The Secret Journals of Sherlock Holmes (A&B Crime)

by Thomson, June

  Our own meal was served in the dining-room, where the curtains had been drawn against the gathering dusk. At Holmes’ request, it was a simple supper of soup and cold meat although Hardern, determined to play the host, had ordered the butler to serve an excellent bottle of claret.

  Mallow was in the very act of filling our glasses when the blow was struck.

  It was so sudden and unexpected that I was aware only of a sound like a shell exploding as the drawn curtains were blown apart and a shower of broken glass was sent flying across the room. At almost the same instant, something round and dark fell with a crash upon the table, scattering china and silver in every direction before finally rolling to a halt beside my plate. It was only then that I realised that the object was nothing more deadly than a large stone which had been hurled through the window.

  Mallow, who was already on his feet, was the first to take action.

  Dropping the decanter in his haste, he started for the door leading into the hall, closely followed by Holmes who, thrusting back his chair, sprinted after him. By the time I had sufficiently recovered from the shock to follow, they had disappeared through the front door into the garden.

  It was a wild evening with a strong wind sending the clouds scurrying across the moon, so that the scene before me was alternately brightly lit or plunged into deep shadow.

  As I halted at the top of the porch steps in order to get my bearings, the sky momentarily cleared and the darkness lifted. In those few seconds of illumination, I saw the thin, stooped figure of the butler running across the lawn towards the shrubbery. Holmes, who was close on his heels, turned his head briefly to call out to me before the moon was again obscured.

  ‘Keep Hardern in the house, Watson! This could well be a trap!’

  The warning came too late. Hardern, who must have followed me out on to the porch, had already descended the steps and had set off in pursuit across the darkened garden, shouting out as he ran, ‘By God, I’ll lay that infernal villain by the heels myself!’

  What happened next was over literally in a flash. The moon suddenly reappeared, its pale, cold light streaming down and throwing into silhouette a venerable cedar tree which stood in the centre of the lawn, its black branches threshing in the wind. Below it, I caught a glimpse of Hardern, head lowered and shoulders hunched as, bellowing like an enraged bull, he went charging forward.

  At that same moment, a loud report rang out from the shrubbery, accompanied by a spurt of yellow flame, and I heard the whine of a bullet pass in front of me.

  It was a sound familiar to me from the battle of Maiwand5 but before I could draw my own revolver, I saw Hardern topple face forward to the ground.

  My first thought was that he was dead, felled by the bullet, and I ran towards him, calling for Holmes who turned and came racing back. But even as we reached the inert figure, Hardern was struggling to his feet.

  ‘I tripped over a d——d root and the bullet missed me!’ he roared out. ‘Go after him! He mustn’t escape.’

  ‘Brave words, Mr Hardern,’ Holmes remarked in a tone of genuine admiration. ‘But further pursuit on my part would be useless. The Black Hand has too long a start. We can only trust that either the butler or Whiffen and his colleagues can capture this villain before he escapes. In the meantime, I urge you to return to the house in case another attempt is made upon you.’

  Hardly had he finished speaking than we were joined by the butler, who came towards us across the lawn, breathing heavily, his clothes and hair much dishevelled.

  ‘You lost him?’ Holmes demanded.

  ‘In the shrubbery, sir,’ Mallow replied, struggling for breath and visibly trembling with his exertions.

  ‘Did you catch sight of him?’

  ‘Only a glimpse. He’s a big man, Mr Holmes; as tall as you but much broader across the shoulders.’

  ‘Well done, Mallow!’ Holmes exclaimed. ‘At least we now know what the Black Hand looks like. And now, if you and Dr Watson would care to escort Mr Hardern into the house, I have a crucial piece of evidence I wish to retrieve.’

  ‘What is that, Mr Holmes?’ Hardern enquired.

  ‘You shall see that, sir, when I have recovered it,’ Holmes replied.

  There was a strange note of jubilation in his voice which seemed out of keeping with the seriousness of the situation and, as Hardern and the butler set off towards the house, I deliberately lingered behind.

  ‘I know that air of excitement, Holmes,’ I announced. ‘It means you are hot on the scent.’

  ‘A mere whiff so far, Watson,’ said he, his eyes sparkling in the moonlight which was now drenching the scene. ‘But I believe it will lead directly to our quarry. Now be a good fellow and go with our client. After such a close encounter with the Black Hand, he will no doubt be suffering from shock and may need your ministrations.’

  As I turned away to comply, I glanced back over my shoulder to see my old friend walking briskly across the lawn in the direction of the shrubbery.

  The effect of the night’s adventure on John Vincent Hardern manifested itself more in anger than in shock. Although I suggested he sit quietly until he had recovered, he refused my medical advice and stamped up and down the drawing-room, all the time inveighing against the Black Hand and the infernal persecution to which he had been subjected, while Mallow and I looked on helplessly.

  ‘It is intolerable!’ he exclaimed. ‘I wish I had never set foot in this country. Law and order, sir! You English do not know the meaning of the words. As for Mr Holmes’ much-vaunted reputation as a consulting detective, why he is nothing but a mere amateur!’

  I was about to protest at this quite unwarranted attack on my old friend’s professional skills, when the door opened and Holmes himself entered the room.

  ‘I am quite willing to admit,’ said he cheerily, ‘that the inquiry has not been entirely successful until this moment. However, the case is now solved.’

  ‘Solved! How?’ Hardern demanded, coming to a halt and regarding Holmes with great astonishment.

  ‘If you care to sit down, Mr Hardern, I shall explain. And I shall require your presence, too, Mallow,’ he added, as the butler made as if to leave the room.

  ‘Mine, sir?’ Mallow had halted in the doorway, his long, pale face turned in our direction.

  ‘Yes, yours. For you know more about this affair than you have admitted, do you not? Your mistake was to describe the Black Hand as a broad-shouldered man. By so doing, you put into my grasp the first loose thread by which this whole tangled affair may finally be unravelled.

  ‘The Black Hand entered the house through the pantry window before leaving his mark on the wall; a small window through which only a man with narrow shoulders could have gained entry. This was my first piece of evidence in my search for the man’s identity. The second is this.’

  Putting his hand into his pocket, he took out a revolver with a stubby, rounded butt and a short barrel, not more than two and a half inches in length.

  ‘This is the gun which was fired at Mr Hardern. When I was chasing the Black Hand across the garden, I heard him throw the weapon away into the shrubbery, no doubt because it was used not only for tonight’s attempted murder but for an even more serious crime. Consequently, he may well have preferred not to be found with it in his possession, should he be caught. I went back to retrieve it. It is a Webley, known popularly as the “British Bulldog”.6

  ‘A similar revolver was used last March in a daring robbery in which a police constable was mortally wounded. Before he died, however, he was able to describe fully both the gun and the man who fired it. He was tall and thin, in his early thirties, with long, pale features; a description which bears a remarkable resemblance to you, Mallow. Who is he? Your younger brother?’

  Before the butler could reply, a loud commotion was heard in the hall. Moments later the door burst open and Inspector Whiffen and his fellow officers entered, bearing between them the struggling figure of a man, his wrists handcuffed.

 
; At the sight of him, Mallow started forward. ‘Victor!’ he cried, his voice anguished.

  To those of us observing the scene, the likeness between the two men was indeed remarkable. Apart from the difference in their ages, they might have been twins. Both had the same dark eyes and narrow, pallid features. But while the butler’s bore an expression of agonised grief, those of his brother, whom we had come to know as the Black Hand, were twisted into an expression of such dreadful rage and depravity that I involuntarily shrank back.

  ‘Keep your mouth shut!’ the Black Hand shouted at Mallow. ‘These fools know nothing!’

  ‘It is too late,’ his brother told him. ‘This gentleman is Mr Sherlock Holmes and he is already acquainted with most of the facts.’

  ‘Holmes! That interfering half-wit!’ Victor Mallow screamed out, letting fly a string of oaths.

  ‘And those facts I do not know may be assumed from a process of logical deduction,’ Holmes said coolly, ignoring the outburst. ‘I suggest, Inspector Whiffen, that your officers remove the prisoner from the room but that you remain to hear the rest of my account before charging Victor Mallow with murder and attempted murder as well as burglary and theft.’

  Whiffen’s eyebrows shot up but he quickly recovered from his astonishment and, on his orders, Victor Mallow was dragged out into the hall, still struggling and shouting, by the sergeant and the constable.

  ‘Allow me to repeat for your benefit, Inspector, what I have already told these gentlemen,’ Holmes remarked, when the door had closed behind them. ‘The Black Hand, otherwise Victor Mallow and the younger brother of Mr Hardern’s butler, took part in a robbery a little over a year ago. I learnt the details of the case from the newspaper accounts.

  ‘The raid was on a bullion dealer’s in London where Victor Mallow, using the alias of George Hallem, was employed as a clerk. It was he who had planned the robbery and, by using a set of duplicate keys, had let his accomplice, William Stone, a notorious burglar already known to the police, into the premises by the back door. One of those keys was also used to open the strong room, from where they removed a box of gold ingots which they carried out to an alleyway behind the building, where they had left a hired carriage. It was their intention to transport the bullion to a man Stone knew in Whitechapel who dealt in stolen property.

  ‘It was while they were loading the heavy crate into the carriage that they were surprised by a police constable who was patrolling the area. Victor Mallow took a revolver from his pocket, the same gun which he used tonight in his attempt on Mr Hardern’s life, and in cold blood fired at the constable, who fell to the ground, mortally wounded. Although a hardened criminal, Stone was nevertheless horrified by Mallow’s action and promptly took to his heels.

  ‘We know these facts, gentlemen, because Stone was later arrested and made a full confession, although he denied being responsible for the murder. He is now serving a long term of imprisonment.

  ‘Stone’s denial was corroborated by the constable who, after he was discovered by a passer-by, was conveyed to Charing Cross Hospital. Before he died, he was able to give a description of the gun as well as of his assailant, which exactly matched Victor Mallow’s.

  ‘At this point, our knowledge of the facts fails us but I think we may imagine Victor Mallow’s state of mind immediately after the robbery.

  ‘Picture the scene, gentlemen, as he stood in that alleyway. His accomplice has vanished into the night. A policeman lies dying at his feet. Very soon the whole of Scotland Yard will be searching for him. Once found, he will certainly be hanged. It is essential that he conceals his booty as soon as possible before going into hiding. But where? It has to be somewhere he can easily retrieve it once the hue and cry has died down.

  ‘It was then, I suggest, that he thought of Marsham Hall, where his brother was employed as butler. At the time, the house was occupied by an elderly gentleman, Sir Cedric Forster-Dyke, an invalid and, moreover, extremely deaf. It was unlikely he would be disturbed by any strange noises in the night. Neither would the servants whose quarters are on the top floor of a separate wing.

  ‘I believe the case of gold ingots was conveyed here the same night that the robbery took place and was concealed somewhere on the premises with your assistance, Mallow.’

  The butler, who had listened to this account with increasing distress, finally broke his silence.

  ‘I refused at first, sir! I told him I would have nothing to do with it! But I could not turn him away. If he had been caught, he would have gone to the gallows. He swore he had not meant to kill the policeman, only frighten him. I believed him, Mr Holmes! As a boy, he had always been wild but never wicked; or so I thought. It was only when he went to London to become a clerk that he fell into bad company and began to gamble heavily. It was then that he turned to crime in order to repay his debts, first fraud at a bank where he was employed and for which he served a term of imprisonment. It was after he came out of gaol that he changed his name to George Hallem and, with the use of forged papers, obtained the post of clerk at the bullion dealer’s.’

  ‘Who supplied a reference?’ Holmes enquired.

  Mallow looked crestfallen.

  ‘I did, sir. Victor swore he had learnt his lesson and would go straight from then on. I wrote from this address, using Sir Cedric’s name and stating that I had employed him for the past five years as my personal secretary. I know I was a fool to trust him and to agree to help him when he came to me that night with the stolen bullion.’

  ‘I think’, said Holmes, ‘that you had better give us a full account of what happened.’

  ‘He left the carriage a little way down the drive, sir, so that no one would hear the sound of the wheels. Victor then forced open the pantry window, the frame of which was loose, and came upstairs to wake me. I helped him carry the box down to the cellar, where we concealed it under the bricks in the floor.’

  ‘From where your brother intended to recover it later,’ Holmes interjected. ‘However, his plans were thwarted by Sir Cedric’s removal to a nursing-home and by Mr Hardern taking Marsham Hall for the whole year.’

  ‘I could not warn Victor of Mr Hardern’s arrival,’ Mallow explained. ‘He was in hiding and I had no address to write to.’

  ‘Then he must have spied out the land and discovered the situation for himself. And so began your persecution, Mr Hardern,’ Holmes continued, turning to our client. ‘The purpose was not to drive you out of the country as we first thought but to force you to vacate Marsham Hall so that Victor Mallow could collect his booty. Unlike Sir Cedric, you are an active man and in full possession of your faculties. Had he returned and attempted to dig up the cellar floor, you might well have heard him. It was a risk he could not take. So he devised the scheme of sending you a series of threatening letters, fully expecting you would take heed of the warnings and leave the house; letters which you, Mallow, would have taken to your master. Did you not recognise the printing on the envelopes as your brother’s?’

  ‘No, sir!’ Mallow protested, beads of perspiration breaking out upon his brow. ‘I remember several letters arriving, addressed to Mr Hardern in capital letters, but I did not realise they were from Victor. I give you my word that I did not make the connection until I saw the open pantry window. Remembering my brother had entered the house before by the same means, I realised that it was he who had left the print of the black hand on the wall and the message threatening Mr Hardern’s life.’

  ‘You should have spoken up then and told everything you knew,’ Holmes admonished him in a stern voice. ‘Had it not occurred to you that your brother was now desperate? He had murdered once and was quite prepared to kill again in order to recover the bullion, which I have no doubt he would have done once Mr Hardern was dead and the police had left the premises.’

  Mallow sank his chin upon his breast and said in a low voice, ‘I am aware of that now, sir. I thought with you and Inspector Whiffen in the house, Mr Hardern’s life was not in any real danger. I did not know V
ictor was still armed and would carry out his threat. When he came to me that night for help, he swore he had thrown away the gun. He is my younger brother, sir, and I trusted him. I could not believe he was capable of such black-hearted villainy.’

  ‘That is all very well but it is no excuse in the eyes of the law,’ Whiffen put in, asserting his official authority. ‘You have committed several felonies, Mallow, including the withholding of information from the police as well as the more serious charges of receiving stolen property and aiding and abetting a known murderer. It is my duty to arrest you.’

  Unlike his brother, Mallow went quietly, holding out his wrists for the inspector to snap on the handcuffs, his expression impassive.

  It was only when he was about to be led from the room that he showed any emotion.

  Halting in the doorway, he turned to address us, his voice trembling but still retaining that note of deferential respect.

  ‘I am sorry, gentlemen, for the great trouble I have caused, especially to you, Mr Hardern. I offer you my most profound apologies for the betrayal of your trust.’

  Even Hardern was struck dumb by the man’s quiet dignity.

  And so, on that sober note, the persecution of John Vincent Hardern was brought to an end.

  There is little else I wish to add to my narrative, except to say that the box of gold ingots was recovered the following morning from the cellar and in due course was returned to its rightful owner. In payment for his services, Holmes accepted a substantial fee from his client but refused an invitation the following year to the wedding of his daughter Edith to Lord Wroxham.

  By one of those strange coincidences which Fate sometimes contrives, the ceremony took place in the same month that Victor Mallow was hanged for the murder of the policeman.

  But it is not for his sake, nor the American millionaire’s, that I have decided not to publish an account of the Hardern case.