Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years

by Michael Kurland

  But he wasn’t wrong. That became evident in the next few seconds, when he turned his gaze from the street to the inner yard and house.

  Someone was moving over there, not fifty yards from where Quincannon was hidden.

  His senses all sharpened at once; he stood immobile, peering through the lilac’s branches. The movement came again, a shadow drifting among stationary shadows, at an angle from the rear of the property toward the side porch. Once the shape reached the steps and started up, it was briefly silhouetted—a man in dark clothing and a low-pulled cap. Then it merged with the deeper black on the porch. Several seconds passed. Then there was a brief stab of light—the beam from a dark lantern such as the one in Quincannon’s pocket—followed by the faintest of scraping sounds as the intruder worked with his tools.

  Once again stillness closed down. He was inside now. Quincannon stayed where he was, marking time. No light showed behind the dark windows. The professional buglar worked mainly by feel and instinct, using his lantern sparingly and shielding the beam when he did.

  When Quincannon judged ten minutes had passed, he left his hiding place and catfooted through shadows until he was parallel with the side porch stairs. He paused to listen, heard nothing from the house, and crossed quickly, bent low, to a tall rhododendren planted alongside the steps. There he hunkered down on one knee to wait.

  The wait might be another ten minutes; it might be a half hour or more. No matter. Now that the crime was in progress, he no longer minded the cold night, the dampness of the earth where he knelt. Even if there was a locked safe, no burglar would leave premises such as these without spoils of some sort. Art objects, silverware, anything of value that could be carried off and subsequently sold to pawnbrokers or one of the many fences who operated in the city. Whatever this lad emerged with, it would be enough for Quincannon to yaffle him. Whether he turned his man over to the city police immediately or not depended on the scruff’s willingness to reveal the whereabouts of the swag from his previous jobs. Stashing and roughhousing a prisoner for information was unethical, if not illegal; but Quincannon felt righteously that in the pursuit of justice, not to mention a fat fee, the end justified the means.

  His wait lasted less than thirty minutes. The creaking of a floorboard pricked up his ears, creased his freebooter’s beard with a smile of anticipation. Another creak, the faintest squeak of a door hinge, a footfall on the porch. Now descending the steps, into Quincannon’s view—short, slender, but turned out of profile so that his face was obscured. He paused on the bottom step, and in that moment Quincannon levered up and put the grab on him.

  He was much the larger man, and there should have been no trouble in the catch. But just before his arms closed around the wiry body, the yegg heard or sensed danger and reacted not by trying to run or turning to fight, but by dropping suddenly into a crouch. Quincannon’s arms slid up and off as if greased, pitching him off-balance. The scruff bounced upright, swung around, blew the stench of sour wine into Quincannon’s face at the same time he fetched him a stabbing kick in the shin. Quincannon let out a howl, staggered, and nearly fell. By the time he caught himself, his quarry was on the run.

  He gave chase on the blind, cursing inventively and sulphurously, hobbling for the first several steps until the pain from the kick ebbed. The burglar had twenty yards on him by then, zigzagging toward the bordering yew trees, then back away from them in the direction of the carriage barn. In the moonshine he made a fine, clear target, but Quincannon did not draw his Navy Colt. Ever since the long-ago episode in Virginia City, Nevada, when one his stray bullets fired during a battle with counterfeiters had claimed an innocent woman’s life and led him into a guilt-ridden two-year bout with Demon Rum, he had vowed to use his weapon only if his life was in mortal danger. He had never broken that vow. Nor touched a drop of liquor since entering into his partnership with Sabina.

  Before reaching the barn, his man cut away at another angle and plowed through a gate into the carriageway beyond. Quincannon lost sight of him for a few seconds; spied him again as he reached the gate and barreled through it. A race down the alley? No. The scruff was nimble as well as slippery; he threw a look over his shoulder, saw Quincannon in close pursuit, suddenly veered sideways and flung himself up and over a six-foot board fence into one of the neighboring yards.

  In six long strides Quincannon was at the fence. He caught the top boards, hoisted himself up to chin level. Some fifty yards distant was the backside of a stately home, two windows and a pair of French doors ablaze with electric light; the outspill combined with pale moonshine to limn a jungly garden, a path leading through its profusion of plants and trees to a gazebo on the left. He had a brief glimpse of a dark shape plunging into shrubbery near the gazebo.

  Quincannon scrambled up the rough boards, rolled his body over the top. And had the misfortune to land awkwardly on his sore leg, which gave way and toppled him skidding to his knees in damp grass. He growled an oath under his breath, lumbered to his feet, and stood listening. Leaves rustled and branches snapped—moving away from the gazebo, toward the house.

  The path was of crushed shell that gleamed with a faint, ghostly radiance; he drifted along parallel to it, keeping to the grass to cushion his footfalls. Gnarled cypress and tall thorny pyracantha bushes partially obscured the house, the shadows under and around them as black as India ink. He paused to listen again. No more sounds of movement. He started forward, eased around one of the cypress trees.

  The man who came up behind him did so with such silent stealth that he had no inkling of the other’s presence until a hard object poked into and stiffened his spine, and a forceful voice said, “Stand fast, if you value your life. There’s a good fellow.”

  Quincannon stood fast.

  2

  The one who had the drop on him was not the man he’d been chasing. The calm, cultured, and British-accented voice, and the almost casual choice of words, told him that. He said, stifling his anger and frustration, “I’m not a prowler.”

  “What are you, then?”

  “A detective on the trail of a thief. I chased him into this yard.”

  “Indeed?” His captor sounded interested, if not convinced. “What manner of thief?”

  “A blasted housebreaker. He broke into the Truesdale home.”

  “Did he, now. Mr. Truesdale, the banker?”

  “That’s right. Your neighbor across the carriageway.”

  “A mistaken assumption. This is not my home, and I’ve only just met Mr. Truesdale tonight.”

  “Then who are you?”

  “All in good time. This is hardly a proper place for introductions.”

  “Introductions be damned,” Quincannon growled. “While we stand here gabbing, the thief is getting away.”

  “Has already gotten away, I should think. Perhaps.”

  “Perhaps?”

  “If you’re who you say you are and not a thief yourself.” The hard object prodded his backbone. “Move along to the house, and we’ll have the straight of things in no time.”

  “Bah,” Quincannon said, but he moved along.

  There was a flagstone terrace across the rear of the house, and when they reached it he could see people in evening clothes moving around a well-lighted parlor. His captor took him to a pair of French doors, ordered him to step inside. Activity in the room halted when they entered. Six pairs of eyes, three male and three female, stared at him and the man behind him. One of the couples, both plump and middle-aged, was Samuel Truesdale and his wife. The others were strangers.

  The parlor was large, handsomely furnished, dominated by a massive grand piano. On the piano’s bench lay a well-used violin and bow—the source of the passages from Mendelssohn he had heard earlier, no doubt. A wood fire blazed on the hearth. A combination of the fire and steam heat made the room too warm, stuffy. Quincannon’s benumbed cheeks began to tingle almost immediately.

  The first to break the frozen tableau was a round-faced gent with Lincolnesque
whiskers and ears as large as the handles on a pickle jar. He stepped forward and demanded of the Englishman, “Where did this man come from? Who is he?”

  “On my stroll in the garden I spied him climbing the fence and apprehended him. He claims to be a detective on the trail of a pannyman. Housebreaker, that is.”

  “I don’t claim to be a detective,” Quincannon said sourly, “I am a detective. Quincannon’s the name, John Quincannon.”

  “Dr. Caleb Axminster,” the whiskered gent said. “What’s this about a housebreaker?”

  The exchange drew the others closer in a tight little group. It also brought the owner of the cultured British voice out to where Quincannon could see him for the first time. He wasn’t such-a-much. Tall, excessively lean, with a thin, hawklike nose and a prominent chin. In one hand he carried a blackthorn walking stick, held midway along the shaft. Quincannon scowled. It must have been the stick, not a pistol, that had poked his spine and allowed the burglar to escape.

  “I’ll ask you again,” Dr. Axminster said. “What’s this about a housebreaker?”

  “I chased him here from a neighbor’s property.” Quincannon switched his gaze to the plump banker. He was not a man to mince words, even at the best of times. And this was not the best of times. “Your home, Mr. Truesdale,” he said bluntly.

  Mrs. Truesdale and the other women gasped. Her husband’s face lost its healthy color. “Mine? Good Lord, man, do you mean to say we’ve been robbed?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. Do you keep your valuables in a safe?”

  “My wife’s jewelry and several stock certificates, yes.”

  “Cash?”

  “In my desk … a hundred dollars or so in greenbacks …” Truesdale shook his head; he seemed dazed. “You were there?”

  “I was. Waiting outside.”

  “Waiting? I don’t understand.”

  “To catch the burglar in the act.”

  “But how did you know …”

  “Detective work, suffice it to say.”

  The fifth man in the room had been silent to this point. He was somewhat younger than the others, forty or so, dark-eyed, clean-shaven; his most prominent feature was a misshapen knob of red-veined flesh, like a partially collapsed balloon, that seemed to hang between his eyes and a thin-lipped mouth. He aimed a brandy snifter at Quincannon and said challengingly, “If you were set up to catch the housebreaker, why didn’t you? What happened?”

  “An unforeseen occurrence.” Quincannon glared sideways at his gaunt captor. “I would have chased him down if this man hadn’t accosted me.”

  “Accosted?” The Englishman arched an eyebrow. “Dear me, hardly that. I had no way of knowing you weren’t a prowler.”

  Mrs. Truesdale was tugging at her husband’s arm. “Elmer, hadn’t we best return home and find out what was stolen?”

  “Yes, yes. Immediately.”

  “Margaret,” Axminster said to one of the other women, a slender graying brunette with patrician features, “find James and have him drive the Truesdales.”

  The woman nodded and left the parlor with the banker and his wife in tow.

  The doctor said then, “This is most distressing,” but he didn’t sound distressed. He sounded excited, as if he found the situation stimulating. He produced a paper sack from his pocket, popped a horehound drop into his mouth. “But right up your alley, eh, Mr. Holmes?”

  The Englishman bowed.

  “And yours, Andrew. Eh? The law and all that.”

  “Hardly,” the dark-eyed man said. “You know I handle civil, not criminal cases. Why don’t you introduce us, Caleb? Unless Quincannon already knows who I am, too.”

  Quincannon decided he didn’t particularly like the fellow. Or Axminister, for that matter. Or the blasted Englishman. In fact, he did not like anybody tonight, not even himself very much.

  “Certainly,” the doctor said. “This is Andrew Costain, Mr. Quincannon, and his wife, Penelope. And this most distinguished gentleman—”

  “Costain?” Quincannon interrupted. “Offices on Geary Street, residence near South Park?”

  “By God,” Costain said, “he does know me. But if we’ve met, I don’t remember the time or place. In court, was it?”

  “We haven’t met anywhere. Your name happens to be on the list.”

  “List?” Penelope Costain said. She was a slender, gray-eyed, brown-curled woman some years younger than her husband—handsome enough, though she appeared too aloof and wore too much rouge and powder for Quincannon’s taste. “What list?”

  “Of potential burglary victims, all of whom own valuables insured by the Great Western Insurance Company.”

  “So that’s it,” Costain said. “Truesdale’s name is also on that list, I suppose. That’s what brought you to his home tonight.”

  “Among other things,” Quincannon admitted.

  Axminister sucked the horehound drop, his brow screwed up in thought. “Quincannon, John Quincannon … why, of course! I knew I’d heard the name before. Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. Yes, and your partner is a woman. Sabina Carpenter.”

  “A woman,” the Englishman said. “How curious.”

  Quincannon skewered him with a sharp eye. “What’s curious about it? Both she and her late husband were valued operatives attached to the Pinkerton Agency’s Denver office.”

  “Upon my soul. In England, you know, it would be extraordinary for a woman to assume the profession of consulting detective, the more so to be taken in as a partner in a private inquiry agency.”

  “She wasn’t ‘taken in,’ as you put it. Our partnership was by mutual arrangement.”

  “Ah.”

  “What do you know of private detectives, in England or anywhere?”

  “He knows a great deal, as a matter of fact,” Axminister said with relish. He asked the Englishman, “You have no objection if I reveal your identity to a colleague?”

  “None, inasmuch as you have already revealed it to your guests.”

  The doctor beamed. He said as if presenting a member of the British royalty, “My honored houseguest, courtesy of a mutual acquaintance in the south of France, is none other than Mr. Sherlock Holmes of 221B Baker Street, London.”

  The Englishman bowed. “At your service.”

  “I’ve already had a sampling of your service,” Quincannon said aggrievedly. “I prefer my own.”

  “Nous verrons.”

  “Holmes, is it? I’m not familiar with the name.”

  “Surely you’ve heard it,” Axminister said. “Not only has Mr. Holmes solved many baffling cases in England and Europe, but his apparent death at the hands of his archenemy, Professor Moriarity, was widely reported three years ago.”

  “I seldom read sensational news.”

  “Officially,” Holmes said, “I am still dead, having been dispatched at Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. For private reasons I’ve chosen to let this misapprehension stand, until recently confiding in no one but my brother Mycroft. Not even my good friend Dr. Watson knows I’m still alive.”

  “If he’s such a good friend, why haven’t you told him?”

  Holmes produced an enigmatic smile and made no reply.

  Axminster said, “Dr. John H. Watson is Mr. Holmes’s biographer as well as his friend. The doctor has chronicled many of his cases.

  “Yes?”

  “‘A Study in Scarlet,’ ‘The Red-Headed League,’ ‘The Sign of the Four,’ the horror at Baskerville Hall, the adventure of the six orange pips …”

  “Five,” Holmes said.

  “Eh? Oh, yes, five orange pips.”

  Quincannon said, “I’ve never heard of any of them.” The stuffy, overheated room was making him sweat. He stripped off his gloves, unbuttoned his chesterfield, and swept the tails back. At the same time he essayed a closer look at the Englishman, which led him to somewhat revise his earlier estimate. The fellow might be gaunt, almost cadaverous in his evening clothes, but his jaw and hawklike nose bespoke
intensity and determination, and his eyes were sharp, piercing, alive with a keen intelligence. It would be a mistake to dismiss him too lightly.

  Holmes said with a gleam of interest, “I daresay you’ve had your own share of successes, Quincannon.”

  “More than I can count.”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Quincannon is well-known locally,” the doctor said. “Several of his investigations involving seemingly impossible crimes have gained notoriety. If I remember correctly, there was the rainmaker shot to death in a locked room, the strange disappearance on board the Desert Limited, the rather amazing murder of a bogus medium …”

  Holmes leaned forward. “I would be most interested to know what methods you and your partner employ.”

  “Methods?”

  “In solving your cases. Aside from the use of weapons, fisticuffs, and such surveillance techniques as you employed tonight.”

  “What happened tonight was not my fault,” Quincannon said testily. “As to our methods—those you mentioned, plus guile, wit, attention to detail, and deduction.”

  “Capital! My methods are likewise based on observation, in particular the observation of trifles, and on deductive reasoning—the construction of a series of inferences, each dependent upon its predecessor. An exact knowledge of all facets of crime and its history is invaluable as well, as I’m sure you know.”

  Bumptious gent! Quincannon managed not to sneer.

  “For instance,” Holmes said, smiling, “I should say that you are unmarried, smoke a well-seasoned briar, prefer cable twist Virginia tobacco, spent part of today in a tonsorial parlor and another part engaged in a game of straight pool, dined on chicken croquettes before proceeding to the Truesdale property, waited for your burglar in a shrub of Syringa persica, and … oh yes, under your rather rough exterior, I perceive that you are well-read and rather sensitive and sentimental.”

  Quincannon gaped at him. “How the devil can you know all that?”