The Midwinter Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes: Three Adventures & The Grand Gift of Sherlock (5 page)

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When I had climbed back up the stairs to my old quarters, I heard Holmes’ voice ring out from the bedroom. “I see that the weather is still rather unhealthy, Watson. Was your trip worthwhile?”

Once I had divested myself of my hat and coat, I entered Holmes’ chamber, and found that the drapes had been drawn again, presumably by Mrs. Hudson. His saturnine figure still lay in the bed, with only a flicker of lamplight illuminating the room. “How could you know that, Holmes?”

“I find, Watson, that this enforced immobility has further heightened those senses which remain unfettered. I would know the sound of your footsteps anywhere, however their particular echo this evening was muffled by what could only be snow upon your boots. But not a dry snow, rather a wet snow of the most unpleasant sort.”

“That is exactly right, Holmes.”

He did not smile at the praise. “Of course it is, Watson,” he said with some asperity, and I could tell that my friend’s temper had not improved since I had left him but ninety minutes earlier. “Tell me what you learned. Leave out no details,” he commanded.

“Well, the ambassador was a grim man who said little. If we could be transported back four hundred years, he would have been well suited for the role of an inquisitor in the darkest dungeons of the Toledo Castle,” I began.

“Cut out the poetry, Watson,”
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Holmes barked. “The facts alone are sufficient.”

Frowning, I resumed the account of my mission, and once my report was concluded, Holmes sighed audibly. “How could you have failed to obtain a look inside the office belonging to Mr. Márquez?”
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“Really, Holmes,” I protested. “That odious Señor Calderón was by my side the entire time. There was no possible way.”

He shook his head. “I can think of seven,” said he, irascibly. “But I suppose you are to be commended for at least identifying a name. It is certainly more than the official force would have been able to accomplish.”

“So you think that Mr. Márquez is the missing man?” I asked, with a hint of pride in my voice.

Holmes nodded curtly. “We may at least accept it as a working hypothesis, until such evidence arises that proves it false.”

“I will ask Jackson to watch my practice for a few days until we have settled this matter.”
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“A few days? Oh, no, Watson. If Mr. Márquez has been abducted, the span of his life can be measured not in days, but in hours. We must locate him soon or the thread will be lost. The next step is to identify the address of his residence,” Holmes mused. “Perhaps an advertisement in the papers? Or you could borrow Toby again,
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and see if he can acquire a scent from some item that you collect after a return to the Spanish Embassy?”

“What about my old school mate, Percy Phelps?”
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I said, interrupting Holmes’ train of thought. “He works for the Foreign Office, and if I am not mistaken, they should keep a list of all foreign embassy staff upon our soil. He owes us a good turn, I think.”

I had the great pleasure of seeing what I could only imagine was a dumfounded look upon my friend’s face.
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To his credit, it did not last long, and he responded with a measure of grace. “The etiology of my reason for being bedridden may not be contagious, Watson, but the faculty of deduction certainly appears to be.
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I endorse your plan wholeheartedly,” he concluded.

“Excellent,” said I, rising from my chair. “Then I will be off immediately to track down Phelps and enlist his help.” I turned towards the door, but was held up by the sound of Holmes’ voice.

“You are forgetting one thing, Watson. As I doubt that you would have departed Crawford Place upon a Christmas mission with your old service revolver in your jacket pocket, I would advise you to open the drawer of my nightstand and take possession of the Webley
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you find within.”

“Do you think there is some danger?”

“I know nothing for certain, other than the fact that it is a wise motto to be prepared for all possible eventualities,” said he, sagely.

I nodded my agreement and took his advice. So weighed down, I departed the flat at Baker Street for the closest telegraph office. I soon learned that ‘Tadpole’ Phelps and his wife Annie were not spending the holidays at their home in Woking. Rather the new Mrs. Phelps was back in Northumberland trying to cheer her still-grieving mother, while Percy was working in Whitehall upon a matter of such importance that it could not wait for the artificial dates that we designate as holidays. Fortunately, at the noontime hour, Percy was taking a brief repast at his club, the Baldwin,
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and a short hansom cab ride found me standing before it. The main room of the Baldwin was exuberantly decked out for the holidays, with evergreen boughs and burgundy ribbons twisted around the banisters. Upon the mantel, silvered pillar candles burned brightly and the smell of cinnamon and apples filled the air. It was all highlighted by a magnificent fir tree, its branches wrapped in pearls and holding a flock of faux songbirds. For those poor men who were forced to spend this day away from the loved ones, it was a close mimic of the comforts of home.

Phelps was fully recovered from his episode of brain-fever, and with those grim days behind him, he was both happily married and advancing swiftly up the ladders of Whitehall. He greeted me warmly and, once I explained my purpose, moved as swiftly as Mercury to seek out the data I required, plainly still grateful for the small assistance Holmes and I had provided the prior year. He sprang from his chair to the club’s telegram room and dashed off several messages to his office. We chatted amiably about our wives and careers for several minutes before a positive response arrived. He more than most understood the urgency of my mission and wished me well without prolonged small-talk. Minutes later I was in yet another cab, this time rapidly clacking its way to Morley Street in Lambeth.

The Palace clock
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was marking the first hour of the afternoon when the cab finally completed its navigation of those streets whose penurious appearance would have perhaps been improved by cover of darkness, if not for the ever-present danger that presumably also accompanied the fall of night. After traversing a labyrinth of featureless streets and densely populated courts, the hansom finally stopped in front of a sad tenement whose façade had not been blessed with a coat of paint since the days of George III.
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I bid the driver to await my return, not wishing to be stranded in this undesirable section of the city, and wondered about the preference of Señor Diego Márquez to live in such a dismal locale. Either the Spanish Embassy was particularly parsimonious with its bequeathing of salaries, or the man had intentionally chosen a residence where illicit activities could transpire, these actions unlikely to attract much notice from his undiscerning neighbors. It struck me as the home of a spy.

I climbed the external staircase, which was the only direct approach, and to ensure that the story I heard at the Embassy was not in fact the plain truth, I planned to simply knock upon his door. Only if I received no answer would I then contemplate alternative modes of ingress, as often employed by Holmes. However, before I could even do so, I was surprised to find that the door was slightly ajar. I pushed gently and it swung open before my touch, exposing a dark and silent interior. Using all of the senses which Holmes had advised, I noted that there was no smell of sickness, as would have been expected if the man actually had been stricken by the Russian flu. For a moment I cursed my lack of preparation, for certainly my quiet tennis shoes would have been a superior option with which to stealthily enter the man’s flat.
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But the die was cast and I pressed on. I had advanced but a short distance before I realized that not only was Márquez not at home, but someone else had already located his residence before me. The sitting room appeared like a small cyclone had descended upon it. The man’s belongings were strewn about the floor, the cushions of his chairs slashed with a knife, and his bookcases emptied.

I rummaged around in the wreckage for a few minutes, my heart sinking the entire time. What hope did I have that some vital clue remained that the prior searcher, whoever he may be, would have overlooked? I do not think that I have been overly humble when I have reported in my accounts that I have routinely failed to notice evidence that Holmes ultimately required in order to resolve a case. If my friend himself could be here, his minute attention to detail might have been sufficient to not only determine what they had been looking for, but also the identity of the prior searcher. But Holmes was cruelly confined to Baker Street. It was up to me alone.

As I gazed about the room, one item did eventually catch my eye. It was the corner of a playing card sticking out from beneath an overturned bust of Ruy Díaz,
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where it was mainly hidden from view. As a great aficionado of card games, I am of course familiar with most of the common decks in widespread circulation. This one, however, seemed quite different. I plucked the card from its resting place and studied it for a moment. It was printed in black and white upon thick cardstock. At the top was the clover symbol of a ‘club’ next to a Roman numeral V. In the middle was a picture of five capped men hanging from a cross-beam, watched over by a series of cavaliers carrying halberds. In the background flames and smoke rose into the air. The bottom of the card was labeled: ‘The Execution of the 5 Ie∫uitts,’ the latter term which I interpreted to be an archaic spelling of ‘Jesuits.’

It seemed to trigger something I had learned under the long-ago tutorship of Mr. Hilton Soames at Winchester,
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but I could not place it exactly. While I contemplated this, I thought I heard a small noise from one of the closets. Stepping around the debris upon the floor, I approached it, wondering if Márquez had left behind some sort of pet. However, to my great surprise, when I opened the door, I found a coat being thrust over my head. I was momentarily blinded, and a set of powerful hands shoved me to the ground. By the time I had pulled the coat off and regained my feet, I could only see the back of a powerfully-built man as he prepared to launch himself from one of the windows.

I scrambled after him, but by the time I reached the window he was gone. I looked down and found that the man had landed softly and was running swiftly down a squalid rear alleyway. Although I reckon that am I fleet of foot
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and could have caught the man in a straight race, I hesitated before throwing myself off a drop of at least fifteen feet. While Holmes often availed himself of a rear exit to Baker Street that did not formally exist, and though my war wounds may have finally healed after a span of over nine years,
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that did not mean that I was sufficiently trained so as to safely land such a terrific leap. If I too injured one of my legs, then neither Holmes nor I would be in any condition to continue the investigation. Though it pained me to let the intruder go so easily, I decided, like Falstaff before me, that discretion was the better part of valor.
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“You could have shot him,” Holmes observed at the end of my account. “You had my gun.”

“Really, Holmes!” I protested. “The man may have been a simple thief. I hardly think that Scotland Yard would have looked kindly upon me killing the man.”

He shook his head vigorously from his recumbent perch. “First of all, Watson, any careful marksman could hit a man in the leg so as to prevent his escape while minimizing immediate risk of hemorrhage.”

“Upon a moving target at forty yards?” I interrupted.

He shrugged. “As I said, a careful marksman. Perhaps you should dedicate one day of your week to target shooting…”

“Holmes, you appear to forget that I not only have a thriving medical practice, but also that my wife is rather less forgiving than Mrs. Hudson when it comes to shooting up the walls of my home.”
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Holmes peered at me and muttered something that sounded like ‘pawky’
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before returning a normal timbre to his voice. “Yes, well, in any case, the odds are heavily against the man being a common burglar. While Mr. Márquez did not inhabit the most salubrious locale in London, and break-ins are not unexpected, it is stretching the bounds of plausibility to postulate that it occurred on the same day that he was snatched from his brougham cab. Furthermore, most house-thieves are not quite so thorough in their rifling, nor so brazen to carry out their work in the harsh light of day. No, this could only be the work of someone who is pursuing the same line of questioning as ourselves.” He shook his head again. “If only you had caught the man, we might be far advanced towards the resolution. For now, however, we are stumbling in the dark. Still, I am a patient man
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and can await the arrival of additional data.”

“Do you think it was someone else from the Spanish Embassy? They knew that I was looking for Márquez.”

He shrugged. “Possibly, Watson, possibly.”

“Can you give me another theory that would fit the facts?”

“I could easily give you a baker’s dozen. Mr. Márquez was plainly a spy posing as an attaché for Spain. If he was carrying documents of a sensitive nature, they could be sufficient to provoke an international incident. Was he working on behalf of Don Velásquez y Reales, the Ambassador, or possibly against him? Were agents of some other country responsible for his abduction? If so, which one would have the most to gain?”