The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures (62 page)

“Who is he, Holmes?”

“What man would play such a game for its own sake? I sought a woman. You may have wondered what I found informative about the handwriting. Why, nothing, save that its use told me that the writer did not fear discovery. It followed that we dealt with no common criminal but with someone well acquainted with the highest circles in the land and who gambled that the identity of the thief would be nothing compared with the need to recover the letter. It also follows that the thief is unlikely to be British with a social position to be maintained at all costs. The Baroness Pilski is most certainly our thief.” He brandished the heavy volume in the air. “A redoubtable lady, Watson, deserving of our respect. Her late husband fled to England after the failed uprising of the Poles in ‘sixty-three and, of an émigré family herself, she married him in ‘seventy-nine at the age of twenty-three. For some years a lady-in-waiting to Lady X, she resigned the position ten years ago and has since employed her skills to wreak damage to whom and where she chose. You may recall I crossed swords with the lady in the curious incident of the Limping Jarvy.”

“Cannot Lestrade arrest her?”

“Tut, tut, our friend will be prepared for such a move. It is the letter we seek, Watson. No, we must wait upon events.”

We did not have long to do so. Three days later, at breakfast, Holmes, deep in his study of
The Times,
startled me with a glad cry. “By Jove, I have it!” His long forefinger pointed to a notice in the personal column.

“The butler is a reptile who sleeps in the shadows until summoned by Zeus,” I read. “A cipher, Holmes?”

“I think not, Watson. Until summoned bears no hint of the cipher about it. The butler of course refers to our faithful retainer, Zeus the Thunderer to
The Times,
and the reptile – well, that is surely obvious.” He had sprung to his feet and seized a timetable from the shelves.

“The Reptile House of the Zoological Gardens.” I rose eagerly, ready to depart at once.

“Pray resume your seat, my dear fellow. See, our express train departs at eleven forty-five and that is time enough for you to consume Mrs Hudson’s excellent muffin in its entirety.”

“But where are we going?”

“Why, to Cornwall.”

He would say no more, and shortly before midnight we were established in a tolerably comfortable inn after a drive from the small country railway station of St Erth. On our way I had glanced at a signpost, dimly lit by the cab’s lamp: “The Lizard”.

“The reptile, of course,” I exclaimed.

“It is always ‘of course’
after
my explanations, Watson, never before, I note.”

It was unusual for my friend to speak so sharply and a measure of the anxiety that preyed upon him.

Next day we found ourselves a small cottage on a grassy headland near Poldhu Bay, in order to further the fiction of complete rest for my friend. Rest? I have seldom known my friend so restless during the weeks that followed. As day followed day, and bluebells replaced the primroses, daffodils and violets in the tall grassy banks that bordered the quiet lanes, and still nothing appeared in the newspaper, I became concerned once more about his health. The ancient Cornish language, as I recounted in an earlier chronicle, did indeed arrest his attention at this time, convinced as he became that it was rooted in the Chaldean, but it could not sufficiently occupy that great mind. Had it not been for the horrible affair of the Devil’s Foot which so unexpectedly cropped up in the nearby hamlet of Tredannick Wollas, I should indeed have prescribed the rest Dr Agar had supposedly ordered. After the case was solved, however, he relapsed into the same silent preoccupation, with such feverish eyes that made me wonder if the Devil’s Foot root we had both imbibed in his quest for experimentation had not had lasting effects.

However I awoke one morning to a grey spring day, promising yet more of that soft and gentle rain with which Cornwall is so plentifully endowed, and Sherlock Holmes was standing by my bedside. Gone were the signs of feverishness, replaced now with the vital strength I had come to know so well.

“If ever I am presumptuous enough to place my services at the disposal of the nation, Watson, pray remind me of the faithful retainer. We return to London today, and by heaven I trust we are not too late.” He spoke gravely.

“For what reason, Holmes?” I struggled from my bed.

“Why, to study the Chaldean language, my dear fellow.” But the words were kindly spoken, not with the mocking sharpness of the last few weeks.

In a jolting restaurant carriage on the Great Western Railway I ventured to press for an explanation of our sudden departure. Even
The Times
had remained unread today.

“Come, Watson, surely with this excellent sole before us you can adopt Mr Auguste Didier’s methods, even if mine remain unfathomable to you?”

“Isn’t he that cook fellow at Plum’s Club for Gentlemen who solved one or two cases?”

“Indeed he is. I was curious enough to pay him a visit in ‘ninety-six after the remarkable affair at Plum’s. I cannot approve all his methods, since he will have it that detection is not purely a science, whereas I maintain that it is entirely a process of logical deduction. He holds that cookery is akin to detection in the assembling of ingredients and their selection, and fashioning into a palatable dish requires a measure of creativity. I doubt if Mrs Hudson would agree. However, consider, Watson, the ingredients in the puzzle before us.”

“The letter, the Baroness – ”

“And other bidders, Watson. That is deduction, not creativity. We may also deduce that the Baroness would assume that this affair is too important for my services not to be called upon. It follows, if the Baroness acknowledges this, then so do the other bidders. I have been an ass, Watson.” His bantering tone returned to its former anxiety.

“I assumed,” he continued, “that the message which sent us scurrying so precipitately to Cornwall was from the Baroness. It was not. It was placed in order to throw me off the scent, no doubt by another bidder, and it succeeded.”

“But nothing has appeared in
The Times.
”

Holmes replied sombrely: “How do we know the summons will be in
The Times
? The original instruction stated merely the daily newspapers. Fortunately Mrs Hudson is under instructions to throw nothing away in any circumstances. Let us trust that two months’ supply of the London newspapers from the
Daily Graphic
to the
Financial Times
awaits us in Baker Street. By God, Watson, if I have thrown our chance away – ’ He broke off, rare emotion consuming him.

“Who might such a bidder be?” I asked quietly.

“You will recall the matter of the Bruce Partington Plans in ‘ninety-five; Mycroft informed me there were few who would handle so important an affair. The only contenders worth considering were Adolph Meyer, Louis La Rothière and Hugo Oberstein. The villainous Oberstein now resides in prison, and thus we are left with La Rothière and Adolph Meyer.”

“Meyer must surely be our man,” I exclaimed.

“For once I agree, Watson. He still resides in London at 13 Great George Street, Westminster. La Rothière has been known to me for some years, and I believe we may dismiss him. I have made it my business, however, since ‘ninety-five, to find out what I can of Adolph Meyer. The gentleman is plump, portly, a friendly soul, with a passion for music though his execrable taste runs more to Mr John Philip Sousa than to the classical. He favours the tuba, not the violin. Inside that affable shell, however, beats the heart of as evil a man as ever lived. He is unofficial agent to the Baron von Holbach. The name means nothing to you, Watson? I am hardly surprised. He does not seek the limelight, but his Machiavellian hand was behind Bismarck’s dismissal, the Kruger telegram, and countless other intrigues. He has the ear of the Kaiser, whereas the Chancellor himself remains unheard. He is no friend to England, and Meyer is his tool. Watson, if I could choose my enemy, send me one that wears the
face
of evil.”

“And you are convinced he is involved in this affair?”

“Yes. He now knows me well enough to fear my powers – though how can I call them powers when my wits have deserted me? Two months in Cornwall, and the Empire at risk!”

He remained plunged in gloom until the train steamed into Paddington station. I shall long remember his long figure hunched at my side as if to spur the cab the faster to Baker Street. On entering the familiar rooms, he did not even wait to remove his ulster (for although it was May, the cool night air had been chilly) and despite the late hour plunged towards the tidy but huge piles of newspaper carefully stacked by Mrs Hudson.

Seldom have I felt more useless. No sooner had I read and absolved a newspaper of containing anything to do with our current problem than Holmes would seize it from me to ensure I had missed nothing. After three hours I could endure no more and retreated to my bed for what remained of the night. I left Holmes surrounded by newspapers, now in untidy heaps all around him, and occasionally scribbling a note on a pad. When I awoke in the morning, he was still where I had last seen him, red-eyed but still alert.

“I have it, Watson.” He pushed the pad towards me.

I stared at his work in horror. It consisted merely of childish doodles; circles, squares, dots, crosses, and pin men and women.

“Holmes, my dear fellow, what is this?”

“Hah!” he cried, as he saw the expression on my face. “You believe I have over-indulged in the syringe! No, my dear fellow. See, this may be the saving of us.” He thrust a copy of the
Daily Mail
before my eyes, stabbing with his finger at a message on the front page personal column. The issue was dated 9 March.

“The circle contains a stop,” I read. “A cipher, Holmes?” I tried once more.

“You think of nothing save cryptograms, Watson. No, no, this explains why we may yet be in time. There is nothing more until the messages resumed early this month.” He placed a second sheet before me.

“Turpin has a dog,” I read. Against it, in Holmes’s neat handwriting, was written: “issue of 6 May.” Underneath were more senseless jumbles of words. “Cupid strikes the right fox four times”; that was the issue of Monday, the 10th. Thursday the 13th bore the legend: “The smiling cook bears a cross”. Friday the 14th: “The pinman and the pageboy take nine paces”, and yesterday’s, the 18th, the day of our return: “The circle has a cross.”

“Surely you are mistaken, Holmes? I have passed over many such messages in the personal columns. Why pick upon these?”

“My dear fellow, have you no eyes?” He thrust under my nose the sheet of doodles to which I have already referred. “We await only the
time
of our rendezvous. The date we have.”

He paced the room in a state of combined exhilaration and disquiet, ignoring my request for further enlightenment. “Thank God we are in time.”

“You speak in riddles, Holmes.”

“Cannot you see,” one finger impatiently jabbed at the doodles. “Well, well, perhaps you cannot.
Argot,
my dear Watson, is a language even more worth studying than the Chaldean, and of more practical use. Consider what profession our Baroness follows.”

“Lady-in-waiting?”

“
Burglar
, Watson. She has joined the underworld, what more natural than that she should amuse herself with burglar’s
argot?
How often have you passed a garden fence with such childish scrawls chalked upon it? Frequently no doubt, and thought nothing of it. Yet such scrawls are the living language of two groups of outsiders in our world, burglars and tramps. Each has their own code – yes, Watson, your code at last, but these marks are the code of the illiterate. Since prehistoric times, drawings in simple form have portrayed messages left for those that come after. A burglar or a tramp goes about his trade with the same dedication as Mr Didier for his. Where the latter collects ingredients, our lawless and vagrant friends deal in information: which servants have been squared, for example.”

“Ah! The cook bears a cross.”

“You excel yourself, Watson,” Holmes murmured. “Similarly they convey how many live in the house, whether there are dogs, how many servants, the best means of access; tramps have a similar code, more concerned with what their brethren might expect from the house. Here before us is all we need to know.”

“Turpin?” I enquired.

“An exception, but simple enough. An acquaintance with the Dover Road should tell you that Turpin is associated with The Old Bull coaching inn on the summit of Shooter’s Hill in Kent. Hence the reference to a dog. The old Old Bull no longer exists, but a new hostelry of the same name stands there.”

“The meeting is there?”

“No, Watson, no. ‘Cupid strikes the right fox four times’.” He pointed to the doodle of an arrow with the figure 4 written by it. “At the foot of Shooter’s Hill stood the old Fox in the Hill public house, conveniently close to the gallows to whet the lips of the onlookers. Both are now vanished, but again a new public house stands close to the old. The hill is lined with villas and I have little doubt that the fourth on the right from The Bull is our place of rendezvous and that therein works a cook who will no longer qualify for the title of faithful retainer. She has been squared, and the gentleman and male retainer of the household step out at nine o’clock, we are informed.”

“And the day, Holmes?” I was by amazed at the depth of my friend’s knowledge of the underworld.

“ ‘The circle has a cross’. A tramp sign conveying that the householder is religious. A little more obscure, but let us take the religious connection. We lack a date and Ascension Day is tomorrow, Thursday the 20th.”

“Suppose it implies Whitsun?”

“Would the gentleman of the house then leave it at nine o’clock? He would be in church or at breakfast. No, no, it is tomorrow, and surely today the last piece of the jigsaw must fall into our hands.”

At this moment Mrs Hudson brought in the daily newspapers and with an eager cry Holmes sprang across the room to receive them from her hands. Mrs Hudson cast one look at the state of the room, then wisely departed without comment.