by David Marcum
“The child was in indoor clothes, and had no hat. I called at a baby-linen shop and bought hat, cloak, frock, and a new pair of shoes. Then I hurried to Willesden. Again the effect was magical. My husband was happy once more; but when at last I attempted to take the child away he would not let it go. It was terrible. Oh, I can’t describe the scene. Dr. Bailey told me that, come what might, I must stay that night in a room his wife would provide for me and keep the child, or perhaps I must sit up with my husband and let the child sleep on my knee, In the end it was the latter that I did.
“By the morning my senses were blunted, and I scarcely cared what happened. I determined that as I had gone so far I would keep the child that day at least; indeed, as I say, whether by the influence of my husband I know not, but I almost felt myself falling into his delusion that the child was ours. I went home for an hour at midday, taking the child, and then my wretched brother saw it and got the whole story from me. He told me that reward bills were out about the child, and then I dimly realized that its mother must be suffering pain, and I wrote the note you spoke of. Perhaps I had some little idea of delaying pursuit - I don’t know. At any rate I wrote it, and posted it at Willesden as I went back. My husband had been asleep when I left, but now he was awake again and asking for the child once more. There is little more to say. I stayed that night and the next day, and by that time my husband had become tranquil and rational as he had not been for months. If only the improvement can be sustained, they think of operating tomorrow or the next day.
“I carried Charley back in the dusk, intending to put him inside one of the gates, ring, and watch him safely in from a little way off, but as I passed down the side lane I saw the French window open again and nobody near. I had been that way before and felt bolder there. I took his hat and cloak (I had already changed his frock, and, after kissing him, put him hastily through the window and came away. But I had forgotten the new shoes. I remembered them, however, when I got home, and immediately conceived a fear that the child’s parents might trace me by their means. I mentioned this fear to my brother, and it appeared to frighten him. He borrowed some money of me yesterday, and, it seems, got intoxicated. In that state he is always anxious to do some noble action, though he is capable, I am grieved to say, of almost any meanness when sober. He lives here at my expense, indeed, and borrows money from his friends for drink. These may seem hard things for a sister to say, but everybody knows it. He has wearied me, and I have lost all shame of him. I suppose in his muddled state he got the notion that he would accuse himself of what I had done, and so shield me. I expect he repented of his self-sacrifice this morning, though.”
Holmes knew that he had, but said nothing. Also he said nothing of the anonymous letter he had in his pocket, wherein Mr. Oliver Neale had covertly demanded a hundred pounds for the restoration of Charley Seton. He guessed, however, that that gentleman had feared making the appointment that the advertisement answering his letter had suggested.
To Mr. and Mrs. Seton, Holmes told the whole story, omitting at first names and addresses. “I saw plainly,” he said in course of his talk, “that the child might easily have been taken from the French window. I did not say so, for Mrs. Seton was already sufficiently distressed, and the notion that the child was kidnapped, and not simply lost, might have made her worse just then. The toys - the cart with the string on it in particular - had been dragged in the direction of the window, and then nothing would be easier than for the child to open the window itself. There was nothing but a drop bolt, working very easily, which the child must often have seen lifted, and you will remember that the catch did not act. Once the child had opened the window and got outside, the whole thing was simple. The gate could be lifted, the child taken, and the window pulled to, so that the bolt would fall into its place and leave all as before.
“As to the previous occasion, I thought it curious at first that the child should stray before lunch and yet not be heard of again till the evening, and then apparently not be over-fatigued. But beyond these little things, and what I inferred, from the letter, I had very little to help me indeed. Nothing, in fact, till I got the shoes, and they didn’t carry me very far. The drunken rant of the man in the police station attracted me because he spoke not only of taking away the child, but of buying it shoes. Now nobody could know of the buying of the shoes who did not know something more. But I knew it was a woman who had taken Charley, as you know, from the heel-mark and the evidence of the shop people, so that when the bemused fool talked of his sister, and sacrificing himself for her, and keeping her out of trouble, and so on, I ranged the case up in my mind, and, so far as I ventured, I guessed it aright. The police inspector knew nothing of the matter of the shoes, nor of the fact of the person I was after being a woman, so thought the thing no more than a drunken freak.
“And now,” Holmes said, “before I tell you this woman’s name, don’t you think the poor creature has suffered enough?”
Both Mrs. Seton and her husband agreed that she had, and that, so far as they were concerned, no further steps should be taken. And when she was told where to go, Mrs. Seton went once to offer Mrs. Isitt her forgiveness and sympathy.
But Mrs. Isitt’s punishment came in twenty-four hours, when her husband died in the surgeon’s hands.
The Case of the Flitterbat Lancers
It was late on a summer evening that I drowsed in my armchair over a particularly solid and ponderous volume of essays on social economy. I was doing a good deal of reviewing at the time, and I remember that this particular volume had a property of such exceeding toughness that I had already made three successive attacks on it, on as many successive evenings, each attack having been defeated in the end by sleep. The weather was hot, my chair was very comfortable, and the book had somewhere about its strings of polysyllables an essence as of laudanum. Still something had been done on each evening, and now on the fourth I strenuously endeavored to finish the book. I was just beginning to feel that the words before me were sliding about and losing their meanings, when a sudden crash and a jingle of broken glass behind me woke me with a start, and I threw the book down. A pane of glass in my window was smashed, and I hurried across and threw up the sash to see, if I could, whence the damage had come.
The building in which my chambers (and Sherlock Holmes’s rooms) were situated was accessible - or rather visible, for there was no entrance - from the rear. There was, in fact, a small courtyard, reached by a passage from the street behind, and into this courtyard, my sitting-room window looked.
“Hullo, there!” I shouted. But there came no reply. Nor could I distinguish anybody in the courtyard. Some men had been at work during the day on a drainpipe, and I reflected that probably their litter had provided the stone with which my window had been smashed. As I looked, however, two men came hurrying from the passage into the court, and going straight into the deep shadow of one corner, presently appeared again in a less obscure part, hauling forth a third man, who must have already been there in hiding. The third man struggled fiercely but without avail, and was dragged across toward the passage leading to the street beyond. But the most remarkable feature of the whole thing was the silence of all three men. No cry, no exclamation, escaped any of them. In perfect silence the two hauled the third across the courtyard, and in perfect silence he swung and struggled to resist and escape. The matter astonished me not a little, and the men were entering the passage before I found voice to shout at them. But they took no notice, and disappeared. Soon after I heard cab wheels in the street beyond, and had no doubt that the two men had carried off their prisoner.
I turned back into my room a little perplexed. It seemed probable that the man who had been borne off had broken my window. But why? I looked about on the floor, and presently found the missile. It was, as I had expected, a piece of broken concrete, but it was wrapped up in a worn piece of paper, which had partly opened out as it lay on my carpet, thus indicating that it had
just been crumpled round the stone.
I disengaged the paper and spread it out. Then I saw it to be a rather hastily written piece of manuscript music, whereof I append a reduced facsimile.
This gave me no help. I turned the paper this way and that, but could make nothing of it. There was not a mark on it that I could discover, except the music and the scrawled title, Flitterbat Lancers, at the top. The paper was old, dirty, and cracked. What did it all mean? One might conceive of a person in certain circumstances sending a message - possibly an appeal for help - through a friend’s window, wrapped round a stone, but this seemed to be nothing of that sort.
Once more I picked up the paper, and with an idea to hear what the Flitterbat Lancers sounded like, I turned to my little pianette and strummed over the notes, making my own time and changing it as seemed likely. But I could by no means extract from the notes anything resembling an air. I half thought of trying Sherlock Holmes’s door, in case he might still be up and offer a guess at the meaning of my smashed window and the scrap of paper, when Holmes himself came in. He had been examining a bundle of papers in connection with a case just placed in his hands, and now, having finished, came to find if I were disposed for an evening stroll before turning in. I handed him the paper and the piece of concrete, observing, “There’s a little job for you, Holmes, instead of the stroll.” And I told him the complete history of my smashed window.
Holmes listened attentively, and examined both the paper and the fragment of paving. “You say these people made absolutely no sound whatever?” he asked.
“None but that of scuffling, and even that they seemed to do quietly.”
“Could you see whether or not the two men gagged the other, or placed their hands over his mouth?”
“No, they certainly didn’t do that. It was dark, of course, but not so dark as to prevent my seeing generally what they were doing.”
Holmes stood for half a minute in thought, and then said, “There’s something in this, Brett - what, I can’t guess at the moment, but something deep, I fancy. Are you sure you won’t come out now?”
I told Holmes that I was sure, and that I should stick to my work.
“Very well,” he said; “then perhaps you will lend me these articles?” holding up the paper and the stone.
“Delighted,” I said. “If you get no more melody out of the clinker than I did out of the paper, you won’t have a musical evening. Goodnight!”
Holmes went away with the puzzle in his hand, and I turned once more to my social economy, and, thanks to the gentleman who smashed my window, conquered.
At this time my only regular daily work was on an evening paper so that I left home at a quarter to eight on the morning following the adventure of my broken window, in order, as usual, to be at the office at eight; consequently it was not until lunchtime that I had an opportunity of seeing Holmes. I went to my own rooms first, however, and on the landing by my door I found the housekeeper in conversation with a shortish, sun-browned man, whose accent at once convinced me that he hailed from across the Atlantic. He had called, it appeared, three or four times during the morning to see me, getting more impatient each time. As he did not seem even to know my name, the housekeeper had not considered it expedient to give him any information about me, and he was growing irascible under the treatment. When I at last appeared, however, he left her and approached me eagerly.
“See here, sir,” he said, “I’ve been stumpin’ these here durn stairs o’ yours half through the mornin’. I’m anxious to apologize, and fix up some damage.”
He had followed me into my sitting-room, and was now standing with his back to the fireplace, a dripping umbrella in one hand, and the forefinger of the other held up boulder-high and pointing, in the manner of a pistol, to my window, which, by the way, had been mended during the morning, in accordance with my instructions to the housekeeper.
“Sir,” he continued, “last night I took the extreme liberty of smashin’ your winder.”
“Oh,” I said, “that was you, was it?”
“It was, sir - me. For that I hev come humbly to apologize. I trust the draft has not discommoded you, sir. I regret the accident, and I wish to pay for the fixin’ up and the general inconvenience.” He placed a sovereign on the table. “I ’low you’ll call that square now, sir, and fix things friendly and comfortable as between gentlemen, an’ no ill will. Shake.”
And he formally extended his hand.
I took it at once. “Certainly,” I said. “As a matter of fact, you haven’t inconvenienced me at all; indeed, there were some circumstances about the affair that rather interested me.” And I pushed the sovereign toward him.
“Say now,” he said, looking a trifle disappointed at my unwillingness to accept his money, “didn’t I startle your nerves?”
“Not a bit,” I answered, laughing. “In fact, you did me a service by preventing me going to sleep just when I shouldn’t; so we’ll say no more of that.”
“Well - there was one other little thing,” he pursued, looking at me rather sharply as he pocketed the sovereign. “There was a bit o’ paper round that pebble that came in here. Didn’t happen to notice that, did you?”
“Yes, I did. It was an old piece of manuscript music.”
“That was it - exactly. Might you happen to have it handy now?”
“Well,” I said, “as a matter of fact a friend of mine has it now. I tried playing it over once or twice, as a matter of curiosity, but I couldn’t make anything of it, and so I handed it to him.”
“Ah!” said my visitor, watching me narrowly, “that’s a puzzler, that Flitterbat Lancers - a real puzzler. It whips ’em all. Ha, ha’.” He laughed suddenly - a laugh that seemed a little artificial. “There’s music fellers as ’lows to set right down and play off anything right away that can’t make anything of the Flitterbat Lancers. That was two of ’em that was monkeyin’ with me last night. They never could make anythin’ of it at all, and I was tantalizing them with it all along till they got real mad, and reckoned to get it out o’ my pocket and learn it at home. Ha, ha! So I got away for a bit, and just rolled it round a stone and heaved it through your winder before they could come up, your winder being the nearest one with a light in it. Ha, ha! I’ll be considerable obliged you’ll get it from your friend right now. Is he stayin’ hereabout?”
The story was so ridiculously lame that I determined to confront my visitor with Holmes, and observe the result. If he had succeeded in making any sense of the Flitterbat Lancers, the scene might be amusing. So I answered at once, “Yes; his rooms are on the floor below; he will probably be in at about this time. Come down with me.”
We went down, and found that Holmes in. “This gentleman,” I told him with a solemn intonation, “has come to ask for his piece of manuscript music, the Flitterbat Lancers. He is particularly proud of it, because nobody who tries to play it can make any sort of tune out of it, and it was entirely because two dear friends of his were anxious to drag it out of his pocket and practice it over on the quiet that he flung it through my windowpane last night, wrapped round a piece of concrete.”
The stranger glanced sharply at me, and I could see that my manner and tone rather disconcerted him. Burt Holmes came forward at once. “Oh, yes,” he said “just so - quite a natural sort of thing. As a matter of fact, I quite expected you. Your umbrella’s wet - do you mind putting it in the stand? Thank you. Come in, come in.”
We entered the room, and Holmes, turning to the stranger, went on: “Yes, that is a very extraordinary piece of music, that Flitterbat Lancers. I have been having a little bit of practice with it myself. I don’t wonder you are anxious to keep it to yourself. Sit down.”
The stranger, with a distrustful look at Holmes, complied. At this moment, the housekeeper entered from the hall with a slip of paper. Holmes glanced at it, and crumpled it in his hand. “I
am engaged just now,” was his remark, and the woman vanished.
“And now,” Holmes said, as he sat down and suddenly turned to the stranger with an intent gaze, “and now, Mr Hooker, we’ll talk of this music.”
The stranger started and frowned. “You’ve the advantage of me, sir,” he said; “you seem to know my name, but I don’t know yours.”
Holmes smiled pleasantly. “My name,” he said, “is Holmes, Sherlock Holmes, and it is my business to know a great many things. For instance, I know that you are Mr Reuben B. Hooker, of Robertsville, Ohio.”
The visitor pushed his chair back, and stared. “Well - that gits me,” he said. “You’re a pretty smart chap, Mr Holmes. I’ve heard your name before, of course. And - and so you’ve been a-studyin’ the Flitterbat Lancers, have you?” This with a keen glance at Holmes’s face. “Well, s’pose you have. What’s your idea?”
“Why,” answered Holmes, still keeping his steadfast gaze on Hooker’s eyes, “I think it’s pretty late in the century to be fishing about for the Wedlake jewels.”