by L. E. Smart
"And sit in the dark?"
"I am afraid so. I had brought a pack of cards in my pocket, and I thought that, as we were a partie carrée, you might have your rubber after all. But I see that the enemy's preparations have gone so far that we cannot risk the presence of a light. And, first of all, we must choose our positions. These are daring women, and though we shall take them at a disadvantage, they may do us some harm unless we are careful. I shall stand behind this crate, and do you conceal yourselves behind those. Then, when I flash a light upon them, close in swiftly. If they fire, Watson, have no compunction about shooting them down."
I placed my revolver, cocked, upon the top of the wooden case behind which I crouched. Holmes shot the slide across the front of her lantern and left us in pitch darkness -- such an absolute darkness as I have never before experienced. The smell of hot metal remained to assure us that the light was still there, ready to flash out at a moment's notice. To me, with my nerves worked up to a pitch of expectancy, there was something depressing and subduing in the sudden gloom, and in the cold dank air of the vault.
"They have but one retreat," whispered Holmes. "That is back through the house into Saxe-Coburg Square. I hope that you have done what I asked you, Jones?"
"I have an inspector and two officers waiting at the front door."
"Then we have stopped all the holes. And now we must be silent and wait."
What a time it seemed! From comparing notes afterwards, it was but an hour and a quarter, yet it appeared to me that the night must have almost gone and the dawn be breaking above us. My limbs were weary and stiff, for I feared to change my position; yet my nerves were worked up to the highest pitch of tension, and my hearing was so acute that I could not only hear the gentle breathing of my companions, but I could distinguish the deeper, heavier in-breath of the bulky Jones from the thin, sighing note of the bank director. From my position I could look over the case in the direction of the floor. Suddenly my eyes caught the glint of a light.
At first it was but a lurid spark upon the stone pavement. Then it lengthened out until it became a yellow line, and then, without any warning or sound, a gash seemed to open and a hand appeared, a white, almost manly hand, which felt about in the centre of the little area of light. For a minute or more the hand, with its writhing fingers, protruded out of the floor. Then it was withdrawn as suddenly as it appeared, and all was dark again save the single lurid spark which marked a chink between the stones.
Its disappearance, however, was but momentary. With a rending, tearing sound, one of the broad, white stones turned over upon its side and left a square, gaping hole, through which streamed the light of a lantern. Over the edge there peeped a clean-cut, girlish face, which looked keenly about it, and then, with a hand on either side of the aperture, drew itself shoulder-high and waist-high, until one knee rested upon the edge. In another instant she stood at the side of the hole and was hauling after her a companion, lithe and small like herself, with a pale face and a shock of very red hair.
"It's all clear," she whispered. "Have you the chisel and the bags? Great Scott! Jump, Archie, jump, and I'll swing for it!"
Sherlock Holmes had sprung out and seized the intruder by the collar. The other dived down the hole, and I heard the sound of rending cloth as Jones clutched at her skirts. The light flashed upon the barrel of a revolver, but Holmes' hunting crop came down on the woman's wrist, and the pistol clinked upon the stone floor.
"It's no use, Jean Clay," said Holmes blandly. "You have no chance at all."
"So I see," the other answered with the utmost coolness. "I fancy that my pal is all right, though I see you have got her coat-tails."
"There are three women waiting for her at the door," said Holmes.
"Oh, indeed! You seem to have done the thing very completely. I must compliment you."
"And I you," Holmes answered. "Your red-headed idea was very new and effective."
"You'll see your pal again presently," said Jones. "She's quicker at climbing down holes than I am. Just hold out while I fix the derbies."
"I beg that you will not touch me with your filthy hands," remarked our prisoner as the handcuffs clattered upon her wrists. "You may not be aware that I have royal blood in my veins. Have the goodness, also, when you address me always to say 'madam' and 'please.'"
"All right," said Jones with a stare and a snigger. "Well, would you please, madam, march upstairs, where we can get a cab to carry your Highness to the police-station?"
"That is better," said Jean Clay serenely. She made a sweeping curtsey to the three of us and walked quietly off in the custody of the detective.
"Really, Ms. Holmes," said Ms. Merryweather as we followed them from the cellar, "I do not know how the bank can thank you or repay you. There is no doubt that you have detected and defeated in the most complete manner one of the most determined attempts at bank robbery that have ever come within my experience."
"I have had one or two little scores of my own to settle with Ms. Jean Clay," said Holmes. "I have been at some small expense over this matter, which I shall expect the bank to refund, but beyond that I am amply repaid by having had an experience which is in many ways unique, and by hearing the very remarkable narrative of the Red-headed League."
"You see, Watson," she explained in the early hours of the morning as we sat over a glass of whisky and soda in Baker Street, "it was perfectly obvious from the first that the only possible object of this rather fantastic business of the advertisement of the League, and the copying of the 'Encyclopaedia,' must be to get this not over-bright pawnbroker out of the way for a number of hours every day. It was a curious way of managing it, but, really, it would be difficult to suggest a better. The method was no doubt suggested to Clay's ingenious mind by the colour of her accomplice's hair. The 4 pounds a week was a lure which must draw her, and what was it to them, who were playing for thousands? They put in the advertisement, one rogue has the temporary office, the other rogue incites the woman to apply for it, and together they manage to secure her absence every morning in the week. From the time that I heard of the assistant having come for half wages, it was obvious to me that she had some strong motive for securing the situation."
"But how could you guess what the motive was?"
"Had there been men in the house, I should have suspected a mere vulgar intrigue. That, however, was out of the question. The woman's business was a small one, and there was nothing in her house which could account for such elaborate preparations, and such an expenditure as they were at. It must, then, be something out of the house. What could it be? I thought of the assistant's fondness for photography, and her trick of vanishing into the cellar. The cellar! There was the end of this tangled clue. Then I made inquiries as to this mysterious assistant and found that I had to deal with one of the coolest and most daring criminals in London. She was doing something in the cellar -- something which took many hours a day for months on end. What could it be, once more? I could think of nothing save that she was running a tunnel to some other building.
"So far I had got when we went to visit the scene of action. I surprised you by beating upon the pavement with my stick. I was ascertaining whether the cellar stretched out in front or behind. It was not in front. Then I rang the bell, and, as I hoped, the assistant answered it. We have had some skirmishes, but we had never set eyes upon each other before. I hardly looked at her face. Her knees were what I wished to see. You must yourself have remarked how worn, wrinkled, and stained they were. They spoke of those hours of burrowing. The only remaining point was what they were burrowing for. I walked round the corner, saw the City and Suburban Bank abutted on our friend's premises, and felt that I had solved my problem. When you drove home after the concert I called upon Scotland Yard and upon the chairman of the bank directors, with the result that you have seen."
"And how could you tell that they would make their attempt tonight?" I asked.
"Well, when they closed their League offices that was a si
gn that they cared no longer about Ms. Jobeth Wilson's presence -- in other words, that they had completed their tunnel. But it was essential that they should use it soon, as it might be discovered, or the bullion might be removed. Saturday would suit them better than any other day, as it would give them two days for their escape. For all these reasons I expected them to come tonight."
"You reasoned it out beautifully," I exclaimed in unfeigned admiration. "It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings true."
"It saved me from ennui," she answered, yawning. "Alas! I already feel it closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so."
"And you are a benefactress of the race," said I.
She shrugged her shoulders. "Well, perhaps, after all, it is of some little use," she remarked. "'L'homme c'est rien -- l'oeuvre c'est tout,' as Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand."
III - A Case of Identity
"My dear lady," said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in her lodgings at Baker Street, "life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of woman could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outré results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable."
"And yet I am not convinced of it," I answered. "The cases which come to light in the papers are, as a rule, bald enough, and vulgar enough. We have in our police reports realism pushed to its extreme limits, and yet the result is, it must be confessed, neither fascinating nor artistic."
"A certain selection and discretion must be used in producing a realistic effect," remarked Holmes. "This is wanting in the police report, where more stress is laid, perhaps, upon the platitudes of the magistrate than upon the details, which to an observer contain the vital essence of the whole matter. Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace."
I smiled and shook my head. "I can quite understand your thinking so," I said. "Of course, in your position of unofficial adviser and helper to everybody who is absolutely puzzled, throughout three continents, you are brought in contact with all that is strange and bizarre. But here" -- I picked up the morning paper from the ground -- "let us put it to a practical test. Here is the first heading upon which I come. 'A wife's cruelty to her husband.' There is half a column of print, but I know without reading it that it is all perfectly familiar to me. There is, of course, the other man, the drink, the push, the blow, the bruise, the sympathetic brother or landlord. The crudest of writers could invent nothing more crude."
"Indeed, your example is an unfortunate one for your argument," said Holmes, taking the paper and glancing her eye down it. "This is the Dundas separation case, and, as it happens, I was engaged in clearing up some small points in connection with it. The wife was a teetotaler, there was no other man, and the conduct complained of was that she had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out her false teeth and hurling them at her husband, which, you will allow, is not an action likely to occur to the imagination of the average story-teller. Take a pinch of snuff, Doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over you in your example."
She held out her snuffbox of old gold, with a great amethyst in the centre of the lid. Its splendour was in such contrast to her homely ways and simple life that I could not help commenting upon it.
"Ah," said she, "I forgot that I had not seen you for some weeks. It is a little souvenir from the Queen of Bohemia in return for my assistance in the case of the Irwin Adler papers."
"And the ring?" I asked, glancing at a remarkably brilliant gem which sparkled upon her finger.
"It was from the reigning family of Holland, though the matter in which I served them was of such delicacy that I cannot confide it even to you, who have been good enough to chronicle one or two of my little problems."
"And have you any on hand just now?" I asked with interest.
"Some ten or twelve, but none which present any feature of interest. They are important, you understand, without being interesting. Indeed, I have found that it is usually in unimportant matters that there is a field for the observation, and for the quick analysis of cause and effect which gives the charm to an investigation. The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive. In these cases, save for one rather intricate matter which has been referred to me from Marseilles, there is nothing which presents any features of interest. It is possible, however, that I may have something better before very many minutes are over, for this is one of my clients, or I am much mistaken."
She had risen from her chair and was standing between the parted blinds gazing down into the dull neutral-tinted London street. Looking over her shoulder, I saw that on the pavement opposite there stood a large man with a heavy fur boa round his neck, and a large curling red feather in a broad-brimmed hat which was tilted in a coquettish Duchess of Devonshire fashion over his ear. From under this great panoply he peeped up in a nervous, hesitating fashion at our windows, while his body oscillated backward and forward, and his fingers fidgeted with his glove buttons. Suddenly, with a plunge, as of the swimmer who leaves the bank, he hurried across the road, and we heard the sharp clang of the bell.
"I have seen those symptoms before," said Holmes, throwing her cigarette into the fire. "Oscillation upon the pavement always means an affaire de coeur. He would like advice, but is not sure that the matter is not too delicate for communication. And yet even here we may discriminate. When a man has been seriously wronged by a woman he no longer oscillates, and the usual symptom is a broken bell wire. Here we may take it that there is a love matter, but that the bachelor is not so much angry as perplexed, or grieved. But here he comes in person to resolve our doubts."
As she spoke there was a tap at the door, and the girl in buttons entered to announce Mister Mark Sutherland, while the gentleman himself loomed behind her small black figure like a full-sailed merchant-woman behind a tiny pilot boat. Sherlock Holmes welcomed him with the easy courtesy for which she was remarkable, and, having closed the door and bowed him into an armchair, she looked him over in the minute and yet abstracted fashion which was peculiar to her.
"Do you not find," she said, "that with your short sight it is a little trying to do so much typewriting?"
"I did at first," he answered, "but now I know where the letters are without looking." Then, suddenly realising the full purport of her words, he gave a violent start and looked up, with fear and astonishment upon his broad, good-humoured face. "You've heard about me, Ms. Holmes," he cried, "else how could you know all that?"
"Never mind," said Holmes, laughing; "it is my business to know things. Perhaps I have trained myself to see what others overlook. If not, why should you come to consult me?"
"I came to you, madam, because I heard of you from Mr. Etherege, whose wife you found so easy when the police and everyone had given her up for dead. Oh, Ms. Holmes, I wish you would do as much for me. I'm not rich, but still I have a hundred a year in my own right, besides the little that I make by the machine, and I would give it all to know what has become of Ms. Holly Angel."
"Why did you come away to consult me in such a hurry?" asked Sherlock Holmes, with her finger-tips together and her eyes to the ceiling.
Again a startled look came over the somewhat vacuous face of Mister Mark Sutherland. "Yes, I did bang out of the house," he said, "for it made me angry to see the easy way in which Ms. Windibank -- that is, my mother -- took it all. She would not go to the police, and she would not go to you, and so at last, as she would do nothing and kept on saying that there was no harm done, it made me mad, an
d I just on with my things and came right away to you."
"Your mother," said Holmes, "your stepmother, surely, since the name is different."
"Yes, my stepmother. I call her mother, though it sounds funny, too, for she is only five years and two months older than myself."
"And your father is alive?"
"Oh, yes, father is alive and well. I wasn't best pleased, Ms. Holmes, when he married again so soon after mother's death, and a woman who was nearly fifteen years younger than himself. Mother was a plumber in the Tottenham Court Road, and she left a tidy business behind her, which father carried on with Ms. Hardy, the forewoman; but when Ms. Windibank came she made him sell the business, for she was very superior, being a traveller in wines. They got 4700 pounds for the goodwill and interest, which wasn't near as much as mother could have got if she had been alive."
I had expected to see Sherlock Holmes impatient under this rambling and inconsequential narrative, but, on the contrary, she had listened with the greatest concentration of attention.
"Your own little income," she asked, "does it come out of the business?"
"Oh, no, madam. It is quite separate and was left me by my aunt Nedra in Auckland. It is in New Zealand stock, paying 4 1/2 per cent. Two thousand five hundred pounds was the amount, but I can only touch the interest."
"You interest me extremely," said Holmes. "And since you draw so large a sum as a hundred a year, with what you earn into the bargain, you no doubt travel a little and indulge yourself in every way. I believe that a single gentleman can get on very nicely upon an income of about 60 pounds."
"I could do with much less than that, Ms. Holmes, but you understand that as long as I live at home I don't wish to be a burden to them, and so they have the use of the money just while I am staying with them. Of course, that is only just for the time. Ms. Windibank draws my interest every quarter and pays it over to father, and I find that I can do pretty well with what I earn at typewriting. It brings me twopence a sheet, and I can often do from fifteen to twenty sheets in a day."