The Mammoth Book of the New Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes

by Denis O. Smith

  After a while – perhaps forty-five minutes, although it was difficult to judge the passage of time with any accuracy – there came the sound of footsteps, and several distinct voices, from the stage above us. Shortly afterwards, I heard someone playing what sounded like an oboe and the sound of other instruments being tuned up. The general hubbub gradually increased, over the course of half an hour or so, and many footsteps and gay voices passed by in the basement corridor outside our room. Then, at length, the noise in the basement died away, as that on the stage above us increased, and it was evident that the rehearsal was about to begin.

  A few minutes later, there came a moment or two of relative silence, during which I heard what was probably Hardy’s voice, then the orchestra struck up what I took to be the overture and soon the rehearsal was in full flow. The music, the singing and the dancing seemed very loud in our chamber, but they were punctuated at regular intervals by quieter passages, when the characters in the play were speaking. During these interludes, although the voices of the actors came to my ears clear enough, I found it impossible to pick out their words. For perhaps another forty-five minutes, I followed the progress of the first act of the play, then, after a particularly rousing song, there came the sound of a general exodus from the stage. I also heard odd, isolated footsteps in the passage outside our room, but most of those who had left the stage appeared to have remained upstairs, no doubt watching the progress of the rehearsal from the wings. All at once, I realised that I was holding myself very tense. Intuitively, I think I knew that if the mystery figure were going to put in an appearance at all, it would probably be in the next few minutes.

  Scarcely had this thought crossed my mind when I heard the door of our chamber open softly. For a brief moment, a flash of dim light from the lamp in the corridor lit up the ceiling, then vanished, as the door was closed again. Every nerve in my body tensed and I longed to see who had entered, but I dared not make any sudden movement, lest I give away our presence. Above our heads, the first act of The Lavender Girl was continuing with a quiet scene. A moment later, I heard a match being struck, somewhere on the other side of the crates of boots, then a hiss, as the gas-jet by the door was lit. For a moment, the light flared up, casting strange black shadows on to the walls of the room, then the gas-tap was evidently turned right down, for the illumination subsided to a dull glow.

  I had positioned myself so that by leaning out sideways I should be able to see round the side of a large crate. Slowly now, and with infinite care, I inched my head and shoulders to the side in that direction. Near the centre of the room, beneath the trap-door and facing away from me, stood the figure I had encountered in the corridor the previous day. Though I could make out little more than a silhouette against the dim light of the lamp beyond, there could be no mistaking that long robe and large, enveloping hood. Beside me, Inspector Jones was peering intently through the narrow gap between two boxes and, beyond him, Holmes was craning over the top of a wicker hamper.

  From above us now came an increase in the noise and I judged that the whole of the chorus had returned to the stage. This passage was brief, however, ending with a rousing flourish from the orchestra. Then came softer music, which I recognised from the day before, and I realised that the rehearsal had almost reached the end of the first act. A moment later, Isabel Ballantyne began her song and her dance across the stage to the fatal trap-door. The hooded figure looked up, clearly following the tap-tap of her footsteps, and reached out a white hand to where the end of the cord was coiled round the hook on the wooden pillar. Slowly, without a sound, he uncoiled it and held it looped in his hand. Miss Ballantyne had paused in her dance now and was, I reckoned, standing upon the trap-door itself.

  All at once, with a suddenness that startled me, there came an abrupt scraping noise from beside me. Inspector Jones, in craning forward, had evidently leaned too heavily upon the box in front of him, which had abruptly given way and had slipped forward across the floor. The hooded figure looked round sharply in our direction. Within the hood, nothing was visible but unfathomable blackness. At that instant, Sherlock Holmes stood up and stepped forward.

  ‘I should not pull that rope if I were you,’ said he in a clear firm voice.

  The figure started visibly. Then, as Jones and I also stood up, he took a quick pace backwards and surveyed us all. An instant later, he had thrust his free hand into a pocket in the robe and brought out a large revolver.

  ‘You!’ said he to me in a deep, growling voice, directing the pistol in my direction. ‘Get over there with the others!’ Then, as I took a pace sideways, he glanced up at the trap-door above him. Isabel Ballantyne had almost reached the end of the verse and would at any moment dance away from where she stood.

  ‘Don’t be a fool!’ cried Jones. ‘If you pull that rope, and she falls, you’ll hang for it.’

  ‘Quiet!’ cried the dark figure in a loud, angry tone, raising his pistol and pointing it at the policeman’s face. Then, as the music above us reached a crescendo, his grip on the cord tightened and, stepping backwards, he gave it a firm tug. The cord went taut, Inspector Jones cried out and I looked up at the trap-door with a hollow feeling in my stomach. But nothing happened. The dark figure grunted with surprise and anger, looked up and pulled hard on the cord again. In the split second that his attention was concentrated upon the trap-door, Sherlock Holmes sprang forward, like a tiger upon its prey, and seized the hand holding the revolver in both of his, forcing it up and back.

  His adversary at once released his hold on the cord and brought his free hand down upon Holmes’s throat, his fingers closing in a powerful grip. But Jones and I sprang forward and threw our weight into the struggle. Our enemy was a very powerful man, of that there could be no doubt, but between the three of us we forced him off his feet and down to the floor. In another moment, Holmes had wrestled the gun from his grasp and Jones had managed to clap a pair of handcuffs upon his wrists. At that very moment, as we struggled to regain our breath, the door from the corridor was flung back with a crash. In the open doorway at the top of the steps stood Count Laszlo of Sipolia, a pistol held rock-steady in his hand.

  ‘What is happening here?’ he demanded in a fierce voice. ‘Hah!’ he cried, as he caught sight of our prisoner on the floor. ‘I thought as much! Stand aside, and I will put a bullet in that blackguard’s heart!’

  Inspector Jones rose quickly to his feet.

  ‘I am a police officer,’ said he in a voice of authority, ‘and I must ask you, sir, to put that firearm away. The situation is under control, and no assistance from the public is required.’

  ‘More’s the pity!’ said the Count. ‘I had hoped to catch the villain alone and to deal with him myself.’ With an air of reluctance, he thrust his revolver deep into his overcoat pocket. ‘If any harm had come to Isabel Ballantyne, I can assure you that this man would never have left the theatre alive!’

  He was interrupted as a stream of the most foul oaths and vicious abuse poured from the lips of our prisoner, who lay, breathing heavily, upon the floor. ‘You infernal, interfering busybody!’ he cried at last at Sherlock Holmes, in a voice which was wild with anger. ‘Damn you!’

  ‘Now, now,’ returned Holmes in a calm voice, as he adjusted his collar. ‘You know it is every man’s solemn duty to interfere and be a busybody if he knows that murder is planned!’ Then he leaned down and, in one swift movement, pulled away the velvet mask, to reveal the features of Captain William Trent, so twisted with rage as to be almost unrecognisable.

  VII

  ‘It is evident,’ said Sherlock Holmes, as we sat either side of a blazing fire in our rooms in Baker Street, later that evening, ‘that for some time Trent had been determined to rid himself of his wife. He would have realised, however, that should she meet her death in sudden and suspicious circumstances, he would inevitably be a chief suspect in the eyes of the authorities. He therefore conceived a scheme in which a series of malevolent actions would appear to be directed at Richar
d Hudson Hardy’s theatre company in general – for which no suspicion could possibly attach to him, he being one of the financial sponsors of the company – which would culminate, however, with the murder of his wife.’

  ‘But if The Lavender Girl had been cancelled, Trent stood to lose a large amount of money,’ I protested.

  ‘Perhaps so; but that was evidently of less importance to him than being rid of his wife. In any case, it is not certain that Miss Ballantyne’s death would necessarily have entailed the cancellation of The Lavender Girl. It would, of course, have been postponed, but it might have opened later, with Lydia Summers, or someone else, in the leading role.’

  ‘I suppose it might,’ I conceded; ‘although I doubt if anyone else could have adequately replaced Isabel Ballantyne. Why on earth,’ I cried, as I reflected upon this possibility, ‘would anyone wish to be rid of a woman of such charm and such gifts?’

  Holmes chuckled. ‘As I have had occasion to mention to you once or twice before, my dear fellow,’ replied he in a tone of amusement, ‘you must never let your admiration for the fair sex affect your assessment of a case! You perceive Isabel Ballantyne only from a distance, as it were, in the form in which she presents herself to the public. Perhaps upon closer acquaintance she appears somewhat less charming and gifted. Who knows? Perhaps she had an annoying habit of singing whenever her husband wished to discuss the movement of prices on the Stock Exchange, or perhaps she fell asleep and snored each time he began to describe the hunting of tigers in India. We cannot say. I am hopeful that Count Laszlo might be able to enlighten us on that side of things. He promised he would call by this evening on his way home.’

  ‘Did you ever suspect that Trent was behind all that had happened?’

  ‘I was certain of it.’

  ‘What! How on earth could you know? After all, Miss Ballantyne herself had described to us how her husband had tried to persuade her to leave the production.’

  ‘Yes, the cunning devil! It is evident he made the suggestion in the full and certain knowledge that his wife would never agree to it. But, to describe to you how I came to perceive the truth: when first we went down to the Albion yesterday, I suspected no one. The data with which I had been supplied were too meagre for me to form any meaningful suspicions, and it would have been a capital mistake to attempt to do so. Whilst we were there, however, an incident occurred which led me to know, with almost complete certainty, that Captain Trent was responsible for what had been happening at the theatre. This incident occurred after we had come up from the basement for the first time. Whilst down there, I had made a few measurements, of footprints, marks on the door-frame and so on, as you will no doubt recall.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘A few simple calculations from those measurements enabled me to form a mental image of the man who had left those traces, an image which was subsequently confirmed, as to height at least, by the mark your assailant left upon the corridor wall as he fled, which was slightly higher than the marks you had made. This image, Watson, was exactly matched by a man who walked in at the front door of the theatre just a short time later. That man was Captain William Trent.’

  ‘But there must be thousands of men in London who are approximately of the same height and build as Trent.’

  ‘There may well be; but just how many of those thousands are intimately connected with Hardy’s Theatre? Besides, Trent would have been drawn to my attention in any case because of the incident to which I alluded.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘He entered the theatre soaking wet.’

  ‘I may be obtuse,’ I remarked, ‘but I can see no significance whatever in that observation, Holmes. Why, it was pouring with rain at the time! Anyone would have been wet! If you recall, Jimmy Webster arrived at the theatre in precisely the same condition.’

  ‘That is so; but Webster had come on foot, he informed us, from a coffee-shop some distance away. Whether true or not, his account was at least plausible. Captain Trent offered no such explanation. He had, he said, come directly from his club. He must, then, have come in a cab. But if so, why was he so wet? At the front of Hardy’s Theatre is a large glass canopy, which extends across the width of the pavement. Anyone alighting from a cab there could step almost directly under the canopy and thus practically avoid the rain altogether. Clearly, then, Trent had not alighted from his cab outside the front of the theatre just before we saw him, despite the impression that he tried to give. It was evident he had walked from further afield, but there was no clue at that time as to where he might have come from. The only innocent explanation which seemed likely was that he had alighted early from his cab in order to call at a tobacconist’s shop or a post office, or somewhere similar. When I surveyed the area later, however, I established that there was no shop of that sort nearby. In the meantime, you and I had discovered the old tunnel which runs between the Albion and the Palace, and it was clear that anyone using it – specifically, the mystery persecutor of Hardy’s company – would have emerged into the daylight from the ruined Palace. At the side of the Palace, in the short cul-de-sac between the two theatres, is a little side-door which seemed to me the most likely exit from the building, and the distance from that door to the front of the Albion would be just sufficient for a man to get caught in a sudden downpour and arrive at the Albion soaking wet. I have little doubt that Hardy’s missing bunch of keys will be found in Captain Trent’s possession and little doubt, either, that one of the keys upon it will fit the side-door of the Palace.

  ‘Of course, if Trent were behind the recent incidents, as I was compelled to believe, then the whole matter was cast in a somewhat different light. Hardy had assumed that the actions of the anonymous miscreant were designed to wreck his production, so that it would not be a success and would not run for long, or might possibly not even open at all. But this motive could not apply to Trent, one of three men who stood to lose money if The Lavender Girl were not a success and whose own wife was the leading lady in the production. It seemed to me possible, then, that the whole series of fairly trivial incidents might be nothing more nor less than an elaborate blind, to distract attention from Trent’s true aim. What this might be, I could not at first conceive; but when – thanks to your alertness, old fellow! – we learnt that he had been in the chamber under the stage and discovered that the trap-door there had been tampered with in an elaborate and highly ingenious manner, I felt sure we had discovered the kernel of his evil scheme. Anyone falling through that trap-door to the flagstones below would surely break his neck. This little piece of malice was therefore on an altogether higher plane of devilry than the spiteful tricks which had gone before. Here, surely, then, was the goal towards which that callous villain had been working.

  ‘But if it was Trent’s intention to murder someone, who might that someone be? In the absence of any other obvious motive, his wife – despite all those charms and gifts which have impressed you so greatly – seemed to me the likeliest candidate. Why else would Trent have gone to such lengths to disguise his true intentions? By an examination of the script, I was able to establish that Isabel Ballantyne spent some parts of the play alone on the stage, which was not the case for any of the other characters. Moreover, as you and I observed yesterday afternoon, for some time at the end of the first act she passed over, or stood upon, the trap-door itself. I was convinced, then, that this was when the attempt would be made upon her life. But there is the bell! This may well be our visitor!’

  A moment later, our landlady announced Count Laszlo of Sipolia and that broad, powerful-looking figure was shown into the room. I pulled a chair up to the fire for him and, having rubbed his hands together in the warmth for a few moments, he got quickly down to business.

  ‘First of all,’ said he, ‘I must apologise most profoundly for my conduct at our interview yesterday. You were quite correct. I had no right to ask the questions I did, and you had every right not to answer them. But you must understand, gentlemen, that my position w
as an extremely difficult one. I have had very grave suspicions for some time as to what might be afoot, but have had no proof of these suspicions. Naturally, I was keen to know if you had discovered anything which might have tended to confirm or refute my suspicions. But, just as you, who had been retained by Miss Ballantyne and Mr Hardy, could not speak freely to me of what you had learnt, so I, who had the most terrible suspicions but no proof, could scarcely speak freely of the matter to you, a perfect stranger to me. I did not doubt your integrity; but I had no way of judging your competence. For all I could tell to the contrary, you might have discovered nothing at all, or you might have discovered some vital fact and, not suspecting Trent’s involvement, have spoken of it in front of him. All of this left me in a perfect agony of indecision.’

  ‘Did you reach any conclusion, as a result of our interview?’

  ‘I judged – forgive me – that you had discovered nothing of significance, but were reluctant to admit it. I therefore determined that I should have to act alone. As it turned out, it appears I would have been too late to prevent that devil murdering Miss Ballantyne. In which case, I would have shot him dead.’

  ‘You would have hanged for it,’ remarked Holmes, in a matter-of-fact voice.

  ‘If so, then your intervention in this business has saved not one life, but three.’

  ‘How came you to be so intimately involved in the matter?’ asked Holmes; ‘and what caused the suspicions you have spoken of?’

  ‘I will tell you,’ said Count Laszlo. ‘As you may be aware, I have followed Isabel Ballantyne’s career with very great interest and appreciation, and have known her personally for many years. Indeed, I will admit to you, gentlemen, what it might embarrass me to admit before a larger audience, that I harboured hopes in the past that she would one day do me the honour of consenting to be my wife. You may consider such a hope absurd, or impertinent, but nevertheless, that was the case. When, however, Captain Trent appeared upon the scene, and conducted his courtship of Miss Ballantyne with the ruthlessness and dispatch with which he no doubt conducted his tiger-hunts, I bore him no ill-will. Indeed, I wished him well, for it appeared, for a time at least, that he had achieved what no one else had managed, including, I regret to say, myself, which is that he seemed to have made Miss Ballantyne happy. After a while, however – for I still saw them from time to time, although not so frequently as before their marriage – it seemed to me that this was no longer so. Indeed, to one who knew her of old, it was apparent that Isabel was profoundly unhappy. This, as you will imagine, caused me great concern. Then, quite by chance, information came my way which suggested that Trent was being despicably cruel to his wife, both mentally and physically. At first I was shocked at this and could not believe it was really true; but further information which reached me confirmed the suggestion beyond doubt.