The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures (33 page)

“Mr Holmes, what is it?” asked the professor, anxiously. “What have you found?”

“Just one moment, sir.”

“You mentioned the plant occurs on heathland. Then the madman must have plucked it from Hampstead Heath which is across the road from my home.”

“Ah, not necessarily, Professor. The plant is yielding a clue to as its origins.”

From what I could see, tiny particles had fallen from the leaf when scraped, which peppered the white calling card with black. Holmes peering at these most closely, carefully drew the flat of his penknife blade from left to right across the card.

“In fact,” said Holmes crisply. “The plant was taken from alongside the railway track that leads into King’s Cross station, which is served by The Great Western Railway company.”

“But how … I don’t understand.” The professor shook his head bemused.

“Professor, you will of course know that locomotives eject not only soot and smoke from the their funnels, but small fragments of unburnt coal. English coal is hard and does not leave any appreciable mark on paper; Welsh coal, however, is quite different. It is very soft and leaves a rich mark when drawn across paper – as richly dark as an artist’s charcoal. Here, I see many grit-like particles of coal adhering to the leaves of this plant. This tells me it was plucked close to a railway line. The coal is indeed Welsh – please note the black marks it has left on my calling card. Therefore, I conclude the plant was picked close to the broad gauge track which serves King’s Cross station. The Great Western Railway company being the only company to exclusively use Welsh coal to power its locomotives. I’d conclude, therefore, that the unfortunate Dr Columbine lives the life of a vagrant close by the aforementioned railway track.”

“Yes,” said the professor a trifle dazed. “But what course of action do we take now? How can we find the man?”

Instead of immediately replying, Holmes held up his hand for a moment, which caused both the Professor and I to lean forward expectantly, sensing Holmes had seen something of great relevance within the room. I tried to follow that razor sharp gaze; however, I discerned nothing amiss. Holmes continued briskly: “Leave that to me, Professor. I will alert my contacts and they will search every gin shop, ale house and railway arch until the man is found. Dwarfish, you say, with bushy red hair and sideburns?”

“Yes.”

“Come, Watson. There’s no time to lose.”

The professor was clearly anguished at being abandoned there to the mercy of the madman for yet another night. “But what if he returns tonight?”

“He will not?”

“You can be so sure?”

“Yes .”

“How?”

“Explanations must wait until tomorrow.”

I’d begun to rise from the sofa when I witnessed a most peculiar thing.

Holmes advanced to the door, as if eager to make his exit. Yet after opening the door to the hallway he abruptly turned
volte face
and then recrossed the room. Swiftly, silently he picked up
The Times
newspaper which had been lying on the table, and opened it noiselessly.

The professor from his chair, and I from the sofa, watched in utter bewilderment as Holmes quickly fanned the newspaper so as to separate the pages into a billowing white cloud of loose leaves.

My bewilderment turned to astonishment as Holmes produced a box of safety matches from his pocket, deftly struck one, then applied the brilliantly flaring match head to the corner of the newspaper.

The dry paper caught instantly.

With a look of triumph Holmes flung the burning newspaper into the firegrate where, instantly, the still substantial updraft of air drew the flames, smoke, fiery pages and all up into the cavernous throat of the chimney back.

Professor Hardcastle gaped in astonishment, his hands clutching the arms of his chair so fiercely they shook.

He must have thought my friend quite mad.

Indeed, I, too, began to suspect that world famous brain had begun to suffer the ill-effects of the furiously hot June day, when all of a sudden I heard a terrific scraping and thumping sound.

Not one moment later an object looking very much like a bundle of rags fell heavily from the chimney and into the grating in a splash of sparks and ashes from the still burning newspaper.

Hardly believing my two eyes I witnessed a pair of filthy arms erupt from the rag bundle. Before I could exclaim, an equally filthy pair of hands grasped Sherlock Holmes by the wrists.

“Professor!” called Holmes, wrestling the creature emerging from the rags. “Now is the time to test your gardener’s loyalty. We need his strong arms in here –
now!
“

Recovering from my astonishment, I rushed to my friend’s assistance as he endeavoured to draw forth from the fireplace a hissing, spitting demon of a creature, that kicked wildly with a pair of bare feet, its toes quite ink black with soot.

“Careful, Watson! He has a razor!”

Holmes, bracing his foot against the iron fire grating, gripped the two filthy wrists and pulled hard, taking care so the barber’s razor clutched in one evil looking hand did not pare his own flesh.

With a furious roar a head appeared from the flaps of cloth.

Beneath a shock of red hair was a white face set with two eyes that burned with the ferocity of lamps.

The creature was more ape than man; nevertheless, I grabbed hold of the madman’s collar and Holmes and I together hauled him from the fireplace. All the time he hissed and spat in a way that aroused in me equal portions of amazement and horror.

“Watson, grab the fellow’s wrist. Hold it … tightly, man. He’ll take off our heads with that razor. There … hold him. Tsk! Careful, this creature bites. Now where is … ah, there he is! Good man!”

The gardener had appeared at the professor’s command, and doing as he was bade, held the madman in his own two powerful arms as Holmes and I bound the madman at the feet and wrists with the curtain cords.

There at our feet, writhing, spitting, straining at the chords, his face distorting into fantastical grimaces, lay a tiny man – almost a dwarf of a man – with fiery red hair.

Holmes straightened, mastering his respiration. “This is … Dr Columbine.”

“Yes …” Professor Hardcastle had not yet recovered from his shock. “Yes … And the man was concealed inside the chimney breast all the while?”

“Indeed he was, Sir, and listening to every conversation within the room. Now, please ask your gardener to summon the police. Oh, Professor, perhaps you would be so kind to allow Clarkson to change back into his own boots, those on his feet are pinching his toes terribly.”

Once the police had taken the madman, straitjacketed and cursing, away, Holmes lit a cigarette and explained: “We know the poor demented Dr Columbine was hell bent on exacting his revenge upon you, Professor. Sadistically, he felt the need to prolong the torture before doing away with your son. So he contrived to hide himself away inside your house, then appear to come and go almost as if he could assume a cloak of invisibility. Accordingly, he’d place such obvious clues as the meteorite and the thyme inside your son’s bedroom. You might imagine the madman lying within the chimney breast, laughing silently to himself as he listened to you and your wife’s anxious conversations concerning the invisible intruder in this room. He would feast on your fears with nothing less than a vampiric intensity.”

“But how the dickens did he climb into the chimney, and remain concealed there for so long? Why did he not starve or die of thirst?”

“Gaining access to the house itself is child’s play. The catches on the windows can be slipped with even a table knife. Once inside the house – ah! – that’s when the peculiar obsessive mind of the madman comes into play. He desired more than to cause physical harm to your family, he wanted to be here to savour every expression of your discomfort and fear. So he hit upon the plan of hiding himself away in that very chimney breast. Which is not as outlandish as it first appears. It is summer, no fires, therefore, are lit in the grate. The chimney itself is quite clean of soot, you Professor, having had the chimney swept in the late spring as is the practice of households throughout the land. And perhaps you, yourself, will have witnessed in the past the chimney sweep sending his lad up inside the chimney to ensure it is thoroughly swept. Indeed, there are footholds and handholds inside the chimney flue to assist the child’s climb.” Holmes sniffed. “Though the practice of sending children up inside chimneys was, I might add, a thoroughly inhumane affair. Nevertheless, it demonstrates that if the chimney is large enough for a child to enter via the fireplace, it is also large enough to accommodate the dwarfish body of Doctor Columbine. See?” Holmes crouching by the fireplace, pointed up inside the chimney flue. “Up there he made himself a pretty little nest. On the ledges within the chimney are his supplies – water bottle, bread, biscuit, dried fruit. You’ll notice he didn’t chose any aromatic foods, the odours of which might have aroused your suspicions, Professor.” Holmes, lifted a small cloth bag from the hearth which had tumbled down with the madman. “Ah, and inside here we find a pair of clean pumps that he’d don on leaving the chimney breast to enable him to move not only quietly around the house, but to do so without leaving any sooty footprints upon the carpets. Before ascending to his hiding place once more he will have removed these, then climbed barefoot into the chimney.” Holmes dropped the bag onto the hearth. “Gentlemen, you’ll notice, also, he was able to devise something akin to a hammock, rigged from lines and blankets, where he would curl himself up quite comfortably to eavesdrop on you and your good wife’s frightened conversations.” Holmes stood up and briskly brush a speckling of soot from the palms of his hands. “So, Dr Columbine lay snug, and quite safe from discovery in the very heart of your home. After all, who would ever think to regularly examine the interior of their chimney breast?”

“Yes,” said Hardcastle. “I see how he did it – and why. But how in heaven’s name did you know the devil was concealed inside the chimney?”

Holmes walked slowly up and down the room. “As in science, the solution to a crime often arrives inexplicably in a flash of inspiration, what the scientific or criminal investigator must then do is extract the hard evidence to substantiate what betting men call a hunch.”

The professor’s eyes widened behind the pince-nez. “You mean you guessed immediately?”

“Let us say I explored, imaginatively, areas within a house that a man of very small stature might conceal himself, yet be able to eavesdrop, and learn what evil affect his machinations are having on the family. Of course, then I proceeded to seek clues. The man must eat and drink. No doubt he slipped out at night to steal small enough amounts that would not be noticeable from your larder. The man had become fond of drink.” Holmes gave a wave of a hand that took in the decanters on a table. “You’ll see a dirty thumbprint on the crystal stopper. I saw, also, fine speckles of soot upon the fireplace that escaped the attentions of your chimney sweep, and that were dislodged by Columbine’s entrance and egress to and from the chimney.”

“But you deduced from the thyme leaves that they’d been plucked from alongside the King’s Cross line?”

“Ah! My final test. The deduction was entirely spurious. There are no coal particles. The black particles upon the card are nothing more than common London soot. Moreover, you should have noticed the Great Western Railway is served not by King’s Cross station, but by Paddington station. Our viciously intelligent madman would have known that. And I realized that although our man could conceal himself inside the chimney, and not reveal his position by remaining silent, unmoving as a statue, even he had to breathe. And the more heavily he breathed, the more he moved within the chimney breast, even if it was nothing beyond a more pronounced rising and falling of his breast. Therefore, my patently absurd deduction wrongly linking the Great Western company with King’s Cross station was deliberate. In short, you can imagine the man curled tightly there in the throat of the chimney, eyes blazing in the darkness, clutching his stomach and laughing silently over the supposedly great criminologist Sherlock Holmes’s foolish errors; this caused a more pronounced movement of his body; enough to dislodge a single bread crumb from his clothing, or from the hammock arrangement, which I observed fall down into the hearth. Ergo: within the chimney breast was a living, breathing creature!”

“Then it is over?” asked Professor, hardly daring to believe it so. “My boy is safe?”

“Quite safe.” Holmes picked up The Rye Stone. “Here is your aerolite, Professor; your very own fallen star. For countless aeons it drifted through space only to happen by chance to fall to Earth in a streak of fire. It did not will itself to engage in such a spectacular and dramatic display; it happened by pure chance, gentlemen. Such a pure chance, perhaps as a microbe in our water supply, or perhaps minuscule defect at birth brought the fiery genius of Dr Columbine crashing down into such a vile state of madness. He was no lucid criminal. He did not will his evil, any more than the stone willed itself to fall to Earth in a fiery and dramatic display of flame and thunder. It is impudent of me to suggest such a thing; however, perhaps you and your brethren, Professor, might consider creating some modest trust fund to enable your once illustrious teacher to live out his final days in a sanatorium where he can dream harmlessly of what astronomical wonders might lie in the depths of our universe. Now, Watson, if you concur, lunch at the Spaniard!”

Part III

The 1890s

After “The Adventure of the Fallen Star”, Watson seems to have assiduously recorded a number of cases that followed on quite quickly: “The Stockbroker’s Clerk”, “The Man With the Twisted Lip” – a case which was considerably more than a three-pipe problem, “Colonel Warburton’s Madness” – one of the lost cases, and “The Engineer’s Thumb”. These and others during this busy period are listed in the appendix. Amongst them are the well-known cases of “The Boscombe Valley Mystery” and “The Red-Headed League” plus a few cases which are probably apocryphal though they have the ring of authenticity about them, including “The Adventure of the Megatherium Thefts” and “The Adventure of the First-Class Carriage”.