I am not as athletic as my friend. I paused before the ruined table, and was immediately grateful that I had; for as I glanced up, I had a sudden vision of Queen Victoria moving, with the same stately dignity with which she had comported herself in life. Instantly I realized this was a misapprehension, and that the great seven-foot portrait that hung behind the Marquis and his hosts was swinging outward as on a pivot. Beyond it was the dark rectangle of an open passage, and inside that rectangle, standing poised within easy striking distance with a dagger of the French dignitary was—
Mycroft Holmes!
I was drawing aim upon that figure with my revolver, and recognized the generous proportions and lofty brow of Sherlock Holmes’s older brother just in time to withdraw my finger from the trigger. The detective, however, was too close to react, and threw his arms around the man in the passage in a flying leap that carried them both to the floor inside the opening.
“Hold, Sherlock!” Mycroft exclaimed, disentangling himself from his sibling. “When will you learn to use your head before your feet?”
Ten minutes later, Holmes and I were seated in our host’s commodious study with Sir John, the Marquis DuBlac, and Mycroft, who had corrected his dishevelment and occupied the largest armchair with cigar in hand and a glass of claret on the table at his elbow.
“All your questions will be answered in the fullness of time,” said he. “Impatience always was your great weakness, Sherlock. First, tell us how you guessed at the presence of a secret passage behind the painting.”
“I haven’t guessed since we were children,” Holmes replied. “When the orchestra began playing ‘After the Ball’ and I realized the die was cast, a passage was the only possibility that offered both access to the intended victim and escape afterwards. The antiquity of Balderwood House suggested the probability that such a passage existed.”
“Admirable!” cried the Marquis. “Unfortunately, our society includes a number of deranged individuals for whom the prospect of flight holds no importance.”
“The wax recording cylinder that was delivered to my door and the whole business of the song pointed to a subtle and devious mind. A fanatic did not answer.”
“Such men have been known to employ fanatics,” Mycroft reminded him.
“The prize was too large, and deranged men are often unpredictable. Skilled labour demands a steady hand.”
Sir John sat back and crossed his long legs, exhibiting calm for the first time. “He is brilliant, as well as cool under fire. Gentlemen, I withdraw my objections. I feared that he was an invention of fiction, but his performance tonight convinces me he is the man for us.”
“I was never in doubt.” The Frenchman’s eyes twinkled. “Dr. Watson’s accounts of his friend’s adventures are very popular in my country. I am privileged to have witnessed his genius and daring firsthand.”
“I felt sure you would see it that way,” put in Mycroft. “I was not so certain of Sir John, and so remained neutral.”
Here Holmes displayed the impatience that his brother deplored. “The time has come to tell me the purpose of this charade. You haven’t the ambition, Mycroft, for practical jokes, which in any case would be unseemly in the shadow of our recent loss.”
Mycroft pulled at his cigar. “That loss has led to a most unstable situation upon the continent. For some time now the great powers have feared unrest, but could not come to an agreement as to who should be entrusted with investigating its source. Until now.” He drew a folded sheet of paper from inside his coat and handed it to his brother.
Holmes unfolded the exquisite stationery and read. The text was all but obscured by the presence of royal seals. “What is the purpose of this?” he asked at length.
Mycroft said, “It is a letter signed and sealed by all the crowned heads of Europe and Great Britain, presenting the bearer with authority to go anywhere and interrogate anyone with the absolute co-operation of the local constabulary. Your mission will be to investigate any and all rumors of subversive activity and to report your conclusions to an international tribunal headquartered in Berne, Switzerland. You will answer to no one government; which means, of course, that you will answer to them all. I should warn you before you accept this post that it will leave you little time for quiet contemplation. It will never be boring.”
“I begin to understand,” said Holmes. “Tonight was an audition of sorts.”
His brother nodded. “I must claim credit for the sham’s details. I’m inordinately proud of the business with the wax cylinder. It was an early Christmas present from an American dignitary, which I decided to put to good use. I was somewhat concerned when Sir John reported that you did not expect anything to happen until the ball was concluded, but I must compliment you upon the swiftness of your actions the moment you realized you’d erred. Flexibility and reflex are crucial. Do you accept the post?”
“I can do no other in the name of peace. I’m grateful you chose me.”
“You should thank Dr. Watson. He visited me last week in my offices at Whitehall, reminded me sternly that England was wasting its greatest natural resource and challenged me to put you to work on its behalf. I confess that because I am related to you I lacked the objectivity to have considered you for this assignment. It was good luck all round that he should have approached me when he did.”
Holmes looked at me with the first signs of astonishment I had ever seen upon his face. I hastened to reassure him that he had not lost his keen powers of observation.
“I knew nothing of the test,” said I. “Mycroft said only that he would take up my suggestion with the foreign secretary. I was convinced tonight’s mystery was legitimate.”
“A great adventure!” the Marquis exclaimed.
“It is more than that.” Holmes was still looking at me. “It is a great gift.”
At that moment the clock on Sir John Whitsunday’s mantelpiece chimed midnight, announcing that Christmas Eve was upon us. “Happy Christmas, Holmes,” said I.
My friend made no reply.
My doorbell rang on Christmas morning while I was breakfasting with my wife.
“Oh, dear.” She set down her cup. “I hope that isn’t a patient, today of all days.”
I arose from the table resignedly. “Perhaps it is just Mrs. Ablewhite’s annual case of the sniffles.”
A fat commissionaire stood upon the doorstep, his great bulging middle barely contained by his brass buttons. An enormous pair of snow-white moustaches obscured most of his florid face. “Package for Dr. Watson,” said he.
I signed the receipt and accepted the parcel, which was no larger than a tin of tobacco and wrapped in bright silver paper. Curious to see which of my patients had sent me a gift, I unwrapped it there upon the threshold.
It was a box containing Sherlock Holmes’s needle in its morocco leather case and his bottle of cocaine.
“Happy Christmas, Watson,” came a familiar voice from behind the commissionaire’s moustaches. “I shan’t be needing it again this century.”
THE CASE OF THE
RAJAH’S EMERALD
Carolyn Wheat
It was said of the late Ebenezer Scrooge that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. His former reputation, that of the miser who greeted the festive season with a curmudgeonly “bah, humbug,” had fallen to another prominent citizen of London, who stood in the doorway of my surgery stamping snow off his boots and loudly declaiming that Christmas was the dreariest holiday in the entire calendar year.
From the point of view of crime, that is.
“It is not,” Sherlock Holmes explained, handing me his furred cap and greatcoat, “that I fail to appreciate the sentiment of the season, my dear Watson. Indeed, as a man and a citizen,” he added, unwinding the long woolen muffler from his neck and tossing it onto the nearest chair, “I applaud the milk of human kindness that succors us all at this most holy time of the year. It is solely,” he continued, striding toward the fire with his han
ds outstretched to receive its warmth, “in my capacity as the world’s first consulting detective that I deplore the general falling-off of crime that attends the birth of our Saviour. Even the common burglar fears to commit his crimes at this most—”
I seldom interrupted my friend, but his words forced a protest from my lips. “But surely, Holmes, you do not wish for—”
He answered my rudeness with an interruption of his own. Holding his slender hands in a placating gesture, he replied, “Surely not, Watson. I do not require a murder to restore my sagging spirits. Nor do I clamour for a plot to rob the Bank of England or a conspiracy to steal Whitehall’s most closely-guarded secrets.”
His hooded eyes seemed to contain the tiniest glint of amusement as he said, “A simple problem will do, something delightfully puzzling without being attended by blood and misery, snakes and blackmail. Something along the lines of that blue carbuncle we had for Christmas last year.”
I could not but smile at the reference. That evidentiary bird had led Holmes to the most notorious jewel-thief in England. Indeed, the discovery of that marvellous jewel in the crop of a dead fowl had been the best Christmas present Holmes could have received, far better than the German microscope I gave him as a token of the season.
How was I to provide my friend with that delightful, puzzling, yet not murderous case he so longed to solve?
The answer presented itself at the door of my surgery less than a week later. Taking a leaf from Holmes’s book, I summed up my visitor as a man in his forties, who had once suffered quite badly from poliomyelitis and even now depended upon a cane. He had a pale complexion and large, burning eyes in a thin face, a man, I was certain, who felt things far too deeply and lived on his nerves. Even before I examined him, I had resolved to prescribe more sleep and less coffee.
This intention dissolved into thin air when I discovered that my visitor had not come as a patient. He handed me a card, and I studied it as Holmes might have done, attempting to glean all I could from its features. Cream-colored stock, raised letters in a plain font, a proper card for a professional man, and, indeed, the card proclaimed its bearer to be such, for the legend, TIMOTHY CRATCHIT, SOLICITOR, 32 LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LONDON, WC1 was embossed thereon.
Oddly enough, I felt I ought to know the name although I had had few dealings with the legal profession, save for the formalities that surrounded the strange death of my wife’s father. Perhaps this inquiry was related to that sad business?
It was not. Mr. Cratchit, at my invitation, seated himself in the chair closest to the fire and availed himself of a cup of tea into which I poured a restorative tot of brandy, for the wind outside was bitter that early December afternoon.
“Dr. Watson, I have come to consult you on a matter so delicate, so important and yet so fantastic, that I find myself at a loss as to how to begin my tale. It is, you may imagine,” he said with a smile that lit his thin face, “an unusual position for me to be in. As a solicitor, I am of necessity a man of facts, sir, a man of details and subordinate clauses. A man who does not, as it were, see spirits.”
“You see spirits?” I had decided Mr. Cratchit had better abstain from spirits as well as coffee, if he were to regain his health.
“Only one spirit, in point of fact,” my visitor replied with that same enigmatic yet engaging smile. “The Spirit of Christmas Past.”
“You’re Tiny Tim!” I exclaimed, all but jumping from my chair. Surely my wife, my lovely Mary, would be enchanted to meet the living embodiment of that Christmas tale all England delighted in repeating at this happy time of year.
A faint blush marked the solicitor’s thin cheek. “I was,” he admitted. “I was Tiny Tim, and my benefactor, my second father, was Ebenezer Scrooge. It is on his behalf that I seek your counsel, Dr. Watson.”
“But Mr. Scrooge is dead,” I blurted. All London had mourned the passing of the great humanitarian; the procession that followed his hearse to the cemetery was of legendary length and the flowers that banked his coffin reminded those in attendance of Covent Garden in spring.
“Oh, yes, Mr. Scrooge is dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am about to relate.”
“Mr. Cratchit,” I said, leaning forward in my chair, “I hesitate to stop your account before it begins, but may I ask whether this is a problem that could benefit from the services of my friend, Sherlock Holmes?”
“Why, I suppose it may be,” Cratchit replied. “I came to you, truth be told, for your Army connexions. But it seems plain as day, now that you mention it, that Mr. Holmes is the very man to plumb this matter to its depths and bring it to a satisfactory conclusion for all concerned.”
“Then may I impose upon your patience and send for Holmes? Or perhaps you would prefer to meet him at his rooms in Baker Street?”
It was decided that we would take a hansom cab to Baker Street, but not before I contrived to invite Mary into the consulting room to introduce her to our visitor. She was properly impressed, and only raised a blush on Cratchit’s thin, sensitive face three times with her references to Tiny Tim and how he had grown.
I was afraid she would say them, and say them she did. As I assisted Cratchit into the cab, she called out from the doorway, “God bless us, every one.”
Cratchit sighed. “I applaud the sentiment,” he confessed, “but I also wish I did not have to hear the words quite so often.”
“Rest assured,” I said, “that you will not hear them from Holmes. He is as much enamoured of the Christmas spirit as was your late benefactor prior to his transformation. Indeed, you may even hear that immortal phrase ‘bah, humbug’ from his lips.”
My companion laughed. “It would be most refreshing,” he admitted. “A draught of tart lemonade to counterbalance all the treacle.”
There was but a dusting of snow left in the city, and that was rapidly turning mud brown and ash gray. The fairy castle look of new-fallen flakes lasted but a short time in the metropolis, not unlike the spirit of the season itself, which had an evanescent quality certain to vanish altogether by the Feast of Stephen.
As the cab jounced along the mud-rutted street, I thought with some satisfaction of the Christmas gift I should shortly present to my friend. Timothy Cratchit, Solicitor, was the perfect client for the holiday, although I could not for the life of me imagine what problem had brought him to my door, and what it had to do with my old Army career.
I was enlightened soon enough. Mrs. Hudson met us at the door and ushered us into the sitting room I once shared with my detective friend, who sat at his ease before the fire, perusing a cheap newspaper.
As was his wont, he came to the point at once, after inviting us to sit and light our cigars.
“And now, Mr. Cratchit, pray tell us what brings you here. I know nothing of your problem save that it involves the estate of your late benefactor and that certain individuals have appeared from the Far East to claim the inheritance.”
“Come, Holmes,” I protested. “This is too much. How can you profess to know these particulars before Mr. Cratchit has begun his account of the matter?”
“You know my methods, Watson.” He ticked off his points upon slender, ink-stained fingers. “First, Mr. Cratchit began his errand with you instead of me. This argues either a medical or an Army matter; since you arrived without your medical case, I am inclined toward the Army. Second, when Mr. Cratchit hung his greatcoat in the hallway, I noted the corner of a document in one of the pockets. It bore the crest of the Oriental Club, which caters exclusively to those employed by the British East India Company. I deduced two separate visitors from the East, one connected with the military and the other with the civil service. This newspaper told the rest of the tale.”
“Has word of this affair reached the newspapers?” Cratchit’s tone was one of agitation. “I would not have had them notified for all the world.”
“Do not fear on that account, sir,” Holmes replied with an enigmatic smile. “I doubt that
many Londoners receive the Lahore Civil and Military Gazette. My copy arrived on the East Indiaman Star of Rajput only yesterday.” He puffed on his pipe, sending a cloud of smoke into the already frowsty room. “As the estate of the late Mr. Scrooge is the subject of a protracted inquiry in Chancery, I concluded that someone from the Far East has appeared to assert an interest in the matter. Am I correct, Mr. Cratchit?”
“Yes.” Cratchit’s answering smile held a tinge of wry humour. “If I had but one claimant to present to the Lord Chancellor as the heir to the Scrooge fortune, I should not be here at this moment. One would be a sufficiency.”
“But two claimants are—” Holmes invited.
“One too many, Mr. Holmes.”
I leaned back in my accustomed Morris chair, basking in the glow of the fire, and feeling a sense of peace and tranquillity such as I had not enjoyed for a long while. I loved my wife, and I was more than ever contented with my wedded existence, yet some part of me yearned always for the masculine comforts of Baker Street, and the stimulating company of my friend Holmes. I never felt so alive as I did when engaged in one of his cases.
“This excellent newspaper,” Holmes said, pointing to the cheaply printed thing, “contains a most enlightening item in its police reports. It appears that the widow and son of the late Frederick Scrooge were robbed while awaiting the departure of the Star of Rajput. No valuables were taken, save documents which were intended to prove the heir’s identity before the Chancery Court.”
“Indeed, Mr. Holmes. I am presented with two claimants, neither of whom possesses a complete set of papers, each of whom charges the other with theft and maintains that he is the true heir. One is a liar and a fraud; the other is the true son of my late benefactor’s nephew, but I—well, sir, I’m blowed if I know which is which!”
More Holmes for the Holidays Page 10