The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures (24 page)

With that he retired for the night, and there the singular adventures of the Grice Patersons might have remained, but for the surprising sequel.

We were seated at breakfast the following morning when there came the sound of raised voices from the hallway outside. Moments later, the door was flung open, and, ignoring the protests of the manager, in strode a gigantic figure, whose tangled ginger hair and beard identified him instantly as MacGlevin, closely followed by a police constable. The Laird of Uffa’s eyes passed quickly over the assembled diners, until they alighted upon the luckless Grice Patersons.

“There they are!” he roared. “There are the villains! Arrest those men at once, MacPherson!”

Like everyone else, Grice Paterson had been frozen into immobility by this sudden, amazing irruption, his egg-spoon poised half-way to his lips, but now he sprang to his feet.

“How dare you!” he cried angrily. “What is the meaning of this?”

“The meaning,” returned MacGlevin in an equally heated voice, “is that you have abused my hospitality. I took you in out of the dark night, and you have returned this favour by treacherously stealing that which is most dear to my clan, the MacGlevin Buckle!”

“This is nonsense,” snorted Grice Paterson. “I have stolen nothing. I have never in my life taken that which was not mine. Why, I have never even seen your wretched buckle!”

MacGlevin’s face assumed a dark, angry hue, and the veins on his temples stood out like whipcord.

“How dare you refer to the heirloom of my family in those insulting terms!” he roared. “You despicable villain!”

How long this aggressive exchange might have continued, it is difficult to say. Certainly, MacGlevin appeared on the verge of imposing his huge physical presence on the little Edinburgh lawyer. But Constable MacPherson placed his considerable bulk between them, and managed to calm the atmosphere a little.“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he said, “let us discuss the matter like the civilized men we are!”

The facts of the matter were soon told. The Laird of Uffa had last seen his family’s heirloom during the previous afternoon, when he had been re-arranging some of the exhibits in his museum. He had not entered the museum with Mr Grice Paterson and his son, but had given them a lantern and told them to look round by themselves if they wished. They had done so for two or three minutes before rejoining him for a hot toddy. Later he had entered the museum to fetch a book, and had found the buckle gone. It had not been protected from theft in any way, but had lain, uncovered, upon a velvet cushion, atop a small stand. No-one but the Grice Patersons had entered the house all day, and nor were there any signs of a forced entry. The case against the Edinburgh men seemed, then, on circumstantial evidence at least, to be conclusive, although, having conversed with them at length the previous evening, I could not really believe either of them to be guilty of so mean a crime. For their part, they declared that they had not observed the buckle the previous evening, having taken only a cursory glance around the museum.

The
impasse
was broken in a surprising manner. Sherlock Holmes abruptly pushed back his chair from the breakfast-table and rose to his feet. In a very few words, he introduced himself, and although he had not then achieved the celebrity he was later to enjoy, the name was recognized instantly by several of those there.

“I followed the Maupertuis case in the papers,” said the policeman with respect, but Holmes waved his hand dismissively.

“I think it would be as well to examine the scene of this crime before any arrests are contemplated,” said he, in a voice of quiet authority. “It may well be that the circumstances there will decide the question of guilt or innocence once and for all, and may also suggest some other line of inquiry.”

“Suggest fiddlesticks!” cried MacGlevin in contempt, but Constable MacPherson nodded his head.

“I canna arrest anybody merely on your say-so, Mr MacGlevin,” said he. “This gentleman is correct. We must examine the scene. You will favour us with your assistance, Mr Holmes?”

My friend assented, and MacPherson quickly made his arrangements. Holmes and he had a brief discussion, during which my friend made several specific suggestions, the upshot being that two of the local fishermen who were special constables were to take charge of matters in Kilbuie in our absence, and the
Puffin
was to be temporarily impounded. Then MacGlevin, MacPherson, the elder Grice Paterson, Holmes and myself set off for the islands in the steam launch,
Alba
.

The black tower of MacGlevin’s abode loomed above us as we approached Uffa, gaunt and solitary. Beyond it stretched the length of the bleak and featureless island, its surface a mottled dun colour. It was a strange and inhospitable place to make one’s home, and perhaps the most unlikely spot in which my friend had ever investigated a crime. A hundred yards or so to the north were further, smaller islands, the sea breaking in white foam over their jagged rocks, and, perhaps two hundred yards to the south, the nearest point on the mainland, an area of tumbled rocks and tangled shrubs.

MacGlevin brought his little vessel alongside a small and rickety wooden jetty, where his servant, a short, spry elderly man with faded ginger hair, was waiting to take the rope, and we climbed ashore. A steep little pathway brought us to the front door of the building. The single tower, perhaps twenty feet square, rose high above us, its little windows set in deep embrasures. At the back of the tower was a long, low, single-storeyed wing, with a shallow-pitched roof. To the left of the tower was a wide, flat grassy area, with piles here and there of driftwood and sawn logs, and at the other side of this open space stood the jumble of lichen-blotched stones which was all that remained of the early Christian settlement.

We followed MacGlevin inside, and through to the museum, which occupied half of the single-storey wing, and which appeared as impregnable as a fortress. The walls were of stone, immensely thick, and hung all about with swords and shields, maps, paintings and tartans. High up along the left-hand wall was a row of windows, and in the sloping roof above was a series of small sky-lights, all of which had black iron bars across. The windows had all been fastened on the inside for the previous two days, the laird informed us, the sky-lights did not open at all, and there was no other door than the one through which we had entered, from the living-quarters of the house. Scattered about the room were several tables and cases containing exhibits, and in the middle stood a white-painted wooden pedestal, about a foot square and four feet high. Atop this was a red velvet cushion, depressed slightly in the middle. This was the usual resting-place of the MacGlevin Buckle, from which it had mysteriously disappeared.

Directing us to stand back, Holmes examined the cushion, the pedestal and the area round about with minute care, occasionally murmuring to himself. As he did so, there was a glint in his eye and an energy in his manner which it thrilled me to see. Like a weary hound who gets the scent of the chase in his nostrils, Holmes’s keen, incisive nature had been kindled afresh by the task before him, and had quite thrown off the lassitude of former days. Grice Paterson caught my eye, raised his eyebrow questioningly, and seemed about to speak, but I shook my head and put my finger to my lips.

“The buckle was not fastened to the cushion in any way?” queried Holmes of MacGlevin. “No? But it appears that something was, for there is a little tear in the surface, as if something has been forcibly ripped from it.” MacGlevin stepped forward to see, and declared that he had not noticed such a tear before.

Holmes was down on his hands and knees when he uttered a little cry of satisfaction as he picked something up from the floor, a couple of feet to the side of the pedestal. He continued his search for a while, without finding anything else, and presently he stood up and held out his hand. Upon the palm lay a tiny grey sphere of metal, little more than an eighth of an inch in diameter.

MacGlevin shook his head dismissively, and shrugged his shoulders. “It must have fallen from someone’s pocket,” he suggested. “I cannot see that it is of any significance. Why, any of my visitors might have dropped it!”

Holmes gave a little chuckle. “Really, Mr MacGlevin,” said he; “if you wish your buckle to be returned to you, you would do well not to dismiss the evidence so quickly. This interesting little sphere – ”

“Is a piece of lead shot of some kind,” said Constable MacPherson in a thoughtful voice “and there’s little opportunity for shooting rabbits in here, Mr MacGlevin!”

Holmes laughed. “There is no more to be seen here,” said he. “Let us now examine the exterior of the building.”

We followed him outside, and round to the back. Where the single-storey wing joined the rear wall of the tower at a right angle, there was a soft patch of muddy ground, to which Holmes devoted his attention.

“I reap the benefits of investigating a crime in such an unfrequented spot,” said he, in good spirits. “There are some wonderfully clear prints here. Your shoe size, Mr Grice Paterson?”

“Seven.”

“I thought as much. And your son’s will be something similar. These prints are too large to be yours, and too small to be Mr MacGlevin’s. Your servant, Mr MacGlevin?”

“Wattie? A tiny fellow, as you saw, with feet to match.”

“Which eliminates him also, then. It rained heavily on Wednesday night, so these prints must have been made yesterday. You did not have any visitors?”

“I never open my house to visitors on a Thursday.”

“Then these are the prints of the thief.”

We all pressed forward to see. A clear impression of a right foot, the toe pointing into the angle of the building, was crossed by another, slightly deeper print of the same shoe, the toe pointing away from the wall.

“He has climbed the building here,” said Holmes. “The deeper print was made when he jumped back down. Might this be where you saw your ghostly figure last night, Mr Grice Paterson?”

“It could very well have been,” replied the lawyer. “It crossed the path from somewhere near here towards the ruins over there.”

“What figure is this?” demanded MacGlevin.

“We thought we saw something,” Grice Paterson returned, “but did not mention it lest you thought us foolish.”

MacGlevin snorted, but made no comment.

While they were speaking, Holmes had been examining the wall closely. Presently his hand found a projecting stone some way above his head, and he managed to haul himself up. He quickly clambered over the gutter and onto the shallow-pitched roof of the museum wing, where he moved carefully along the slates, examining each skylight in turn.

“Oh, this is pointless!” said MacGlevin, who was becoming impatient once more. “Even if someone did climb up there, the sky-lights don’t open, the panes of glass are too small for anyone to pass through, and they’re all barred on the inside, anyway.”

“Nevertheless,” Holmes called back in an agreeable tone, “someone has recently been tampering with this one. The lead strip round the edge has been bent back, the putty chipped away, and the nails … Ah!” He had been looking behind him, down the roof to the guttering. Now he carefully reached down and plucked from the gutter a small sliver of something metallic, which he held up between his finger and thumb and examined closely. “If you would be so good as to join me,” he called to MacPherson, “I should be most obliged.”

The sky had been growing darker for some time, and MacGlevin, Grice Paterson and I hurried for shelter as there came a sudden downpour of rain, leaving Holmes and MacPherson in conversation upon the roof. The shower soon blew over, and twenty minutes later, after a cup of tea, we went back out to find that the clouds had parted and the sun was shining. Holmes and MacPherson were nowhere to be seen, and we were wondering what had become of them, when there came a shout from below, and we turned to see a small rowing-boat approaching the little harbour below the castle, with Holmes and Macpherson in it. The policeman was pulling sturdily on the oars, while Homes sat in the stern, placidly smoking his pipe.

“We have just had a little run-round in the boat,” he explained, as they stepped ashore.

“And?” said MacGlevin.

“The case is now complete.”

We returned to Kilbuie to find the hotel in tumult. Luggage of all kinds was heaped up in confusion in the entrance-hall, so that we had to shuffle sideways to get past.

Doctor Oliphant ran up to us as we entered, his face a picture of agitation.

“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded of MacPherson in a shrill voice. “It is absolutely vital that I reach home this evening. I have an important lecture to deliver in Edinburgh tomorrow night, and I must have a day to prepare my notes. The coach is not here, and when I inquire why not, I am informed that it is held by order of the police!” His voice rose to a breathless cry. “This is an outrage! You have no right to detain a public coach! If it does not leave soon, we shall miss the connecting train!”

Murdoch MacLeod stepped forward, wringing his hands with anxiety.

“What
is going
on?” he queried in a hopeless voice. “Can you explain, Constable?”

“This is highly irregular,” said Hamish Morton. “They tell us the coach cannot leave, but my wife and I must be back in Glasgow tonight, and Mrs Baird Duthie, too, is anxious to be away. Should we make our own arrangements?”

MacPherson pulled an enormous watch out of his pocket, and consulted it for a moment.

“You’ll all get where you’re going,” he said shortly. “If you would just step through into the dining-room for a moment – ”

The hotel servants were setting the tables for lunch, and looked up in surprise as we all filed in and arranged ourselves as best we could, here and there about the room. Old Mrs Baird Duthie was the last to shuffle in, Angus Johnstone supporting her elbow. His brother brought a chair forward for her and relieved her of her stick, and she sat down heavily. All eyes were on Sherlock Holmes, who stood patiently until everyone was settled, his hands behind his back.