by David Marcum
“Oh, yes; my husband gave them authority to pay checks signed by me up to a certain amount, and I often do it for household expenses, or when he happens to be away.”
“Then perhaps it will be best for you to go alone,” Holmes responded. “Of course they will never, as a general thing, give any person information as to the account of a customer, but perhaps, as you are known to them, and hold your husband’s authority to draw checks, they may tell you something. What I want to find out is, of course, whether your husband drew from the bank all his remaining balance yesterday, or any large sum. You must go alone, ask for the manager, and tell him that you have seen nothing of Mr. Geldard since he left for business yesterday morning. Mind, you are not to appear angry, or suspicious, or anything of that sort, and you mustn’t say you are employing me to bring him back from an elopement. That will shut up the channel of information at once. Hostile inquiries they’ll never answer, even by the smallest hint, except after legal injunction. You can be as distressed and as alarmed as you please. Your husband has disappeared since yesterday morning, and you’ve no notion what has become of him; that is your tale, and a perfectly true one. You would like to know whether or not he has withdrawn his balance, or a considerable sum, since that would indicate whether or not his absence was intentional and premeditated.”
Mrs. Geldard understood and undertook to make the inquiry with all discretion. The bank was not far, and it was arranged that she should return to the office with the result.
As soon as she had left Holmes turned to the pedestal table and probed the keyhole of the locked drawer with the small stiletto attached to his pen knife. “This seems to be a common sort of lock,” he said. “I could probably open it with a bent nail. But the whole table is a cheap sort of thing. Perhaps there is an easier way.”
He drew the unlocked drawer above completely out, passed his hand into the opening and felt about. “Yes,” he said, “it’s just as I hoped - as it usually is in pedestal tables not of the best quality; the partition between the drawers doesn’t go more than two-thirds of the way back, and I can drop my hand into the drawer below. But I can’t feel anything there - it seems empty.”
He withdrew his hand and we tilted the whole table backward, so as to cause whatever lay in the drawers to slide to the back. This dodge was successful. Holmes reinserted his hand and withdrew it with two orderly heaps of papers, each held together by a metal clip. The papers in each clip, on examination, proved to be all of an identical character, with the exception of dates. They were, in fact, rent receipts. Those for the office, which had been given quarterly, were put back in their place with scarcely a glance, and the others Holmes placed on ‘the table before him. Each ran, apart from dates, in this fashion: “Received from Mr. J. Cookson 15s., one month’s rent of stable at 3 Dragon Yard, Benton Street, to,” - here followed the date. “Also rent, feed and care of horse in own stable as agreed, £2. - W. GASK.” The receipts were ill-written, and here and there ill-spelt. Holmes put the last of the receipts in his pocket and returned the others to the drawer. “Either,” he said, “Mr. Cookson is a client who gets Mr. Geldard to hire stables for him, which may not be likely, or Mr. Geldard calls himself Mr. Cookson when he goes driving - possibly with Miss Trennatt. We shall see.”
The pedestal table put in order again, Holmes took the poker and raked in the fireplace. It was summer, and behind the bars was a sort of screen of cartridge paper with a frilled edge, and behind this various odds and ends had been thrown - spent matches, trade-circulars crumpled up, and torn paper. There were also the remains of several cigars, some only half smoked, and one almost whole. The torn paper Holmes examined piece by piece, and finally sorted out a number of pieces which he set to work to arrange on the blotting pad. They formed a complete note, written in the same hand as were the envelopes already found by Mrs. Geldard - that of the girl Emma Trennatt. It corresponded also with the solitary fragment of another letter which had accompanied them, by way of having a number of crosses below the signature, and it ran thus:
Tuesday Night
Dear Sam,
Tomorrow, to carry. Not late because people are coming for flowers. What you did was no good. The smoke leaks worse than ever, and F. thinks you must light a new pipe or else stop smoking altogether for a bit. Uncle is anxious.
EMMA
Then followed the crosses, filling one line and nearly half the next; seventeen in all.
Holmes gazed at the fragments thoughtfully. “This is a find,” he said - “most decidedly a find. It looks so much like nonsense that it must mean something of importance. The date, you see, is Tuesday night. It would be received here on Wednesday - yesterday - morning. So that it was immediately after the receipt of this note that Geldard left. It’s pretty plain the crosses don’t mean kisses. The note isn’t quite of the sort that usually carries such symbols, and moreover, when a lady fills the end of a sheet of notepaper with kisses she doesn’t stop less than half way across the last line - she fills it to the end. These crosses mean something very different. I should like, too, to know what ‘smoke’ means. Anyway this letter would probably astonish Mrs. Geldard if she saw it. We’ll say nothing about it for the present.” He swept the fragments into an envelope, and put away the envelope in his breast pocket. There was nothing more to be found of the least value in the fireplace, and a careful examination of the office in other parts revealed nothing that I had not noticed before, so far as I could see, except Geldard’s boots standing on the floor of the cupboard wherein his clothes lay. The whole place was singularly bare of what one commonly finds in an office in the way of papers, handbooks, and general business material.
Mrs. Geldard was not long away. At the bank she found that the manager was absent and his deputy had been very reluctant to say anything definite without his sanction. He gave Mrs. Geldard to understand, however, that there was a balance still remaining to her husband’s credit; also that Mr. Geldard had drawn a check the previous morning, Wednesday, for an amount “rather larger than usual.” And that was all.
“By the way, Mrs. Geldard,” Holmes observed, with an air of recollecting something, “there was a Mr. Cookson I believe, if I remember, who knew a Mr. Geldard. You don’t happen to know, do you, whether or not Mr. Geldard had a client or an acquaintance of that name?”
“No, I know nobody of the name.”
“Ah, it doesn’t matter. I suppose it isn’t necessary for your husband to keep horses or vehicles of any description in his business?”
“No, certainly not.” Mrs. Geldard looked surprised at the question.
“Of course - I should have known that. He does not drive to business, I suppose?”
“No, he goes by omnibus.”
“But as to Emma Trennatt now. This photograph is most welcome, and will be of great assistance, I make no doubt. But is there anything individual by which I might identify her if I saw her - anything beyond what I see in the photograph? A peculiarity of step, for instance, or a scar, or what not.”
“Yes, there is a large mole - more than a quarter of an inch across I should think - on her left cheek, an inch below the outer corner of her eye. The photograph only shows the other side of the face.”
“That will be useful to know. Now has she a relative living at Crouch End, or thereabout?”
“Yes, her uncle; she’s living with him now - or she was at any rate till lately. But how did you know that?”
“The Crouch End postmark was on those envelopes you found. Do you know anything of her uncle?”
“Nothing, except that he’s a nurseryman, I believe.”
“Not his full address?”
“No - ”
“And Trennatt is his name?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. I think, Mrs. Geldard,” Holmes said, taking his hat, “that I will set out after your husband at once. You, I think, can d
o no better than stay at home till I have news for you. I have your address. If anything comes to your knowledge please telegraph it to my rooms at once.”
The office door was locked, the keys were left with the caretaker, and we saw Mrs. Geldard into a cab at the door. “Come,” said Holmes, “we’ll go somewhere and look at a directory, and after that to Dragon Yard. I think I know a man in Moorgate Street who’ll let me see his directory.”
We started to walk down Finsbury Pavement. Suddenly Holmes caught my arm and directed my eyes toward a woman who had passed hurriedly in the opposite direction. I had not seen her face, but Holmes had. “If that isn’t Miss Emma Trennatt,” he said, “it’s uncommonly like the notion I’ve formed of her. We’ll see if she goes to Geldard’s office.”
We hurried after the woman, who, sure enough, turned into the large door of the building we had just left. As it was impossible that she should know us we followed her boldly up the stairs and saw her stop before the door of Geldard’s office and knock. We passed her as she stood there - a handsome young woman enough - and well back on her left cheek, in the place Mrs. Geldard had indicated, there was plain to see a very large mole. We pursued our way to the landing above and there we stopped in a position that commanded a view of Geldard’s door. The young woman knocked again and waited.
“This doesn’t look like an elopement yesterday morning, does it?” Holmes whispered. “Unless Geldard’s left both this one and his wife in the lurch.”
The young woman below knocked once or twice more, walked irresolutely across the corridor and back, and in the end, after a parting knock, started slowly back downstairs.
“Brett,” Holmes exclaimed with suddenness, “will you do me a favor? That woman understands Geldard’s secret comings and goings, as is plain from the letter. But she would appear to know nothing of where he is now, since she seems to have come here to find him. Perhaps this last absence of his has nothing to do with the others. In any case will you follow this woman? She must be watched; but I want to see to the matter in other places. Will you do it?”
Of course I assented at once. We had been descending the stairs as Holmes spoke, keeping distance behind the girl we were following. “Thank you,” Holmes now said. “Do it. If you find anything urgent to communicate wire to me in care of the inspector at Crouch End Police Station. He knows me, and I will call there in case you may have sent. But if it’s after five this afternoon, wire also to my rooms. If you keep with her to Crouch End, where she lives, we shall probably meet.”
We parted at the door of the office we were at first bound for, and I followed the girl southward.
This new turn of affairs increased the puzzlement I already labored under. Here was the girl Trennatt - who by all evidence appeared to be well acquainted with Geldard’s mysterious proceedings, and in consequence of whose letter, whatever it might mean, he would seem to have absented himself - herself apparently ignorant of his whereabouts and even unconscious that he had left his office. I had at first begun to speculate on Geldard’s probable secret employment; I had heard of men keeping good establishments who, unknown to even their own wives, procured the wherewithal by begging or crossing-sweeping in London streets; I had heard also - knew in fact from Holmes’s experience - of well-to-do suburban residents whose actual profession was burglary or coining. I had speculated on the possibility of Geldard’s secret being one of that kind. My mind had even reverted to the case, which I have related elsewhere, in which Holmes frustrated a dynamite explosion by his timely discovery of a baker’s cart and a number of loaves, and I wondered whether or not Geldard was a member of some secret brotherhood of Anarchists or Fenians. But here, it would seem, were two distinct mysteries, one of Geldard’s generally unaccountable movements, and another of his disappearance, each mystery complicating the other. Again, what did that extraordinary note mean, with its crosses and its odd references to smoking? Had the dirty clay pipes anything to do with it? Or the half-smoked cigars? Perhaps the whole thing was merely ridiculously trivial after all. I could make nothing of it, however, and applied myself to my pursuit of Emma Trennatt, who mounted an omnibus at the Bank, on the roof of which I myself secured a seat.
II.
Here I must leave my own proceedings to put in their proper place those of Sherlock Holmes as I subsequently learnt them. Benton Street, he found by the directory, turned out of the City Road south of Old Street, so was quite near. He was there in less than ten minutes, and had discovered Dragon Yard. Dragon Yard was as small a stable-yard as one could easily find. Only the right-hand side was occupied by stables, and there were only three of these. On the left was a high dead wall bounding a great warehouse or some such building. Across the first and second of the stables stretched a long board with the legend, “W. Gask, Corn, Hay and Straw Dealer,” and underneath a shop address in Old Street. The third stable stood blank and uninscribed, and all three were shut fast. Nobody was in the yard, and Holmes at once proceeded to examine the end stable. The doors were unusually well finished and close-fitting, and the lock was a good one, of the lever variety, and very difficult to pick. Holmes examined the front of the building very carefully, and then, after a visit to the entrance of the yard, to guard against early interruption, returned and scrambled by projections and fastenings to the roof. This was a roof in contrast to those of the other stables. They were of tiles, seemed old, and carried nothing in the way of a skylight; evidently it was the habit of Mr. Gask and his helpers to do their horse and van business with gates wide open to admit light. But the roof of this third stable was newer and better made, and carried a good-sized skylight of thick fluted glass. Holmes took a good look at such few windows as happened to be in sight, and straight way began, with the strongest blade of his pocket-knife, to cut away the putty from round one pane. It was a rather long job, for the putty had hardened thoroughly in the sun, but it was accomplished at length, and Holmes, with a final glance at the windows in view, prized up the pane from the end and lifted it out.
The interior of the stable was apparently empty. Neither stall nor rack was to be seen, and the place was plainly used as a coach or van house simply. Holmes took one more look about him and dropped quietly through the hole in the skylight. The floor was thickly laid with straw. There were a few odd pieces of harness, a rope or two, a lantern, and a few sacks lying here and there, and at the darkest end there was an obscure heap covered with straw and sacking. This heap Holmes proceeded to unmask, and having cleared away a few sacks left revealed about half-a-dozen rolls of linoleum. One of these he dragged to the light, where it became evident that it had remained thus rolled and tied with cord in two places for a long period. There were cracks in the surface, and when the cords were loosened the linoleum showed no disposition to open out or to become unrolled. Others of the rolls on inspection exhibited the same peculiarities. Moreover, each roll appeared to consist of no more than a couple of yards of material at most, though all were of the same pattern. Every roll in fact was of the same length, thickness and shape as the others, containing somewhere near two yards of linoleum in a roll of some half dozen thicknesses, leaving an open diameter of some an open diameter of some four inches in the centre. Holmes looked at each in turn and then replaced the heap as he had found it. After this to regain the skylight was not difficult by the aid of a trestle. The pane was replaced as well as the absence of fresh putty permitted, and five minutes later Holmes was in a hansom bound for Crouch End.
He dismissed his cab at the police station. Within he had no difficulty in procuring a direction to Trennatt, the nurseryman, and a short walk brought him to the place. A fairly high wall topped with broken glass bounded the nursery garden next the road and in the wall were two gates, one a wide double one for the admission of vehicles, and the other a smaller one of open pales, for ordinary visitors. The garden stood sheltered by higher ground behind, whereon stood a good-sized house, just visible among the trees that surrounde
d it. Holmes walked along by the side of the wall. Soon he came to where the ground of the nursery garden appeared to be divided from that of the house by a most extraordinarily high hedge extending a couple of feet above the top of the wall itself. Stepping back, the better to note this hedge, Holmes became conscious of two large boards, directly facing each other, with scarcely four feet space between them, one erected on a post in the ground of the house and the other similarly elevated from that of the nursery, each being inscribed in large letters, “TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.” Holmes smiled and passed on; here plainly was a neighbor’s quarrel of long standing, for neither board was by any means new. Thewall continued, and keeping by it Holmes made the entire circuit of the large house and its grounds, and arrived once more at that part of the wall that enclosed the nursery garden. Just here, and near the wider gate, the upper part of a cottage was visible, standing within the wall, and evidently the residence of the nurseryman. It carried a conspicuous board with the legend, “H.M. Trennatt, Nurseryman.” The large house and the nursery stood entirely apart from other houses or enclosures, and it would seem that the nursery ground had at some time been cut off from the grounds attached to the house.
Holmes stood for a moment thoughtfully, and then walked back to the outer gate of the house on the rise. It was a high iron gate, and as Holmes perceived, it was bolted at the bottom. Within the garden showed a neglected and weed-choked appearance, such as one associates with the garden of a house that has stood long empty.
A little way off a policeman walked. Holmes accosted him and spoke of the house. “I was wondering if it might happen to be to let,” he said. “Do you know?”
“No, sir,” the policeman replied, “it ain’t; though anyone might almost think it, to look at the garden. That’s a Mr. Fuller as lives there - and a rum ’un too.”