by D. R. Bensen
“Yes! I am going to crush you in such a way that your humiliation and downfall will be witnessed by the entire world!”
“How fascinating! And just how do you propose to do that?”
“The crime of the century—the past century, this one, and all centuries yet to come!—is now in preparation. It will go forward as planned, despite the temporary setback your interference tonight has caused me. It will go forward, it will take place, and, Mr. Holmes … it will take place before your very eyes! And you will be powerless to prevent it!”
He sat back in his chair, gesturing with the revolver as though driving home a salient point of mathematics in the classroom.
“The world will gape at its very immensity! And when the world discovers that it has occurred within arm’s length of the incomparable Sherlock Holmes, the world will sneer, the world will ridicule—and the world will hound you into oblivion! That is why I have not used any of the means at my disposal here in this room. I have other plans for you, Mr. Sherlock Holmes!”
The Professor sank back further in his chair, fairly panting with the emotion that had surged through him in the course of his tirade. Holmes looked at him for a moment, then slowly shook his head.
“Have you? I, on the other hand, have the same plan for you that I have always had: to see you swing at the end of the hangman’s rope. I have no doubt, Professor, that it is my plan that will prevail.”
He stood above the wizened Professor for a moment, a brooding sternness shadowing his face. He might have been an avenging angel taking the measure of a demon of the Pit for a fated forthcoming struggle.
A piece of crystal crunched under one evening pump as he shifted his stance slightly. He glanced down, and his face lightened with a wry smile.
“Pity about the chandelier. It was the only thing in the room that showed a little style. Don’t bother to get up, Professor. I’ll see myself out.”
He turned and was gone from the room.
Professor Moriarty sat for many minutes, his claw-like hands cradling the blued metal of the revolver with an almost urgent affection, gazing with a curiously passionless abstraction at a point in space between himself and the wall. Then, moving decisively, he laid down the weapon and strode to the blackboard. Wiping it clean, he picked up the chalk and began charting his next project in large but meticulously neat letters:
1. SHERLOCK HOLMES TO …
Chapter Two
Some three days after the singular confrontation just described, on the 22nd of March of this year of 1901 to be precise, a dismal morning found me finishing a quite satisfactory breakfast in the lodgings I had so often shared with Sherlock Holmes. The practice of my profession, and two marriages which left me twice a widower, had seen me domiciled elsewhere for long periods of time, but I was well aware that the cluttered rooms at 221B Baker Street were now truly my home, and one which suited me eminently. Mrs. Hudson is a jewel of a landlady, with a rare understanding of the sort of breakfast required to start a day; and, trying though he is at times, Sherlock Holmes is a fellow-tenant of the kind guaranteed to keep a constitutionally torpid medical man stimulated and on his toes!
As he entered the sitting room, where breakfast had been laid, however, he seemed sunk in morose introspection, and flung me a glum “‘Morning, Watson. Breakfasting?” His faded purple dressing-gown hung on him a little.
“Now how, Holmes,” said I gravely, “did you work that out?”
I took a sip of my tea and returned to my perusal of The Times, anticipating a small surprise its pages had in store for him.
Sherlock Holmes was in no mood for persiflage. “Watson, do you mind curbing your tendency toward schoolboy jokes for the moment? You know I’ve no head for humor when there’s nothing to occupy me but staring at rain-streaked windows on the other side of the street! Three days since I broke the back of Moriarty’s organization, and there’s not been a caller or a letter worthy of my attention!”
Hands behind his back, his head bowed, he strode across the room to the bookshelf and cast a sour glance at the bound volumes containing those cases of his which, with a constantly expressed distaste and reluctance (though, I have always felt, a secret pride) he allowed me to present to the public gaze.
He ran his finger along the gilded tops of the books as if looking, indeed hoping, to discover dust, and observed, “As my biographer, Watson, you’ve precious little with which to occupy yourself these days. You’ll soon be afflicted with the same boredom I’m suffering, I dare say, though I don’t suppose you’re quite as congenial a host to the blue devils as I am. I tell you, it’s intolerable! If nothing is to happen for the moment in the matter of Professor Moriarty, so be it. For the big game, after all, one must be prepared to wait in the blind for as long as needs be.”
“Yet has London lost its flavor with the Queen’s passing? Where are the ingenious stranglers, the convoluted cracksmen, the bizarre blackmailers of yesteryear? Why, the new King’s cronies by themselves ought to account for a torrent of activity ready-made for a consulting detective!”
Though I was as aware as he that, as Prince of Wales, the King had acquired many dubious associates, I was not well pleased with Holmes’ comment. I had, as Holmes had not, worn the uniform of my country, and preferred to consider my monarch as beyond the reach of a subject’s light censure; though I admit that His Majesty Edward VII may well test this principle farther than I would like, before his reign is done.
I let my friend’s remark go by, and said merely, “Well, well, I’m certain matters will look up before long.” I allowed a note of smugness to creep into my voice as I added, “And, by the bye, within a fortnight’s time you will be receiving a letter from America.”
Holmes turned from the bookcase and bent on me a glance which mingled impatience, surprise, and a trace of hope that something of interest might after all be in the wind.
“How in the world do you come to know such a thing?”
“Stealing a bit of your thunder, am I, Holmes? Mystified you, have I?” said I.
“Thoroughly.”
I picked up the newspaper and said, “Well, then, listen to this item in the theatrical news: ‘Our Broadway correspondent reports that on the thirty-first of this month Daniel Furman’s production of Sir Arthur Wing Pinero’s The Second Mrs. Tanqueray will open at the Empire Theater in New York.’ Why do you suppose, Holmes, that the Americans would name a theater ‘Empire’ when they’re a republic? No matter,” for I saw a glint in his eye and a tightening of his mouth that bespoke a brusque response to this, to my mind quite legitimate, inquiry. “Ah, yes. ‘In addition to Mr. Kendal, Mr. Huntley, Mr. East, and Miss Campbell, the distinguished cast will include, in her first non-singing role—’”
“Miss Irene Adler!”
I was dashed, and said so as I laid down the paper. “Holmes, I was dead set on astonishing you!”
“You have, Watson, you have,” said Sherlock Holmes, his face animated in a way that, in spite of my disappointment that his nimble mind had divined my surprise, gladdened me. “Your ability to extract the single item of unalloyed interest from the entire mass of wordage in today’s number of The Times is an astonishing faculty.” He turned and strode briskly toward the mantelpiece.
I sighed as I laid down the paper and reflected on my friend’s narrow scope of concern. “The one item of unalloyed interest,” indeed! Aside from the progress of the war in South Africa, the contentions of Turk, Greek, and Bulgar in the Balkans, and a pungent if erratic speech by young Mr. Churchill in the Commons, there was a most fascinating analysis by the financial correspondent of the prospects of the largest steel company in the world, just formed by Mr. Pierpont Morgan in New York, to be called United States Steel. Though not as sound as Consols, naturally, it seemed to me as though a share or so would not be an imprudent investment. But such matters are always far from the mind of Sherlock Holmes!
Standing at the mantel, he lifted up from it a dainty music-box ornamented in porcelain a
nd gold filigree of such delicacy that it might have been spun sugar. It was emblematic of that cloying fusion of Germanic and Mediterranean taste that characterizes Franz Josef’s empire. (As I write, it strikes me that the seemingly eternal Franz Josef, Wilhelm of Germany, Nicholas of the Russias, the Empress of China, the Sultan of Turkey, the Kings of Spain, Portugal, and Italy—every ruler now living—will be gone by the time this account is published. Who will sit on those thrones in that distant time, I wonder?) Holmes opened the box, and, faint and tinny, the strains of “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes” wafted through the room. It is a sentimental tune, but English to the core, and I have always thought it was that which prompted Irene Adler to make a present of this particular music-box to Holmes. European of the Europeans, she was; and Holmes, for all his half-French ancestry and occasional impatience with his more stolid countrymen, including myself, is as British as roast beef, impossible to imagine as a German, an Italian, or an American. I believe Irene Adler recognized this and chose to make him a gift that showed she did so.
Why, of course (being probably the only person, and assuredly the only woman, who had ever bested Holmes in the course of his work), she had felt it necessary to bestow this memento of their encounter on him was a more difficult matter to fathom. She had won the game fairly, and, in so doing, showed herself to have a stronger character and higher standards of conduct, admitted adventuress though she was, than the titled personage on whose behalf Holmes had been induced to act against her. In the baker’s dozen of years that had passed since that “Scandal in Bohemia,” Holmes had always referred to her as “the woman.” Her opinion of him had been suggested by the gift of the music-box, and by certain envelopes received at irregular intervals.
Such an envelope—one of ten or so—Sherlock Holmes now removed from the filigreed box, and opened. I knew that, no matter which envelope it was, it contained two tickets from any one of a number of theaters in cities around the Continent and England, for dates ranging back nearly ten years.
“She’s never failed to send you opening-night tickets, has she?” said I.
“Never,” answered Holmes in a low voice. “Row E, seats one and three—for the last nine seasons.” He replaced the tickets in their envelope and the envelope in its box, and continued in a musing, almost wistful tone, “One day we must find ourselves in those seats, eh, Watson? They’ve gone begging too long, far too long— Come in!”
Mrs. Hudson, after her discreet knock at our sitting-room door and Holmes’ response, entered, clutching a large handful of envelopes.
“The post’s come, sir,” said she, and handed them to him.
As always, I could not repress a twinge of annoyance. Holmes and I shared the expenses of the household on a completely equal basis, and it was indeed I who saw to it that Mrs. Hudson’s charges were met to the penny and to the date. Yet she made no secret of the fact that she regarded Holmes as the sole tenant of her rooms and myself as a welcome but inconsequential appendage. I knew that Holmes would, of course, pass over any letters or circulars addressed to me, but that was not the point: I should have much preferred Mrs. Hudson to separate our post and hand each man’s to him directly. It was all the more galling that I could not bring the matter up without appearing petty.
“Shall I bring some hot tea?” said Mrs. Hudson.
My cup was then quite cold, and the little tea remaining in the pot was scarcely more than a tepid stew of leaves.
“Why, yes, that would—”
“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Hudson,” Holmes interrupted, leafing through the envelopes, “and if you’ve got a couple of rashers of streaky bacon, I’ll—”
He stopped and held up an envelope bearing a stamp which I could see at a glance was not British.
“You must apologize to the trans-Atlantic mails, Watson. Your estimate of a fortnight for a letter from America lacks thirteen days of proving accurate.”
I could sense his excitement as he slit the envelope, drew from within it a smaller one, and opened that.
“Row E as usual,” said I. “Seats one and— Holmes, what is it?”
For I had seen the animated hands suddenly stop their motion, and a wary, shadowed look appear on the keen face, a look that deepened into dread as he inverted the smaller envelope over his open hand and shook from it a number of torn strips of pasteboard.
I rose and inspected the fragments. They were obviously the remnants of theater tickets and I could make out a clearly identifiable portion of a capital letter E.
“Good heavens, Holmes!” I exclaimed. “That’s a rum business! Whatever would make her do a thing like that?”
My words seemed to galvanize Sherlock Holmes from his inactivity. “Watson! There’s not a moment to be lost. I must set out for New York this very day. Will you be kind enough to engage passage immediately?”
“Certainly, Holmes,” I replied. “If time is of the essence, we can gain half a day by taking a Cunarder from Liverpool. The trains there are—”
“We? I said nothing of—”
“You cannot imagine,” said I firmly, “that I shall allow you to embark on a matter of this moment—though what it is, I confess I do not know—unaccompanied. Especially in a strange country, you will need someone—”
“—on whom I can rely absolutely. You have the right of it, Watson, as always when it comes to questions not requiring overmuch mental agility! Well, well, I shan’t deny I shall be glad to have you by my side, though I warn you this is a dark business. I can’t see the shape of it yet, but it may well be that we come away from it with worse wounds than that Jezail bullet-hole in your leg!”
It was not only Holmes’ comment that reminded me of my Army service that morning; I own that I felt quite like a commanding officer planning an attack as I studied timetables and sailing schedules, bullied the steamship line’s clerk into telegraphing Liverpool to confirm our cabin, and arranged matters so that we would be on the high seas on a fast liner before sunset—with the great port of New York only six days and some hours ahead of us. I had even ferreted out from the clerk the means by which we were to get to the American city itself from our landing place on the opposite bank of the river, which bore the exotic name of Hoboken—there were frequent ferries, he assured me. I arranged for him to book rooms for us at an hotel by trans-Atlantic cable.
The sums of money I was obliged to lay out gave me pause, but did not deter me. This was clearly a matter of such urgency for Holmes that speed and speed alone was important. I counted myself lucky to live in an age when money could transport one across the ocean in practically the twinkling of an eye—less than a week.
It all went perfectly, with our trunks being tossed aboard the luggage van a full five minutes before our Liverpool train left Waterloo Station. As we stood on the platform before entering our carriage, a slight figure swathed in an ulster sprinted toward us. “Mr. Holmes!”
“Why, it’s Lestrade! Good morning, Inspector. What brings you here? I hope you have not come with a problem for me to look into, for I must and shall be on this tram.”
“No, no, Mr. Holmes, you shall have your ocean voyage. I only came to see you off in the way of friendship, if I may presume so far. And, though there are those at Scotland Yard who would feel more comfortable if you were at hand whilst we’re seeing to this Moriarty business, I believe we have it well enough in hand. It is only a matter of time before some of those fellows we have in custody decide to talk about their master, and, thanks to your work, we shall know where he is to be found.”
“You expect Professor Moriarty to sit quietly in his den in the Victoria Docks to await your knock at the door, do you?” said Holmes.
Lestrade shrugged. “He is, of course, under constant watch. No person has left that place since your own departure, and I assure you that none will leave without one of my smartest detectives keeping close on his track.”
“Are the river police also keeping watch? You will recall my mention of the trapdoor in the Professor’
s quarters.”
Lestrade laughed heartily.
“Dear me, Mr. Holmes, you don’t want to be getting fanciful! Dropping through a trap like a pantomime demon into a boat that spirits him away into the fog—that’s more a scene for the magic show at Maskelyne and Devant’s than what happens in real life, I can tell you! No, sir, it’s the regular police work that does it in the end, be assured of that. I say, there’s the guard signaling. You and Doctor Watson had best be getting aboard. I wish you both the finest of weather on your voyage!”
I could see the Inspector waving from the platform as the train drew out of the station. Holmes looked back at him gloomily.
“There are times, Watson,” said he, “when I feel a certain kinship with Professor Moriarty. With such guardians of the law as that, it seems almost criminal not to take advantage of the opportunity. You may depend upon it that, should the police ever gather the evidence they need, they will find their bird flown.”
“Floated in this case, I should say,” I put in, much pleased to have been able to correct Holmes’ imagery.
He did not respond to the trifling jest, even with the irritation that such things sometimes roused in him, but stared out the window at the suburban landscape that now slid past us.
“What’s going through your head, Holmes?”
When he spoke, it was more as though he marshaled his thoughts for his own benefit than made any effort to satisfy my curiosity.
“I am attempting to connect two events that by all sense and logic cannot be connected—truly a futile exercise, Watson.”
“What are they?”
“My conversation with Moriarty three nights ago, and the receipt of those shredded theater tickets this morning.”
“But how could one have had the remotest connection with the other?”
“That is precisely it, Watson. I don’t know … I don’t know. And yet, were I Moriarty, and were my one unwavering determination the destruction of Sherlock Holmes, I would expend every effort at my command to discover the single, the only chink in his armor, however small it might be. And, once I had found it, if it exists at all, it is there I should thrust with all the strength and fury I could muster!”