“My hero,” Jonadab Evans explained hesitantly. “You see, whenever the Honorable Derring accomplishes some truly exceptional exploit, he always leaves a scribbling at the scene of the crime for Sergeant Inspector Pipsqueak to find. He draws a little man and writes a pun on his name beside it—like this.” John O’Dab reached for a sheet of paper and hastily penciled:
“Hm.” Jackson compared this with the card. “That is the same as the W in the message all right. I suppose that a man trying to think of a new squiggle figure would most readily—”
“Stuff and nonsense, Lieutenant,” Bottomley broke in. “If you’re trying to implicate Evans, it’s bosh. Any one of us might have thought of that figure—we’re all Derring Drew readers. So is every other customer in every lending library, to say nothing of the flocks who’ve seen your brother play him on the screen.”
“Maybe,” Jackson admitted. “But I’ve seen Paul in the part, and I don’t remember the somersaulting stick man.”
“In the adaptation a few revisions were necessary,” said Mr. Weinberg, and tried not to look at John O’Dab.
“I get it. But to come back to the card—Federhut, you were also going to tell me something about this name. Does Talipes Ricoletti mean anything to you?”
A half-puzzled enlightment showed on the five faces. “The Ricoletti part, yes,” said Federhut. “You know, Herr Leutnant, how many stories Watson alluded to which he never told. The Adventure of the Second Stain, I believe, is the only episode mentioned in advance and later written.”
“Though at that,” Dr. Bottomley complained, “with a curious confusion of time and complete omission of the roles promised for Monsieur Dubuque of the Paris police and Fritz von Waldbaum, the well-known specialist of Dantzig.”
“Still, Herr Doktor, at least it was written, while the others remain to the world mysteries; and of these none is more fascinating than that mentioned in The Musgrave Ritual: ‘a full account of Ricoletti of the club-foot, and his abominable wife.’”
“Come now,” Mrs. Evans protested, “how about ‘the politician, the lighthouse and the trained cormorant’?”
“And Isidora Persano,” Drew Furness added dreamily, “who was found stark staring mad before a matchbox containing a variety of worm hitherto unknown to science.”
“Hardly a verbatim quotation,” Ridgly objected. “It actually reads—”
“Gentlemen!” Jackson protested. “You can argue these fine points later. Is there anything more definite in Holmes about this Ricoletti?”
Federhut answered. “Nothing, Herr Leutnant, beyond that one allusion—as regrettable a lacuna as exists in all literature.”
“Not even his first name?”
“Not even that.”
“Then what does this Talipes mean?”
“That, sir,” said Dr. Bottomley, “is simplicity itself. ‘Talipes’ is the Neo-Latin word used in surgery to describe the deformity known as clubfoot.”
“Which brings us right back where we were. Unless it could indicate medical knowledge?”
“Lieutenant! This is the same as the German word and the Derring Drew squiggle. As Federhut pointed out, no man is going to sign a crime with a fragment of his specialized knowledge. Besides, what proof have we that the dancing men and the visiting card have anything to do with the murder?”
“None,” Jackson admitted. “But coincidence can be carried too far. Now as to these—” He pointed to the dry seeds.
“The five orange pips!” the Irregulars exclaimed like a well-trained a capella chorus.
“I suppose,” said Jackson patiently, “this is another quotation. Go ahead.”
“In the year 1887,” said Drew Furness reflectively, “that same year in which Holmes solved the episode of ‘the Amateur Mendicant Society, who held a luxurious club in the lower vault of a furniture warehouse’—is that sufficiently accurate, Mr. Ridgly?”
“Quite. I have often wondered if that Society included among its members that exceptionally skillful amateur mendicant, Mr. Neville St. Clair, who was to attain fame two years later as The Man with the Twisted Lip.”
“A possibility,” said Dr. Bottomley gravely. “As Tantalus of this learned organization, might I suggest a brief monograph on the subject for some later meeting?”
“Come back to the pipes,” Jackson prompted.
“Yes, Lieutenant. In that year,” Drew Furness resumed, “which was further distinguished by ‘the singular adventures of the Grice Patersons in the island of Uffa,’ and other notable cases, occurred the extraordinary tragedy of The Five Orange Pips, one of the few cases which Holmes did not succeed in bringing to a satisfactory neat conclusion.”
“All right. But are these seeds pips? I thought pips were the markings on playing cards?”
“It is an odd use of the word, I admit. You sometimes speak of apple seeds as pips, but orange pips does sound strange. It may be British usage, or simply a quaint specimen of Watsonese. Yes, these seeds are pips; and according to the American Encyclopaedia consulted by Holmes, they were once a death warning of the Ku-Klux Klan.”
Jackson looked down at what he still thought of as the seeds. “Of course we can disregard the Klan angle. That’s no more significant than a German word or a medical term. The main point is that this is a Holmesian warning, which, like the message of the dancing men, Worth never received. If he had … Well, there’s no use going into that.
“Now these,” he held them up as he spoke, “are photographs of the room. They show you the position of the body as indicated by the bloodstains—that checks perfectly with Miss O’Breen’s story. No footprints except hers, you’ll notice. Whoever else was in that room was careful not to step in the blood. Fingerprints are no use either. Any one of us could have been in the room innocently earlier in the evening, and most of us were there when we tucked Worth away. The only place where prints might help—the walls in the corner where the murdered must have stood—is perfectly blank.
“But there are a couple of points of interest in these pictures. Here is the word RACHE. Above it, you’ll notice, is a small chip in the plaster, apparently fresh. There’s a similar chip in the corner we spoke of. Probably something that happened while the decorators were freshening up the house; but I’m giving you all the details. And here on the window is a fresh-looking dent in the wood.
“Now as to the brief case that Worth had with him: what would you say was in it?”
“I don’t think it was empty,” Maureen ventured. “Of course, it’s a silly idea to carry around an empty brief case, but I’m getting where nothing would surprise me. Still, it didn’t just dangle from his hand; he held it as though it had some weight,”
“It did have,” Dr. Bottomley added. “I carried it upstairs. I’d hate to estimate it to the pound, but I’d say it was as heavy as though it had four or five ordinary-sized books in it.”
“I thought so,” said Jackson. “I picked it up myself at one point, but I wanted corroboration. Well, when we found it, it was still strapped up nice and neat; but all that was in it was this piece of paper.”
This was a sheet from a note pad, of the size technically known as a P-slip. On it was neatly typed a list of figures:
20518
25414
25723
20974
25191
25585
22394
25237
“Now is that,” Jackson wanted to know, “another quotation from Holmes?”
“Lieutenant!” Jonadab Evans exclaimed excitedly, “There are bushes under Worth’s window, aren’t there?”
“I think so. Why?”
“Were they searched by the police?”
“They must have been.”
“But then they were hunting for a body, weren’t they? They mightn’t have noticed … I’ll be right back,” he said hastily, heading for the door.
“Oh no you don’t!” Sergeant Watson looked resolute.
“Please, I—”
“You could go with him, Sergeant,” Jackson suggested.
“And leave all of you here?”
“After all,” said Jackson, “unless you’re convinced that I—”
“OK, Lieutenant. But I don’t like it.”
Sergeant Watson’s heavy tread followed Mr. Evans’ light footsteps down the hall and out of the house.
“What bit your little friend?” Jackson asked of the room at large.
“If I’m guessing right,” drawled Harrison Ridgly III, “an extremely logical and utterly mad idea, which will turn this case quite upside down.”
“I don’t think I’d notice the change, Ridgly. This case is like a modernist painting—there just isn’t any right-side up. But about this list of numbers—is there any Holmes echo here?”
“There might be,” Otto Federhut decided slowly. “To me one of the greatest interests in Holmes is his use of codes and ciphers. There is one in The Valley of Fear—a code this time, Herr Leutnant—which has its points of similarity to this, at least in so far as that the same method of solution might possibly be applied. If you will give me time—”
But at the moment all attention was distracted by the reappearance of Jonadab Evans and Sergeant Watson. The Sergeant was scratching his head in the manner of one who knows that the woman wasn’t really sawed in two, but still … Mr. Evans advanced to the table and added his find to the set of clues.
It was a small and exceedingly pretty pearl-handled automatic. Stout twine was wrapped tautly about its handle, and at the end of a two-yard length of twine hung a ponderous volume.
“A woman’s gun,” Jackson observed bemusedly. “And this book—Aynidge Bemmer …”
Otto Federhut peered over his shoulder. “Einige Bemerkungen … It means: A few remarks upon the Ireland-Problem, with special reference to the theories of Drew Furness.”
“‘A few remarks’!” Jackson repeated scornfully, hefting the huge volume in his hand. “So they write books about you, do they, Furness? I suppose you own a copy of this? But why should you, or any other sane man, go around tying it onto pretty little pistols?”
Jonadab Evans was surveying his trove and beaming contentedly. “Thor Bridge,” he said, as though that explained everything.
Chapter 9
“Thor Bridge?” Lieutenant Jackson echoed.
“As you might guess, Lieutenant,” Harrison Ridgly observed, “that is the title of a Holmes adventure.”
“But how—”
“I hope,” said Jonadab Evans apologetically, “that my friends here will forgive my going into detail. Doubtless they had already reached the same conclusions as I. The nick on the window sill was irresistible.”
“Look,” said Jackson. “Put it in words of one syllable.”
“Very well, Lieutenant. In The Problem of Thor Bridge, a woman is found shot with no weapon near at hand. The crime is, of course, thought to be murder. Actually, she had affixed a heavy stone to the end of a cord tied to the pistol. This stone dangled over the parapet of the bridge upon which the act took place. When her hand released the pistol after she had shot herself, the stone carried the weapon over the parapet into the water. All this Holmes reconstructed from noticing a chip on the stone parapet where the gun had struck against it in passing.”
Jackson frowned. “That sounds familiar, but not from Holmes. Isn’t it—?”
“You are probably thinking,” Dr. Bottomley interrupted, “of The Greene Murder Case. Out of charity to the dead, let us say that it is an unfortunate example of coincidence in plot device. There snow served in place of water for the concealing agent; here it is bushes.”
Jackson was examining the tiny weapon carefully, keeping a handkerchief between it and his fingers. “Not,” he murmured, “that I’ve any hope of prints. One shot fired—fairly recently, I’d say. No help from ballistics with the body gone.” Suddenly he stood erect and his eyes gleamed. “Look here,” he said. “This indicates a damned sight more than just another Holmes quotation. Can’t you see that? According to your Thor Bridge and my Greene Murder Case this is a device for concealing the fact that a wound was self-inflicted. What must that mean here?”
Ridgly smiled scornfully. “It must mean, Lieutenant, that Stephen Worth killed himself just to be nasty and then carried away his own corpse just to be confusing.”
“Don’t be so damned clever, Ridgly. What proof have we that he was really dead? He could have given himself a superficial wound by this method, just enough to account for the blood found, and then disappeared in the confusion.”
Sergeant Watson re-entered the discussion. “Why?” he asked simply.
“What do we know of Worth’s private affairs? How do we know what reasons he might have had for wanting to disappear after being thought dead?”
“What private griefs he had, alas, we know not, that made him do it,” said Dr. Bottomley—possibly merely to show that he could quote more than Holmes.
Maureen made a noise which, coming from a man, would be called a snort. “So I’m a liar, Lieutenant?”
“You could have been fooled, Miss O’Breen. If it were a trick he would want a witness to—”
“Remember,” she said with strained patience, “what I told you. I can’t ever forget it myself. I saw his hands, both of them, groping at me in the air at the very moment that he was shot. And it was no superficial wound. I saw the blood ooze out from right over his heart. It’s a nice idea, Lieutenant, but it just won’t work.”
“Here is a possibility,” Ridgly suggested. “The murderer had intended that we should think this a suicide in the Thor Bridge manner. The inadvertent arrival of Miss O’Breen changed his plans and caused him to knock her out and, for reasons which we cannot as yet understand, to abscond with the body. But he had already planted this evidence in the shrubbery, and forgot it in his flight. How is that?”
“It won’t wash,” Jackson grunted. “He’d have to plant the same gun he used in the shooting.”
“That was not the case,” Jonadab Evans recalled, “in the original Thor Bridge problem. There two guns were used—one as a weapon and one as a plant.”
“Which was long before ballistics. Anybody with any sense would know now that we’d check that point first thing. Well, that’s two bright ideas that don’t work. Any others? No? Then we file this away with the rest of our clues and get on to more of our choice little collection. Here. Can any of you tell me the Holmesian meaning of this?”
This was a tiny fragment, roughly triangular in shape, of very thin and somewhat cloudy glass. On it could be made out the letters OV, with a segment of an arc above them.
In turn all five Irregulars examined the fragment and shook their heads. “No,” said Dr. Bottomley, “that means nothing to us. Where did you encounter this curious object?”
“In the metal wastebasket in the corner where the murderer must have stood. We thought the basket was empty; but one of our men, just to be thorough, turned it over. That bit of glass fell out. And you mean to say that it is not a Holmes clue?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Jackson now took up the piece of black cloth. “It’s obvious enough what this is,” and he looked significantly at Ridgly. “But can you tell me any more abstruse meaning which it might have.”
Ridgly himself answered. “I see what you mean. It is, I believe, the exact duplicate of my arm band.” He compared it with the one he was wearing. “Yes, identical. The implication, I suppose, is that I dropped it at the scene of the crime?”
Jackson smiled. “That’s making it too easy, isn’t it?”
“I sincerely hope so.”
“And is this a quotation, too?”
Again all five Irregulars paused for reflection, and again the result was nothing.
“No arm bands in Holmes? That’s something. Now let me go over all this again. Whoever planted all these quasi clues was damned careful to involve all five of you, and Miss O’Breen as well. Weinberg, you should feel hurt at being neglected. Ther
e’s the German word for Federhut, the medical term for Bottomley, the arm band for Ridgly, the book for Furness, the signature squiggle for Evans, and the lady’s weapon for Miss O’Breen—or could it be Mrs. Hudson? There is, of course, one point to notice: the arm band, the item involving Mr. Ridgly, is the only one which is not a Holmes quotation. I don’t know what that might mean—”
“I know,” Ridgly interrupted, “what you infer that it might mean. That the murderer carefully planted Holmes clues to involve all the others, and that the clue involving me, not being a part of the Holmesian structure, is accidental and therefore really indicative.”
“A flight into death, Ridgly,” said Dr. Bottomley. “You seem obstinately determined to make the worst of things. Does an electric chair—no, a lethal gas chamber here—call to you with so sweet a voice?”
“It’s an old gambit,” said Jackson wearily, “to make the case against yourself so black that the investigator will automatically disregard it. Trouble is, it doesn’t work very often. But let’s drop these clues for a minute.”
“We couldn’t,” Maureen asked wistfully, “just drop the whole thing till morning? We’re all simply dead.”
“We couldn’t,” Jackson replied firmly. “The next thing I want is something nice and solid and not at all learned or deductive. I want a complete timetable of this evening, for each of you.”
Maureen sighed. “Mrs. Hudson,” she pled, “could we have some more coffee?”
Jackson seated himself at a table with pencil and paper while the others gathered around. “First off,” he said, “let’s get the topography straight. I’m no good at architectural drawing, but I’m going to make a rough sketch of the top floor as best I can. There’s a hallway running the length of it, with three bedrooms and a bathroom on either side. That’s a bedroom for each of you and the extra one we put Worth in. Mrs. Hudson has a room downstairs. Right?
“Now at the end of the hallway is a door leading onto a sun porch. This porch runs the whole width of the house. The wraps had been left originally in the empty bedroom, but when we put Worth in there, they were moved to the sun porch, and that’s where Miss O’Breen went first on her trip upstairs.”
The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars Page 10