The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (46 page)

Outside Regnier's, with its old-fashioned shopfront and gilt mouldings, Montmorency paused to watch a man taking the jewels on their velvet display-cushions from the window, in preparation for the shop to close. Before the metal grille was put across the window, however, the marquis had slipped inside. Lestrade could see him talking to the frock-coated shopman. After a few minutes, the customer came out and made his way back to Charing Cross.

Whatever suspicions Lestrade might have had about the purchase were put to rest by Montmorency's insistence that he would take no money until he handed over the necklace. Nor could it be doubted that he behaved with perfect openness and honesty to Valence in reporting the afternoon's visit. That evening, as they sat down to cards in the dark-walled smoking-room, Lestrade heard him say to the Australian, ‘I paid a call on Regnier this afternoon. There will be no difficulty at all in the transaction. If you choose, of course, you may just write a little note, authorizing me to collect and pay for the item on your behalf. As for your discount, however, it is as safe as if it were in your pocket at this moment.'

Perhaps this was as well. They played baccarat that evening and, by the end of it, Valence was quite twenty pounds down. However, he had won as much on other occasions and could scarcely begrudge such a sum to his benefactors. Lestrade could not, in all conscience, see any trickery in the game. He was familiar with the most common ruse at baccarat whereby, under cover of his sleeve, a man might slip an extra counter over the line, or not, to adjust his stake according to the fall of the cards. There was not the least sign of that.

Indeed, Lestrade thought, he would have believed entirely in the good faith of the Marquis Montmorency, had it not been for the curious business of the nobleman entering his friend's room to inspect the stubs of his cigarettes in so furtive a manner.

On the following day, Mycroft Holmes, behind his wide desk, the green spaces of St James's Park filling the window behind him, showed a magisterial indifference to Lestrade's report.

‘One is apt to think that men who play cards for greed and are fleeced deserve it,' he observed at one moment. ‘As for the matter of the necklace, I opine that it is a service being performed so that Mr Valence will feel obliged to remain at the card-table in a game where the others take money off him. After all, they have him as a companion now whether he likes it or no, do they not? I daresay my brother would take a different view of the matter. For a third time, by the way, he asks after Mr Valence's left thumb.'

‘It is a thumb,' Lestrade said bluntly, ‘that is all it is.'

Mycroft Holmes heaved his untidy bulk from the chair and shook his large head, like a dog coming from water.

‘No, it is not all. If my brother occupies himself about it to this extent, you may be sure that it is not all. However, I can make no more of it. Nor can I answer your question about the ends of the cigarettes. There is a war breaking out between the Khedive of Egypt and Abyssinia, into which we may all be drawn. Turkey threatens to make trouble between ourselves, the Russians, and the German Empire by carrying out massacres in Bulgaria. It would be expedient if you and my brother should realize that I have more to occupy myself with than left thumbs and cigarette ends. Good day to you.'

However, the suspicion that Valence was being held at the card-table and fleeced by a specious promise of discount on a necklace was wired to Sherlock Holmes. The reply came almost at once.

REQUIRE FACTS NOT CONJECTURES STOP. CEASE OBSERVATION OF LEFT THUMB OF VALENCE STOP. HOLMES HOTEL CRILLON
.

IX

Valence's losses were little enough at the card-table on the next day. Indeed, for much of the game he was ahead. The day following that, he lost moderately. If he took this disappointment philosophically, it was because his friend Montmorency was able to inform him that the diamond necklace would be ready next day and might be collected in the afternoon. Valence assured the amiable nobleman that he would make arrangements to reimburse him for the cost immediately.

Lestrade gathered enough of these exchanges to know that the purchase was almost complete. Next day, towards the end of the afternoon, Valence retired as usual to his room and the card-table was deserted. Montmorency approached the polished mahogany sweep of the reception-desk in the hotel's marble foyer. Lestrade heard him ask that his bill should be made up in readiness for his departure on the following morning. Then the dapper marquis walked out into the Strand and called a cab from the station rank.

Try as he might, Lestrade could still see nothing worse than a hint of sharp practice at the card-table. Even this was more than balanced by Montmorency's act of generosity. As for the racing-man in the dog's-tooth check, he was scarcely a proper companion for a marquis. However, as Lestrade remarked to me years afterwards, the association seemed no more questionable than that of the celebrated Marquess of Queensberry and his kind with the riff-raff of the sporting world and the smoking-room. The detective officer had half made up his mind to follow this benevolent marquis, out of curiosity, when a bell on the panel rang and he was summoned by name to Mr Valence's room.

According to the account given in the papers of Sherlock Holmes, events now followed with great rapidity. The Marquis Montmorency kept his promise to the last detail. He ordered the cab to wait for him in Bond Street, outside Regnier's shop, while he went in and greeted the jeweller with unfeigned geniality. He then wrote his cheque, took the necklace, and returned to the Charing Cross Hotel. There, in company with his friend the racing-man, he asked at the reception-desk whether it might be convenient to call upon Mr Valence, who was expecting him. The clerk inquired and replied that it would be most convenient but that Mr Valence would be grateful for a delay of ten minutes while he finished dressing for dinner.

When this interval was over, the two men were shown up to Mr Valence's room by a page-boy. The lad knocked and was summoned by a voice from within. The Marquis Montmorency and his friend entered, surprised to find that Valence was not alone. Beside him stood the wiry grim-faced figure of the smoking-room attendant, whom the card-players had laughed at behind his back as the hotel's drunken butler. Most disconcertingly, for the marquis and his friend, James Lester Valence, gold prospector and railroad-builder, had lost his Australian voice. He had acquired a more precise and rather clipped English accent.

‘Lock the door, if you please, Lestrade,' he said crisply.

The cadaverous butler obeyed, stepping round the other two men to do so.

‘One cannot be too careful in dealings of such value, after all,' Valence observed for the benefit of Montmorency and his friend.

This seemed to reassure them a little.

‘You have the necklace?' Valence asked, raising his eyebrows at Montmorency.

The dapper little nobleman drew a leather case from his pocket and handed it to the Australian.

‘Eighteen hundred pounds, sir.'

Valence nodded as he opened the case and drew up from its velvet a ripple of glass fire that hung and swayed from his fingers.

‘Admirable,' he said softly, ‘wholly admirable. Shall we say—not eighteen hundred pounds, of course—perhaps eighteen pounds?'

The racing-man seemed about to start forward at Valence but Montmorency laid a hand on his friend's arm and smiled at the Australian's pleasantry.

‘I can promise you, Mr Valence, that I have a receipt from Messrs Regnier in my pocket for eighteen hundred pounds.'

‘I do not doubt it,' said Valence politely. ‘Nor do I doubt that somewhere else you have a receipt for eighteen pounds—or whatever the price may be—for a set of imitation glass, made up as a replica of the true necklace. True diamonds do not sparkle in the light as these do, they glow in twilight and obscurity.'

Montmorency stared at him.

‘Then I have been as much deceived as you, sir.'

‘I do not doubt it, though not deceived in quite the way that you imagine.'

‘I should like a word with that fellow Regnier!'

‘You shall have one, never fear. Mr Regnier, if you please!'

The door leading to the bathroom opened and the jeweller appeared.

‘I regret that you were kept waiting downstairs, sir,' said Holmes to Montmorency, ‘but it was necessary that Mr Regnier should be one of our company. Be so kind, Mr Regnier, to repeat to these two gentlemen what you have already told Lestrade and myself.'

The jeweller cleared his throat and began.

‘A little while ago I was visited by you, Mr Holmes …'

‘Holmes?'

The Australian, with a slight wince of discomfort, peeled aside the bristling black beard to reveal that familiar aquiline profile.

‘Though I have had some little theatrical success in my youth, even playing the role of Horatio on the London stage with the Sasanoff Company,' he remarked wryly, ‘I have never mastered the art of drawing off a beard without pain.'

Next he raised from his head the unkempt pate of dark hair and laid it aside.

‘Now, Mr Benson,' he said, ‘forgive me but I cannot continue to call you the Marquis Montmorency without some feeling of mirth. Nor would Major Montgomery serve you as a title any longer. Let us resume the narrative. I beg your pardon, Mr Regnier.'

The jeweller began again.

‘I was visited by Mr Holmes who informed me that a plot by professional swindlers was in preparation against himself, masquerading as a wealthy Australian gentleman. With the knowledge of the authorities, I gave my consent to assist in frustrating this. A few days later, I was visited by a man who gave his name as the Marquis Montmorency and who I now know to be Mr Harry Benson. He explained that he wished to buy a very fine diamond necklace which I then had in stock. Mr Holmes had already spoken to me of this article. Mr Benson, as the Marquis Montmorency, said he would pay for this necklace with a cheque. However, he would leave both the necklace and the cheque with me until such time as the latter had been cleared and the funds were in my account. How could I have any objection to that arrangement?'

‘How, indeed?' Holmes murmured.

‘However, gentlemen, the Marquis Montmorency also wished to have a good imitation set made, so that his wife might generally keep the original necklace at her bank and have the imitation at home for less formal occasions. It is not an uncommon request and the imitation, being mere glass and paste, was easily done. This afternoon, as agreed, the Marquis Montmorency came with his cheque. He left the diamond necklace as a pledge for the cheque's clearance and took away the imitation. Naturally I wrote him two receipts, one for each article.'

There was a moment of total silence.

‘And so,' said Holmes at last, ‘Mr Benson brings us the imitation necklace with a receipt for the genuine one. In respect of this, Mr Valence, as he believed me to be, would pay him eighteen hundred pounds in cash. A vast sum of money for an imitation that is worth next to nothing. In due course, Mr Regnier would discover that the cheque had not the value of the paper it was written on. However, he would still have his diamond necklace and would not be much worse off. It was Mr Valence who was the target of the conspirators.'

The dapper little man's eyes flashed with anger.

‘No, sir! It is I who am the victim and you who are the conspirator! You are a prime mover of the plot!'

‘I baited the trap,' said Holmes modestly, ‘and the bait was taken.'

But Harry Benson had now recovered his self-command.

‘I do not think, Mr Holmes, that such a case of trickery or entrapment would stand a moment's examination in court, once your chicanery was revealed. You might very well find yourself in prison.'

Holmes wiped the Australian climate from his cheeks with a handkerchief.

‘You may well be right,' he said cheerfully. ‘Indeed, I have always rather suspected that I should find myself in prison one day. Yet I think in this case that the forgery—the cheque signed to Mr Regnier as the Marquis Montmorency—would be more than enough evidence to put the boot on the other foot, as the saying has it. As it happens, I am little concerned for that. My client is the Comtesse de Goncourt, or to be more accurate Mr William Abrahams. My object has been to flush out those who sought to cheat that lady of many thousands of pounds. When you stand your trial, Mr Benson, it will not be for the necklace swindle but for a grander design represented by Archer & Co. of Northumberland Street and the City of Paris Loan, perpetrated from the rue Réamur. In the world of the racing certainty, a single forged cheque passed to Mr Regnier will come in a very poor third.'

Billy Kurr, the racing-man, had so far watched these proceedings with a dumb incredulity. Now he reached into his pocket and drew from it a small but efficient-looking revolver. Benson swung round to Lestrade.

‘Give me the key to this door!'

Lestrade's features were set more like a bulldog than ever.

‘Put that gun down!' he snapped at Kurr.

‘Give Mr Benson the key, Lestrade,' Holmes said calmly.

‘I shall do no such thing.'

‘By the authority of Superintendent Williamson, you are under my orders until this matter is concluded. The lives of all those in this room are in my keeping. Now, give him the key!'

There was such rage in the face of the Scotland Yard man that Holmes thought he would still refuse, or else make some move to wrest the revolver from Kurr's grip. However, the fight seemed to go out of Lestrade and he tamely handed the key to Benson. The ‘Marquis Montmorency' unlocked the door, ushered his companion through it, then locked it securely on the outside.

Lestrade rattled the handle of the door unavailingly.

‘I owe you an apology,' Holmes said equably. ‘However, it was necessary that you should think me in Paris. Brother Mycroft connived in getting the telegrams relayed. Had you known of my Australian masquerade, I feared your behaviour might have betrayed it.'