Sherlock Holmes and the Boulevard Assassin

by John Hall

  The astonished clerk looked from the director to the assistant manager. ‘Messieurs? What shall I do?’

  ‘Call the police!’ said the assistant manager decisively.

  The clerk nodded, turned and ran off.

  ‘But what is happening?’ the director managed at last.

  ‘Monsieur, I do not know. All I know is that the key to the vault is still here, upon my watch-chain – ’ and the assistant manager produced the key from his waistcoat pocket, and held it up, before replacing it – ‘and there it stays! I shall not give it up for you, begging your pardon, Monsieur; nor for the entire Board of Directors; nor for the Governor himself – no, nor for the very Prince of Darkness and all his fallen angels, though they drag me down to the Pit!’

  The director stared at the assistant manager for a long moment, then took hold of his shoulders. The assistant manager, suspecting further villainy, made to step back, but the director merely kissed him on both cheeks before remarking, ‘Were it in my gift, Monsieur, you should have the Legion of Honour!’

  Meantime, heroic deeds were being done at the main entrance to the Bank. It may perhaps be that Auguste Vauban has hitherto appeared in this narrative as somewhat effete, a dreamer, a man concerned only with thoughts of Sunday lunch with his family. Nothing could be farther from the truth: Auguste was a stout fellow in every sense. He was the scion of a long line of farmers, and if he was not exactly quick of wit, then at least he was strong of arm.

  For all that, thought Auguste, it was the devil’s own job to subdue this villain, this imposter, this man who had the audacity to pretend to be Sherlock Holmes! But, with the aid of a couple of his fellow guards, and some of the more daring of the clerks, Auguste managed to keep the rascal quiet enough, until the arrival of Monsieur Dubuque of the Paris police, who – as an old customer of the Bank – was well enough known to Auguste by sight.

  Dubuque had also known Mr Sherlock Holmes for some years, and – when once Auguste had been persuaded to allow the ‘villain’ to stand up – Dubuque unhesitatingly identified the supposed imposter as the real, the only, Sherlock Holmes.

  Auguste was apologetic, but what else could he have done, in all conscience? Sherlock Holmes spoke quietly to himself, in an abstracted fashion, for some considerable time; Auguste did not understand the words, but he could follow the general sense, and it rather spoiled the rest of his day, and cast a blight over his Sunday luncheon party to boot.

  Naturally, by the time the truth had emerged, it was too late to pursue the fake Holmes, or the equally spurious representative of the prefect of police; and above all it was too late to follow the unassuming-looking ‘auditor’, who was, as the real Holmes told Dubuque bitterly, none other than the infamous Professor James Moriarty!

  TWO

  Mr Sherlock Holmes leaned back in his chair, and looked across at me. ‘Well, Watson?’

  ‘All imposters?’ said I, incredulous. ‘The whole lot of them? All members of the same gang – the Moriarty gang?’

  Holmes nodded. ‘The first rogue impersonated an English gentleman; then the others made a point of seeming to reveal that it was an imposture, and that the visitor was really Jupin, whilst themselves actually impersonating the forces of law and order!’

  ‘Including you?’

  Holmes laughed. ‘As you say. Damnable impudence!’ He grew more serious. ‘It was a master stroke to say that it was Jupin, of course.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said I, ‘for he is as famous in France as – ’

  ‘My blushes, Watson!’

  ‘I was about to say, “– as he is unknown in England”!’

  Holmes laughed.

  I went on, ‘I suppose that it was not Jupin, though? After all, it is exactly the sort of daring thing he would do!’

  Holmes – who had been involved once or twice with Jupin in the past, at the request of the French police – considered this a moment before shaking his head. ‘You mean that Jupin himself might genuinely have had designs on the Bank of France? It would be a monstrous coincidence indeed!’ said he, adding with a smile, ‘Even you would hardly dare employ it in your accounts!’

  ‘I would not be too sure, Holmes! But I agree, it would be stretching credibility somewhat if one set of villains had used the designs of another set! But I meant rather – might Jupin not have been a member of the gang?’

  Holmes reflected. ‘I think not. He prefers to work alone; and besides, although he is criminal, he is a gentleman, he has his own standards, his own code. And one cannot truthfully say that of Moriarty or any of his associates. No, Jupin was not involved, save for the use of his name.’

  ‘The gang used one of their own men, then, to impersonate Jupin, who was then to impersonate an English aristocrat?’

  ‘Delicious, is it not?’

  ‘And the rest were all similarly imposters?’ I shook my head in disbelief.

  ‘Imposters, to a man. But clever imposters, all. All, that is, save the director of the Bank. He was genuine enough – the others had fooled him completely, made him think that there was a very real and pressing danger to the Bank’s deposits, in order that he might go with them to the Bank – where, of course, he was known to be genuine – and so lend verisimilitude to their story. And then, naturally, when he learned that some mysterious “stranger” had called that very morning – and that the visitor was Jupin! – well, that served to confirm the whole tale, and any lingering doubts he may have entertained vanished at once. Needless to say, the unfortunate director was the only one whom the police managed to arrest!’ He grew more serious. ‘And at that he was lucky, Watson, for there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Moriarty and the others would have killed him out of hand when once they were fairly away from the Bank with the diamonds.’

  ‘It was a daring plan.’

  ‘Such merit as it had lay in its daring, and its simplicity,’ said Holmes thoughtfully. ‘After all, what could be simpler than to walk into a bank and ask the assistant manager to let you roam around the vaults and walk out with your pockets stuffed with diamonds?’

  ‘It was risky, though?’

  ‘Perhaps not as risky as might at first appear,’ said Holmes. ‘Their bona fides seemed impeccable – there was a genuine director, who was known to the clerks and the managers; there was an elderly, and clearly respectable auditor; there was a representative from the prefecture of police; and of course lastly – ’

  ‘But by no means least – ’

  Holmes laughed. ‘It was unfortunate for them that I had pursued Moriarty to Paris,’ said he. ‘They could not have taken that into account, although perhaps they ought to have done so.’

  ‘Moriarty, at any rate, took a great risk, by appearing in person, so to speak.’

  ‘You must realise,’ said Holmes, ‘that his intention was to move his field of operations into France, and thence – I have no doubt at all – to the rest of Europe, like some monstrous plague. And, like any other businessman, he naturally needed capital funds for this expansion. He had already made one attempt upon the deposits of the Banque de France – although that attempt took place in London – and he simply tried again, but this time he did not leave it up to a subordinate.’

  ‘Whatever one may think of him, he was not lacking in courage or ingenuity. It was a daring and outrageous exploit. And it is undoubtedly an interesting story,’ I said. ‘Yes, much might be made of it, with a little imagination.’

  ‘Imagination?’ said Holmes with some annoyance. ‘And are the mere facts not sufficient in themselves? Must they be dressed up with French phrases dimly remembered from one’s distant schooldays and hurriedly – though all too often inadequately – checked with an elementary grammar before dispatch to the publisher? Must the account consist of adjectives following, rather than preceding, their nouns, and peppered withal with exclamation marks, in order to give a – a – what can I call it – an authentic Parisian atmosphere?’

  I surreptitiously jotted a note on my cuff – “lots
excl mks!!!” – before bothering to reply to this calumny. ‘Modern readers are by no means the unsophisticated creatures they once were, Holmes,’ said I. ‘The Board Schools have made epicures of them. They demand a certain amount of background, of descriptive material. “The human angle”, as our American friends would term it.’

  ‘Oh, well! If you are really going – ’

  ‘I could, perhaps, write it largely from the point of view of one of the relatively minor characters, the assistant manager, or the doorman, say. Yes, that would be one way.’

  Three years of travel studying the fatalistic philosophies of the mysterious East had evidently done nothing to sweeten Holmes’s temper. ‘The doorman? And what the devil had the doorman to do with anything, pray? Beyond sitting on my head and thereby preventing me laying my hands upon the rogues, that is?’

  ‘Human interest, Holmes.’

  ‘But how can you tell his story? Why, you do not even know the fellow’s name!’

  ‘No more does anyone else, Holmes! Who can say that it is not what I choose it to be? And there are plenty of biographical encyclopaedias!’

  Holmes emitted a sound which I can only politely describe as a snort of derision, and lit his briar, which had gone out whilst he was telling me the tale which I have just set down for you – in a slightly modified form, for it cannot be denied that Holmes’s own version was somewhat lacking in that human interest which he sometimes so disparaged.

  ‘Not that your account was in any sense uninteresting of itself, of course,’ I hastened to add, trying my best to mollify him. ‘Indeed, it is of the first importance to anyone who – like myself – would wish to understand your pursuit of Professor Moriarty.’

  Holmes, almost his old self again, nodded. ‘It was a long and very involved pursuit,’ he said. ‘The episode I have just recounted was by no means the most daring of Moriarty’s exploits, nor the most difficult of my investigations.’

  ‘Do you say so? The others must have been interesting indeed! And Moriarty managed to escape so often! The world is fortunate that you were finally able to pursue your investigations to such good effect.[1] Just think how different things might have been had Moriarty survived the Falls of the Reichenbach!’

  ‘Indeed,’ murmured Holmes. And he added hastily, almost as if to change the subject, ‘How is the sale of your practice coming along?’

  It was towards the end of June, 1894. Holmes had been back in London for almost three months, and he had prevailed upon me to sell my little practice in Kensington and move back to my old lodgings in 221B, Baker Street. For some reason which I could not begin to explain, although I had known so much sadness there the practice still had some sentimental attraction for me, and I had accordingly set upon it a higher figure than I thought it warranted, half hoping that the elevated price would discourage prospective buyers; but a young Dr Verner had paid what I asked at once, almost without properly looking the place over. It was not until later that I learned that he was a distant relative of Holmes’, and that Holmes had advanced the money for the purchase.

  To a certain extent, Holmes and I were having to get to know each other all over again. His three years in the wilds had had their effect; and I dare say that my own happy marriage and sad bereavement had gone some way to changing me, too. But yet we had settled down happily enough a decade before, and we were not all that different now, save for being a little older and perhaps – one can dream – even a little wiser, so that I had hopes that things would quickly be back as they had once been.

  The one thing I really dreaded was boredom, for I knew that inactivity would cause Holmes to relapse into those habits which I had so often, and for so long, had reason to condemn. Inactivity, boredom, those were the demons I feared most where Holmes was concerned. His capture of Colonel Sebastian Moran, which I have recorded under the title of The Empty House, was the one and only approach to a case which Holmes had undertaken since his return to London, and even then it was Inspector Lestrade who had – at Holmes’s own express request – received the credit for Moran’s arrest. The public, that ‘great unobservant public’, as Holmes had once called it, remained in ignorance of the very fact that Holmes was still alive, and we had few callers in that summer of ’94. It was to keep Holmes from the horrors of the hypodermic syringe and the cocaine bottle that I had prompted him to recount something of that long, lonely and difficult investigation into the Moriarty gang which had occupied the winter of 1890 and ’91.

  Before I could reply, Holmes leaned forward, then suddenly straightened up. I could swear that he sniffed the very air, like an old hound on the scent. ‘You hear that, Watson?’

  I listened. ‘Street noises, Holmes? A cab rattling along. Several cabs. An argument going on. The newspaper vendor, crying his wares. That’s all I hear.’

  ‘Ah, Watson, Watson! You hear, but you do not observe! The newspaper vendor, my boy! Listen! You hear his intonation? It is almost exultation!’

  ‘Doggerel, Holmes, doggerel. A sad misuse of the English – ’

  ‘Doggerel be damned! There’s murder in that cry, Watson! Murder, mutilation, and mayhem!’ He leapt to his feet and rang the bell vigorously, then, with a curious echo of the very metaphor that had occurred to me, he added, ‘The old hound may have found a new line to follow yet! Now, Billy,’ he told the page boy who appeared in answer to the bell, ‘I require a copy of every newspaper you can find – and quickly, mind!’

  ‘Yessir!’ The page ran out of the room.

  ‘We may have a case, Watson! A case, at long last!’

  ‘Part of me could wish it were so,’ said I. ‘But yet it will be at the cost of some poor devil’s life or happiness.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Holmes was subdued for a moment only, then he said, ‘Ah, but the damage is already done. Were you to be called out to attend some medical emergency, you would hardly hold yourself to blame for its occurrence, now would you? You would merely set about doing what you could to amend matters.’

  ‘Perhaps you are right. Ah, here is Billy.’

  ‘Put them down anywhere, Billy,’ said Holmes eagerly. He seized the nearest newspaper. ‘Good Lord!’

  I picked up another newspaper, glanced at the bold headline – ‘PRESIDENT OF FRANCE ASSASSINATED’ – and echoed his sentiment. ‘Great heavens, Holmes!’ I read on, to learn that President Sadi Carnot had been stabbed whilst in Lyons; the assailant being one of those misguided zealots who call themselves ‘anarchists’.

  Holmes had flung himself into a chair, and read in silence for a time. Then he threw the newspaper down, and picked up another. ‘A bad business, this, Watson. What have you there?’

  ‘I fancy the accounts are all broadly similar,’ said I. ‘It says here that the assassin was taken by an angry crowd, which is something at any rate.’

  ‘And what use – ?’ Holmes broke off, picked up another newspaper, and another. ‘They all have the same tale, as you say.’ He subsided in his chair. ‘A bad business indeed, Watson. Pass me the matches, and prepare to listen whilst I tell you my thoughts on this matter.’

  I threw my tobacco pouch across to him. ‘I shall be most interested,’ said I.

  ‘You must first cast your mind back to the winter of 1890,’ said Holmes. ‘I had become aware – no matter exactly how – of the fact that Professor Moriarty was extending his operations to the Continent, to France, in fact. I followed him there – ’

  ‘And that is how you came to frustrate his designs on the diamonds held by the Bank of France?’

  Holmes nodded. ‘You will recall that when I called upon you in the April of 1891, I mentioned that Professor Moriarty had given me a list of the occasions upon which I had incommoded him?’

  ‘I fancy that I noted the fact in my account of what I called “The Final Problem”.’

  ‘I fancy that you did. Along with much else that was sensational, if not downright inaccurate. Be all that as it may, Moriarty was in the process of opening a branch office, so to speak, in Fran
ce, and he had a trusty lieutenant, the direct equivalent in the French gang of Colonel Sebastian Moran in the English gang.’

  ‘And the name of this French lieutenant?’ I asked.

  Holmes frowned. ‘That is one thing that I did not manage to find out. I imagine he has a dozen aliases. Certainly he is a master of disguise and an accomplished actor, for it was he who had the deuced nerve to impersonate me in that Bank of France affair! And the doorman of the Bank – the prospective hero of your sensational narrative, my dear Watson, and the man who prevented the immediate arrest of Moriarty – this doorman swore that he was the very image of me!’

  ‘Well, it seems to me that the resemblance is significant,’ said I. ‘At least we know that he resembles you in a general sense, height, weight, and what have you, be his face raddled never so heavily.’

  ‘Watson, Watson! Have I myself not demonstrated to you on more than one occasion that a man may take a foot off his height without so very much trouble? It is inconvenient, to be sure, even painful; but it can be done. And to add a few inches is less trouble still, for a thick-soled boot, a top hat, will do much to fool the casual observer.’

  ‘But his weight? His build?’

  ‘I will allow you that.’

  I sat up. ‘You may have to allow me more, Holmes. Does it not seem to you that Moriarty may perhaps have chosen his representative simply because of the resemblance to you? That the professor had planned to use him as a decoy in some villainy of the very sort which you foiled?’

  Holmes stared at me. ‘You are positively incandescent, Watson. And it is a pretty compliment you pay me. But I fear that I must disclaim any responsibility. One may perhaps think that a lofty brow, a distinguished profile, be-token great mental powers, and that a man who looks like me must necessarily think like me; but I imagine that a mere passing resemblance would not go very far with Moriarty. No, his closest associates were chosen on the basis of their intellect, not their good looks!’