by Otto Penzler
Within half an hour of coming to this resolution I was standing in the doorway of the familiar old room in Baker Street.
Holmes was stretched upon the couch with his back towards me, the familiar dressing gown and old brier pipe as much in evidence as of yore.
“Come in, Watson,” he cried, without glancing round. “Come in and tell me what good wind blows you here?”
“What an ear you have, Holmes,” I said. “I don’t think that I could have recognized your tread so easily.”
“Nor I yours,” said he, “if you hadn’t come up my badly lighted staircase taking the steps two at a time with all the familiarity of an old fellow lodger; even then I might not have been sure who it was, but when you stumbled over the new mat outside the door which has been there for nearly three months, you needed no further announcement.”
Holmes pulled out two or three of the cushions from the pile he was lying on and threw them across into the armchair. “Sit down, Watson, and make yourself comfortable; you’ll find cigarettes in a box behind the clock.”
As I proceeded to comply, Holmes glanced whimsically across at me. “I’m afraid I shall have to disappoint you, my boy,” he said. “I had a wire only half an hour ago which will prevent me from joining in any little trip you may have been about to propose.”
“Really, Holmes,” I said, “don’t you think this is going a little too far? I begin to fear you are a fraud and pretend to discover things by observation, when all the time you really do it by pure out-and-out clairvoyance!”
Holmes chuckled. “Knowing you as I do it’s absurdly simple,” said he. “Your surgery hours are from five to seven, yet at six o’clock you walk smiling into my rooms. Therefore you must have a locum in. You are looking well, though tired, so the obvious reason is that you are having, or about to have, a holiday. The clinical thermometer, peeping out of your pocket, proclaims that you have been on your rounds today, hence it’s pretty evident that your real holiday begins tomorrow. When, under these circumstances, you come hurrying into my rooms—which, by the way, Watson, you haven’t visited for nearly three months—with a new Bradshaw and a timetable of excursion bookings bulging out of your coat pocket, then it’s more than probable you have come with the idea of suggesting some joint expedition.”
“It’s all perfectly true,” I said, and explained to him, in a few words, my plans. “And I’m more disappointed than I can tell you,” I concluded, “that you are not able to fall in with my little scheme.”
Holmes picked up a telegram from the table and looked at it thoughtfully. “If only the inquiry this refers to promised to be of anything like the interest of some we have gone into together, nothing would have delighted me more than to have persuaded you to throw your lot in with mine for a time; but really I’m afraid to do so, for it sounds a particularly commonplace affair,” and he crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it over to me.
I smoothed it out and read: “To Holmes, 221B Baker Street, London, S.W. Please come to Sheffield at once to inquire into case of forgery. Jervis, Manager British Consolidated Bank.”
“I’ve wired back to say I shall go up to Sheffield by the one-thirty a.m. express from St. Pancras,” said Holmes. “I can’t go sooner as I have an interesting little appointment to fulfil tonight down in the East End, which should give me the last information I need to trace home a daring robbery from the British Museum to its instigator—who possesses one of the oldest titles and finest houses in the country, along with a most insatiable greed, almost mania, for collecting ancient documents. Before discussing the Sheffield affair any further, however, we had perhaps better see what the evening paper has to say about it,” continued Holmes, as his boy entered with the Evening News, Standard, Globe, and Star. “Ah, this must be it,” he said, pointing to a paragraph headed “Daring Forger’s Remarkable Exploits in Sheffield.”
Whilst going to press we have been informed that a series of most cleverly forged cheques have been successfully used to swindle the Sheffield banks out of a sum which cannot be less than six thousand pounds. The full extent of the fraud has not yet been ascertained, and the managers of the different banks concerned, who have been interviewed by our Sheffield correspondent, are very reticent.
It appears that a gentleman named Mr. Jabez Booth, who resides at Broomhill, Sheffield, and has been an employee since January, 1881, at the British Consolidated Bank in Sheffield, yesterday succeeded in cashing quite a number of cleverly forged cheques at twelve of the principal banks in the city and absconding with the proceeds.
The crime appears to have been a strikingly deliberate and well thought-out one. Mr. Booth had, of course, in his position in one of the principal banks in Sheffield, excellent opportunities of studying the various signatures which he forged, and he greatly facilitated his chances of easily and successfully obtaining cash for the cheques by opening banking accounts last year at each of the twelve banks at which he presented the forged cheques, and by this means becoming personally known at each.
He still further disarmed suspicion by crossing each of the forged cheques and paying them into his account, while, at the same time, he drew and cashed a cheque of his own for about half the amount of the forged cheque paid in.
It was not until early this morning, Thursday, that the fraud was discovered, which means that the rascal has had some twenty hours in which to make good his escape. In spite of this we have little doubt but that he will soon be laid by the heels, for we are informed that the finest detectives from Scotland Yard are already upon his track, and it is also whispered that Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the well-known and almost world-famed criminal expert of Baker Street, has been asked to assist in hunting down this daring forger.
“Then there follows a lengthy description of the fellow, which I needn’t read but will keep for future use,” said Holmes, folding the paper and looking across at me. “It seems to have been a pretty smart affair. This Booth may not be easily caught, for though he hasn’t had a long time in which to make his escape we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that he’s had twelve months in which to plan how he would do the vanishing trick when the time came. Well! What do you say, Watson? Some of the little problems we have gone into in the past should at least have taught us that the most interesting cases do not always present the most bizarre features at the outset.”
“ ‘So far from it, on the contrary, quite the reverse,’ to quote Sam Weller,” I replied. “Personally nothing would be more to my taste than to join you.”
“Then we’ll consider it settled,” said my friend. “And now I must go and attend to that other little matter of business I spoke to you about. Remember,” he said, as we parted, “one-thirty at St. Pancras.”
—
I was on the platform in good time, but it was not until the hands of the great station clock indicated the very moment due for our departure, and the porters were beginning to slam the carriage doors noisily, that I caught the familiar sight of Holmes’s tall figure.
“Ah! here you are Watson,” he cried cheerily. “I fear you must have thought I was going to be too late. I’ve had a very busy evening and no time to waste; however, I’ve succeeded in putting into practice Phileas Fogg’s theory that ‘a well-used minimum suffices for everything,’ and here I am.”
“About the last thing I should expect of you,” I said as we settled down into two opposite corners of an otherwise empty first-class carriage, “would be that you should do such an unmethodical thing as to miss a train. The only thing which would surprise me more, in fact, would be to see you at the station ten minutes before time.”
“I should consider that the greatest evil of the two,” said Holmes sententiously. “But now we must sleep; we have every prospect of a heavy day.”
It was one of Holmes’s characteristics that he could command sleep at will; unfortunately he could resist it at will also, and often have I had to remonstrate with him on the harm he must be doing himself, when, deeply engrossed in one of his s
trange or baffling problems, he would go for several consecutive days and nights without one wink of sleep.
He put the shades over the lamps, leaned back in his corner, and in less than two minutes his regular breathing told me he was fast asleep. Not being blessed with the same gift myself, I lay back in my corner for some time, nodding to the rhythmical throb of the express as it hurled itself forward through the darkness. Now and again as we shot through some brilliantly illuminated station or past a line of flaming furnaces, I caught for an instant a glimpse of Holmes’s figure coiled up snugly in the far corner with his head sunk upon his breast.
It was not until after we had passed Nottingham that I really fell asleep and, when a more than usually violent lurch of the train over some points woke me again, it was broad daylight, and Holmes was sitting up, busy with a Bradshaw and boat timetable. As I moved, he glanced across at me.
“If I’m not mistaken, Watson, that was the Dore and Totley tunnel through which we have just come, and if so we shall be in Sheffield in a few minutes. As you see I’ve not been wasting my time altogether, but studying my Bradshaw, which, by the way, Watson, is the most useful book published, without exception, to anyone of my calling.”
“How can it possibly help you now?” I asked in some surprise.
“Well it may or it may not,” said Holmes thoughtfully. “But in any case it’s well to have at one’s fingertips all knowledge which may be of use. It’s quite probable that this Jabez Booth may have decided to leave the country and, if this supposition is correct, he would undoubtedly time his little escapade in conformity with information contained in this useful volume. Now I learn from this Sheffield Telegraph which I obtained at Leicester, by the way, when you were fast asleep, that Mr. Booth cashed the last of his forged cheques at the North British Bank in Saville Street at precisely two fifteen p.m. on Wednesday last. He made the round of the various banks he visited in a hansom, and it would take him about three minutes only to get from this bank to the G.C. station. From what I gather of the order in which the different banks were visited, he made a circuit, finishing at the nearest point to the G.C. station, at which he could arrive at about two eighteen. Now I find that at two twenty-two a boat express would leave Sheffield G.C., due in Liverpool at four-twenty, and in connection with it the White Star liner Empress Queen should have sailed from Liverpool docks at six thirty for New York. Or again, at two forty-five a boat train would leave Sheffield for Hull, at which town it was due at four thirty in time to make a connection with the Holland steam packet, Comet, sailing at six thirty for Amsterdam.
“Here we are provided with two not unlikely means of escape, the former being the most probable; but both worth bearing in mind.”
Holmes had scarcely finished speaking when the train drew up.
“Nearly five past four,” I remarked.
“Yes,” said Holmes, “we are exactly one and a half minutes behind time. And now I propose a good breakfast and a cup of strong coffee, for we have at least a couple of hours to spare.”
—
After breakfast we visited first the police station where we learned that no further developments had taken place in the matter we had come to investigate. Mr. Lestrade of Scotland Yard had arrived the previous evening and had taken the case in hand officially.
We obtained the address of Mr. Jervis, the manager of the bank at which Booth had been an employee, and also that of his landlady at Broomhill.
A hansom landed us at Mr. Jervis’s house at Fulwood at seven thirty. Holmes insisted upon my accompanying him, and we were both shown into a spacious drawing room and asked to wait until the banker could see us.
Mr. Jervis, a stout, florid gentleman of about fifty, came puffing into the room in a very short time. An atmosphere of prosperity seemed to envelop, if not actually to emanate from him.
“Pardon me for keeping you waiting, gentlemen,” he said, “but the hour is an early one.”
“Indeed, Mr. Jervis,” said Holmes, “no apology is needed unless it be on our part. It is, however, necessary that I should ask you a few questions concerning this affair of Mr. Booth, before I can proceed in the matter, and that must be our excuse for paying you such an untimely visit.”
“I shall be most happy to answer your questions as far as it lies in my power to do so,” said the banker, his fat fingers playing with a bunch of seals at the end of his massive gold watch chain.
“When did Mr. Booth first enter your bank?” said Holmes.
“In January, 1881.”
“Do you know where he lived when he first came to Sheffield?”
“He took lodgings at Ashgate Road, and has, I believe, lived there ever since.”
“Do you know anything of his history or life before he came to you?”
“Very little I fear; beyond that his parents were both dead, and that he came to us with the best testimonials from one of the Leeds branches of our bank, I know nothing.”
“Did you find him quick and reliable?”
“He was one of the best and smartest men I have ever had in my employ.”
“Do you know whether he was conversant with any other language besides English?”
“I feel pretty sure he wasn’t. We have one clerk who attends to any foreign correspondence we may have, and I know that Booth has repeatedly passed letters and papers on to him.”
“With your experience of banking matters, Mr. Jervis, how long a time do you think he might reasonably have calculated would elapse between the presentation of the forged cheques and their detection?”
“Well, that would depend very largely upon circumstances,” said Mr. Jervis. “In the case of a single cheque it might be a week or two, unless the amounts were so large as to call for special inquiry, in which case it would probably never be cashed at all until such inquiry had been made. In the present case, when there were a dozen forged cheques, it was most unlikely that some one of them should not be detected within twenty-four hours and so lead to the discovery of the fraud. No sane person would dare to presume upon the crime remaining undetected for a longer period than that.”
“Thanks,” said Holmes, rising. “Those were the chief points I wished to speak to you about. I will communicate to you any news of importance I may have.”
“I am deeply obliged to you, Mr. Holmes. The case is naturally causing us great anxiety. We leave it entirely to your discretion to take whatever steps you may consider best. Oh, by the way, I sent instructions to Booth’s landlady to disturb nothing in his rooms until you had had an opportunity of examining them.”
“That was a very wise thing to do,” said Holmes, “and may be the means of helping us materially.”
“I am also instructed by my company,” said the banker, as he bowed us politely out, “to ask you to make a note of any expenses incurred, which they will of course immediately defray.”
—
A few moments later we were ringing the bell of the house in Ashgate Road, Broomhill, at which Mr. Booth had been a lodger for over seven years. It was answered by a maid who informed us that Mrs. Purnell was engaged with a gentleman upstairs. When we explained our errand she showed us at once up to Mr. Booth’s rooms, on the first floor, where we found Mrs. Purnell, a plump, voluble, little lady of about forty, in conversation with Mr. Lestrade, who appeared to be just concluding his examination of the rooms.
“Good morning, Holmes,” said the detective, with a very self-satisfied air. “You arrive on the scene a little too late; I fancy I have already got all the information needed to catch our man!”
“I’m delighted to hear it,” said Holmes dryly, “and must indeed congratulate you, if this is actually the case. Perhaps after I’ve made a little tour of inspection we can compare notes.”
“Just as you please,” said Lestrade, with the air of one who can afford to be gracious. “Candidly I think you will be wasting time, and so would you if you knew what I’ve discovered.”
“Still I must ask you to humor my little w
him,” said Holmes, leaning against the mantelpiece and whistling softly as he looked round the room.
After a moment he turned to Mrs. Purnell. “The furniture of this room belongs, of course, to you?”
Mrs. Purnell assented.
“The picture that was taken down from the mantelpiece last Wednesday morning,” continued Holmes, “that belonged to Mr. Booth, I presume?”
I followed Holmes’s glance across to where an unfaded patch on the wallpaper clearly indicated that a picture had recently been hanging. Well as I knew my friend’s methods of reasoning, however, I did not realize for a moment that the little bits of spiderweb which had been behind the picture, and were still clinging to the wall, had told him that the picture could only have been taken down immediately before Mrs. Purnell had received orders to disturb nothing in the room; otherwise her brush, evidently busy enough elsewhere, would not have spared them.
The good lady stared at Sherlock Holmes in open-mouthed astonishment. “Mr. Booth took it down himself on Wednesday morning,” she said. “It was a picture he had painted himself, and he thought no end of it. He wrapped it up and took it out with him, remarking that he was going to give it to a friend. I was very much surprised at the time, for I knew he valued it very much; in fact he once told me that he wouldn’t part with it for anything. Of course, it’s easy to see now why he got rid of it.”
“Yes,” said Holmes. “It wasn’t a large picture, I see. Was it a water color?”
“Yes, a painting of a stretch of moorland, with three or four large rocks arranged like a big table on a bare hilltop. Druidicals, Mr. Booth called them, or something like that.”
“Did Mr. Booth do much painting, then?” enquired Holmes.
“None, whilst he’s been here, sir. He has told me he used to do a good deal as a lad, but he had given it up.”