Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #10
Page 20
“Now to prove the identity of the counterfeiter,” Holmes declared. “I borrowed from the village doctor a Bunsen burner and gas canister on our way back here, Watson. And that glass globe covering the clock on the mantle should do the trick, if you wouldn’t mind fetching it down.” Holmes then took a vial with his furtive iodine solution from the leather case in his jacket pocket, set up his laboratory on the kitchen table, and placed the questioned page under the glass after igniting the burner and adjusting the vial on the little stand he also brought with him. “You will soon see the latent fingerprints and hand print of the wrongdoer,” Holmes advised Roddy as the forged page began to change colour. Roddy watched in awe as the heel print of a right hand appeared on the margin, along with three fingerprints at the top left corner. Said Holmes: “All that is left to do is contrast these with the prints of young Zachary Tarleton, which we can do with a writ and some printer’s ink we acquire from the village weekly newspaper.”
Tex, who was equally astounded by the development, drove Roddy to the village to do his part. Meanwhile, Holmes and I discussed the implications of the findings over a bottle of port wine we took from Mr Carroll’s rack in the dining room.
It was drawing toward evening when Roddy returned in his surrey. Tex had already arrived in the otherwise empty buckboard and was putting up the team. Holmes and I climbed onto the surrey behind Roddy, who drove toward the Tarletons’s home.
Zachary Tarleton was obstinate, but he reluctantly allowed Holmes to smear the ink on his hands and make an impression of them on a sheet of foolscap—after Roddy served young Tarleton with the writ. “What are you trying to prove with this?” he demanded.
“We shall let you know in the morning after we compare your prints to those we recovered from the agreement between your father and Mr Carroll,” Holmes answered.
“How can you recover my prints from an old document that was signed before I was born?” Tarleton wanted to know.
“I employ a foolproof method,” Holmes informed him.
“Your method is pure madness,” he retorted, and strode off to the kitchen to wash away the ink, his robust arms outstretched.
After we arrived back at Mr Carroll’s home, we ate a plate of beef stew that Tex had prepared in our absence, left over from the pot roast dinner we had the night before.
“Mr Carroll, er, my father, taught me to cook,” Tex said, “but I don’t do as well with the stove as him. My stew will go down easy, though, especially when you’re as hungry as we all are.”
Holmes was in no rush to make the comparisons, convinced that the two sets of prints would match. So confident was he that he relinquished the honour to Roddy, handing him a magnifying glass and seating him at the desk in the sitting-room. Roddy studied the prints thoroughly and eventually disclosed his conclusion: “They are a perfect layover, Mr Holmes. Where do we go from here?”
Holmes said he would confront young Tarleton in the morning but wanted to do it alone. “He might say some things to me that he would not in your presence, Constable Roddy.”
“Well, if you say so,” Roddy said in reaction, “but I insist on going along and waiting in the surrey outside the house in the event he decides to fight.”
“I should like to be there as well,” I chimed in.
Holmes agreed, and the next day we set out together for the Tarleton homestead. Roddy stopped the surrey out of view of the front door, and Holmes approached it on foot from about two hundred paces away. Once we were certain he was safely inside, Roddy drew the surrey closer to the house.
Holmes had disappeared for nearly an hour. When he came out, he was escorting Zachary Tarleton to the surrey. Young Tarleton looked disheveled and was bleeding from a gash on his cheek. “Standing before you,” Holmes said matter-of-factly, “is the forger who murdered the respected James Harley Carroll as well as the drunkard George Beidler in cold blood. Young Mr Tarleton here has admitted to it.” Roddy was flabbergasted. I, on the contrary, had come to expect such pronouncements. Roddy clasped irons on the reprobate and seated him in the back of the surrey between myself and Holmes, then we headed in the direction of the village.
Later, after the prisoner had been secured in the tiny gaol, Roddy drove us to the Carroll home, where Tex greeted the news with a whoop. “Do you suppose they’ll string him up before long?” he asked Holmes and Roddy.
“First there is the matter of a fair trial,” Roddy cautioned.
“Right after that, then?” Tex pleaded.
“Perhaps then,” Holmes responded.
“How did you catch him, Mr Holmes?” Tex continued.
Holmes explained to all of us then the phases of his investigation. First, there was the killer’s boot prints near the body of Beidler. “Young Tarleton wears a pair exactly as I described,” Holmes told us. Second, when Holmes examined the crime scene, he found in the woods the iron rim from a wagon wheel. “The village blacksmith informed me that he had repaired a wagon wheel with a missing rim for young Tarleton that very morning, after the discovery of Beidler’s torso,” Holmes went on. Additionally, Holmes said, he learned in the village that the muscular Mr Tarleton was an expert with a sabre, having been taught by his grandfather, the son of Sir Banastre Tarleton, nicknamed The Butcher. Sir Banastre cut off the heads of his enemies with one swipe of a sabre in the American War of Independence.
“When I confronted Tarleton with this information, and the fact that we had proof he had forged the agreement,” Holmes said, “Tarleton became enraged and lunged for one of the crossed sabres above the fireplace. ‘You know too much, Holmes, so it’s off with your head also,’ he sputtered. I dodged his advance and took down the other broadsword. He attacked, and I parried. We were engaged in this combat for only a minute when I intercepted a thrust and disarmed him, placing the tip of my blade against his chest. I asked him then what he had done with the heads of Mr Carroll and George Beidler, and he confessed that he had buried them in the family cemetery behind his home. He also acknowledged that he had taken Beidler’s life merely as a diversion to throw off suspicions in the death of Mr Carroll, as was my belief from the start.”
“That means he killed ole George for nothin’ and he killed Mr Carroll to inherit this farm,” Tex added. “Hangin’ ain’t good enough for him.”
THE FIELD BAZAAR, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
“I should certainly do it,” said Sherlock Holmes.
I started at the interruption, for my companion had been eating his breakfast with his attention entirely centred upon the paper which was propped up by the coffee pot. Now I looked across at him to find his eyes fastened upon me with the half-amused, half-questioning expression which he usually assumed when he felt that he had made an intellectual point.
“Do what?” I asked.
He smiled as he took his slipper from the mantelpiece and drew from it enough shag tobacco to fill the old clay pipe with which he invariably rounded off his breakfast.
“A most characteristic question of yours, Watson,” said he. “You will not, I am sure, be offended if I say that any reputation for sharpness which I may possess has been entirely gained by the admirable foil which you have made for me. Have I not heard of débutantes who have insisted upon plainness in their chaperones? There is a certain analogy.”
Our long companionship in the Baker Street rooms had left us on those easy terms of intimacy when much may be said without offence. And yet I acknowledge that I was nettled at his remark.
“I may be very obtuse,” said I, “but I confess that I am unable to see how you have managed to know that I was… I was…”
“Asked to help in the Edinburgh University Bazaar.”
“Precisely. The letter has only just come to hand, and I have not spoken to you since.”
“In spite of that,” said Holmes, leaning back in his chair and putting his finger tips together, “I would even venture to suggest that the object of the bazaar is to enlarge the University cricket field.”
I look
ed at him in such bewilderment that he vibrated with silent laughter.
“The fact is, my dear Watson, that you are an excellent subject,” said he. “You are never blasé. You respond instantly to any external stimulus. Your mental processes may be slow but they are never obscure, and I found during breakfast that you were easier reading than the leader in The Times in front of me.”
“I should be glad to know how you arrived at your conclusions,” said I.
“I fear that my good nature in giving explanations has seriously compromised my reputation,” said Holmes. “But in this case the train of reasoning is based upon such obvious facts that no credit can be claimed for it. You entered the room with a thoughtful expression, the expression of a man who, is debating some point in his mind. In your hand you held a solitary letter. Now last night you retired in the best of spirits, so it was clear that it was this letter in your hand which had caused the change in you.”
“This is obvious.”
“It is all obvious when it is explained to you. I naturally asked myself what the letter could contain which might have this effect upon you. As you walked you held the flap side of the envelope towards me, and I saw upon it the same shield-shaped device which I have observed upon your old college cricket cap. It was clear, then, that the request came from Edinburgh University—or from some club connected with the University. When you reached the table you laid down the letter beside your plate with the address upper-most, and you walked over to look at the framed photograph upon the left of the mantelpiece.”
It amazed me to see the accuracy with which he had observed my movements. “What next?” I asked.
“I began by glancing at the address, and I could tell, even at the distance of six feet, that it was an unofficial communication. This I gathered from the use of the word ‘Doctor’ upon the address, to which, as a Bachelor of Medicine, you have no legal claim. I knew that University officials are pedantic in their correct use of titles, and I was thus enabled to say with certainty that your letter was unofficial. When on your return to the table you turned over your letter and allowed me to perceive that the enclosure was a printed one, the idea of a bazaar first occurred to me. I had already weighed the possibility of its being a political communication, but this seemed improbable in the present stagnant condition of politics.
“When you returned to the table your face still retained its expression, and it was evident that your examination of the photograph had not changed the current of your thoughts. In that case it must itself bear upon the subject in question. I turned my attention to the photograph therefore, and saw at once that it consisted of yourself as a member of the Edinburgh University Eleven, with the pavilion and cricket-field in the background. My small experience of cricket clubs has taught me that next to churches and cavalry ensigns they are the most debt-laden things upon earth. When upon your return to the table I saw you take out your pencil and draw lines upon the envelope, I was convinced that you were endeavouring to realize some projected improvement which was to be brought about by a bazaar. Your face still showed some indecision, so that I was able to break in upon you with my advice that you should assist in so good an object.”
I could not help smiling at the extreme simplicity of his explanation.
“Of course, it was as easy as possible,” said I.
My remark appeared to nettle him.
“I may add,” said he, “that the particular help which you have been asked to give was that you should write in their album, and that you have already made up your mind that the present incident will be the subject of your article.”
“But how—!” I cried.
“It is as easy as possible,” said he, “and I leave its solution to your own ingenuity. In the meantime,” he added, raising his paper, “you will excuse me if I return to this very interesting article upon the trees of Cremona, and the exact reasons for their pre-eminence in the manufacture of violins. It is one of those small outlying problems to which I am sometimes tempted to direct my attention.”
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