Sherlock Holmes & The Master Engraver (Sherlock Holmes Revival)

by Husband, Ross

  “They’re as perfick as anyone could make from what you give me. An’ there ain’t many as could do what I just done, even if I does say it meself. But if, an’ I’m only sayin’ if, it don’t work first-orf, ’ere’s a little dodge.”

  With some curiosity I studied the crooked little scoundrel as he fawningly discoursed with my clever, elegantly-attired colleague and I reflected that there is, strangely, about some free-born Britons a cringing and innate baseness, a quite needless and uncalled for lick-spittle awe of rank, wealth or education which appears not to exist even in the most despotic tyrannies in Europe, yet is principally and almost exclusively to be found thriving among the English working classes. Perhaps, I reflected, it affirmed for them some comforting value which anchored them securely at their allotted station in life, cheerfully above their lesser brethren – the hucksters, itinerant tinkers and drink-sodden brawlers, yet reassuringly beneath their acknowledged betters, the men of learning, letters and position. In such a way, I supposed, were their lives ordered.

  I watched Pollitt select one of the simpler keys – my guess would be the one to Petch’s office – and take it to the bench where he smoked it in a sooty candle flame. He returned with the smut-blackened key and a small selection of wafer-thin files.

  “Now Mr ‘olmes Sir, if it don’t work first orf, you smokes it so, and tries again. You takes the key out ever so gently and see where the lamp-black has gone bright on the bit – them’s the parts you ‘as to file away.” He walked over to the parlour door, inserted the key in the lock and attempted to turn it, with no result of course, but that was clearly not his point. Returning he indicated those areas on the blade, now showing bright, which had conflicted with the levers of the lock mechanism.

  “Nah Mr ‘olmes, supposin’ just in case you ever did find a lock to match this key, heugh heugh, I’d better throw in these files, compliment’ry o’course.”

  Holmes nodded curtly, looked up, and addressed our two visitors, his face now a stern pale mask, cold and deadly serious.

  “Now listen gentlemen both, and listen very closely; I believe our work here is complete.

  “You, Pollitt, will leave here everything you brought with you; you will take nothing away. Not even your recall of the last two day’s events. You have never visited Baker Street. The fee buys all. The same strictures bind you also von Huntziger.

  “Any loose talk whatsoever – believe me, I will hear of it – and you will discover to your very great discomfort, just how fast and how far Sherlock Holmes can reach out. Is that well understood?”

  Both divined instantly that the good-natured badinage between consummate detective and wily master criminals had now quite evaporated, and that Holmes was in deadly earnest. I myself would dread to cross him, and I am his close friend and confidant. I shuddered to think what anguish he could cast across these two rogues’ lives should they ever be minded to turn their hand against him. “Very well, gentlemen; if that is clearly understood, here is your payment as agreed.”

  In a flat, chilling tone he added “I am satisfied with the results of our short association. Have a care that you keep matters that way” and he passed over two envelopes, both of which vanished in a blink, one into a grimy inner pocket, the other, considerably thicker, slipped deep inside a rich velveteen jacket.

  “Oh, one more thing, Pollitt; who in London, other than you, might be unscrupulous or skilled enough to perform the work you have accomplished, and to this standard, with no awkward questions being asked?” A crafty look passed over the ferrety little locksmith’s face – clearly he perceived an opportunity to extort more money. He scratched his head, feigning great perplexity. “Well, I can’t say as I rightly knows Mr ’olmes, and my memory ain’t what it was. I ain’t a peach you know. An’ then again it’d take some time but I could make some enquiries I s’ppose...”

  My friend rolled his eyes heavenwards at this shameless attempt to fleece him. Patently it beggared belief that a reformed criminal locksmith and safe-cracker would not have such information readily at his fingertips; but Holmes indulged him. “Very well; you have until ten tomorrow to regain your memory Pollitt. I’m sure this will speed your recovery.”

  He handed over a further white note which vanished in the blink of an eye. “Ten o’clock mark you and no later. If I am not present, hand a clearly-written message to the boy in the hall, or to Mrs Hudson.”

  Knuckling his forehead furiously, the diminutive Pollitt fled as if Holmes had let slip all the hounds of hell to chase him home. Von Huntziger, however, paused at the door and turned in a leisurely fashion.

  “It has been a pleasure to be of service, and a privilege to renew our acquaintance Mr Holmes, but I doubt we will ever have reason to meet again, so I will say my final adieu.”

  Holmes looked up from the keys he had been examining and smiled cryptically. “Mayhap, von Huntziger, mayhap, but who knows how the future will turn? For my part I shall merely bid you Auf Wiedersehn.”

  After the door closed behind the aristocratic rogue, I turned to my colleague. “Good Heavens above Holmes! As far as I can determine, you have spent an entire day or more illicitly conspiring with two of the country’s blackest villains to forge the keys that will open the vault that guards the printing plates for The Bank of England!”

  He threw his head back and laughed aloud.

  “Guilty as charged m’Lud! Send me down!” he intoned in a sepulchral voice and held out his hands, wrists together. More seriously he continued “I grant you it was indeed a dubious and motley meeting that you joined with, my dear Watson, but I have high hopes that it will prove part, at least, of my reconstructive theory. You have wired Mrs Watson I trust? I can manage without my Boswell, but my lieutenant is quite indispensable.”

  Now I am well aware of Holmes’ views on the estate of marriage which, though not precisely misogynistic, are at the very least, deeply sceptical.

  I am certain he felt that intimate involvement with a woman would distract him from that total self-absorption he regarded as critical to the science of precise and minute observation, relentless machine-like analysis, and cold, logical deduction which he so much prized, and so had made of it his own superlative domain. Nonetheless, I was pleased that he still valued my assistance in these affairs. “I have Holmes, and as matters turn, Mary is delighted to spend a little more time with her friends.”

  “Capital! I had hoped as much! Then let us prepare for tomorrow.”

  And so I settled down to watch, intrigued, as Sherlock Holmes prepared for the following day.

  From a drawer in his desk he retrieved a shallow wooden tray, heavy with ordered slugs of printers’ type in compartments, together with a crumpled lead tube of black printer’s ink, a demi-quarto sized slab of plate glass and an India-rubber roller, a small closely grooved hardwood block, tweezers, a few slips of ivory paste-board and a hand-press that was little larger than the single-impression embossing devices favoured by lawyers to place seals upon legal documents.

  Having selected the characters he required, and arranged them right-to-left in the rack, he inked the roller upon the slab of glass and applied it to the type. I watched in silence. An hour or so later, after a few attempts, he smiled at the results of his work – a half a dozen calling cards in black on ivory that soberly proclaimed:

  Mr. John Watson M.R.I.C.S.

  CHARTERED SURVEYOR

  Caversham Heights, Reading

  After carefully setting them out to dry before the fire, he assembled in a battered attaché case such items as might ordinarily be carried by a surveyor – a leather-cased retractable fabric measure and boxwood yardstick, a small compass, yellow legal pad and pencils, his small ivory slide-rule, and a miniature brass sextant and theodolite which customarily sat atop his desk. Finally, he swiftly scrawled two telegraph messages to destinations in France and Ireland respectively and despatched the boy downstairs clutching the forms and a half-crown, to the telegraph office.

  Thus prep
ared to his complete satisfaction and being mindful of the unaccustomed but nonetheless eagerly anticipated early start the following day, we each retired early to our rooms.

  * * *

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Game’s Afoot!

  A few minutes before nine o’clock next morning, Mr John Watson, Surveyor, inconspicuously attired in sober grey suit, worn black fustian overcoat and freshly brushed billycock hat, with his assistant Mr Whitbread, alighted from a hansom in Fleet Street at the massive iron gates of Perkins, Baker & Petch. The watchman attended our ring almost upon the instant; a steel shutter slid open and Holmes announced us. The door in the large iron gate swung wide to admit us.

  We were greeted by a smartly uniformed gentleman, clearly tanned from many years spent overseas, and around sixty years of age, unmistakeably of military comportment, and lacking his right arm below the elbow.

  “Good morning and compliments of the season Sah! Mr Watson I collect; and you will be Mr Whitbread. Mr Petch told me to expect you, Sah!” Wryly I noted that though I significantly out-ranked the sergeant, I did not merit the honorific.

  Holmes proffered his new calling card. “Indeed, and you would be?”

  “Sergeant Jacob Gunton Sah, late of Her Majesty’s

  Royal Irish Fusiliers, at your service Sah! Of course in my day it was The Princess Victoria’s 89th Regiment of

  Foot. Mr Petch said as I was to give you all assistance necessary in your work here, Sah!”

  “This is all well Gunton, but you may simply address me as Mr Watson.”

  “Very good Mr Watson, Sah!”

  I nodded sympathetically at Gunton’s gleaming steel hook. “I see you paid dearly in your service to your country Gunton.” I added “...as did I at Kandahar.” The old soldier stiffened, and then laughed easily. “It’s not so bad Mr Whitbread Sah, lots of the lads came off worse than me Sah; six-pounder at Meerut gave me this little memento, compliments of the Rani of Jhansi. Wouldn’t have minded so much except that it was one of our own – treacherous damned Sepoys had pinched one of our artillery pieces, hid it up in a nullah and then used it on us, the ungrateful beggars, ‘scusing my language Sah!”

  Wonderingly he added “And me getting safe and sound all through the Crimea without so much as a hair on my head being touched too! He returned his attention to Holmes. “Now Mr Watson, how may I best be of help?”

  “As you will know, we are here to survey the premises with a particular view to further refurbishments and recommending improvements in security; we shall require access throughout the buildings. Describe first, if you will, the general procedures upon admissions, deliveries, contractors and the like.”

  Gunton deliberated. “As you might suppose, in our line of trade, nobody gets in unless I knows them by sight – or Private Shadwell, Jeremiah, if he’s on duty – or if they has an appointment in the book; definitely no casual salesmen or the like. Jemmy will be here to relieve me shortly, and then I shall go onto night duty for the coming week.

  “Tell me Sergeant, what nature of fellow is your Jeremiah Shadwell?” The tanned old sergeant ruminatively scratched a red-veined nose with his gleaming hook and grinned.

  “Well Sir, he’s a sound enough lad but if I tell you he’s twice as large as your biggest bare-knuckle booth boxer, and half as quick-witted, you’ll maybe take my meaning. ‘Biddable’ was how Captain Oakes described him; but just as long as he smokes you’re an officer and a gentleman he’ll do anything you order.

  “He was the best gun-layer in the regiment but he was pensioned off after a musket ball creased his noddle something wicked and took his right eye and half of his wits with it – ‘liable to be unpredictable in action’ was what the surgeon said. ‘An’ I was always telling the great daft sod to keep his head down, too; but ’e could never resist standing up to see the fall of the shot.

  “Never mind – he still couldn’t shoot a musket worth a tinker’s cuss even with both eyes but ’e could lay an artillery piece so prettily ’e could take a cocoa-nut off a palm-tree at three hundred yards. But don’t you mind ’im Mr Watson; if he takes a fancy to you, he’ll be as devoted as a guard dog.” I smiled to myself, for I had encountered a fair number of that staunch species of privates and non-commissioned officers who would doggedly offer their loyalty to an officer they felt to be above the usual cut; their judgement was rarely wrong.

  “Very good Gunton; now I understand that you have performed the day duties for the week past? That I may have an idea of the general procedure for comings and goings; tell me what you have observed this week gone, for example. I would like you please to exert yourself and try to remember everything, no matter how small.”

  “No need whatever for exertion Mr Watson. Every visit, departure, delivery and collection is written down in the day-book, along with the time, together with any other observations or unusual happenings. The partners are most particular in that respect.” He reached within the watchman’s hut and retrieved a battered foolscap-sized register with the week’s callers listed in some detail and handed it to Holmes, who scrutinised it at length.

  “Ah yes, I see here that Wednesday was the day you closed the factory. Now what else do we have..? I see Hollum arrives at eight, now followed by employees Miss Hodgson, George Smee, then Edward and Sam Porter, and one Peter Hope, all by half past the hour, as are the partners. And here, at nine o’clock, listed as visitors, we see a Mr Orman accompanied by three others. They would be...?”

  “Orman’s Building Contractors Sah. Laying pitch on the roof and general decorating Sah. And between you and me, I’m powerful glad they’ve finally packed up their wagon and finished; you can see them signed out here at five o’clock on the twenty-first; the smoke from all that black boiling pitch was something terrible. What with the banging and sawing and the bloody fumes, you couldn’t even take contentment in a pipe of shag, it was that bad – an’ considerable worse than the rotten-egg stink of musket smoke! It made you cough something really dreadful, didn’t it just?” Holmes nodded understandingly.

  “I observe that Thursday was singularly quiet by comparison... the builders turn up for their work, Mr Hollum makes a brief appearance to collect his tool-bag at ten o’clock... and departs at twelve. And here at two in the afternoon I note a delivery from Portals Paper Mill, thirty boxes.”

  “That is correct Sah; all safely delivered to the paper-store. No doubt you shall see it in due course.”

  “Indeed; now I note here that apart from the roofers’ visits, little or nothing occurs from Saturday the 21st – when the builders finally attended to finish off and depart with their tools and wagon – and nothing more?”

  “Everything was quiet – the street was quite empty – not as much as a single wassailer Mr Watson. And if it hadn’t been for the jolly old organ grinder who’d set up outside the gates that Saturday, a penny’d win a pound I’d have turned up my toes with world-weariness! Champion tunes too, like ‘Kitty Dear’ and ‘Meeting of the Waters’. Why, the old gent even played ‘The British Grenadiers’ especially loud for me whenever I made a quick walk around the site!”

  Holmes smiled indulgently. “How very thoughtful of him; I’m sure that was a most welcome diversion on a cold winter’s day; no doubt much the more so knowing that all the while your fellows were tucked up in their homes by the fire or in a cosy ale-house?

  “I see that on Christmas Eve, Mr Petch visited.” “Quite so Mr Watson, and a tedious quiet time I was having of it too, so it was a welcome surprise when Mr Petch turned up unexpectedly, carrying three fat pheasants, one of which he gifted to me which I thought pretty handsome of him; it seems he had left some drawings or such-like he needed to take home with him but he plainly found them because he emerged carrying a burlap bag about an hour later.

  “Mind you, he did seem most troubled, not quite himself at all. Prob’ly not my place to mention it Sah, but I thought he appeared to be a bit jumpy-like, nervous and rather fretful. Not hisself at all, oh no Mr Wats
on Sah, not at all hisself.” Holmes appeared to take little heed of this information.

  The old soldier chuckled. “But enough of my gripings; shall I be opening up the building for you now Sah?”

  Before Holmes could respond there was a soft knock on the wicket gate and a deep, quiet voice spoke; “Mornin’ Sarge – Jeremiah sir.” Gunton opened the gate to admit a colossus of a man wearing a black eye-patch, at least six and a half feet tall, whose weight was perhaps two-fold that of Holmes.

  The giant warily eyed Holmes and me with evident suspicion. Holmes considered him with wry amusement.

  “Ah, good morning to you Private Shadwell; I can well see why you are a watchman at Perkins, Bacon & Petch.

  The massive Cyclops ignored Holmes’ comment and turned to Sergeant Gunton. “Who’s this Sarge?” he asked, clearly unsettled by our irregular disruption to his familiar, uncomplicated routine. “Easy Jeremiah, you mind your manners now; this here is Mr Watson – he’s visiting us at the particular request of Mr Petch, and this is his assistant Mr Whitbread. Mr Watson is a surveyor” – Shadwell looked uncomprehendingly at Sergeant Gunton – “That means he’s just like an officer, Jeremiah, and Mr Whitbread is an officer too, so mind you do whatever they asks of you, just like it was an order.” Comprehension dawned on the simple giant’s face.

  “Very good Sarge, just as you says – whatever they asks it is.” After the keys were handed over and Gunton had departed, Holmes swiftly consulted the plan of the buildings furnished by Henry Petch, then addressed the giant. “Very well Private Shadwell, I shall require a ladder to be placed against the wall over there, so I may first inspect the roofs. Then you may open the building including the internal doors so we can make all necessary measurements. These are most important so we shall require complete peace and quiet, with no interruptions whatsoever.”