Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #3

by SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

  Watson duly noted the measurement and we prepared to take our leave of Dr. Hedley.

  “Gentlemen, I hope I have been of service to your investigation,” Dr. Hedley said.

  “I am not sure what we are investigating,” Watson said.

  “In time, Watson.” I commented.

  “I would be honoured,” Hedley continued, “if you would accept the radiograph with my compliments.”

  We took the X-ray, expressed our appreciation, and headed back through a light rain to our waiting cab. The driver had been reluctant to wait but my half-crown advance insured he was our constant companion for the remainder of our errands. I instructed the driver to take us to the ministry of the Royal Army.

  “The Army, Holmes?” Watson was surely intrigued by now.

  * * * *

  I remained silent until we arrived at the ministry. We were led through a long hall adorned with regimental flags to a small side door. We entered an office to find waiting for us my brother, Mycroft, and Lord Lytton. We exchanged greetings and Watson saluted the former Viceroy of India.

  “Holmes,” Watson said, “your brother almost never ventures outside the confines of the Diogenes Club.”

  “Just a small trip from my office in Whitehall, Doctor,” Mycroft said. “Sherlock cabled me with your little mystery and I thought Lord Lytton would be interested.”

  “Would you please explain this business to me, Holmes?” Watson began to sound irritated. “Is it not enough that I’ve been driven through the streets in this weather, made to remove my shirt and subject myself to the torrents of the cold and those X-ray beams?”

  I smiled at Watson, and I must confess, I rather enjoyed keeping him in the dark. I turned to our host and said, “With your permission, Lord Lytton, I should like to review the facts.” Lord Lytton nodded his assent. “Watson, you were kind enough to recall the events of your injury at Maiwand. Just before your company was overrun, you were struck with a Jezail bullet in the shoulder.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Watson, what was your position when hit by the missile?”

  “Why, I had turned from my patient to find the help of an orderly.”

  “And from which direction was the Ghazi advance?”

  “They flanked us from the northeast and the northwest.”

  “But when you turned for the orderly…”

  “I was turned toward the rear of our lines.”

  “Exactly! Away from the advancing attack. Yet you were struck from the front of the shoulder.”

  “Quite so,” Watson replied.

  “Therefore, Watson, we must conclude that the shot did not come from the attacking Ghazis but from the rear of your own advance.”

  “You mean…”

  “You were shot by one of our own troops,” Lord Lytton added gravely, and stroked his beard. There was a moment of stunned silence.

  “You brought the radiograph, I see,” Mycroft observed.

  “Yes, I have.” I held the picture to the light and briefly explained the process for the benefit of our hosts.

  Mycroft immediately noted the corroborating evidence shown on the plate. “I take it, Sherlock, that you have measured the diameter of the bullet and you have recorded zero point four five inches.”

  Watson checked his notebook. “You are correct, Mycroft. But how could you know that? The diameter of the bullet was only just revealed moments ago by Dr. Hedley.”

  Mycroft looked at me in a sporting way. I shrugged. “Elementary, my dear Watson,” he chuckled. “Isn’t that what you say in all those stories, Sherlock?” He turned to Lord Lytton and said, “If you would be so kind.” Lord Lytton selected two rifles from a long rack hung on the wall. He placed them side-by-side on a table. “Sherlock’s cable was the key to confirming a suspicion we have had for some time. However, we lacked certain proof. In the confusion of battle it can be quite difficult to determine the trajectory of certain small arms fire. While it is a grim consequence of battle that men can be struck by bullets fired from their own side, one needs proof of accusations that some of these shots may be intentional.”

  “Subversives,” Lord Lytton commented. “The blasted Indian nationalists.”

  “We have suspects under suspicion who could have led a subversive movement from within the ranks, yet we have lacked solid evidence,” Mycroft admitted.

  “Until now,” I said. “You see, Watson, at the time in the battle at which you were struck there were none of the enemy at the rear of our charge.” I removed the calipers from my pocket. “Here the caliper is set at zero point four five inches, the size of the bullet still lodged in your shoulder.” I placed the caliper across the bore of the first rifle, the Jezail. “You see, a bullet of zero point four five caliber is too small to load in the Jezail, the rifle used by the Ghazis.” I then placed the calipers across the muzzle of the second rifle. It matched exactly. “This is the Martini-Henri. It matches your bullet.”

  “This was the bullet fired by our own Jacobs Rifles,” Mycroft said.

  “Your batman, Mr. Bates…” Lord Lytton trailed off.

  “You mean Murray?” Watson exclaimed. “He could never have shot me. He saved my life.”

  “No, Dr. Watson,” Lytton said, “Murray was loyal to the end. He filed his reports dutifully. His last was as a witness to your shooting, implicating a Captain Reynolds. But we suspect that he was ordered from someone higher up in the nationalist movement.”

  “Murray was no mere orderly. He was a top informant for our side,” Mycroft said.

  “The subversives would keep to themselves around the regular troops, but by placing our men in inconspicuous roles, they are free to move about unnoticed, thereby gaining valuable information,” Lytton added.

  “Spies, Holmes, who would have guessed?” Watson said.

  “Murray’s position had been compromised,” Mycroft said. “Sherlock’s deductions would seem to confirm that the bullet that struck you was meant for Murray.”

  Watson looked aghast. “You see, Watson,” I explained, “when you turned to call for Murray, his quick response allowed the bullet to miss him, unfortunately striking you.”

  “He is the true hero, then,” Watson said. “I should like to thank him.”

  Mycroft and Lytton exchanged glances. “I am sure you can, Doctor,” Mycroft said. “Your testimony will be quite helpful when we apprehend the assailant.”

  “You have located him, Mycroft? After so many years?” I asked.

  My brother smiled at me. “There are many we keep tabs on, Sherlock. You would be surprised. Lord Lytton and I must keep a low profile on such matters, you understand. But if you and the Doctor would be so kind as to assist us, you would do our nation a service.”

  I turned to Watson. “Are you game, my man?”

  “Anything to thank Murray,” he replied.

  Mycroft handed me two envelopes. “You shall have that opportunity. You will find the addresses in the envelopes.” He stared hard into my eyes in silent communication.

  “I understand. Thank you, gentlemen. Come, Watson, the game is afoot.”

  I ushered my somewhat stunned colleague to our waiting coach, nodding to acknowledge the occupants of another coach parked nearby. I opened the first envelope and instructed the driver to proceed with all speed to the next address. We dashed through the rainy streets, putting some distance between us and the coach that followed. I read the remaining portion of the document en route.

  We arrived at a moderately sized house just west of the city. We dismounted our coach and called at the door.

  A servant answered. “May I help you, gentlemen?”

  “We have come to call on Captain Reynolds. Important business,” I said as we entered the foyer.

  “Whom shall I say is
calling? The Captain is entertaining guests at tea in the library and should not be disturbed,” the servant said.

  I gave the man my card and told him to tell Reynolds that we were friends of Mr. Murray Bates. “He will, no doubt, wish to speak with us.”

  Soon, two men appeared, one in regimental attire, the other an Indian in a long coat over traditional silks. “What is the meaning of this intrusion?” Reynolds demanded.

  “Captain Reynolds, we have come to inquire about Murray Bates.”

  Reynolds looked at his friend slyly, in silent communication. “Can’t say that I know the chap.”

  “You will answer for his murder and the assault of my colleague, Dr. Watson.” I kept my eyes fixed on the pair.

  “Murder?” Watson exclaimed.

  Barely had Watson time to speak when I detected a quick movement from Reynolds’ silent companion. I swung my cane, deflecting the blade that the Indian deftly pulled from his sash. As he watched the knife skid over the floor, I grabbed him around the throat.

  “You will unhand my friend,” Reynolds said coldly as he trained a revolver on Watson.

  Watson bravely stood his ground.

  I maintained a firm grip on the Indian.

  The crack of the pistol was near deafening in the small space.

  Reynolds was knocked back in a spray of blood and glass. When the smoke cleared we found him on the floor, clutching his shoulder. Inspector Lestrade stood with his smoking gun, smiling at us through the shattered window. “Good afternoon, Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson,” he said. Lestrade’s fellow officers came pouring through the front door and dragged our adversaries to a waiting wagon.

  “Splendid shot, Lestrade,” I remarked outside as I lit my pipe. I glanced at Watson, who was looking pale.

  “Where would you boys be without us?” Lestrade asked. I handed Lestrade the warrant given to me by Lord Lytton. He glanced only briefly at the document. Lytton’s seal was enough for him. He left to join his colleagues.

  * * * *

  Our final errand of the day took us to the somber gates of Highgate Cemetery. Watson and I were all too familiar with the location, as it was the site of a dicey encounter with another bullet in our investigation of the case of “The Dead House.” The address contained within Mycroft’s second envelope also included the location of a gravesite. The rain was driving harder by this time and the setting of the sun somewhere behind the clouds added a darker shade to the gloomy day. Our driver took us as close to the location as the small road that wound through the headstones would provide, and we were obliged to walk a distance to our destination. Watson opened his black umbrella and I took a torch from the pocket of my overcoat to help us read the names on the stones.

  “Here we are, Watson,” I said. I shone the beam across a small stone to read:

  Murray Bates

  1859–1880

  Corporal Royal Berkshires

  We stared at the inscription in silence. Watson handed me the umbrella and reached into his pocket. He bent over the gravesite and unwrapped his Roberts Star from Murray’s kerchief, and whispered a word of thanks as he laid the medal on the ground above Murray. The rain soaked the dried blood on the old cloth, and, for a moment, Watson’s blood ran again.

  A VOLUME IN VERMILLION, by Kim Newman

  (Being a reprint from the Reminiscences of Col. Sebastian Moran, Late of the 1st Bengalore Pioneers)

  I blame that rat-weasel Stamford. He was no better at judging character than at kiting paper. Stamford later had his collar felt in Farnham, of all blasted places, and turned his fine calligrapher’s hands to sewing post-bags in Dartmoor Prison. If you want to pass French government bonds, you can’t afford to mix up your accents grave and your accents acute—though, as it happens, the most I picked up from Mlle Fortier, my French tutor, was an interesting, persistent itch.

  Nevertheless, Archie Stamford gets no sympathy from Sebastian Moran. There’s one forger they should have hanged. And, indeed, drawn, and, furthermore, quartered. Thanks to Idiot Archie, I was first drawn into the orbit, the gravitational pull as he would have said, of Professor James Moriarty.

  In ’81, I was a vigourous, if scarred, forty. I had an unrivalled bag of big cats, and a fund of stories about blasting the roaring pests. I’d stood in the Khyber Pass and faced a surge of sword-waving Pashtuns howling for British blood, potting them like grouse in season. Nothing gladdens a proper Englishman’s heart—this one, at least—like the sight of a foreigner’s head flying into a dozen bloody bits. I’d dangled by single-handed grip from an icy ledge in the upper Himalayas, with something huge and indistinct and furry stamping on my freezing fingers. I might not have brought home the ears and the pelt on that jaunt, but—as I promised in my article on the subject for Tit-Bits, ‘I’ll Get You, Yeti!’—there’s still time for another try. I’d stood like an oak in a hurricane as Sir Augustus, the hated pater, spouted paragraphs of bile in my face, which boiled down to the proverbial ‘cut off without a penny’ business. Stuck to it, too, the mean old swine. The family loot went to a society for providing Christian undergarments to the Ashanti, with the delightful side-effect of reducing my unmarriagable sisters to boarding-house penury.

  I’d taken a dagger in the lower back from a harlot in Hyderabad and a pistol-ball in the knee from the Okhrana in Nijni-Novgorod. More to the point, I had recently been raked across the chest by the mad, wily old she-tiger the hill-heathens called “Kali’s Kitten.”

  None of that was preparation for Moriarty!

  KK got too close for the long gun, and was being playful with her jaws and paws, crunching down and swallowing my pith helmet like one of Carter’s Little Liver Pills, delicately shredding my shirt with three razor-claws, digging into the skin and drawing casually across my chest. Three bloody stripes. Of course, I pulled my Webley side-arm and shot the hell-bitch through the heart. To make sure, I emptied all six chambers. After that chit in Hyderabad dirked me, I broke her nose for her; the tigress looked almost as aghast and infuriated at being killed. I wondered if girl and beast were related. I had the cat’s rank breath in my face and I saw the lamps go out in her huge eyes.

  One more for the trophy wall, I thought. Cat dead, Moran not: hurrah and victory!

  But KK nearly murdered me after all. The stripes on my chest went septic. Good thing there’s no earthly use for the male nipple, because I found myself down to just the one. Lots of grey stuff came out of me. So I was packed off back to England for proper doctoring. Since the scratches mostly cleared up on the voyage home, and all the other business similarly went away, it occurred to me that a concerted effort was made to boot me out of the sub-continent. I could think of a dozen reasons for that, and a dozen clods in stiff collars who’d be happier with me out of the picture. Maiden ladies who thought tigers out to be patted on the head and given treats. And the husbands, fathers and sweethearts of non-maiden ladies. Not to mention the old Bengalore Bastards, who didn’t care to be reminded of their habit of cowering in ditches while Bloody Basher did three-fourths of their fighting for them.

  Still, mustn’t hold a grudge, what? Sods, the lot of them. And that’s just the whites. As for the natives…well, let’s not get started on them, shall we? We’d be here til next Tuesday.

  For me, a long sea-cruise is normally an opportunity. There are always bored fellow-passengers and underworked officers knocking around with fat note-cases deep in their luggage. It’s most satisfying to sit on deck playing solitaire until some booby suggests a few rounds of cards and, why just to make it spicier, perhaps some trifling, sixpence-a-trick element of wager. Give me two months on any ocean in the world, and I can fleece everyone aboard from the captain’s lady to the bosun’s second-best bum-boy, and leave each mark convinced that the ship is a nest of utter cheats with only Basher as the other honest hand in the game.

  Usually, I embark sans so
u and stroll down the gang-plank at the destination pockets a-jingle with the accumulated fortune of my fellow voyagers. I get a warm feeling from ambling through the docks, listening to clots explaining to the eager sorts who’ve turned up to greet them that, sadly, the moolah that would have saved the guano-grubbing business or bought the Bibles for the mission or paid for the wedding has gone astray on the high seas. This time, tragic to report, I was off sick, practically in quarantine. My nimble fingers were away from the pasteboards and employed mostly in scratching around the bandages while trying hard not to scratch the bandages themselves.

  So, the upshot. Basher in London, out of funds. And the word was abroad, so I was politely informed by a chinless receptionist at Claridge’s in Brook Street that my usual suite of rooms was engaged and that, unfortunately, no alternative was available, this being a busy wet February and all. If I hadn’t pawned my horsewhip, it would have got quite a bit of use. If there’s any breed I despise more than natives, it’s people who work in bloody hotels. Thieves, the lot of them, or, what’s worse, sneaks and snitches. They talk among themselves, so it was no use trotting down to the end of the street and trying somewhere else.

  I was on the point of wondering if I shouldn’t risk the Bagatelle Club, where—frankly—you’re not playing with amateurs and there’s the peril of wasting a whole evening shuffling and betting with other sharps who a) can’t be rooked so easily and b) are liable to be as cash-poor as oneself. Otherwise, it was a matter of beetling up and down Piccadilly all afternoon in the hope of spotting a ten-bob note in the gutter, or—if it came to it—dragging Farmer Giles into a side-street, splitting his head and lifting his poke. A come-down after Kali’s Kitten, but needs must…