The Three Locks

by Bonnie MacBird

  The door flew open and Colangelo peered out at me. ‘Ah, Dr Watson! That fourth observation? Correct, as were the others. You did not see the expression on Mr Holmes’s face when I struck you on the side of the head.’

  He slammed the door shut.

  Presumptuous fellow, I thought. Utterly ridiculous.

  I turned to say something to Holmes, but he was already at the end of the hall, disappearing down the stairwell.

  ‘Holmes!’ I called and dashed after him.

  CHAPTER 22

  Danger in the Doldrums

  Upon returning to Baker Street, Holmes informed Madame Borelli via a brief letter that Santo Colangelo may have mangled his own finger accidentally, although Dario Borelli was not entirely in the clear. Colangelo had not engineered her husband’s near drowning, however, neither was he jealous (having two paramours himself) nor handy enough. Holmes suggested the culprit in Borelli’s accident was closer to home, naming both Falco Fricano, the stagehand, and Borelli himself as the likely culprits. In this missive, he offered to continue along those paths in the investigation, should she wish.

  By return post, and within the hour, Madame curtly dismissed both the theory and Holmes from the case. The letter enclosed a cheque for a modest sum.

  ‘And that is the end of that saga,’ he remarked wryly. ‘I think it most likely to be her husband, and by now she has figured it out.’

  ‘Well, that is her problem then, isn’t it?’ I was secretly sorry, as the arcane elements and the colourful client herself were at least a welcome distraction.

  Holmes retired to his bedroom with a book about physics, closed the door and did not emerge for supper.

  Three days passed. We heard nothing from Cambridge, and neither Dillie nor her parents communicated with Holmes. Holmes cabled once or twice to Inspector Hadley, but, receiving no response there, was forced to let that case moulder as well.

  Two fascinating cases, at least to my mind, had stagnated. What I did not realize at the time was that both were sleeping monsters. But of course I was keenly aware that another danger lurked in our very rooms. Torpor bred peril of its own kind for my friend.

  While London continued to suffer under relentless, oppressive heat, no fresh cases presented themselves. For days he never once left our rooms, nor did he dress, but spent hour after hour sprawled on our sofa in his white cotton nightclothes. The blue dressing gown he often wore had been discarded in the heat, and it was like having some great white ghost lying in sullen stillness in the centre of our sitting-room.

  From time to time Holmes arose, sawed tunelessly on the violin, then sank back down again. He would not eat and refused the cooling beverages Mrs Hudson offered to him.

  These were the precise conditions under which my friend was most likely to turn towards artificial stimulants. While I longed to escape, or to pursue my mysterious silver box with another try at a locksmith, I resolutely remained with him, and vigilant. I busied myself with notes on old cases, a couple of cheap yellow-backed novels, and the newspapers. As the days passed, even the mystery of my silver box seemed to fade in the atmosphere of indolence and malaise that had settled into 221B.

  It was upon the fifth day of this self-imposed confinement that I chanced upon a notice in The Times that Professor Richard Wyndham of Cambridge had announced the engagement of his daughter Miss Odelia Wyndham to Mr Frederick Eden-Summers, eldest son of the Duke of Harbingden. An unsmiling portrait of the young lady appeared next to the notice. Holmes’s response was a dismissive wave of the hand and silence. Nothing I could say would entice him to dress or to leave our rooms and go for a walk or any other activity.

  By the next day, Thursday, I could stand internment with my morose companion no longer and ventured out into the sweltering city with my mysterious silver box to Chubb’s Lock Company, the second of the locksmiths that he had recommended.

  Two hours later I returned, after having received the identical response I had gotten earlier from Mr Boobbyear and having been charged an exorbitant price for this useless information. The infernal box was secured with a trick lock and apparently was impregnable, except by destroying it. As I entered into the foyer, Mrs Hudson greeted me with a worried look. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Listen.’

  I could hear the strains of Holmes’s violin playing a racing, frenetic melody.

  ‘Well, better that than his recent tuneless atrocities,’ I remarked.

  ‘But it has been going on since you left. Some two and a half hours, Doctor. With no pause. None at all!’

  That set me back. ‘Since immediately after I left?’

  ‘No, about ten minutes after.’

  That could mean only one thing. I raced up the stairs.

  Holmes was standing silhouetted in the window, his nightshirt billowing in the faint breeze, playing in a frenzy of excitement.

  ‘Holmes!’ I cried.

  He did not hear me but continued playing. The piece reached a crescendo and ended. He put down the violin with a flourish and waved his bow in the air.

  ‘I have done it!’ he shouted.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have memorized all six of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas! Without a flaw! I recreated them in my mind, retrieving it page by page. I could see it!’

  His eyes were feverishly bright. His face was damp with perspiration, and his whole body vibrated with excitement.

  ‘In two hours? How do you know it was perfect?’

  ‘Memorization! I review it once! I have it here,’ he cried, tapping his forehead with his bow.

  ‘Sit down, Holmes. You are in a kind of mania!’

  ‘No, I am inspired!’ But he did set down his bow. ‘What, no luck with your box again?’

  ‘How did you—?’

  ‘Never mind. Just listen! I will play them for you!’ He reached for his violin again, but I snatched it up and placed it in a far corner of the room. I moved over to his desk and tried to pull open the top drawer. It was locked. I turned to face him.

  ‘What have you taken?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Tell me now. Or I shall leave you in this mess, go to an hotel and send for my things. I mean it, Holmes.’

  ‘Just the usual, Watson. A seven per cent solu—’

  ‘Cocaine! The moment I leave. And something else. What else? Open this drawer. It is locked again.’

  He waved and turned away. ‘That is my business.’

  ‘I would like my chequebook!’

  ‘I would like an end to starvation and the discovery of the missing seventh Bach Partita.’

  Madness! I picked up the fireplace poker, inserted the sharp edge into the drawer and with a loud crack, broke it open.

  I yanked out the drawer. There, at the front, was the small morocco case with his hypodermic. Near to it was a half-empty bottle of cocaine solution, and further back in the drawer several small blue bottles. I pulled one out. Upon a flowery pink and blue label were the words ‘Phillips Blissful Baby Soother’. It was a sleeping medicine for infants containing laudanum.

  My God, he’d combined laudanum with cocaine! The combination could be lethal.

  I glanced down at the small waste receptacle under the desk. Papers were piled to the top. I pushed them aside. At least twelve empty bottles of the Baby Soother were at the bottom. He must have been drugging himself with laudanum for days as I sat in the same room.

  I looked up to see his look of guilt and alarm.

  ‘It was only a mild soother, Watson, no harm done. I would have driven you mad without it. You would have run shouting into the streets, demanding roast beef and chorus girls.’

  ‘No, you are the one on the edge of madness. Surely you know that laudanum is highly addictive and—?’

  ‘Not in this small amount.’

  ‘Holmes, I despair!’ I cried. ‘You are wrong and will turn that God-given intelligence to porridge. And combining it with cocaine? What on earth were you thinking?’

  I snatched up
the hypodermic, threw it to the floor, and crushed it under my boot, grinding it onto the wood at the edge of the carpet.

  ‘Watson!’ came an anguished cry.

  I took up the small brush by the fireplace, swept the shards into a dustpan, and dumped them into that same waste receptacle. I then marched upstairs with the four bottles and flushed the remaining liquid down the toilet.

  When I returned to the sitting-room, Holmes sat defeated on the sofa. He looked like a small child who had been deprived of his favourite toy. My patience was at an end. I flung a stack of unread newspapers at him.

  ‘Good God, man,’ I cried. ‘Go through these newspapers. Surely there will be something to inspire you there. See who has been murdered. Check the agony columns. I guarantee you that something will engage that great heaving brain of yours.’

  He looked up at me with sad, resigned eyes. ‘It is unlikely, Watson. We have hit the bottom of the barrel. Our last two cases have gone nowhere but into the dung heap of sordid love affairs.’

  ‘Self-pity does not become you, Holmes. It’s the drugs. Pull yourself together, man.’ I snatched one of the newspapers off the top of the pile and took it to my usual chair. ‘I will find something if you will not!’

  ‘What did Chubb’s say about your box?’

  ‘The same as Mr Boobbyer.’

  ‘As I expected.’

  ‘Then why did you suggest them?’

  ‘A vain wish. I had hoped to avoid the one man I fear that you do, in fact, need.’

  ‘What do you mean? What man? Give me the name.’

  ‘You cannot visit him alone.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, give me his name. You are going nowhere in this state.’

  ‘He is … a somewhat shifty and malevolent character. In a rather forbidding area of town. No, Watson, out of the question.’

  ‘Now you have piqued my curiosity. What is he – some kind of criminal?’

  Holmes sat up on the settee. A change came over his face as he savoured the idea. It took on the mien of an eager fox. ‘He is a dangerous man with peculiar habits. But if anyone can open your lock, it is he.’

  ‘Peculiar habits, you say? Pot, kettle, black!’

  ‘Pot, kettle, black?’

  ‘An expression from my childhood. You are the pot calling the kettle black. My mother read it somewhere and she used to … never mind.’ But the idea was a good one. Getting him outside and moving could not hurt. ‘Get dressed, Holmes. I want to go there now.’

  Just then Mrs Hudson entered with a sandwich and a lemonade for Holmes. She set it down before him. ‘Gentlemen, you will get out of this house or I will have you out on your ears. Mr Holmes, you will eat this first. And drink this. I have run you a bath. And then you will go out with the good doctor while I tidy this rubbish. And I will brook no objections. Get going, young man. Now.’

  Mrs Hudson and I stood side by side, staring at the present shipwreck of a human being who never ceased to surprise me with his infinite and extreme variation. To my surprise, Holmes stood up, and without a word did exactly what our landlady had commanded.

  And indeed it was just as well that I did not go to see Mr Knut Lossop alone.

  PART FIVE

  THE TUMBLERS

  ‘From the point of view of the physicist, a theory of matter… ought to furnish a compass which, if followed will lead the observer further and further into previously unexplored regions.’

  —J. J. Thomson

  CHAPTER 23

  The Story Collector

  In just under an hour, Holmes – refreshed, perfectly groomed and impressive in his summer city suit of impeccable linen – emerged from Baker Street, looking as though he could easily stop en route to our next destination to take tea with the Queen or confront an errant MP in Whitehall. In fact, when not lounging about Baker Street in his dressing gown, this sober, conservative elegance was his natural presentation. The transformation was both rapid and profound, but I had to remind myself that I had seen it before, and regression could be swift. With my precious box stowed in a small satchel, I hailed a cab and we made our way to Hackney.

  The address was hard to find even for Holmes, who had as clear an image of the London map in his head as I had of the human skeleton. At last we narrowed it down to one building. It was missing a number on the door, and there were no signs outside.

  However, it was there, on the ground floor of an ancient Tudor construction of plaster and timber, on Durham Grove near a paint factory, that locksmith Knut Lossop ran his business. We entered the shop and squinted in the dim light. The windows were small, and a few candelabra provided the only illumination.

  We had stepped back in time.

  The proprietor emerged from the murk and in a moment we stood before the strange, gnome-like man. Lossop faced us in the flickering light over a long counter, on which were displayed a number of locks of varying sizes, shapes and levels of complexity. He was wizened, somewhere between forty and sixty years old, but lined and greasy, with long, thin blond hair plastered to his skull and draping limply down the back of his neck. An equally desultory moustache hung down by either side of moist pink lips, but in contrast to this lacklustre presentation, a pair of rheumy, pale blue eyes focused with pinpoint intensity on whatever they found.

  At this particular moment, those eyes were riveted on Sherlock Holmes, who had just said something to him in a language I could not make out.

  Lossop stood very still and chewed on one side of his moustache.

  ‘Have I got that right, Mr Lossop?’ asked Holmes.

  ‘Speak only English here,’ growled this pestiferous individual.

  Holmes smiled. ‘I gather, then, that your name is your own choice. Knut is common enough – it means “lock” in Norwegian, Watson – but Lossop? That sounds like an anglicization of “låse opp” – which means “unlocked”. Therefore, a kind of self-advertisement in your choice of a pseudonym.’

  ‘No pseudonym. Is my real name,’ said the locksmith.

  ‘Holmes, you speak Norwegian?’ I asked.

  Holmes frowned at me and nodded curtly. ‘As you wish, Mr Lossop. I am sure there is an interesting reason for your choice to remain anonymous. Though one might easily trace you by your speciality. In any case, we bring before you a unique challenge. I am Sherlock Holmes. Ah, I see that you have heard my name before. This is my friend and colleague, Dr Watson. He received a package in the mail, containing a highly decorative silver box with an unusual lock. Both the good doctor and I have attempted to open this box—’

  Lossop held out his hand, palm up, to receive the object. I noted thin, spidery fingers and long nails.

  ‘Give,’ he said.

  ‘But let me complete the thought. Watson here brought it to – who was it, Watson?’

  ‘Boobbyer on the Strand, and Chubb’s.’

  The locksmith snorted in derision.

  ‘—with no luck. I have done my research. Your name, hard to come by, Mr Lossop, was at last given to me. You are in a class by yourself, apparently.’ Holmes smiled solicitously.

  ‘The box, please. I shall have a look.’

  I took the scented soap container from my satchel, extracted the mysterious and beautiful silver box, and placed it on the counter between us.

  Lossop crossed his arms in front of him and leaned towards it. He stared at the box for a full minute without touching it. Thoughts flickered across his sharp features, and a slow smile lit his pale face.

  Holmes and I waited patiently. The locksmith then picked up the box, placed a jeweller’s loupe over his spectacles and examined it minutely. He hummed tunelessly, and brought a candelabrum closer, holding the box to the flickering light to scrutinize something that evidently interested him.

  He put the box down with a smile.

  ‘Well, can you open it?’ I asked.

  ‘It is most probable. But not quickly.’

  ‘If you cannot, can you break it open?’

  ‘Yes, but that may well
destroy the contents.’

  This confirmed my fear.

  He held up the box and pointed to a place on the side. I saw nothing but the swirling Celtic tracery. ‘Look closer,’ he commanded, and handed me the loupe.

  I did, but could see nothing. The fine workings on the box were complicated, with lines of different depths, small pinpoint dots, and—

  Holmes took the box and the loupe from my hand and, holding it up to the light, examined the area the locksmith had indicated. He handed both back to Lossop. ‘I see,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I don’t,’ I said with some irritation.

  ‘Someone tried to drill into this box, revealing that it is lined with something. I presume this material is much harder than silver, and blocked the drilling,’ said Holmes.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Lossop.

  ‘Like what?’ I asked.

  ‘A steel alloy, perhaps, even with tungsten?’

  ‘Ha!’ cried Lossop. ‘Tool steel! Nothing harder. Except diamond.’

  ‘Exactly,’ continued Holmes. ‘And that would explain why the box is so heavy for its size. One cannot drill into it to unlock it, Watson. Not easily, and perhaps not at all. I wonder where your family might have come upon such a box?’

  ‘It was commissioned,’ said Lossop. ‘I recognize the workmanship, and I know the maker. Or I think I do.’

  ‘Perhaps this person could help us?’ asked Holmes.

  ‘No. He is dead some five years. I have seen his work once before. My mentor, Andelan Schutz, showed one of his creations to me. He could not unlock it, but I did. It took me a month, however.’

  ‘A month!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Excellent that you exceeded your mentor,’ said Holmes.

  ‘Is that not the purpose of having a mentor?’ murmured the man, taking the box back into his hands. Holmes’s compliment had landed well. ‘I relish the challenge.’

  ‘Then you will open it for us?’ I asked.

  He set down the box abruptly. ‘Perhaps. If you can meet my price.’

  ‘We are not wealthy men,’ said Holmes.