holmes was wearing his cloak and ear-flapped travelling-cap, a leather bag beside him, labelled for the night-ferry via Folkestone and Boulogne.

He turned a little in his seat to look directly at the policeman.

‘Your orders for the next few days are quite clear in your mind?'

‘What Mr Williamson and Mr Mycroft Holmes told me at the Home Office is plain, sir. I am to carry out your instructions, provided they are not manifestly illegal. If I have doubts in the matter, I am to communicate with Mr Williamson through Mr Mycroft Holmes at the Home Office department.'

‘I could almost wish,' said Holmes piously, ‘that it had been possible to leave my brother out of this business. I suppose, however, that would not have done.'

‘As to that,' Lestrade said enigmatically, ‘it would not be for me to say.'

‘Very well, then these are your orders and the reasons for them. For as long as I am allowed to give you instructions, you will be employed at the reception-desk of the Charing Cross Hotel, or in whatever other employment is most prudent.'

‘As a clerk, sir?' There was no mistaking Lestrade's alarm. ‘I know not the first thing about hotel clerking, Mr Holmes!'

‘You are supposed to be there on approval in whatever capacity is necessary. You will not be required to work alone and there is only one person, in a very senior position and entirely trustworthy, who knows your true identity.'

‘And that is all I am to do, sir?'

Holmes made an effort at infinite patience.

‘You will earn your wages, Lestrade. At this moment, a most dangerous criminal conspiracy embraces both Paris and London. Therefore, one of us must be here and the other in Paris. I shall go to Paris tonight, being familiar with the language, the city, and the officials whose assistance may be necessary to us. I shall probably be away for a few days. What needs to be done here is merely work-a-day but it must be done none the less.'

In the reflected oil-light, Lestrade looked apprehensive.

‘Done by me?'

‘Of course. The Charing Cross Hotel, estimable in many ways, is convenient for international criminals, standing as it does at the heart of London yet so close to the route to Paris and the Channel ports. I have just spent two hours at the Home Office. My brother has information of a new conspiracy against James Lester Valence, a most powerful man in Australian commerce. That is all we know at present. He is by no means the first victim of these scoundrels but stands head and shoulders above the rest. Valence made and lost a fortune in the gold-fields, then made another from building railroads in New South Wales and Queensland. He was in London six weeks ago, staying at this very hotel to which he is about to return. I cannot protect him for the moment, therefore you must. You will report every day to the Home Department and will receive your instructions there. Do not attempt to communicate with me in any other way. Do not go anywhere near Scotland Yard. As for Valence, he has been touring in Europe, and is due here in a day or two. I understand he is soon to be married. Whatever villainy is plotted against him, the Charing Cross Hotel appears to be the scene of it. Such is the extent of my information.'

‘Does that information include a photograph of him?' Lestrade asked hopefully.

‘I have not seen one. However, you could scarcely mistake him. The description I have from my brother is of a man taller than you or I, as well as a good deal more bulky. He wears a black and somewhat bristling beard. His face, such as one may see of it, is marked by the outdoor life of sun and wind. When going out, he carries as a matter of habit a black ebony stick with a silver band, embossed with a small griffin and the initials “J. L. V.” '