Shivers for Christmas

by Richard Dalby

  ‘Well, you can ask the King of Proosia, for all I care. I’ve had enough of it. Get out of this!’ He rushed fiercely forward, and the inquirer flitted away into the darkness.

  ‘Ha! this may save us a visit to Brixton Road,’ whispered Holmes. ‘Come with me, and we will see what is to be made of this fellow.’ Striding through the scattered knots of people who lounged round the flaring stalls, my companion speedily overtook the little man and touched him upon the shoulder. He sprang round, and I could see in the gaslight that every vestige of colour had been driven from his face.

  ‘Who are you, then? What do you want?’ he asked in a quavering voice.

  ‘You will excuse me,’ said Holmes blandly, ‘but I could not help overhearing the questions which you put to the salesman just now. I think that I could be of assistance to you.’

  ‘You? Who are you? How could you know anything of the matter?’

  ‘My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don’t know.’

  ‘But you can know nothing of this?’

  ‘Excuse me, I know everything of it. You are endeavouring to trace some geese which were sold by Mrs Oakshott, of Brixton Road, to a salesman named Breckinridge, by him in turn to Mr Windigate, of the Alpha, and by him to his club, of which Mr Henry Baker is a member.’

  ‘Oh, sir, you are the very man whom I have longed to meet,’ cried the little fellow with outstretched hands and quivering fingers. ‘I can hardly explain to you how interested I am in this matter.’

  Sherlock Holmes hailed a four-wheeler which was passing. ‘In that case we had better discuss it in a cosy room rather than in this windswept market-place,’ said he. ‘But pray tell me, before we go farther, who it is that I have the pleasure of assisting.’

  The man hesitated for an instant. ‘My name is John Robinson,’ he answered with a sidelong glance.

  ‘No, no; the real name,’ said Holmes sweetly. ‘It is always awkward doing business with an alias.’

  A flush sprang to the white cheeks of the stranger. ‘Well, then,’ said he, ‘my real name is James Ryder.’

  ‘Precisely so. Head attendant at the Hotel Cosmopolitan. Pray step into the cab, and I shall soon be able to tell you everything which you would wish to know.’

  The little man stood glancing from one to the other of us with half-frightened, half-hopeful eyes, as one who is not sure whether he is on the verge of a windfall or of a catastrophe. Then he stepped into the cab, and in half an hour we were back in the sitting-room at Baker Street. Nothing had been said during our drive, but the high, thin breathing of our new companion, and the claspings and unclaspings of his hands, spoke of the nervous tension within him.

  ‘Here we are!’ said Holmes cheerily as we filed into the room. ‘The fire looks very seasonable in this weather. You look cold, Mr Ryder. Pray take the basket-chair. I will just put on my slippers before we settle this little matter of yours. Now, then! You want to know what became of those geese?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Or rather, I fancy, of that goose. It was one bird, I imagine, in which you were interested—white, with a black bar across the tail.’

  Ryder quivered with emotion. ‘Oh, sir,’ he cried, ‘can you tell me where it went to?’

  ‘It came here.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes, and a most remarkable bird it proved. I don’t wonder that you should take an interest in it. It laid an egg after it was dead—the bonniest, brightest little blue egg that ever was seen. I have it here in my museum.’

  Our visitor staggered to his feet and clutched the mantelpiece with his right hand. Holmes unlocked his strongbox and held up the blue carbuncle, which shone out like a star, with a cold, brilliant, many-pointed radiance. Ryder stood glaring with a drawn face, uncertain whether to claim or to disown it.

  ‘The game’s up, Ryder,’ said Holmes quietly. ‘Hold up, man, or you’ll be into the fire! Give him an arm back into his chair, Watson. He’s not got blood enough to go in for felony with impunity. Give him a dash of brandy. So! Now he looks a little more human. What a shrimp it is, to be sure!’

  For a moment he had staggered and nearly fallen, but the brandy brought a tinge of colour into his cheeks, and he sat staring with frightened eyes at his accuser.

  ‘I have almost every link in my hands, and all the proofs which I could possibly need, so there is little which you need tell me. Still, that little may as well be cleared up to make the case complete. You had heard, Ryder, of this blue stone of the Countess of Morcar’s?’

  ‘It was Catherine Cusack who told me of it,’ said he in a crackling voice.

  ‘I see—her ladyship’s waiting-maid. Well, the temptation of sudden wealth so easily acquired was too much for you, as it has been for better men before you; but you were not very scrupulous in the means you used. It seems to me, Ryder, that there is the making of a very pretty villain in you. You knew that this man, Horner, the plumber, had been concerned in some such matter before, and that suspicion would rest the more readily upon him. What did you do, then? You made some small job in my lady’s room—you and your confederate Cusack—and you managed that he should be the man sent for. Then, when he had left, you rifled the jewel case, raised the alarm, and had this unfortunate man arrested. You then—’

  Ryder threw himself down suddenly upon the rug and clutched at my companion’s knees. ‘For God’s sake, have mercy!’ he shrieked. ‘Think of my father! of my mother! It would break their hearts. I never went wrong before! I never will again. I swear it. I’ll swear it on a Bible. Oh, don’t bring it into court! For Christ’s sake, don’t!’

  ‘Get back into your chair!’ said Holmes sternly. ‘It is very well to cringe and crawl now, but you thought little enough of this poor Horner in the dock for a crime of which he knew nothing.’

  ‘I will fly, Mr Holmes. I will leave the country, sir. Then the charge against him will break down.’

  ‘Hum! We will talk about that. And now let us hear a true account of the next act. How came the stone into the goose, and how came the goose into the open market? Tell us the truth, for there lies your only hope of safety.’

  Ryder passed his tongue over his parched lips. ‘I will tell you it just as it happened, sir,’ said he. ‘When Horner had been arrested, it seemed to me that it would be best for me to get away with the stone at once, for I did not know at what moment the police might not take it into their heads to search me and my room. There was no place about the hotel where it would be safe. I went out, as if on some commission, and I made for my sister’s house. She had married a man named Oakshott, and lived in Brixton Road, where she fattened fowls for the market. All the way there every man I met seemed to me to be a policeman or a detective; and, for all that it was a cold night, the sweat was pouring down my face before I came to the Brixton Road. My sister asked me what was the matter, and why I was so pale; but I told her that I had been upset by the jewel robbery at the hotel. Then I went into the back yard and smoked a pipe, and wondered what it would be best to do.

  ‘I had a friend once called Maudsley, who went to the bad, and has just been serving his time in Pentonville. One day he had met me, and fell into talk about the ways of thieves, and how they could get rid of what they stole. I knew that he would be true to me, for I knew one or two things about him; so I made up my mind to go right on to Kilburn, where he lived, and take him into my confidence. He would show me how to turn the stone into money. But how to get to him in safety? I thought of the agonies I had gone through in coming from the hotel. I might at any moment be seized and searched, and there would be the stone in my waistcoat pocket. I was leaning against the wall at the time and looking at the geese which were waddling about round my feet, and suddenly an idea came into my head which showed me how I could beat the best detective that ever lived.

  ‘My sister had told me some weeks before that I might have the pick of her geese for a Christmas present, and I knew that she was always as good as her word. I
would take my goose now, and in it I would carry my stone to Kilburn. There was a little shed in the yard, and behind this I drove one of the birds—a fine big one, white, with a barred tail. I caught it, and, prying its bill open, I thrust the stone down its throat as far as my finger could reach. The bird gave a gulp, and I felt the stone pass along its gullet and down into its crop. But the creature flapped and struggled, and out came my sister to know what was the matter. As I turned to speak to her the brute broke loose and fluttered off among the others.

  ‘“Whatever were you doing with that bird, Jem?” says she.

  ‘“Well,” said I, “you said you’d give me one for Christmas, and I was feeling which was the fattest.”

  ‘“Oh,” says she, “we’ve set yours aside for you—Jem’s bird, we call it. It’s the big white one over yonder. There’s twenty-six of them, which makes one for you, and one for us, and two dozen for the market.”

  ‘“Thank you, Maggie,” says I; “but if it is all the same to you, I’d rather have that one I was handling just now.”

  ‘“The other is a good three pounds heavier,” said she, “and we fattened it expressly for you.”

  ‘“Never mind. I’ll have the other, and I’ll take it now,” said I.

  ‘“Oh, just as you like,” said she, a little huffed. “Which is it you want, then?”

  ‘“That white one with the barred tail, right in the middle of the flock.”

  ‘“Oh, very well. Kill it and take it with you.”

  ‘Well, I did what she said, Mr Holmes, and I carried the bird all the way to Kilburn. I told my pal what I had done, for he was a man that it was easy to tell a thing like that to. He laughed until he choked, and we got a knife and opened the goose. My heart turned to water, for there was no sign of the stone, and I knew that some terrible mistake had occurred. I left the bird, rushed back to my sister’s, and hurried into the back yard. There was not a bird to be seen there.

  ‘“Where are they all, Maggie?” I cried.

  ‘“Gone to the dealer’s, Jem.”

  ‘“Which dealer’s?”

  ‘“Breckinridge, of Covent Garden.”

  ‘“But was there another with a barred tail?” I asked, “the same as the one I chose?”

  ‘“Yes, Jem; there were two barred-tailed ones, and I could never tell them apart.”

  ‘Well, then, of course I saw it all, and I ran off as hard as my feet would carry me to this man Breckinridge; but he had sold the lot at once, and not one word would he tell me as to where they had gone. You heard him yourselves tonight. Well, he has always answered me like that. My sister thinks that I am going mad. Sometimes I think that I am myself. And now—and now I am myself a branded thief, without ever having touched the wealth for which I sold my character. God help me! God help me!’ He burst into convulsive sobbing, with his face buried in his hands.

  There was a long silence, broken only by his heavy breathing, and by the measured tapping of Sherlock Holmes’s fingertips upon the edge of the table. Then my friend rose and threw open the door.

  ‘Get out!’ said he.

  ‘What, sir! Oh, Heaven bless you!’

  ‘No more words. Get out!’

  And no more words were needed. There was a rush, a clatter upon the stairs, the bang of a door, and the crisp rattle of running footfalls from the street.

  ‘After all, Watson,’ said Holmes, reaching up his hand for his clay pipe, ‘I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies. If Horner were in danger it would be another thing; but this fellow will not appear against him, and the case must collapse. I suppose that I am commuting a felony, but it is just possible that I am saving a soul. This fellow will not go wrong again; he is too terribly frightened. Send him to jail now, and you make him a jail-bird for life. Besides, it is the season of forgiveness. Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and its solution is its own reward. If you will have the goodness to touch the bell, Doctor, we will begin another investigation, in which, also, a bird will be the chief feature.’

  __________________________________________

  THE BUOY THAT

  DID NOT LIGHT

  Edgar Wallace

  __________________________________________

  Edgar Wallace (1872–1932) was a most prolific writer of popular fiction with countless mystery novels, short stories, plays, and non-fiction articles to his name. ‘The Buoy That Did Not Light’ was originally published in the Grand (companion magazine to the Strand) in January 1923, and later appeared in his collection The Steward (1932).

  ‘What’s that word that they use to describe an airplane that can come down on the sea or the land? (It was the steward inquiring.) Amphibian! That’s it. It was the name our old captain gave ’em. In the days when I was steward on board the old Majestic—you remember how she killed a stoker every voyage—there used to be a crowd that worked its way across twice a year—the only crowd I ever knew that mixed it.

  ‘Amphibians are rare. A man either works ships or he works towns. If a ship’s gang works a town at all, it is with people they’ve got to know on board ship. Somebody said that a ship is like a prison, with a chance of being drowned. It is certainly a bit too restricted for people who want to sell gold bricks, or have had a lot of money left to them to distribute to the poor, providing they can find the right kind of man to give it away. The point I want to make is this: that the ship crowd and the land crowd very seldom work together, and if the land people do travel by sea, they’ve got to behave themselves, and not go butting in to any little game that happens to be in progress in the smoke-room. The ship crowd naturally do not go to the captain or the purser and complain that there is an unauthorized gang on board eating into their profits. The case is settled out of court; and when you’ve real bad men travelling … Well, I’ve seen some curious things.

  ‘There was a fellow, quite unknown to me except from hearsay, called Hoyle. He was a land man in a big way. Banks and bullion trains and post cars were his specialty, but there was hardly a piece of work he couldn’t do if there was money to it.

  ‘If he’d kept to land work, where by all accounts he was an artist, he’d have been lucky. You can’t properly work both. I’ve had that from some of the biggest men that ever travelled the sea. What my old skippers called “The Barons of the Nimble Pack” work in a perfectly straightforward manner. All they need is a pair of hands, a pack of cards, a glib tongue and a nut. Sometimes they use more packs than one, but there is no fanciful apparatus, no plots and plannings, guns, masks or nitroglycerine. It’s a profession like doctoring or lawyering—peaceful and, in a manner of speaking, inoffensive. When a land crowd comes barging into the smoke-room they’re treated civilly so long as they’re travelling for pleasure. Otherwise … Well, it’s natural. If you’re poaching a stream you don’t want people throwing half-bricks into it. There’s only one sensible way of being unlawful when you’re poaching, and that is to poach.

  ‘I’ve seen a bit of amphibian work and I’m telling you I don’t want to see any more. In the year 19— we went out of Southampton with a full passenger list, the date being the 21st of December, and we carried to all appearance as nice a passenger list as you could wish to meet. Mostly Americans going home, though there was a fair sprinkling of British. We had a couple of genteel gangs on board—fellows who never played high or tried for big stakes, but managed to make a reasonable living. Tad Hesty of Pittsburg ran one, and a London fellow named Lew Isaacs managed the other. I think he was a Jew. A very nice, sensible fellow was Lew, polite and gentlemanly, and I’ve never heard a complaint against him, though I’ve travelled a score of voyages with him.

  ‘“Felix,” he said to me one day, “moderation in all things is my motto. Nobody was ever ruined by taking small profits. A man who loses a hundred dollars or twenty pounds doesn’t squeal. Touch him for a thousand, and the pilot boat comes out looking like an excursion steamer, it’s that full of bulls. A hundred dollars is speechless, F
elix. It may give a tiny squeak, but it apologizes immediately afterwards. A thousand dollars has a steam siren, and ten thousand dollars makes a noise like a bomb in a powder plant.”

  ‘He and his two friends used to share the same cabin. One was always dressed quiet and respectable, and never went into the smoke-room at all. He used to sit up on the deck, reading a book and getting acquainted with the serious-minded people from the Middle West, or the North of England mill-owners who think they’re sporty because they own a couple of greyhounds that get into the second round of the Waterloo Cup.

  ‘Lew was on very good terms with the Pittsburg crowd, and I’ve seen them drinking together and exchanging views about the slackness of trade and the income tax and things of that kind, without any ill word passing between them.

  ‘A ship isn’t out of port twenty-four hours before a steward knows the history of everybody on board; and the smoke-room steward told me that there was nobody else on board but the Pittsburg crowd and this man Lewis and his friends. In fact, it looked so much like being such a quiet voyage, that only the little cards warning passengers not to play with strangers were put up in the smoke-room. If the Flack gang had been travelling, we’d have put up the usual warning with four-inch type.

  ‘I had eight state-rooms to look after. No. 181 to 188, F Deck. A Chicago man had one, a Mr Mellish, who was a buyer at a St Louis store, was another, a young English officer—Captain Fairburn—attached to the British Embassy had another and the remainder were booked by Colonel Roger Markson for his party. There was the colonel, a tall, solemn-looking man, his wife, who was younger than him, and always seemed to be crying in her cabin, his son, a slick young fellow, generally dressed to kill, and there was Miss Colport.

  ‘Personally, I don’t take much notice of a passenger’s personal appearance. I judge ’em by their hair-brushes. There’s woodens, generally missionaries or fellows like reporters whose passage is paid by somebody else; there’s ivory backs (the captain’s was ivory) and silver backs and horn backs, with now and again a gold back. Gold backs are usually on their honeymoon. I can’t remember whether this Miss Colport was an ivory or a silver. Maybe she was silver, for she was Markson’s secretary and he’d got her in London, where she was stranded and anxious to get home. Not that she had any friends in New York. By all accounts she came from the west and went to London to take up a position as stenographer to an uncle, who first went broke in the rubber slump and then died.