by Hugh Ashton
“ ‘ Excellent,’ said he. ‘ When I come to collect the boots next week, you may tell me how you are getting along with it. I have high hopes for this design, and hope that soon all people in your unfortunate position may be able to use such a thing.
“ Well, Mr. Holmes, sir, it may sound strange to you to hear a cripple such as myself singing the praises of such a simple thing as a crutch, but believe me, unless you have experienced such a thing for yourself, you cannot begin to conceive how pleasant it is to have such a thing to help you along your way.
“ Be that as it may, I was able to suggest to Mr. Habgood some minor modifications and improvements to the original design and he was gracious enough to listen to my suggestions, taking the crutch away for half a day or so, in order to have the changes made at the works, before returning the improved crutch to me.
“ About two weeks ago, I was just about to shut up my little shop in Wembley, and return home, when I was visited by two men. They told me that they had seen me with the new aluminium crutch, and asked me if I would sell it to them.”
“ Did they offer a good price ? ” I asked, smiling.
“ They offered a price which was much higher than I would have thought possible,” he answered me in all seriousness. “ They proposed to pay me the sum of twenty pounds.”
“ That is indeed a considerable amount of money. But it appears that you refused the offer ? ”
“ I did indeed, sir. I told them that the crutch, strictly speaking, was not mine to sell, and had been loaned to me by Mr. Habgood as the only one of its kind. It is quite possible that l was mistaken in that, but I really wished to keep it.”
“ And their reaction ? ”
“ They asked if they might examine the crutch. I handed it to them, and they appeared to be familiar with the way it had been assembled.”
“ How do you mean ? ”
“ As you can see here, sir,” and here my visitor demonstrated, “ you can remove the end of the crutch by unscrewing it. It is not obvious that this is possible, but it seemed that my attacker knew about it. He removed the end, and then he looked inside the tube of the crutch, as if he was looking for something, and held the crutch up in the air, and waved it about, as if he was trying to shake something out of it. Nothing came out, and he then turned his attention to the other end, which he removed. Again, it seemed to me that he knew exactly where to find the parts of the crutch that held it together. Once more he looked for some object inside the crutch, but he couldn’t find anything.
“ ‘ Where is it ? ’ he asked me, turning to me, with a terrible expression on his face. Well, of course, I had no idea of what he meant by this, and told him so. ‘ I’ll fix you, you lying _______,” he swore at me.
“ I was saved from his wrath by his companion, who pointed out that there was no need to use any sort of violence towards me. The other seemed to agree with that, which was a relief to me, sir, I can tell you, and they left me in my shop, and my crutch in three pieces on the counter.”
“ One moment,” I interrupted. “ Would you know these men again if you saw them ? ”
“ I might be able to recognise them, sir, if I saw them again. It was getting dark, however, and I had not at that time lit the lamps. One thing I noticed, though was that I felt that they were not English, though they seemed to speak English well enough. Maybe Swedish or Danish or something like that. You see a lot in the Andrew, and you learn to notice these things. We were in the Baltic with the Cossack, and I picked up a little of those languages. There was one other thing. At one point, one of them said something like ‘ We were told it was in the crutch’.”
“ That may well prove to be of importance,” I told him. “ But they found nothing, and they took nothing from you ? ”
“ Nothing,” he confirmed. “ They did not seem to have any interest in me at all, just in the crutch.”
“ I take it that you then went to the police ? ”
“ I did not. After all, although one of them had expressed some anger, there was no real threat, let alone an act of violence.”
“ And since then ? ”
“ A similar thing happened last night. I had just closed up my shop, and I was walking towards my home nearby, when almost the same thing happened again. This time, it was three men, rather than two.”
“ The same as on the previous occasion ? ” I asked.
My client shook his head. “ I am almost sure that they were a different lot from those who had come round the time before,” he told me. “ Although it was hard for me to see their faces, the voices were different. They were still from that same part of the world, though, sir, as far as I could tell.”
“ Again, they wanted to buy the crutch off you ? ”
“ That they did. This time, they offered thirty pounds, and a new wooden crutch. They were polite enough about asking me, but when I refused to sell it to them, they turned nasty on me. One of them started swearing at me in one of those languages—”
“ Which language ? ”
“ One of those from up there in the Baltic, sir. Swedish or Danish, but I couldn’t swear to which it was. They started to crowd in on me, and I was frightened about what was going to happen to me, I can tell you, when a bobby came around the corner, and they left pretty quick. The constable asked me what was going on, and I told him.
“ Well, he was good enough to listen to me, and I was a bit shaken up, I can tell you that, sir. He suggested that I come along to the police station with him, where he would give me a cup of tea and let me tell my story.
“ When I had told the sergeant on duty there of my little adventure, he suggested that I should take the crutch to pieces, so that he could look at it and see what was special about it. I did, but he could not see anything strange or remarkable.
“ As I just told you, I was unable to give any description of the men, and although the police officers at the station told me that they were very sorry, they also said to me that there was nothing that they could do to provide any practical help in catching the men who had threatened me.”
“ That is so often the way with the official police,” I remarked.
“ But, sir, they have promised to station a constable outside my shop at the time when I close.”
“ That is something, I suppose,” I admitted. “ And now you are here ? ”
“ Yes. There is a Sergeant Morton at the station, who suggested that I come here.* He had heard of your name, and felt that you might be able to help me.”
* Editor’s note : This may well be the police officer, later promoted, and referred to as “ Inspector Morton” in “ The Dying Detective”.
“ I am in no position to offer you protection, such as the police are doing,” I informed him.
“ No, sir, that is not what I want. I want to know what is the meaning of these visits, and what is the meaning of this crutch, and why it seems to be so important.”
“ That may take some time, and also...” I have to confess that at this stage in my career, I considered myself to be still learning my trade, and I was not confident in the matter of demanding fees from my clients. Happily, Mr. Gosling took my meaning without my having to provide the embarrassing details of fees and expenses.
“ There’s no need to be worried about money, sir. Before I came here, I took the liberty of calling on Mr. Habgood, and explaining what had happened. He was shocked and distressed that his gift to me should have had such results, and he promised to make good any expenses that I might incur in this business.”
This, as you can imagine, relieved my mind somewhat. Though I was hesitant to ask for fees, I was nonetheless in need of money to pay for the necessities of life, not to mention the materials I required in order to ply my trade effectively.
At this date, by the way, there was no doubt in my mind but that I was pursuing a trade – one of applied science, perhaps – but a trade nonetheless, until such time, that was, until I could raise it to the dignity of a profession.
I requested my new client to hand over the crutch for my examination. As he had told me, it was indeed of a very light weight, but at the same time of a sturdy construction. It certainly seemed to me that if the process of extracting the metal from the ore could be made cheaper, there would be a future demand for this metal which could far exceed that for steel.
However, such speculative thoughts were not conducive to solving the problem now laid before me, and I examined the crutch, attempting to work out how it could be disassembled. Gosling offered to tell me the details, but I refused, preferring to discover the method myself.
After a minute’s inspection, it proved a relatively simple process to remove the tip and to take apart the other end, and I examined the joints, and all relevant parts of the crutch, using a powerful lens. The whole appeared to be extremely well constructed, and machined with precision.
“ This is an extremely well-made piece of work,” I re- marked to Gosling.
“ It is indeed, sir,” he agreed. “ As a craftsman myself in another field, I have to agree with you there.”
“ Do you know what other business or objects Mr. Hap- good conducts and manufactures at his works ? ”
“ No, sir. All I know is that it is a metal works.” “ And the name of the company ? ”
He felt in his pocket, and produced a piece of paper, on which was written the name of Mr. James Habgood, and printed at the top was the name and address of his company, the Wembley Empire Metallurgic Works, Ltd. I withdrew my notebook from my pocket, and stood up to retrieve my pen from the desk by the window behind me. As I did so, I noticed two men standing idly on the pavement on the opposite side of the road to the house. They appeared to be waiting for something or somebody, and I called my visitor’s attention to them, handing him the crutch to assist him to make his way to the window, while bidding him to keep out of sight of those below, as far as possible.
“ Do you know those two ? ” I asked him.
“ I cannot swear to it, but I would say that they are two of the ones who came to visit me last night, sir,” he told me. “ Yes, that’s right,” as one of them turned away. “ There was a certain trick to his walk which I seem to recognise from the time before.”
“ I would say that it would be unwise for you to leave the house alone, at least carrying this crutch,” I remarked. “ That is to say, if the crutch really is the object of these unwelcome attentions, which would seem to be the case.”
“ What shall I do ? ” he asked.
“ It is simple,” I told him. “ I will ensure that you have a simple wooden crutch to support you while I make my enquiries, and I will let you out of the back door to the house, where you will not be seen.” I stepped to the casement, taking care to hide myself from the two watchers below, and blew two short blasts and a long one on my police-whistle. The two men below looked up sharply at the noise, but were unable to distinguish anything as I dodged back behind the curtains.
After some five minutes, there was a knock at the door, and I admitted a street Arab who went by the name of Wiggins. I had employed the lad, and a number of his friends, on a few occasions in the past, and I had found his services to be well worth the minimal amount I paid for them.
“ How much,” I asked of my visitor, “ would you expect to pay for a well-made wooden crutch ? ”
“ Somewhere in the region of four shillings, sir,” he told me.
“ Very well. Wiggins, here are five shillings. You are to go to the hospital and procure a crutch for this gentleman here – of the best quality, mark you – and you may keep whatever remains of the five shillings. I advise you to depart and return by the back entrance.”
Wiggins touched his forelock and departed on his errand. When he had departed, I ascertained more details regarding my client, but was unable to discover anything that would seem to have a bearing on the attacks on his person.
In a matter of twenty minutes, Wiggins returned, bearing a wooden crutch of an obviously high standard. “ They told me that the person who this belonged to had no further use for it, and so I could have it cheap at three shillings,” he announced proudly.
“ In which case, I shall ask you to earn the extra money by assisting Mr. Gosling down the stairs, and out of the back door to the nearest Underground railway station. If anyone approaches you, you are to use whatever means you think necessary to see them off. You can do that ? ”
Wiggins assented, and I turned to Gosling. “ This crutch will have to serve you until I return your aluminium crutch,” I told him. “ I trust it will be satisfactory.”
“ Entirely so,” he told me. “ If I had not had the aluminium crutch presented to me, this would be just what I would choose for myself.”
With that, and my promise that I would let him know as soon as I discovered anything of interest, he and Wiggins left the room. I watched the two men opposite, who continued their watch for about two hours more, before finally appearing to lose interest and leave.
Naturally, I could not be sure whether they had lost interest, and I therefore placed the crutch in a prominent position before I left the room, on the assumption that if they were seeking the object, which appeared to be of no value or interest in my eyes, it was better that they came across it immediately, and did not feel it necessary to ransack the room in their search for it.
In any event, I felt it necessary not to waste time, and as soon as I had taken my luncheon, I made my way to the Enfield Empire Works managed by Mr. Habgood. These proved to be not so much a large manufactory, as a cluster of small brick buildings, from some of which issued smoke and fumes of a familiar chemical nature.
On presenting my card, I was admitted to the office of Mr. James Habgood, who received me with a little suspicion. He was a small man, with intense blue eyes that peered at me through thick spectacles. I was not prepared for the owner of the company to be dressed in a white laboratory coat, but he explained that he was not only the manager of the company, but its chief researcher.
Following Watson’s chronicling of my little adventures, some fame has come my way, and the science of detection is a relatively familiar subject to those who read newspapers and magazines. At this stage of my life, though, it was necessary for me to introduce myself to Habgood, and explain exactly how I made my living, and to persuade him that any money he was to spend in my direction on behalf of the unfortunate cobbler would be money well spent.
After he had heard me out, he appeared to be sincerely interested in my way of life, and asked several questions which betrayed a keen intelligence.
“ I had no idea that there were people such as yourself plying this trade,” he said to me at one point.
“ I am, as far as I am aware, the first, and to the best of my knowledge, the only consulting detective in London,” I told him.
“ Well, you may be just the person I am looking for, in that case,” he told me. “ Maybe I can tell you a little of our business, since you have been good enough to tell me something of yours, and you may decide whether you wish to pursue an enquiry of mine concurrently with that of poor Gosling. I had no idea when I presented him with the crutch that it could cause such a problem, but I sense that his problem may also be mine.”
“ Pray tell me,” I invited him, “ and I will decide whether to take your case or not.”
“ You are certainly a curious fellow,” he said to me with a smile. “ In any case, to begin. You have noted the name of this works ? ” I nodded, and he continued. “ We are not your usual metalworking factory, you understand. We develop new alloys and metalworking techniques all the time, which we then make available – at a price, of course – to companies engaged in the actual business of manufacturing.”
“ And aluminium is one of the materials with which you work, I take it ? Such as the crutch that you presented to Gosling ? ”
Habgood chuckled. “ You describe yourself as a professional man. I take it that you may therefore keep a secret in a professional manner ? ”
Naturally, I assented. “ Do not worry, Mr. Holmes. I am not asking for a lifelong undertaking to keep your lips sealed. Merely for the next six months at the most. The crutch that I have loaned to Gosling contains one of our most valuable pieces of research.”
“ I examined the crutch closely,” I told him, “ and could see nothing contained in it.”
He laughed in my face. “ My dear sir,” he said to me, “ I am not in any doubt as to your ability to see what is in front of your eyes, or even to make deductions, such as you describe, from those observations. What is contained in Mr. Gosling’s crutch is invisible to the eye. It is the material of which it is composed that is of interest.”
“ Aluminium, he told me.”
“ Ah, but it is not merely aluminium. There are other metals added, and a special process employed, that make the metal of a vital part of that crutch many times stronger than aluminium, and only a fraction heavier. Why, it could even be used as lightweight armour-plating against bullets, we believe.”
“ I am to take it that this recipe and this process are secret ? ”
“ Indeed they are. The exact composition of this alloy and the method for its manufacture are known in their entirety to one person alone – myself. The details are kept in a safe in a bank. The only sample of the metal exists as a part of the crutch I have loaned to Gosling.”
“ Is it possible,” I asked him, “ to discover the elements composing the alloy and the process by which it has been made, through an examination of the material itself ? ”
“ I believe that it is in theory possible, using the technique of spectroscopy. A trained metallurgist could deduce certain key processes by examining the substance through a high-powered microscope.” I must have appeared a little crestfallen, because he added, “ It is no reflection on you, Mr. Holmes, unless you consider yourself a metallurgist, that you were unable to identify the material. In any event, only a small part of the crutch is made of the durable aluminium alloy I have described.”