The West End Horror (9 page)

“Then tell me what has happened. Did you find Wilde?”

“At the top of his form.” The detective thereupon detailed for our salubrious client the encounter at the Avondale lounge and its singular aftermath in the writing room. When he mentioned the Marquess of Queensberry and spoke of Wilde’s warrant, the most extraordinary change came over Shaw. He paled, leapt to his feet, and stood trembling.

“The man’s taken leave of his senses!” he cried and, squeezing past, ran from the restaurant. Holmes and I stared at one another in disbelief and perplexity.

“What is going on?” I demanded, but he shrugged noncommittally.

“Our difficulties lie at Twenty-four South Crescent and the dressing room of the Savoy Theatre–not the lounge of the Avondale. At least, they don’t as yet.” He looked at his watch and sighed. ‘We are not going to run Sir Arthur to ground this evening; that much seems evident.”

“He probably wouldn’t enjoy it if we interrupted a game of chemin de fer played with his titled friends,*[According to biographical accounts, these games, played for high stakes, frequently included the Prince of Wales.] I agreed.

“And I can’t say I feel very much like dining. Shall we go? It is quite a three-pipe problem, and my cherrywood has a larger bowl than the oily briar I am carrying. Not that I feel like smoking, either.” He shook his head and started to rise. Perhaps its Shaw s influence.

“I think I shall remain here for a few minutes more,” I said quietly.

“My dear fellow, you’re not truly ill?” He pressed a hand to my brow. “You feel quite warm, but then so do I.” He repeated the experiment with his own forehead. “It appears we’ve both caught colds.

“I’ll be myself in a little,” I protested, thinking the while that this was the oddest cold I’d ever contracted. “You go on and I’ll catch you up.”

“You’re quite sure?”

He hesitated a moment or so longer, scanning my features and generally subjecting me to a close inspection before straightening up with a sigh. “Very well. Come to think of it, early to bed at Baker Street may do as well for me. Come as soon as you feel able.”

I nodded heavily and he moved
off.
When he had gone, I sat for some time, feeling the fever take possession of my body. I drank some more water from the carafe. The waiter returned and asked if I wished to order. I told him that we had all changed our minds and started to rise. He perceived I was ill and asked if he might fetch me a cab.

“Thank you, I’ll walk. The fresh air might do me good.”

I got feebly to my feet and staggered out of doors, observing that it had begun to snow quite heavily again. I struck off down the street, perspiring profusely amidst the silent, frosty deluge, aware that more sensible folk had forsaken the night air in favour of a warm fire and a toasty bed.

And then something so unexpected happened that I could scarcely credit it. I was seized from behind by a powerful pair of arms and pulled bodily out of the glare of the gas lamps into an alley that adjoined the restaurant. In my weakened condition struggle was useless. One of the gloved hands now reached ‘round and held my nose, so that I could not breathe save through my mouth, whilst the other brought a vial of liquid to my lips and forced them open. It was either drink or suffocate, and I drank, perforce, my head reeling, my ears pounding, my feet slipping madly about beneath me on the icy pavement. I was unable to see either my assailant or the colour of what I was swallowing. It tasted bitter and was faintly charged with alcohol. I was obliged to drink off the entire mess and was then released. The shock of the attack and my fever combined to render me helpless. I collapsed in a darkness like oblivion, dimly conscious of the snow piling up about me.

How long I remained in that alley, I did not learn until much later. Eventually, two constables on their rounds espied me and forced some brandy down my throat. At first they supposed that I had consumed too much liquor at some earlier point in the evening, but awakening, I identified myself and related what had happened. Ascertaining that I was unable to describe my attacker, they put me in a cab and I returned to Baker Street.

There another surprise awaited me. Sherlock Holmes, in bed with pillows propping him up, informed me that upon leaving the restaurant, he too had been assaulted in the same manner.

Breakfast the next morning at Baker Street was a subdued repast. Aside from hearing my story and telling me his–so very similar–Holmes ate in silence. In spite of my vigil in the snow, I slept well and my fever had quite vanished. With its departure my appetite reasserted itself and I made a good breakfast as we puzzled over the affair in disjointed syllables.

“It doesn’t seem to have done us any harm,” Holmes allowed finally.

“Rather the reverse, I should say.”

He nodded and poured some more coffee. “I have known parents who cozened reluctant children into swallowing medicine in that fashion.” He set aside his napkin and reached for his clay. We could neither of us begin to describe our mysterious assailant. What motive inspired him was–like so much else regarding this bizarre business–tabled for the time being, pending the accumulation of further data.

“Is it still your intention to seek out Arthur Sullivan?”

“More than ever. I’m hoping he can add to our negligible store of information regarding Jack Point, If he cannot, we shall be obliged to perform the real drudgery of detective work of the kind they do so well at Craig’s Court.*[Craig’s Court, in Whitehall, was the center of the private detective business, with no fewer than six agencies housed there.] By which I mean going to Miss Rutland’s lodgings, talking with the neighbours, and so forth. It is the kind of refined spying that usually requires an effective disguise, for people become closemouthed if they think you desire such information, whereas they positively press it on you if it appears you do not. Are you coming?”

“Yes, indeed.”

I had started to suit action to the word and put on my jacket when a knock on the door was followed by the entrance of our landlady.

“A boy left this for you at the front door, Mr. Holmes.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hudson.” He came forward and took the small brown envelope.

“May I tell the girl to clear?”

“What? Yes, yes.”

Utterly absorbed, like a child with a new toy, Holmes walked over to the bow window and held the packet up to the grey sunlight.

“Hmm. No postmark, of course. Address typewritten–on a Remington in need of a new ribbon. Paper. Hmm. Paper is Indian–yes, definite watermark–no visible fingerprints–”

“Holmes, in heaven’s name open it.”

“In good time, my dear fellow, in good time.”

He had, however, completed his examination of the envelope and now proceeded to slit open one end, using the jackknife he kept on the mantel for such purposes. He withdrew a folded sheet of the same dark stock and spread it out upon his knee.

“Liverpool Daily Mail, Morning Courant, London Times,
and the
Saturday Review,
if I am not mistaken,” he murmured, running his eye over it with a practised air.

“What are you talking about?”

“The different sources for these cuttings. Here.” He passed the paper to me. Its message ran:

There was no signature. As I looked at the message, with its arbitrary configurations of letters, scissored to reorder their sense, I thought of our adventure outside Simpson’s the night before and experienced a very real tingle of fear. I have not known the sensation often, but I venture to say I am no stranger to it. I shuddered and could feel my blood running cold, as though my fever had returned. I looked up from the paper and beheld Holmes’s grey eyes searching mine.

“Still game, Watson?” cried he. It was plain to see that he regarded the paper as a challenge.

“Still. Tell me, are you certain of the papers from which these words were taken?”

“You know that I am perfectly capable of identifying no fewer than twelve periodicals by their typeface,” he responded with an injured look.

“Then does the printing itself suggest nothing to you?”

“Beyond the fact that the writer wishes to remain anonymous, very little.” His eyes twinkled. ‘What does it suggest to you?”

“Why look at the sources he has used!” I cried with some excitement. “The
Morning Courant
and the
Saturday Review.
Does that not bring us back to my theory of a deadly rivalry between those two papers?”

“Say, does it not rather steer us away from your theory? Only a fool, in the position in which you place our man, would compose his message with either of the typefaces at issue. And then, how does your theory explain the murder of poor Miss Rutland?”

“It fails to,” I admitted ruefully. “At the moment. But what do you make of Shaw’s bolting out of the restaurant like that? Where does that fit in your precious triangle?”

“Do you imply that it was Shaw who waited outside and initiated the curious attacks?”

“He hasn’t the strength for it, obviously. Besides, we have no way of determining if the attacks were even related to this business.”

Holmes threw on his coat. “I should be surprised to learn that they were not, and so should you; come, confess it. No, my dear doctor, I fancy our correspondent merely chose the words he required where he chanced upon them. “The
Courant
and the
Review,
after all, are both prominent sheets. Come along.”

On our way to the Lyceum, we read the morning papers in the cab. There was a brief piece on the warrant sworn out by Wilde against the Marquess of Queensberry, as well as quite a detailed account (on another page) of the murder at
24
South Crescent. Heavy emphasis was placed on the pronouncements of Inspector G. Lestrade, who promised to “lay the culprit by the heels” in “very short order” and who described the critic’s murderer for the benefit of the press in a neat paraphrase of Sherlock Holmes’s own summation.

Holmes chuckled as he ran over the account. “There are some comforting consistencies in this reeling world of ours,
Watson,”
said he, “and Lestrade must be accounted one of them. The man hasn’t changed a hair in the last dozen years.

“The paper nowhere makes mention of Miss Rutland,” I noted.

“Quite possibly not. I believe the
Times
goes to bed too early in the evening, but we shall find it, no doubt, in this afternoon’s edition. The murderer will have the dubious satisfaction of seeing himself in print twice in one day.”

“You’re convinced it is the same man, then?”

“I think it would be stretching coincidence if it were not. Besides, he has the same style–and shoes.”

“I was not aware of any great similarity between the crimes. Quite the contrary, the first appears to have been committed on impulse, whereas the second obviously involved a deal of premeditation.”

“That is true. It is also true, however, that in both cases a knife-like weapon was employed–how fittingly McCarthy referred to him in his diary as Jack Point!–and in both cases the man displayed a more than rudimentary knowledge of anatomy. Indeed, his throat-slitting was accomplished with surgical precision and must have dispatched his second victim with humane immediacy.”

“Humane!”

“Well, relatively.”

“How do you reconcile the crime of impulse with the crime of premeditation?”

“I do not reconcile them as yet, but I will advance a provisional theory: Jack Point, our discarded lover, in talking with Jonathan McCarthy for whatever reason, learns of the latter’s infatuation. In a rage of impulse he slays the man, and in one of forethought, he revenges himself upon his faithless mistress. Ah, here is the Lyceum!”

We stepped out of the cab before the imposing columns of that reverend structure. Like a man in a trance, I advanced to the third pillar from the left.

“Are you all right, Watson? I had forgotten.”

“I think so.” I hesitated for some moments, leaning against the pillar, my eyes filling with tears. It was to this column, some seven years before, that Holmes and I accompanied young Mary Morstan, my future wife, on the errand of intrigue which first brought her to our door.*[Details of the case may be found in Watson’s second opus,
The Sign of the Four.
] It was now almost three years since her untimely death, and I had never, in all that time, found myself so near the starting point of our great adventure together. With an effort I regained my composure and indicated that I was ready to proceed.

The front doors of the Lyceum were open, and we stepped into the elegant foyer.

“Can I help you?” The deep voice which spoke these words startled us, the more so as we could not determine whence it came. The mystery was quickly solved when the shuttered windows of the box office were banged open and we were confronted by a dark, bearded man with a pinched aquiline nose and expressionless black eyes. He sat behind a set of bars like a teller’s window, and my first thought was that he should stay behind them.

“Can I help you?” he repeated with the same wooden inflection.

“We are looking for Sir Arthur Sullivan,” Holmes explained. “Is he here this morning? We were told he would be.”

‘Who wants to know?”

“Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”

The bearded apparition remained stock-still at these words, then rose with startling decision and slammed the shutters. In another moment the door to the box office opened and he strode out, a man just under six feet, wearing a dark, impeccably tailored suit, which failed to conceal a powerful, not to say athletic physique.

“Sherlock Holmes?” His bottomless black eyes travelled from one to the other of us. Holmes inclined his head slightly.

“You wish to see Sir Arthur? He is occupied with Sir Henry. Can I help you with something?” There was no warmth behind the offer.

“You can help me to Sir Arthur,” Holmes answered, undismayed by the man’s threatening visage. “And you may pay my compliments to John Henry Brodribb.”