The Redacted Sherlock Holmes, Volume 3

by Orlando Pearson

  “But what relevance does that have to Miss Brusher’s story?” I asked, as I was still sore at Holmes’s high-handedness.

  “The reason why I asked about the house numbers is that in one house there was a dispute with the builders during its construction and, in protest, the builders bricked up the windows on the ground floor and refused to build the non-load-bearing partition walls. The dispute was resolved and eventually the bricked-up space was used for hanging washing, whereas normally such activity is carried out in the attics. In this case, the attic area was turned into dwellings. The house number is eighty-four, so I have succeeded in finding the location of the room to which Carr was admitted although I have barely had to stir from our quarters.” Holmes looked up at me from his chair and for all my frustration with my own investigations I had to own that he had found out far more than I had.

  “So was my visit to Hackney a complete waste of time?” I asked in the hope of eliciting at least some small word of praise.

  “Not at all, Watson, not at all,” soothed my friend and leaned back in his chair. “You have confirmed what I have established by talking directly to the property manager - namely that there is a windowless room at the ground level of a block at eighty-four Caesar Street and that Carr or some man in his pay has been in Caesar Street on the pretext of looking for a Captain Spear. We can therefore rule out the theory that what Miss Brusher has told us is a complete fiction either on her part or on Carr’s. You have further confirmed the presence of some sort of large room where what appears to be official business is being transacted.”

  I was about to make a mildly self-congratulatory comment that I had at least confirmed something even without establishing anything new when Holmes added: “It is, however, fair to say that your contribution to our investigation so far says more about your skill for accurate reporting than it does for any proper understanding of detective work.”

  He sat silently in his armchair and puffed indigo smoke rings at the ceiling. They hovered around the lamp-shade and dissipated. I felt the silence awkward and asked “So you say that Carr or someone in his pay has been down there? Are you suggesting it may not have been Carr who went down there since that is what he is described in Miss Brusher’s text as doing?”

  “Carr is clearly a troubled individual. It is not impossible that he set the whole thing up himself: gaining access to number eighty-four Caesar Street, paying people to impersonate a court and, having followed Miss Brusher here, organising for a bunch of loafers to impersonate a court for anyone following up on his narrative. He may even have arranged for someone else to go down there on his behalf rather than going down himself. Beyond some form of perverse self-gratification, however, I do not see what end that would serve and I am therefore inclined to dismiss the theory that this is all an elaborate invention on the part of Carr’s, without ruling it out altogether. As you will realise, Watson, we are in the process of razoring away the impossible to leave what must be true. If we dismiss the theory that the whole thing is an elaborate fantasy on the part of Carr, in my view, there are only two possibilities left.”

  I waited for Holmes to set out the two possibilities, but instead he adopted an even more languorous expression and puffed more smoke rings at the ceiling. Finally I ventured an “And?”

  “And I must carry out more investigations of my own,” he replied calmly and leant further back in his armchair with a glazed look in his eyes.

  All further efforts to draw Holmes into dialogue were unavailing and in the end I went to spend the rest of the day at the billiard table in my club. When I returned, Holmes had gone, though the acrid smell of tobacco hanging in the air assured me that he had not been gone long and that he had spent the time till his departure in a smoking frenzy.

  I saw little of Holmes over the next few days. When he was in Baker Street, he was distracted far beyond conversation and it was clear that it was the case of Joseph Carr to which he was giving his full attention as his mail remained unopened and calls from visitors were rebuffed with an abruptness that he showed only when dedicating himself fully to a particularly consuming task. The one person to whom he did give an audience was Miss Brusher, who called on two separate occasions when Holmes chanced to be at our lodgings. Completely at variance to his pattern of behaviour since our earliest cases together, as soon as she appeared carrying additional bundles of typescript, Holmes asked me to vacate our sitting room so that he could talk to Miss Brusher unaccompanied, which he proceeded to do at considerable length.

  I could see Miss Brusher was also startled by this approach, but, as she robustly commented, she was used to Mr Carr coming to see her without anyone else present and she was a lady who could look after herself.

  It was a full week after my trip to Hackney before Holmes said anything more than a brusque word to me.

  One evening when he had been back for two hours and had sat in silent contemplation, not uttering a word while still dressed in a boiler suit smelling faintly of chlorine, he suddenly started to speak:

  “It’s like this, Watson: In his writings, Carr gets to his job at the bank early, stays there till late and either then goes home or goes looking for help from a variety of sources on the case for which he is under arrest. I decided I needed to track Carr for as much of the day as I could, so I posed as a loafer outside twelve Prague Square for when he was at his home and then joined one of the gangs that clean the various banks in the evenings in order to be inside the bank when he was there late. One of the things I had to assess was the extent to which his writings, in which he uses the third person to describe what he does, correspond to what is in fact happening in his own life. By sitting as a loafer under his window at his home and working as a cleaner at the bank in the evenings, I am able to follow what he is doing for several hours a day, though not all the time. I have a blank period during his working day when I am unable to get into the office part of the bank, a blank when he is at home inside and a blank each time he goes into a private property to consult about his case.”

  “I can understand you operating as a loafer, but how did you get to work as a cleaner in a bank? Surely an organisation such as a bank would readily be able to establish that you were an imposter.”

  “My dear Watson, you will remember from the adventure of ours that you were kind enough to chronicle as ‘The Stockbroker’s Clerk’ that the financial institution Mawson and Williams was prepared to offer an applicant a permanent and responsible job without so much as meeting him. Can you imagine how much easier it is to infiltrate a bank when you work in a lowly position for a contractor? The bank takes no pains at all to check the bona fides of those working for its contractor and the contractor hardly more so. I have adopted a Moravian name, Vincenc Kramar, and I had to give the team master a verbal undertaking that my presence in the country was legal. After that there were no further background checks and I was free to move from bank to bank with access to all the private offices of the most senior officers. My team is a friendly, honest, hard-working crew from all corners of the earth, though I would not advocate looking too closely at their legal right to reside in the country.”

  “So what are your conclusions?”

  “Where I am in a position to validate his writings, they confirm to the reality of his life.”

  “Does that mean that you believe he is the subject of a major persecution?”

  “I have no choice but to do so. Everything I observe him do appears in his writings. Accordingly, I cannot believe that his writings referring to the parts of his life I cannot see are not retelling his actual experiences, outré though some of them are. Therefore, I have to conclude that he is subject to a persecution from authorities that are ubiquitous, well-resourced and yet unofficial, as all my research about Carr reveals there is no official interest in him at all. Accepting that what Carr is writing is what he is experiencing also puts me into the position of observing him
and then shortly afterwards reading what I have seen in the writings Miss Brusher brings around. So I watch Carr go where I cannot follow him and then read in the text from Miss Brusher that he went where I saw him go and what happened when he was out of my sight. His writings about himself, if I may say so, are a good deal less embellished than what my own chronicler writes about me or indeed about himself.”

  “So what is happening to Carr now?” I asked, ignoring Holmes’s barb.

  “He constantly tries to press his documents on Miss Brusher, but I know that not just from the text but also from what Miss Brusher tells me. And, what I can also confirm from my work as a cleaner at the bank, is that he has had an encounter with a flogger.”

  “With a flogger?”

  “You remember at his visit to the courthouse he complained about the corrupt behaviour of the officials who arrested him. I was cleaning in the mail room of the bank late one evening when Carr came past and threw open a door to a storage cupboard in the corridor outside. I went into the corridor and I was able to see from behind his shoulder into the room where two men were being flogged by a third man because they had abstracted various possessions of Carr’s on his arrest. Carr made no attempt to stop the flogging and went on his way. Shortly afterwards the incident with the flogger appeared in the typescript he gave to Miss Brusher, which she then passed on to me.”

  “But Holmes, whatever organisation is persecuting Carr, it seems to have resources everywhere. It can set up a courtroom in a tenement block, employ people to stage the arrest of a senior figure in a bank and use its agents to punish those of its members who do not abide by its rules. What sort of organisation is of the scale to do that?”

  “One playing for high stakes, in order to make the size of their organisation viable.”

  “So what of your two theories?”

  “Either Carr is being persecuted by some arm of the state authorities so powerful and yet perverse as to be unknown to us, or this is a private persecution from an organisation that has huge resources at its disposal. As my discrete contacts with the higher circles of the government lead me to believe that this is not a state-sponsored persecution, we are forced to conclude that a major private enterprise is persecuting Carr.”

  “But to what end?”

  “One that I intend to uncover.”

  With that he pulled his violin out of its case and improvised in a way that bespoke determination, for all that it was wanting in tunefulness.

  Holmes had already gone when I got up the next morning and it was two days later, as I lay slouched in my armchair after dinner, contemplating going to bed, that a message came through from him asking me to get to Prague Square as soon as possible. When I got there, I found him in the company of Peter Jones, the official police agent, whose tenacity, if not whose intelligence, Holmes had always admired. Jones and Holmes were standing silently together, but as soon as I arrived and without preamble Holmes started to whisper to me as one thinking out loud.

  “And I think I have found out what they are playing for. Carr is Company Secretary of the bank, but in a previous role at the bank he was on the trading floor.”

  “But surely a bank would never allow someone from the trading floor to move directly to working on the administrative side of the business. It means that they both place deals and then control the processing and scrutiny of the deals.”

  “It clearly is a breach of what is normally required for the proper running of a bank and the lack of adequate controls over what roles people play does indeed have a bearing on what I have found. In his previous role almost exactly a year ago, Carr had a counter-party who took out a large option to buy gold from him at a price of £4 2s 1d per ounce. The contract was of a size as to be beyond the authorised limit or ultra vires for someone in the position Carr was in at the time, but the price of gold at present is £4 1s 9d so the contract can easily be satisfied on the existing market. Furthermore, the C&S Bank has large gold reserves and so it can cover its position.”

  “So in spite of all your efforts, are you still searching for a real case to investigate?”

  “Oh! I have two cases to investigate! The ultra vires transaction I have identified is a mere prelude to the main one. What would make the contract difficult to fulfil would be if the price of gold were to spike, and one of the things that would cause it to do so would be a sudden shortage of gold on the market such as might be caused if the bank’s vault were robbed. I have discovered that Carr is one of the two people each of whom has half of the code that opens the bank’s vault. Both codes need to be used to gain entry to the vault. I believe the other person is putting him under pressure to reveal it and so enable that other person to rob the gold.”

  “But if the price of gold were to rise substantially, how much would the gain be to the person who had the gold?”

  “Colossal. The person holding the gold would be in possession of metal worth a gigantic sum and there would be a run on the bank as it became unable to meet its obligations, the first of its type in this country for over a hundred years.”

  “So how did you uncover this?”

  “Carr had entered some of the details of the ultra vires transaction into a notebook which he keeps on his desk. The bank’s security procedures were set out in a manual of operating instructions which he also conveniently left out.”

  “So as a cleaner you were able to penetrate the bank’s inner offices and find out the details of its most material deals and its most important security measures.”

  “Banks often seem unable to understand the risks they are taking or the deals that they are making or to know how to protect their secrecy. Remember Mr Holder of Holder and Stevenson, who rather than locking the beryl coronet into the safe of his bank, resolved to keep it in his home overnight and told his family about it.”

  “So what are your steps now?”

  “I was keeping you out of this one because of the devastating consequences of what is afoot. If the bank collapses, it will be unable to meet its obligations to other banks, thereby creating a run on all of them. I could not have you realising the full potential consequences of what is happening and indicating it in some way to that share speculator friend of yours, Thurston, with whom - I observed from the chalk on your thumb - you are continuing to play at billiards. I know not where the contagion caused by a run on the banks might stop. It may indeed end with people trying to withdraw money from all the banks at once. Today, however, I established that the option on the gold expires tomorrow, so the other password holder is likely to strike tonight. I therefore need the help of someone on whose support I can rely.”

  I had felt a little raw about Holmes leaving me out of the case and had done my best not to show it. But I was pleased that I now had an explanation for my exclusion and some confirmation that he valued my abilities.

  “Would we not be better using the full resources of Scotland Yard to help us with this?”

  At that moment a hansom cab drew up and two men dressed in forbidding clothing and with black top hats pulled down low stepped out. Holmes drew us behind some bushes and we watched. They rang at number twelve and were admitted. Shortly afterwards, they came out with a third person between them whom I took to be Carr.

  The cab had gone and they half-accompanied, half-dragged Carr to the middle of the square and laid him out prone on the grass. A window facing onto the square was thrown open and a light shone out as they pulled him to the ground. To my horror, I saw the glint of a blade in a gloved hand. The knife was poised over Carr’s throat.

  Holmes, Jones and I stole up behind them with pistols drawn. Suddenly Carr cried out “Like a dog!”

  We now made no attempt to conceal our onrush and the two dark-clad men looked around. Holmes fired in the air and I had them covered. The two dropped Carr and made to run, but another shot in the air from Holmes made them realise the fut
ility of any resistance or thought of flight. They hesitatingly raised their hands.

  “Good to see you again, Mr Merryweather!” said Holmes as he ripped the hat off one of the assailants. To my astonishment, I recognised one of Carr’s attackers as the well-known chairman of the Board of Directors of the County and Suburban Bank whom we had previously met in the adventure I have recorded as “The Red-Headed League”.

  “I think I’ll call you Merryweather from now on,” said Holmes. “I was always puzzled how on the night of the first attempt on County and Suburban Bank you rapped on the floor of the vault with your stick on precisely the stone under which the tunnel came out. I thought at the time it might be to warn the robbers, but I had no evidence with which to substantiate it. I have now. And how good to see you here too, John Clay,” he said, turning to the other man. “I don’t suppose we need to ask where the money came from to procure your escape from jail.”

  Merryweather was too stunned by the turn of events to say anything, but Clay said “I may once again find myself in detention at your hands, Mr Holmes, but as a man with noble blood in my veins, I do insist on being called Mr Clay. Indeed, were I able to prove my belief that my birth followed a secret marriage between Lord Mason and my mother rather than just an irregular dalliance, I would expect to be called Lord Clay.”

  “And you, Clay, were again on the verge of a major coup. You had the option to buy gold from Carr and were about to raid the bank’s vaults to empty its stocks of gold and raise the gold price to make your option much more valuable.”

  “Holmes,” drawled Clay. “You underestimate my ambition. You seem to think I would be satisfied by the piffling profit on a bit of gold.”