by Cavan Scott
“Then perhaps I can be of assistance?” cut in Tovey, producing a small leather pouch from his breast pocket. “If you gentlemen would give me a little room.”
“Gladly,” smiled Holmes, gently pulling me aside.
Tovey knelt, and, opening the wallet, extracted a small penknife and a single lever pick. His tools in hand, the inspector went to work, inserting the blade into the keyhole. Listening to rather than looking at the lock, he manipulated the knife, easing it up within the casing. I knew enough of such practices from my time with Holmes to imagine that he was trying to raise the bolt within the mechanism. Satisfied that the knife was in position, it was in with the lever pick. Stepping to the side to get a better look, I was amused to see the pink tip of the inspector’s tongue poking out of the side of his mouth, in the same manner as a child concentrating on a drawing. There was nothing infantile about the man’s dexterity, however, those thick fingers gently easing the pick into the workings, searching for the correct groove, before with a satisfying click the bolt gave way.
“Bravo,” remarked Holmes, rewarding the inspector with a sotto round of applause. “Expertly done, Inspector. I couldn’t have managed better myself.”
“And you a bloodhound of the law,” I remarked, offering the large man a hand as he hauled himself back up to his feet.
“I wasn’t always a policeman,” Tovey replied enigmatically, pocketing his tools before trying the door once again. It swung open with remarkable ease, emitting barely a squeak of rusty metal. Inspector Tovey ran his index finger across the hinges.
“Oiled,” he reported, rubbing the tip of his now slick and blackened finger against his thumb. “And recently too.”
“And here is the rest of our footprint,” said Holmes, once again squatting in the doorway. There was no need for a glass to make it out, clear against the grime of the step.
“Small,” I pointed out. “A woman?”
“Possibly,” Holmes said, rising again, “although the edges regrettably lack the definition required for conclusive analysis.”
“Then what about these?” Tovey said, stepping into the lobby of the abandoned hospital. Sure enough, by the light spilling into the room from the now opened door, many more footprints were clearly visible in years’ worth of dust. The inspector pulled a torch from his pocket and flicked it on, tracing the footsteps back to the bottom of a flight of distinctly rickety-looking stairs.
“Definitely a woman,” Holmes said, following the inspector inside, “and more besides. Inspector, if you would swing your light this way.”
Tovey did so, revealing the imprint of a larger boot. “Looks like a man this time,” he said, “according to the size and tread.”
“Inspector, if I may borrow your torch?” Holmes asked, holding out his hand in anticipation. Tovey handed it over, and Holmes illuminated another set of prints. “That is odd,” he said, crouching on his haunches.
“What is?” I asked, walking over to him.
“The man stood still here,” Holmes explained, showing me the marks in the dust. “See? His feet are at shoulder width.”
“And how is that peculiar?” I enquired. “Other than why anyone would want to linger in such a place like this?”
I am not embarrassed to admit that there was something in this relic of a hospital that unnerved me. It wasn’t the dust motes spinning in the beams of light, or even the distant scrabbling of tiny claws behind the wainscoting. The air simply seemed wrong, as if it held a tang of the unnatural. Ridiculous, of course, and I am certain that Holmes would have dismissed my unease as the overactive imagination of a second-rate novelist, but I felt it all the same.
Attempting to stop myself from shivering, more from apprehension than the damp cold that seemed to pervade the building, I studied more closely the prints that Holmes was examining so diligently. “They look perfectly normal to me, if a little on the large side.”
“But that’s just it, Watson,” he replied. “The size. The right foot is at least three sizes larger than the other.”
I looked more carefully still and could now see the truth for myself.
“So it is, although that is less unusual than one might expect. Why, my wife—”
“Has a larger left foot than her right,” Holmes interrupted. “Of course she does. In eighty per cent of cases the left is larger than the right, but the difference is usually minimal, as in Mrs Watson’s case; a size four on her left and three on the right.”
“If you say so,” I sniffed.
“I do indeed, but the difference between the left and right in these prints is far too pronounced.”
“A false leg, maybe?” Tovey suggested.
“Possibly, yes,” Holmes conceded, standing again.
“Do we know what size shoes Pike took?” I asked.
“I doubt the letter from the privy purse bothered with such detail,” Holmes deadpanned, before pointing up the stairs. “Whoever the prints belonged to, it appears that our mismatched male and his female companion spent most of their time here traversing up and down these steps.”
Holmes swept the torch around the remainder of the lobby. The dust to the side of the stairway was undisturbed, a thick blanket covering the space between us and a number of internal doors, most of which remained shut.
However, as Holmes angled the light to sweep up the staircase, we could clearly see a host of footprints on the steps. Whoever had been here regularly walked up and down the stairs, ignoring the rest of the ground floor.
Gripping hard the handle of my walking stick, I swallowed my nerves, taking the first step.
“Then we had better see what’s up there, had we not?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE DYNAMO
I cried out as my foot went straight through a step.
“Tread carefully, Watson,” Holmes said, springing forward to catch me as I tumbled onto my knees.
“Yes, thank you, Holmes,” I snapped, pulling my foot free from the jagged hole in the wood. “The thought had crossed my mind. Of course, it might help if you pointed the torch in the direction we’re walking, rather than darting it here, there and everywhere.”
Inspector Tovey rushed up beside me, testing with his foot the rest of the step that had given way.
“This one’s rotted through, but the next looks solid enough.”
He dragged himself up over the broken wood using the handrail. The next step creaked, but remained firm beneath his sturdy boots. “I reckon we’ll be fine heading further up,” he speculated with little in the way of evidence, “besides, if they can take my weight, you should have no bother at all, Doctor.”
“I’ll judge that when we reach the top,” I murmured, holding onto the banister and rubbing my throbbing ankle. A shard of wood had left a nasty scratch, but thankfully the skin was unbroken, although I could feel that an angry welt had already risen along the length of the injury.
“You could wait here,” Holmes suggested, “or return to the lobby. I am sure the inspector would be happy to accompany me from this point on.”
“No problem at all,” Tovey confirmed.
“We could even give you the torch.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, resuming my ascent. “I’ve come this far, haven’t I?”
I was reluctant to admit that I would rather take my chances falling through another rotten stair than waiting alone in that disconcerting place below.
We were climbing towards the second storey of the hospital now, the light failing with every passing minute. The first floor had been much like the lobby, the thick layer of dust on the floor undisturbed save for marks left by tiny scurrying paws. Instead the human footprints continued upstairs.
All around us the building groaned, wind whistling through the empty corridors. Doors caught in the breeze, banging open and shut to shred what little was left of my nerves. We continued up, loose strands of cobwebs brushing across our faces, and our nostrils full with the cloying stench of a building submittin
g to ruin.
And all the time, my knees threatened to rival the creak of the wood beneath our feet.
Inspector Tovey paused at the top of the flight, calling us to join him. “This is it,” he said, pointing towards a set of double doors. “The footprints head that way.”
“And that is not all,” I added. “Look, Holmes, something was pulled across the landing. Something heavy.”
A path had been cleared through the dust, a channel with straight edges at either side, some two feet apart.
“A trunk maybe,” Holmes commented absently, following the path to the doors. He opened them, peering around the corner, his surprise evident as he saw what lay beyond.
“Watson. Inspector. Come and see.”
I hobbled forward, my ankle still aching, and made my way through the doors.
A series of wires hung from the walls, laden with electric light bulbs that dangled like forgotten Christmas tree decorations. It was clear that the cables were not part of the hospital’s original fittings and fixtures. The wires were thrown between the inert gas lamps that dotted the walls, the supply long disconnected.
“Wait here,” Holmes ordered, darting ahead. I called for him to wait, but instead he turned left into a room, the torchlight vanishing, shadows immediately rushing in to claim the corridor.
“Holmes,” I cried out. “Holmes, what have you found?”
“Let us see,” he called back, and I heard what sounded like a lever being thrown.
With the buzz of a hundred angry wasps, the hanging bulbs blazed with yellow light. I raised my hand to protect my eyes, blinded by the sudden glare. When I lowered it again, blinking against the artificial incandescence, the shadows of the corridor had been banished. We could now see both the paint peeling from the walls and the detritus that littered the floor: papers, files, even an upended chair, the remnants of a working hospital, scattered around. The bulbs fizzed and flickered, making the scene yet more unsettling, and beneath it all came the throaty growl of machinery.
Holmes’s head appeared from around the door. “Watson, you have to see this.”
The inspector and I entered what looked once to have been some kind of administrator’s office. A wooden desk was pushed to the far corner and shelves stretched around all four walls. Once these would have been lined with notes and ledgers. Now they held only dust.
Holmes was standing, facing the door, his face full of anticipation, waiting to see how we would react to what we saw. Behind him, wheezing like a grampus, was an incredible device. A bicycle wheel, stripped of its tyre, had been bolted upright to a wooden plinth, the spokes replaced by six thick metal rods. At its centre was a core that spun like a Catherine wheel, producing a worrying number of sparks with each revolution.
“An electrical generator?” I asked, keeping a safe distance between myself and the device.
“The very same, and an ingenious one at that.” Holmes took a step closer to the machine, and it was all I could do to stop myself pulling him back for his own safety. The damned thing looked as if it might go up in flames at a moment’s notice.
“These static rods are magnets,” he said, pointing out each component as he talked, “the rotating armature at the centre generating the current. I cannot see for sure, but I would think, from the positioning of the cables, that there is a communicator at the dynamo’s heart, converting any generated current to workable power.”
“For all these lights,” said I, glancing up at the strings of bulbs.
“And possibly more,” commented Holmes.
The inspector did not share my friend’s enthusiasm. “I’ve seen more sophisticated rigs,” he sniffed. “This looks practically homemade.”
“Not to mention decidedly unsafe,” I added.
“And that’s precisely why it is so impressive,” insisted Holmes.
“That it might combust at any second?”
“No. Just think of it, Watson. If whoever created this machine can generate power with such crude materials, just imagine what they might do with the right components. Inspector, you are correct; it is primitive, laughable even compared to industrial dynamos, but surely you can see that there is a craftsman at work here? Look at the welding. Such precision. Elegance, even.”
Holmes’s passion was rubbing off on me. “But how is it powered?” I asked, intrigued. “There are no oil or petrol canisters.”
The detective waggled an amused finger at me. “A good question, Watson. Here.”
Holmes pointed towards a thin rubber tube, the kind found on Bunsen burners in every laboratory across the land, tracing its path from the back of the device to a small slit of a window near the ceiling. Then he crossed the room and tried the gas lamp that was fixed to the wall above the desk.
“The gas supply to the building is cut off,” he said, “so our clever engineer has found a way to siphon the required fuel for his dynamo from the mains. I would imagine that the tube finds its way down the back of the building, thin enough to remain unnoticed, unless one knows what one is looking for.”
“A great deal of effort to go to,” Tovey said, scratching the back of his neck.
“Indubitably,” came Holmes’s reply, “so let us see what is so important.”
Holmes darted back out into the corridor, following the long line of bulbs. We followed, splitting into two teams; I explored the rooms to the right with Holmes, while Tovey took those to the left.
The chambers were small, the first empty save for rusty bed frames and mouldering mattresses. No bulbs had been strung around the gas-fittings and we found nothing of apparent interest, except a pile of yellowing medical notes beside a broken table leg. Holmes snatched up the notes, only to return them to the floor a few seconds later.
The fourth room, however, was illuminated by a single light above the doorway. Inside there was a bed, like the others, but again the dust on the floor was disturbed. Furthermore, Holmes spotted something beneath the bed. He dropped to his knees and fished it out.
“A book,” he announced as he returned to his feet. He turned the paperback volume over in his fingers and gave its cover a cursory glance, before flicking through the pages. “A novel, no less.”
“I’m not going to ask if it is important,” I said, “knowing full well what your answer will be.”
“Everything is important, Watson,” Holmes said, thrusting the book towards me. I took it and turned it over, noticing immediately that the title was in French.
“Le Triangle d’or,” I read. “One of Leblanc’s Lupin stories?”
“Not among the best,” Holmes commented, as he cast his eye around the rest of the room. “Lupin is all but absent for the first half, and I guessed the culprit’s identity within three pages of his appearance.”
“You’ve read it?” I asked in amazement. This was a man whom I had once categorised as possessing a complete absence of interest in literature other than that of the ghoulishly sensational kind. I suppose the exploits of Maurice Leblanc’s outrageous gentleman thief certainly matched the latter.
“A fellow must occupy himself one way or another, Watson,” Holmes replied. “In days gone by you berated me for escaping the mind-calcifying boredom of inertia by means of the needle. I thought you would be pleased that these days I prefer to lose myself in the pages of a good book.”
“Or even a bad one? And to think you have the temerity to criticise my stories.”
Holmes laughed. “I have made the acquaintance of a young curate in the village who imports such dubious delights from the continent. He allows me access to his growing library in return for a few jars of royal jelly.”
As he spoke, my ever-surprising friend had finished his examination of the room and, finding nothing else of note, turned to face me.
“However,” he continued, “your astonishment about my new-found passion for the written word has distracted you from the most obvious of conclusions.”
“Which is?” I asked, still bemused.
“Look
at the publication date, Watson,” Holmes instructed.
Doing as I was told, I flipped the book open, finding the front matter. Running my finger down the text, I found the date in question.
“1918,” I reported.
“Indeed it was; November, if I remember correctly. Now, does this institution look as if it was open for patients eight months ago?”
“I sincerely doubt it,” said I.
“And you would be correct. Every scrap of paperwork I have found dates from before the war.”
“So the book wasn’t left here by a patient,” I concluded.
“And instead was read by a recent occupant, unequivocally male, possibly French, with a low level of literacy, poor personal hygiene and the habit of sleeping in his working clothes.”
With that, Holmes marched out of the room, leaving me to hurry after him as fast as my aching legs would allow.
“Now, Holmes. The French origin I can see from the book itself, and the gender of the reader from the large unequal footprints in the dust,” I said, finding Tovey and the detective in an adjacent room, “but as for the rest?”
Holmes sighed, turning to me. “It is as clear as day. Turn to any page, and you will see smudges caused by someone running their fingers beneath the lines as they read. The size of the fingers can only be that of a male, and the grime consistent with someone who has little acquaintance with water.”
“And the fact that the person concerned sleeps in his clothes?”
“There are numerous sturdy threads – such as those used to make hardy working attire, not a man’s nightclothes – snagged around the buttons of that poor excuse for a mattress. Now, unless you need me to explain further, I should very much like to know what the inspector has discovered in the room opposite.”
It was moments like this that had caused me to paint Holmes in a more flattering light than he often deserved. There was always a fear that the readers of the Strand would struggle to identify with the more irritating aspects of his personality. He could be the most charming of companions, and yet, at times, I had to fight the urge to bludgeon him over the head with my stick.