The Problem of Threadneedle Street (The Assassination of Sherlock Holmes Book 2) (19 page)

“We are innocent, I swear to you,” he protested sharply. “These two men shanghaied us, and forced us to help with their plans.” As he spoke, I saw a gleam of from the second tooth upon the left-hand side, which had been very badly stuffed with gold. At once I knew him to be the supposed Arthur Pinner, whose true name I had never learned. Therefore, the man beside him could only be his brother Beddington, the famous forger and cracksman.
[98]

Holmes only shook his head sadly. “I am afraid that the criminal records belonging to you and your brother are far too long for any jury to believe such a preposterous story.”

Meanwhile, one of the men next to Pinner appeared outraged by this accusation. He was a lithe and small man, with a pale face and a shock of very red hair. His companion, however, took it with an indifferent attitude. Of the latter, it was challenging to say his age, though he was not short of forty. He too was fairly small, but stoutly-built, with quick mannerisms. His still-boyish face was lacking in hair, though he had a white splash of acid upon his forehead, and his ears were pierced for earrings. A wicked scar crossed his throat, a wound that must have been so severe it was a great wonder that the man survived the blow which had dealt it.

“Why, Watson, if it’s not our old friend, John Clay and his pal Archie!” exclaimed Holmes. “I thought I recognized signs of your handiwork in that tunnel under the Old Lady. Your attention to bracing and shoring is really quite exact. I must commend you.”

“I would prefer you address me as Your Grace, Mr. Holmes. The old gent died, you know.”
[99]

“Yes, well, I heard you had died as well.”

“Reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated,”
[100]
the other answered, with the utmost coolness. “As I see were your own, Mr. Holmes. I myself wore a black armband when I heard you were lost over the falls.”
[101]

Holmes smiled. “You always had a rather daring attitude, Your Grace,” said he, with hardly a trace of sarcasm in his voice. “It is a great shame that you turned your cunning brain to the role of murderer, smasher, thief, and forger.”

“So you say, Mr. Holmes. Only the third was ever proven.”

“You draw ever closer to the hangman’s noose, Your Grace.”

“For a simple robbery? I think not.”

“And what about murder?”

“You will have a hard time sticking such a charge upon me, Mr. Holmes, especially since I am innocent.”

“That is not what Colonel Moran here just told us. He claims you pitched a man from a balloon not two nights ago, a balloon mighty similar to the one that you just arrived on.”

Clay’s eyes widened slightly before he glanced over at the silent Colonel. “A good bluff, Mr. Holmes, but you will have to do better than that. The sun will set upon the British Empire before an Eton man peaches on one of their own.”
[102]

“This may be your last chance to tell all, John Clay, before the quality of my mercy is strained past the point of no return,” said Holmes, severely.

“Ah, yes, well, it has been some time since England last shed a drop of royal blood. I fear not,” said he with utter insouciance.

§

As that was the last word that John Clay or the others would utter, we soon left the five captured criminals in the capable hands of Scotland Yard and decamped back to Mycroft’s rooms, though Holmes was careful to take the eight foot tube with him as we left.

I remained silent during the cab ride back, turning the events of the case over in my mind. However, once we had settled in to the study’s armchairs, I turned to my friend. “There are a few things, Holmes, that I still do not fully understand.”

“Pray tell, Watson.”

“I see that Clay, Archie, and the Beddingtons planned to land upon the roof, cut their way through the glass dome, and then rappel down into the lobby. But how did they plan to crack the vault door while under the constant view of the guardsman in Mr. Pycroft’s watchtower? Was the guard eliminated in some fashion? Or did they bribe him?”

Holmes laughed. “Neither, Watson. Your methods would have been considered by the mastermind of this scheme, but both would have been rejected as excessively risky. Mr. Pycroft did far too good a job ensuring that the guard’s position was both unassailable, but also well-recompensed. I learned that Mr. Pycroft had an ingenious method of dealing with bribed guards. They were expected to report any such approaches, and said report would immediately generate a payment to the guard from the bank in the same amount offered. Only once or twice has he actually been required to pay out, for most criminals have learned that Silvester’s is far too tough a nut to crack. Instead, our friends employed a rather curious strategy, which can be found within this tube.” He hefted the eight-foot long cylinder.

“What is it?”

“See for yourself, Watson.” Holmes unscrewed the end and drew forth a rolled canvas. It proved to be a perfect reproduction of the lobby of the bank, but curiously devoid of any people. I immediately recognized it.

“The painting of Mr. Silvester!” I exclaimed.

“Very good, Watson. Yes, I recognized the hand of Victor Lynch, the forger, in the brush strokes of the supposed Achille Pendré.
[103]
It was then I realized how they planned to fool the watchtower guard – by showing him the empty lobby that he expected to see each time he peered through the grill.”

“And what were they trying to steal from Silvester’s?”

“Ah, now you come to the heart of the problem, Watson. Given the involvement of Colonel Moran in this matter, one cannot but wonder if perhaps his old master had stashed some old deposit box within? One that escaped the attention of both myself and Inspector Patterson when we were cataloging the list of his assets. It would be curious to identify it and see what secret documents lie within.”

“So you believe Moran to be the mastermind? Is he our Mortlock?”

“Honestly, Watson, I reject that possibility. Moran is a weapon. He can be pointed at something or someone, but he is no brilliant thinker. I fear that we may be putting out small fires when we enable the arrest of Windibank, Parker, Clay, Archie, the Beddingtons, and even Moran himself. But the bonfire still blazes. We have yet to identify the man himself, and I am certain that he still possesses forces that he has kept in reserve. The question is where shall he deploy them next?”

I had no answer for this question, but we had not long to wait before our secret adversary reared his head. The door to the study opened and Mycroft’s ancient butler, Stanley, appeared with a note for Holmes. It had been folded over twice and sealed with a red wax pressed down with an 1889 Victoria Jubilee Crown coin. The note was superscribed to “Sherlock Holmes, Esq. To be left ‘til called for.” It was written upon ordinary cream-laid paper without an identifying watermark. My friend tore it open, and we read it together. It was not dated, and ran in this way:

atuaoltrnfntaxeenwieimeaefgieoihrfritnoetigohetiirsntraeyaeehrmryulfrmsprmeyaanlytsdrauyaethkdmevhnsopiohdhefelaceaogtohlpeeothtiliegmneoaafhttodtsuyortte. – MORTLOCK

Holmes studied this for some minutes, his face grave with unease. Finally, he set it down, and looked over at me. “As you are aware, Watson, I am familiar with virtually all forms of abstruse cryptograms, from the absurdly simple extra words of Mr. Beddoes,
[104]
to the fiendishly clever little men of old Patrick.
[105]
I believe, from the frequency distribution of the characters, that this is a rail-fence cipher. You can see that Mr. Mortlock has given us a fairly long strand to work with, and we can thus tell that the letter ‘E’ appears no less than twenty times. As ‘E’ is the most common letter in the English alphabet, one can hypothesize that this is not a complex polyalphabetic cryptogram, such as was devised by Mousier Vigenère,
[106]
where one letter is substituted for another using multiple shifting alphabets. Rather this is a transposition, where the plain-text is written downwards and upwards on successive rails of an imaginary fence, with the cipher-text then read off in horizontal rows. It is an ancient technique, dating back to the
scytale
rods of the Greeks, and has been widely used in recent wars as a battlefield code.
[107]
It is easy to decrypt if you know the number of rails used by the authors, and even without that key, it can be done by brute force and sufficient time.”

“But we have the key,” said I quietly.

“We do?” he exclaimed.

“Try ‘Four.’ As in ‘The Sign of.’”

He stared at me for a moment, a curious expression upon his face. He then bent to work for some time at the table. Finally he looked up and handed to me a piece of paper, covered with agitated scribblings that were far removed from Holmes’ usual precise hand. I had to mentally insert spaces in order to form the string of letters into words, and when I had done so, the result turned my blood cold:

Again I tell you, it is harder for a guilty man to enter the kingdom of heaven than it is for a sphinx to thread the eye of a needle.
[108]
What crimes are you guilty of, Mr. Holmes? Prepare to meet thy fate. MORTLOCK

“What does it mean, Holmes?” I whispered.

He looked at me, his face a somber mask. “It is a threat, of course, but from whom exactly I still cannot be absolutely certain. Not yet. I now hold in my hands several of the scarlet threads that are running through the tangled skein of one of the strangest cases which ever perplexed a man’s brain, and yet I lack the one or two which are needful to complete my theory. But I will have them, Watson, I’ll have them!”

§

THE ASSASSINATION OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
will conclude in…

THE FALLING CURTAIN

§

Other than the esteemed Dr. Watson and his assorted clients, the individuals that Sherlock Holmes interacts with most often during his almost twenty-year career as the world’s first consulting detective are the various Inspectors of Scotland Yard, G. Lestrade and Tobias Gregson chief among them. It therefore stands to reason that Holmes might have spent considerable time at their headquarters, but a close examination of the Canon suggests that this is not the case. In point of fact, the mighty Inspectors of the Criminal Investigation Unit (C.I.D. for short) of the Metropolitan Police Service almost always came, hat in hand, to the flat at 221B Baker Street whenever they encountered some remarkable case whose solution was beyond their limited means. Or at least this is the impression that Dr. Watson is careful to suggest in his accounts of Holmes’ investigations. However, an intriguing undated scrap of paper, retrieved at the time that certain other completed manuscripts were unearthed, paints a slightly different picture, and also brings to light the vast esteem in which the members of the Yard held Mr. Sherlock Holmes. It ran as follows:

‘It is still a peculiar sensation to climb the official staircase of the New Scotland Yard after many years of visiting the old building on Whitehall Place.
[109]
However, once I traveled down the second floor hall, immediately past the Rogue’s Portrait Gallery, I found myself in a place that was intimately familiar,
[110]
The prosaic inspectors of the C.I.D. might hesitate to call it by such an official-sounding sobriquet, but I prefer to think of it as the small, but exquisite, Scotland Yard Museum.
[111]
This room, off-limits to the general public, was long and narrow. Dusty cupboards and cabinets stood all-round the walls. These were embellished and crowded with a great variety of curious specimens, the likes of which I little needed the nicely-typed name-cards in order to identify. In no particular sequence, amongst a myriad of other sundry items, I could plainly see:

1. A pair of steel handcuffs, with a unique springing pattern: In which the hands of Mr. Jefferson Hope were caught by Inspector G. Lestrade.
   [112]
   
2. The coil of rope used to hang the bank-robber Sutton: Submitted by Inspector B. Lanner.
   [113]
   
3. A small tract containing a historical account of the Manor House at Birlstone: Submitted by Inspector A. MacDonald.
   [114]
   
4. A silk wedding dress, pair of white satin shoes, a wreath, and a veil, all somewhat discolored and water-stained: Dragged from the Serpentine by Inspector G. Lestrade.
   [115]
   
5. A small brass tripod for charcoal, whose poisonous fumes suffocated Mr. Paul Kratides: Confiscated from the scene of his murder by Inspector T. Gregson.
   [116]
   
6. A long, sharp, black thorn used to murder Mr. Bartholomew Sholto: Confiscated from the scene by Inspector A. Jones.
   [117]
   
7. A box of Benares metalwork, an image of a sitting Buddha upon its front hasp: Confiscated from Jonathan Small by Inspector A. Jones.
   [118]
   
8. The type-written statement of Mr. James Browner: As made before Inspector I. Montgomery.
   [119]
   
9. A wig of tangled red hair: Confiscated from the erstwhile beggar Hugh Boone by Inspector C. Bradstreet.
   [120]
   
10.        
    The jagged unmarked stone used to murder Mr. Charles McCarthy: Submitted by Inspector G. Lestrade.
    [121]
    
11.        
    The long-bladed knife of Mr. Joseph Harrison: Submitted by Inspector H. Forbes.
    [122]
    
12.        
    A box of nickel and tin, for use in counterfeiting: Confiscated from the house of Dr. Becher by Inspector C. Bradstreet.
    [123]
    
13.        
    A tin of luminous paste: Confiscated from an island in the Great Grimpen Mire by Inspector G. Lestrade.
    [124]
    
14.        
    A small black and white ivory box with a sliding lid: Confiscated from Mr. Culverton Smith by Inspector L. Morton.
    [125]
    
15.        
    A folded piece of old parchment written by M. Simon Renard: Submitted by Inspector A. MacDonald.
    [126]
    
16.        
    A corner of woolen carpet, stained with the blood of Mr. Eduardo Lucas: Confiscated from his home by Inspector G. Lestrade.
    [127]
    
17.        
    A pair of pince-nez mounted in solid gold with broken black silk cord: Submitted by Inspector S. Hopkins.
    [128]
    
18.        
    A soft wax seal of a thumb-print: Confiscated from Mr. Jonas Oldacre by Inspector G. Lestrade.
    [129]
    
19.        
    A vial of Fowler’s solution: Confiscated from Dr. Benjamin Lowe by Inspector G. Lestrade.
    [130]
    
20.        
    A mummified monkey strung with a double band of white shells: Submitted by Inspector T. Gregson (with assistance from Inspector Baynes of the Surry Constabulary).
    [131]
    
21.        
    The steel harpoon used to murder Peter Carey: Confiscated from the scene by Inspector S. Hopkins.
    [132]
    
22.        
    The advertisements of Pierrot in
    The Daily Telegraph
    : Submitted by Inspector G. Lestrade.
    [133]
    
23.        
    The axe of Mr. George Blunt: Confiscated by Inspectors G. Lestrade and T. Gregson.
    [134]
    
24.        
    The sideboard silver of Sir Eustace Brackenstall: Recovered from the Abbey Grange pond by Inspector S. Hopkins.
    [135]
    
25.        
    The plaster footmarks of a middle-sized, strongly built man implicated in the murder of Mr. Charles Augustus Milverton: Prepared by Inspector G. Lestrade.
    [136]
    
26.        
    A purple indelible pencil: Recovered from the body of Dr. Ray Ernest by Inspector T. MacKinnon.
    [137]
    
27.        
    A fragment of a plaster bust of Napoleon Bonaparte: Submitted by Inspector G. Lestrade.
    [138]
    
28.        
    A formidable horn-handled, two-edged dagger owned by Black Giorgiano of the Red Circle: Confiscated from his murder scene by Inspector T. Gregson.
    [139]
    
29.        
    The counterfeit hundred-pound plates of Rodger Prescott: Turned in by Mr. S. Holmes.
    [140]
    
30.        
    The air-gun of the blind German mechanic Von Herder used to assassinate the Honorable Ronald Adair: Confiscated from Colonel Sebastian Moran by Inspector G. Lestrade.
    [141]
    
31.        
    The papers from Pigeonhole M used to convict the gang of Moriarty: Submitted by Mr. S. Holmes.
    [142]
    

Standing amidst these relics of the past, I was moved to witness the profound change in attitude assumed by the inspectors of Scotland Yard. Where once they regarded him with skeptical contempt and insolence, they had over the years, perhaps due to the fact that Holmes refused to take credit for the great deal of invaluable assistance that he provided them, clearly grown to regard him with a measure of respect, admiration, and even awe.’

As we mere mortals have never been granted access to this wondrous collection, we can only hope that Scotland Yard has perhaps since seen fit to add the sculpted head of a faux-Sphinx and the torn gold-beater’s skin of an aeronautical balloon?

§