Holmes rose from his chair. “I’ve noticed that you seem to take a perverse pleasure in not lying to me,” he told Moriarty, “but trust to subtle indirection to keep me ignorant of your true goals. So I will parse your words at my leisure and see if I can discover what secrets lay within. In the meantime, I might as well make myself useful for the rest of the trip by keeping a close eye on you—and the gold.” And with that as his Parthian shot, he stubbed his cigarette out and stalked off.
“Be my guest, Holmes,” Moriarty called to Holmes’s retreating back. “But do try to get some rest and recapture you old, ah, joie de vivre.”
“So that’s Sherlock Holmes,” Colonel Moran said, watching through a cloud of cigar smoke as Holmes, stiff-backed, pushed through the smoking room door and departed. “The phrase ‘unpleasant chap’ leaps unbidden to my mind.”
“He doesn’t go out of his way to make friends,” Moriarty observed. “Never has.”
“Really?” Moran tapped his cigar against the side of the ashtray. “I hadn’t noticed. What is it, exactly, that he suspects you of, Professor?”
“Everything,” Moriarty explained. “Everything.”
The Empress of India reached Port Suez three days later and had a oneday stay in port before she could commence the fifty-two-hour passage through the canal early the morning after. Guards were posted at every gangway, entrance port, and periodically along the deck, with orders to look fierce, growl at anyone trying to board, and stomp on fingers or toes if necessary to keep intruders off the deck. “It won’t work,” Captain Iskansen said, “but we might as well try.”
“Who are these relentless boarders that we must repel?” General St. Yves asked, after seeing to the disposition of his men.
“Native shopkeepers,” Iskansen told him.
“Shop . . .”
“Even so. And they will set up shop in any nook or cranny of the deck they can reach: under cover or out in the open, beside the lifeboats, under the lifeboats, in the ladderways; as long as they’re underfoot and in the way.”
“Ah!” said St. Yves. “I remember them from the trip out. Insistent little beggars. But I thought they were invited on board to sell trinkets to the passengers.”
“Inviting them would be quite redundant and unnecessary,” the captain told him. “We arrive in port, they arrive on board. It’s quite miraculous and damned annoying.”
“There is that about miracles of all sorts,” St. Yves murmured. “They do tend to be quite annoying.”
The gold vault was of course closed, both inner and outer doors, and closely guarded while the Empress was in port, as it would be for the entire transverse of the canal. As it happened, some of the ubiquitous “shopkeepers” did manage to come aboard and spread their wares on various parts of the deck, giving the passengers a last chance to buy scarves, hats, dresses, shoes, and various gewgaws of an Oriental flavor until they reached London, where much the same articles could be bought in the East End for much the same price. Captain Iskansen did manage to keep them all from going below, or even inside, and the last of them scurried off into the waiting skiffs as the Empress prepared to enter the canal.
The Artful Codger and Cooley the Pup confronted Sherlock Holmes in his cabin the morning the ship entered the Suez Canal. “Well, I haven’t seen you two around for the last few days,” Holmes said, sitting on the edge of his bed, wrapped in his Pin Dok Low red silk dressing gown with the embroidered dragons snapping at each other across the front. “Cigarette?” he extended his silver cigarette case toward them.
“That’s a start,” said the Artful Codger, selecting one and bringing it up to his nose to sniff it. “Cheap tobacco,” he opined.
“Strong tobacco,” Holmes told him. “Egyptian. Not particularly cheap.”
“If you say so,” said the Codger, “but it ain’t the sort of tobacco I’d be buying if I had my share of that gold down below. I suppose there’s no chance of that now.”
Cooley the Pup straddled the hard-back wooden chair in front of the tiny desk and waved away the offered cigarette case. “What I want is words,” he said. “I want you to explain to me what I don’t understand.”
“That would take years,” Holmes told him, a muscle in the corner of Holmes’s mouth twitching as he spoke. “What particular bit of explanation would you like right now?”
“So you’re really Sherlock Holmes?” the Pup demanded. “What happened to Pin?”
“Is there a Pin Dok Low?” asked the Codger. “Was there ever a Pin Dok Low?”
“As far as I know there was only the one I created,” Holmes told them. “I created Pin Dok Low, I became Pin Dok Low, and now I am no longer Pin Dok Low. Sorry about that.”
“Some people we both know are going to do their best to make you very sorry,” the Codger said mildly. “Now, me, I take the cruel reverses of life with a smattering of equa-bloody-nimity, but there are those who don’t share my inconsequential attitude toward life. And a couple of them are awaiting our arrival in London even now.”
“You’re not threatening me, are you, Codger?” asked Holmes, an anticipatory smile on his face.
“Not me,” the Codger said, raising his hands in mock horror at the suggestion. “Just reminding you of what’s what.”
Holmes stood up and glowered at his two former henchmen. “If you behave yourselves,” he told them, “and cease thinking in terms of impossible crimes, I had it in mind that perhaps I could do something for you.”
“What sort of something?” the Codger asked suspiciously.
“On the other hand, if you’re determined to threaten me and otherwise show signs of malcontent, why, then you’re on your own and the devil take you.”
“Easy for you to say, Pin—Mr. Holmes,” said the Pup, “but you’re the one as got us on this here boat, don’t say you’re not. Were it not for you and your assurances—”
“Pin Dok Low’s assurances,” Holmes interrupted him.
“Now, there’s a distinction without a ha’penny’s worth of difference,” sneered the Artful Codger. “It was you and your blandishments what got us here,” he said, “and it’s up to you to make honest villains of us, as I see it.”
“As I see it,” Holmes told them, stepping closer until he loomed over them like a gaunt oracle, “the pair of you have hopped over to the other side of the fence, and you might consider staying there for a bit.”
“How’s that?” asked the Artful Codger.
“What fence?” the Pup asked, moving his head slightly back as though afraid that Holmes intended to bite him on the nose.
“Why, you’re both heroes,” Holmes told them. “You’ve helped save the gold. You’ve even been wounded in the cause, Codger,” he added, indicating the Codger’s bandaged hand.
“And what of it?” asked the Pup.
“Why, I would think there would be a reward,” Holmes told them. “Yes, I’m sure of it. The Bank of England itself will certainly pay a reward to those who helped fight off the Thuggees.”
“Well, I’ll be . . .” the Pup said, as the enormity of the idea sank in.
“Now, wouldn’t that be amusing,” said the Artful Codger.
TWENTY-EIGHT
INTO THIN AIR
We cannot kindle when we will
The fire that in the heart resides,
The spirit bloweth and is still,
In mystery our soul abides.
—Matthew Arnold
Captain Iskansen stood and raised his glass to his guests at the captain’s table. It took a few seconds for the hubbub at the table to cease, and the quiet rippled slowly across the room as people turned to hear what the captain had to say. “An ocean voyage is a time for companionship, and for shared adventure,” he told the assembled diners, holding his glass high above the pea soup. “Well, we have had our share of both. Indeed, this voyage of The Empress of India will be long remembered by all who are aboard her. I am well pleased to have had this—this—throng of heroes aboard, for both crew and p
assengers have behaved like heroes on this trip, and I thank you one and all.”
“Hip-hip,” called someone in the room, and the dining room reverberated with a series of cheers. And the toast was drunk and, at some tables, drunk again.
“Eat, drink, and be merry,” Captain Iskansen bellowed. “For tomorrow we dock!”
A smattering of applause grew into a fusillade of earnest clapping. The trip down the length of the Mediterranean had been blissfully uneventful. The Empress had rounded Gibraltar and was plowing her way north through rain just heavy enough and a sea just choppy enough for the passengers to feel as though it were a part of their continuing adventure without being truly uncomfortable. They had their sea legs, most of them. They could dine without discomfort despite the rolling motion under their seats.
Cool breezes wisped around the ship. This evening had been cool enough for woolen trousers and tweed skirts to replace the light cotton or linen garments for promenades around the deck. The dreadful attack was in the past, and all signs of it had been removed. The passengers were now feeling exceptionally jolly, and good companionship abounded.
Margaret St. Yves turned to her father after the captain resumed his seat and spoke to him earnestly and in an intense undertone, causing General St. Yves to fidget and look ill at ease. “But dear,” he said, interrupting her flow of words, “you want me to agree to let this Peter fellow marry you? Just like that? I’m to give you away to this fellow who thinks wearing an army uniform is some sort of joke? Really?”
“If he should ask you for my hand, Father,” Margaret said patiently, “I just want you to know that it would be all right with me if you were to seriously consider it. And then if, after a suitable period of consideration—say, ten or twenty minutes—you were to say yes, I would think that was perfectly fine.”
“And when is he going to ask me?” St. Yves inquired.
“I don’t know,” Margaret confessed. “He hasn’t asked me yet.”
St. Yves thought this over carefully for a minute. “And what makes you so sure he’s going to?” he asked, venturing into territory in which no man is safe.
“A woman knows these things,” his daughter told him.
“I see,” St. Yves said. “Has he any money? Any expectations? Will he be able to support you?”
“I have no idea,” Margaret said, blithely throwing aside the notion that money was of any importance. “Besides, won’t I have a sufficient income on my own when I marry? I always supposed I would.”
“True,” her father admitted. “You come into a sizable sum from your maternal grandfather when you marry or reach the age of thirty-five, whichever comes first. But do you really want a husband who lives off of your money?”
“If we’re married,” Margaret said reasonably, “then I don’t suppose it will really matter whose money it is.”
“It might,” St. Yves said. “It could come to pass that it would matter a great deal. A man should be able to support his wife.”
“If a couple is living on inherited wealth,” Margaret asked reasonably, “then which of the partners has done the inheriting is more a matter of pure chance, wouldn’t you say?”
“Humph,” said her father.
Captain Iskansen stood again. “The gold vault door will be closed tonight for the last time until we dock,” he said. “If any of you want to take one last look at our precious cargo—not as precious as the lives and fortunes of our passengers, but precious nonetheless—you have one more hour.”
He paused for a sip of wine, and continued, “I will ask you all to be patient with us when we dock. As a final safety precaution the gold will be unloaded before the passengers debark. It will be quite early in the morning, and it should take no more than an hour and a half, so none of you should be inconvenienced. I hope and trust that you’ve all had a pleasant voyage. Well, barring that one unseemly incident, of course, as pleasant as we could make it for you. And I thank you all once again.” He raised his glass, nodded his head, and sat down.
“There is going to be some people awaiting at the dock what is going to be most unhappy at the turn of events,” the Artful Codger remarked into his pea soup. “They will consider themselves greatly inconvenienced.”
“That’s the truth,” Cooley the Pup agreed. “It’s funny how things turned out, ain’t it?”
“Angelic Tim McAdams ain’t exactly a philosophical bloke,” the Codger said. “He’s going to require a bit of explaining, and I’m glad I ain’t the one as is going to have to do it.”
“Maybe you are the one,” said the Pup. “I don’t fancy that Mr. Sherlock Holmes, as he is now calling himself, is going to be any too eager to do it for himself.”
“Do you suppose that Holmes is right?” the Codger asked. “About the Bank of England giving us a reward for helping save the gold?”
“He sounded like he meant it,” said the Pup. “But I ain’t counting on it till the guineas is clinking together in my pocket.”
“Won’t that be something?” marveled the Codger. “Why, it’ll be almost like getting paid for honest work.”
“Mind how you talk!” said the Pup. He pushed his chair back and stood up. “I want to go take one last look at the gold, which is as close as we’re going to get.”
The Codger rose. “I’ll go with you,” he said. “You know, it’s a shame Holmes got that second bump on the head. If he was still Pin, he’d have a way for us to get at that gold.”
“Maybe if we cosh him again . . .” suggested the Pup.
“It don’t work like that,” said the Codger.
“Pity,” said the Pup.
_______
The Empress of India steamed up the Thames and tied up at Queen’s Dock at quarter to five the next morning, while the passengers and most of the city were still asleep. The two following ships, the cruiser H.M.S. John of Gaunt and the revenue cutter Ajax, which had kept the Empress in sight since she rounded Gibraltar, went their own ways, replaced by a pair of police boats, a company of the Household Guard, a squad of London constabulary, a bevy of Scotland Yard plainclothes men, and a pride of bowler-hatted special guards employed by the Bank of England, who were to oversee the transfer of the gold from the ship’s vault to the two special armored wagons which were pulled up at dockside. The dock area was lit by gaslights and lanterns on posts, and two powerful electrical floodlights from the ship, and many of the men were carrying lanterns; but a cold, damp fog had settled in for the predawn hours and no object more than a few feet away could be clearly seen.
Inspector Giles Lestrade was in charge of the Scotland Yard contingent, and he had just finished placing his men when he heard his name called by someone standing in the open hatch to the cargo hold. “In-spector Lestrade, is that you? Come up here, please, you’re needed!”
Lestrade swung his lantern around. He knew that voice. “Holmes?” He shone the light up toward the hatch. “What are you doing there? For that matter, what are you doing anywhere? Where have you been?”
“Later,” shouted Holmes. “Come up here, please. Bring your men!”
Lestrade paused and contemplated the possibilities. Holmes wasn’t supposed to be there. Holmes was missing, presumed dead. Still, perhaps—
“Well, Lestrade,” Holmes bellowed from his perch in the cargo hatch. “Are you coming or aren’t you coming? This is a matter of the utmost urgency; no time for you to ponder.”
“Coming, Holmes,” Lestrade called back. Holmes, if it was Holmes, was right, pondering could come later. And questioning. He gave two brief blasts on his police whistle and led his quartet of plainclothesmen up the ramp to the hatch.
It was indeed Holmes standing there. The same well-remembered arrogant posture, the same familiar overweening gesture as he beckoned them forward. “This way,” the world’s foremost consulting detective said, leading them into the ship and around a corridor.
“This had better not take too long,” Lestrade said, huffing to keep up with Holmes’s long strides. “
We have the gold to look after. The unloading is due to begin any minute now.”
Holmes stopped short halfway down the corridor, where a cluster of men in a variety of uniforms and mufti were standing by what looked like an open bank vault door. “The gold appears to have already been unloaded,” Holmes said.
“How’s that?” Lestrade halted and looked over the group in front of him: several army officers, a few ship’s officers, and assorted civilians. They all glowered at him as he approached, as though he were responsible for something, although he had no idea what. Holmes introduced him to a general, the ship’s captain, and some people of lesser importance. Lestrade would have been greatly impressed had he time for such thoughts. He took a breath. “What do you mean, it’s been unloaded? The armored wagons just arrived a few moments ago.”
Holmes indicated the open vault door. “This is where the gold was,” he told Lestrade. “A bit over two tons of the stuff. It was there last night. As you can see, it is no longer there.”
Lestrade went over and peered through the door. There was an inner door of iron bars, which was still closed. Looking through the bars, Lestrade saw a room about twelve feet square and eight feet from floor to ceiling. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the room were made up of riveted iron plates. There was no apparent entrance to the room except the door through which Lestrade was now peering with interest. The room appeared to be empty, save for a few scraps of charred wood. “The vault?” Lestrade asked.
“Indeed,” said Captain Iskansen.
“Two tons of gold?”
“A bit more, I fancy,” said Holmes, “just a bit more.”
“Gone?”
“Afraid so,” said General St. Yves. “They were here yesterday. I saw them. Gold bars all boxed up in stacks of tidy boxes, six to a box.”
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