The Sherlock Holmes Stories of Edward D. Hoch

by Edward D. Hoch

  The murmur of conversation was low, broken only by an occasional shout or curse from an emotional player. Tobacco smoke hung heavy in the air, though there were no drinks served upstairs. We’d been observing the scene for some minutes when a short, thickset man who might have been a former prize fighter came over to introduce himself.

  “I’m Jerry Helmsphere, the manager here. Can I help you gentlemen with anything?”

  Sherlock Holmes smiled. “I had thought that I might help you. I understand that you have had some criminal activity here of late.”

  The man seemed taken aback by his words. “Could you step into my office, please?”

  We followed him into a small office where Holmes introduced us. It was obvious at once that the man recognized the name.

  “Sherlock Holmes, the consulting detective?”

  “The very same.”

  “How did you learn of the theft of our tape machine?”

  “I may have a clue to its whereabouts,” Holmes said, pointedly ignoring the question. “Would you care to hire me in an official capacity?”

  The short man was hesitant. “How much are you asking?”

  Holmes mentioned a figure and the man sighed. “I am only the manager here. I don’t possess that sort of money.”

  “But you cannot request help from the police, since your entire operation is illegal,” Holmes remarked. “And you dare not report it to your owner.”

  “The owner resides in Paris. He is better left undisturbed.” Helmsphere made a counteroffer. “That is as high as I can go.”

  “Very well,” Holmes agreed. “Now, tell me exactly what happened to your missing tape machine.”

  “You may have noticed one machine against the opposite wall as you entered. Its ticker reports the results from Epsom, Ascot and the other tracks. We had two such machines to accommodate more of our patrons who wished to read the results before they are posted. One was stolen overnight. I need not tell you that the tape machines are expensive, and illegal possession of one could lead to all manner of chicanery.”

  I observed that beads of perspiration had collected on Jerry Helmsphere’s upper lip as he spoke. Clearly the disappearance of the machine was a matter of grave importance to him.

  Holmes sensed it, too, and asked, “What sort of chicanery?”

  He wiped a hand across his lips. Many of the smaller book-making establishments do not have tape machines like these. Whoever stole it could use it to place bets on winning horses before the official results reached those places. The other bookmakers might hold me responsible for their losses.”

  His meaning was all too clear. The man feared for his life unless he could recover the stolen machine.

  “How heavy is it?” Holmes inquired. “Could one man have carried it out alone?”

  “Not easily. Two would be much safer.”

  “At about what time would the theft have taken place?”

  “We close here at two a.m. I’m usually around until three checking the books and making certain the place is cleaned up. We open at one in the afternoon on race days, so it makes for long hours.” He paused, then added, “The theft would have taken place between three a.m. and noon, when I discovered it.”

  “A man’s body was found this morning down by the river. He was dressed as a seaman and had one of your roulette chips in his pocket. Do you remember anyone like that being in here last night?”

  Helmsphere shook his head. “We generally attract a better clientele. A man in seaman’s dress would not have been allowed upstairs. However, he might have remained downstairs to mingle with the girls. Let me ask Frances.”

  He sent someone downstairs to get her and, after a moment, the blond piano player joined us. Her name was Frances Poole and she seemed to be in her late twenties. She eyed Holmes and me with some apprehension.

  My friend smiled, trying to put her at ease. “There is nothing to fear, Miss Poole. We are only inquiring about one of last evening’s customers. This would be a man with black hair and a beard, dressed as a seaman.”

  She nodded at once. “He danced with some of the girls, and then he wanted to go upstairs, but Tim told him he wasn’t dressed for it.”

  “Tim?”

  “That would be Tim Thaw, one of our croupiers. They often go downstairs on their breaks,” the manager told us.

  “Could I speak to him?”

  “Frances, have someone relieve Tim and tell him to come in here.”

  She nodded and went off on her mission. Through the open door, I saw her approach a sandy-haired young man at the roulette table. Presently he came in to join us, with someone else taking his place at the table.

  “How can I hope you, Mr. Helmsphere?” he asked.

  “I have invited these gentlemen here to investigate the overnight theft of our tape machine.”

  Holmes shook Thaw’s hand and said, “Miss Poole tells me a bearded seaman was downstairs last evening and spoke with you about coming up here for gambling.”

  “That’s right. I informed him that proper attire was needed for the gaming room and he remained downstairs with the ladies.”

  “Did he mention his name or his ship?”

  “His name was Drexel, I believe, off one of the Liverpool ships. I didn’t see him again after my break ended.”

  “He left a bit later,” Frances Poole confirmed.

  “Alone?”

  “I believe so.”

  We seemed to have learned all there was to learn and, as we left the office, we walked out with young Thaw.

  “Have you worked here long?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “A few months. I owned a country pub near Henley, but couldn’t make a go of it. I think I was always meant to live in London. This is a nice place to start out.”

  Holmes and I watched him for a time at the roulette table, then went back downstairs. Frances Poole was at her piano. Some of the ladies had disappeared from the dance floor and I wondered aloud to Holmes where they might be.

  “Good old Watson,” he said. “That needn’t concern us. We have quite enough with the murder by the river and the stolen tape machine.”

  “Do you think the two are linked, Holmes?”

  “Almost certainly. The thief needed help to carry the stolen machine out of here and hired the seaman. They had a falling-out, no doubt over money, and the thief stabbed him.”

  “But if that’s true, Holmes, what happened to the killer and the stolen machine? And what was the meaning of our cipher message?”

  “I believe I know, but we must wait until morning.”

  It was quite unusual for Mrs. Hudson to interrupt our breakfast with news of an early morning visitor, but she did so the following day, announcing that Inspector Lestrade had come calling once more. “Send him up, by all means!” Holmes exclaimed. “He may have news for us, Watson.”

  The inspector apologized for his early arrival. “I thought you’d want to know, Mr. Holmes, that the dead man has been identified. He was missing off the Irish freighter Antrim, and the captain identified him as a third mate named Sean Drexel.”

  “I suspected as much,” Holmes said. “Watson and I visited Parkleigh’s last evening and his name was mentioned. He was there shortly before his death.”

  “Parkleigh’s!” Lestrade repeated. “How did you ever find such a place?”

  “It matters not. Could the Metropolitan Special Constabulary supply us with a police boat this morning?”

  “It might be arranged, but to what purpose?”

  “Give me a boat and I will deliver the murderer before noon.”

  Within the hour, we finished breakfast and Holmes donned the pea jacket and red scarf he’d worn before when we ventured onto the Thames.

  “Do you have your revolver, Watson?”

  “You believe I’ll need it?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Lestrade insisted on coming with us in the launch, and we met it at Westminster Wharf. Its green running lights had been removed from the side
s so it was not readily identifiable as a police boat, and we set off downriver toward Wapping. A morning mist still hung over the water, but the sun was gradually burning it off. We passed tugboats pulling lines of loaded barges, but Holmes paid no attention to the river traffic. He seemed alone with his thoughts until we had gone under Tower Bridge. Then he sprang instantly to life.

  “Steer us toward the south shore,” he instructed the officer at the wheel. There was another man tending the coal-fired steam engines below deck. As the launch moved closer to shore, Holmes scanned the damp soil with his binoculars. The tide was still low, though it was beginning to rise as it had on the previous morning.

  “What are we looking for?” Lestrade asked. “And why here? The murder occurred on the opposite bank.”

  Without lowering the glasses from his eyes, Holmes began to speak. “The facts of the case seem clear enough. The casino chip in the victim’s pocket led Watson and me to Parkleigh’s in nearby Wapping. There, we learned that a valuable ticker tape machine, used for receiving race results, had been stolen during the early morning hours, after three o’clock. This is a relatively heavy machine and, since some sort of carrying case was necessary to protect the glass dome, the thief would have wanted someone to help transport it out of the casino. The seaman Sean Drexel was recruited and given a five-pound casino chip as a down-payment.”

  “How can you possibly know that, Holmes?”

  “Drexel was barred from the casino floor because of his seaman’s attire. He could only have acquired that chip if someone on the ground floor gave it to him.”

  “Come now,” Lestrade argued. “I can think of another explanation. A fellow seaman, having visited the casino, might have brought it back to their ship and given it to him.”

  But Holmes shook his head. “No, Inspector. If that were the case, the fellow seaman would surely have remarked upon the proper attire for admittance to Parkleigh’s.”

  The police launch was moving closer to shore, and we were directly opposite the place on the north shore where the body was found.

  “Soon now,” Holmes said, almost to himself.

  “You believe the killer came across the river to this area?” Lestrade asked. “Why not the other direction? Why not the north side?”

  “You are full of questions today,” my friend answered, a slight smile on his lips. “He obviously left the scene of the crime by boat. Working alone, he would have had to drag his heavy box back up to the street if a vehicle awaited him, and there were no drag marks. The use of a boat implies a destination across the river in an easterly direction. If he were going west, it would have made more sense to hire a vehicle and go back over Tower Bridge. But there is no other bridge to the east of the Tower. Rather than risk a long carriage ride and the driver’s suspicions as to his cargo, he acquired a small boat, no doubt a rowboat, to carry himself and his loot across the river. His destination was a location in this area where the tape machine could be installed to deliver early race results.”

  Suddenly he gripped my shoulder. “Quick, Watson! Look through these binoculars and tell me what you see!”

  I did as he asked. “It seems to be a small warehouse of some sort, probably abandoned.”

  “No, no…on the sand leading up to it!”

  “Drag marks above the tidal line,” I confirmed. “They might be from a boat.”

  “No doubt. And something else besides.”

  As we drew nearer, I could see that one of the doors stood open a few inches for ventilation. It seemed likely that our quarry was inside. Lestrade directed the officer at the wheel to dock the launch at a pier about a hundred feet downriver. As Holmes and I left the vessel, the inspector and the two-man crew were right behind us.

  When we neared our destination, I drew my revolver.

  “You won’t need that,” Lestrade told me.

  “The man is a murderer.”

  “It has yet to be proven.”

  Holmes flung open the warehouse door, revealing a figure bent over a tape machine identical to the one we had seen at Parkleigh’s.

  “I must interrupt your work,” Holmes said, like the voice of judgment. “The police are here to arrest you for murder, Mr. Tim Thaw.”

  When he saw the revolver in my hand and the officers behind us, Thaw offered no resistance. Instead, he tried to argue his way out.

  “I know nothing about a murder.”

  As the officers took him into custody, Holmes went over to inspect a rowboat and a wooden packing case. The latter had obviously been nailed together by Thaw from scrap boards.

  “This was an investigation where I suspected I knew the killer’s name even before I met him. Thaw told us he’d owned a pub near Henley, and that was the final clue I needed.”

  He showed us again the apparent cipher we’d found in the wet sand, only he’d rewritten it to move the second line to the top:

  T O M I T

  W A H T Y H

  Y V I Y A H

  “Do you see it now?” Holmes asked. “The letters were raised on the bottom of this homemade box made out of scrap lumber. In the damp sand, their impression was printed backward, like a metal die. These pieces came from Thaw’s old pub sign.”

  He turned over the box so we could see the embossed bottom:

  T I M O T

  H Y T H A W

  H A Y I V Y

  “Timothy Thaw, Hay & Ivy. You’ll note the spacing device between his first and last names, and the ampersand between ‘Hay’ and ‘Ivy.’ Both are painted rather than embossed, so they did not leave their marks in the soil. He cut the sign apart, using the wood for the bottom of the box, where it wouldn’t be seen. By some curious coincidence, all of these letters are symmetrical, appearing the same forward and backward.”

  “Why didn’t he notice the imprint on the sand?” Lestrade wanted to know.

  “Because it was dark when Drexel was killed. Remember, the river police spotted the body just after dawn.”

  “And Thaw rowed across here alone?”

  “No great feat for a young man, especially one from Henley, where rowing is a popular sport, at least at Regatta time. But he had to drag the box up here, and I was counting on its having left marks above the tidal line.”

  Lestrade turned to confront their captive. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

  The man curled back his lips. “He wanted more money. He made threats. I stabbed him. There’s nothing more to say.”

  “You should have stayed in the pub business.”

  THE CHRISTMAS CONSPIRACY

  IT WAS MRS. HUDSON who persuaded me to dress up as Father Christmas and distribute a few toys to the neighborhood children. I felt just a bit foolish toting my sack into her front parlor on that Christmas Eve Sunday of 1899, emitting a jolly, “Ho! Ho! Ho!” as I brought forth the gifts.

  “Look here, children!” she announced enthusiastically. “It’s Father Christmas!”

  My sack was quickly emptied and I was out of there in ten minutes. That was when I decided to drop in on my old friend Sherlock Holmes on the floor above. It had been weeks since I’d seen him and I wondered if I could astound him with my costume.

  But he barely glanced up from his paper as I entered, saying simply, “I’m glad you dropped by, Watson. I have a little problem here that might interest you.”

  “I assume Mrs. Hudson told you I was coming tonight,” I muttered, deflated by his casual reaction to my entrance.

  “Not at all, old friend. But do you think I could have listened to your tread upon the stairs for all these years and failed to recognize it? I see Mrs. Hudson has recruited you in her latest mission to spread a bit of Christmas cheer. I could hear the commotion all the way up here.”

  I was busy pulling the false beard from my chin. “They’re a noisy bunch at holiday time,” I agreed. “Now what is this little problem that’s so important as to concern you on Christmas Eve?”

  “We have a new century beginning in just eight days,�
�� said Holmes. “It is a time for all manner of skullduggery.”

  “Her Majesty’s government is of the opinion the twentieth century does not officially begin for another year,” I pointed out.

  He shrugged. “Let them think what they will. In America, this has been a decade known as the Gay Nineties. It certainly began in 1890, not 1891, and it will end next Sunday at midnight.”

  “I quite agree.”

  “But now to business. I was visited yesterday by a charming young lady named Elvira Ascott. She has been married just one year and now her husband is off in South Africa fighting the Boers. Her parents are deceased and she has no one to advise her on financial matters. Now an offer has been made on a piece of land she inherited from her family. The offer is good only until the end of the year, at which time it will be withdrawn.”

  “That’s hardly your line of work, Holmes,” I pointed out.

  “But a gentleman has come forward to help her in the matter, free of charge. His name is Jules Blackthorn and he claims to be a solicitor. However, she called unexpectedly at his office a few days ago and found it was only a convenience address where he received mail. He did not even have a desk there. That was when she consulted me.”

  “And what have you learned about this man, Blackthorn?”

  Holmes leaned back and lit his pipe. “Very little, except to confirm her suspicion that he is not a solicitor. She suspects a plot of some sort to steal her property while her husband is away.”

  “Is this property especially valuable,” I asked.

  “It does not seem so, which adds to the mystery. The land is a flood plain near the mouth of the Thames, often under water when there are storms with onshore winds. The man offering to buy the property is a fellow named Edgar Dobson, the owner of an adjoining estate. As it happens, Dobson holds a Christmas party at his home each year and has invited Mrs. Ascott to attend. Blackthorn has offered to escort her in her husband’s absence, but she doesn’t trust him. She has asked me to accompany her instead.”