Death on a Pale Horse

by Donald Thomas

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  He had simply replaced each letter with the one following it in the alphabet. It was childishly simple now but not in a moment of dismay when faced by an alphabetic rampart, infinite possibilities, and very little time to spare! Of course I had supposed from the start that he was not likely to send me a message I could not unravel—but that start had been a moment of panic. And if I could decode it, why was it that our enemies could not?

  I completed the transposition of the letters.

  IMPERATIVE THAT I REMAIN IN BRUSSELS STOP PRESENT SCENE

  OF EVENTS IS HERE STOP OUR CLIENTS INFORMED YOU WILL BE

  THEIR ESCORT STOP YOUR DUTIES NOMINAL STOP LESTRADE OR

  GREGSON AT DOVER STOP ACKNOWLEDGEMENT NOT REQUIRED

  STOP HOLMES

  And that was all. I had been right. Whatever might be going on in Brussels, this was to be a channel crossing as uneventful as any other in the ship’s itinerary. All the same, I swore that I was going to be the first passenger aboard the Comtesse de Flandre and not a face that followed me should escape my scrutiny. Not even if it were Holmes in disguise!

  As a rule, passengers were permitted to board an hour before sailing time. I reached the gangways as they were being lowered into place, side by side, and made fast. I was dressed in my warm Harris tweed coat and my hat and carrying my black malacca cane, ready for the worst that the voyage could bring. My revolver was in the pocket of the coat, but much use did it seem to be now. Before I and a few others could get closer, the purser was at the gangway and his message was clear.

  “Stokers’ party and crew only just now. Thank you.”

  We waited until they were aboard—and still we waited. Then the reason for this became apparent. It was the arrival of a four-wheeler drawn by a pair of white horses. Several men got down, one of them a stout figure in a frock coat with a glimpse of astrakhan collar and silk cravat. He was holding a top hat as if to save the trouble of taking it off to acknowledge the crowd. This was my first sight of Prince Napoleon-Jerome, Plon Plon. The lamp-light caught a heavy face with mouth turned down and eyes mournful. His head was bald at the top and the dark hair grizzled. Yet the profile was strong and impressive. Here and there people clapped, but for the most part the onlookers were quiet. Most of them probably did not recognise the claimant to the French throne. Waiting passengers stood back for him to pass with three soberly dressed civilians and two officers in dark blue uniforms and gold insignia.

  After an interval to allow the royal party to settle itself in the first-class deck saloon, the purser stood back and I was, indeed, the first of the other passengers aboard. I had decided that the best vantage point would be at the steamer’s rail just forward of the paddle-box. From there I could see every face that came up the gangways, until each arrival stepped on to the deck a few feet away from me. I could even watch them as they waited on the harbour pier for their turn to come aboard. Perhaps because this was a Friday sailing, there were far more than had come across from Dover, but the second-class travellers would be confined to the forward part of the ship.

  I truly had expected that Holmes might slip aboard in disguise; but none of these, whom I saw at very close range, resembled him in the least. I do not underrate my friend’s capacity for concealing his identity. Yet there is one thing that cannot be disguised, short of bandages or dark glasses, and that is the eyes. Not for nothing had I been a physician searching the gaze of my patients for hope, fear, or resignation. I looked at close range into the faces of those hundred or so who came aboard. I would swear on my life that none of them was Holmes nor, indeed, Colonel Rawdon Moran. His telegram seemed to have told the truth. The scene of events would be in Brussels.

  As the light dwindled, the rising mist became a fog that closed upon us with the chill of a hoar frost. The ritual of departure began and with it came a fond memory of my childhood. It was low tide and the steamer had come in bows-first. To go astern in shallow water, against low tide and poor visibility, is unwise. Yet there was often no room for a ship to turn herself round in a small harbour where other vessels were moored. The answer is simple. A man in a rowing boat comes out, carries the loop of a heavy mooring rope from the winch in the stern of the ship to a bollard on the far quay. The winch is then used to wind the rope in and pull the stern round until the bows of the steamer face the tide. The loop from the bollard splashes into the sea, and the length of the mooring rope is wound in at the stern. How often had I seen the ferries perform this manoeuvre in the west coast harbours of my Scottish boyhood!

  The oarsman in his little shell rowed out from the mole, collected the rope, rowed back, and looped it over the bollard. There was a clanking and a gust of steam from our stern as the heavy rope rose taut and dripping from the water. Our stern swung slowly round until the bows faced the sea. The loop was cast off by the oarsman standing at the end of the harbour jetty. The bridge telegraph above me rang “Half Ahead.”

  We faced the dark with several hours and sixty or seventy miles of fog-bound sea in a flat calm ahead of us. We should round the Ruytingen lightship off Dunkirk, then turn north for Dover. British travellers “going foreign,” as the saying is, would have taken the shorter crossing to Dover from Calais. Unfortunately, our royal protégé, like all other claimants to the throne of France, had been permanently exiled by the laws of the Third Republic and was not to set foot on French soil.

  The weather promised to be thick, but not so dense that the sailing had to be cancelled. As we eased past the end of Ostend’s western pier, the bridge telegraph rang “Full Ahead” to the engine room and the two paddles picked up speed. Their wake frothed down either side of the ship as we slid into the seaway, past a tier of colliers and coasters. Presently we were steaming at about twelve knots, parallel with the flat winter sands. Behind a line of muddy surf, only a chain of lights from houses on the esplanade marked the shoreline that was fast receding into the gloom.

  While I was leaning on the rail, watching our departure, the first mate had come to the foremast and hoisted a white oil-light almost twenty feet above the deck. He then turned, gave an order, and a second man standing behind him handed a box of lucifers to the ship’s boy. The lad struck one of these and lit the green navigation light whose lantern was fixed to the forward edge of the starboard paddle-box. The seaman took the box back and went to attend to the red light on the port side.

  On such Channel crossings in poor weather, I much prefer to “stick it out on deck,” smoking a pipe, rather than go down to the miasma of the refreshment saloon. The vibration of the ship’s reciprocating engines under my feet and the beat of the paddles on either side of the hull was comforting, even on such a journey as this. We passed very little shipping. From time to time I could just make out the drifting ghost of a fishing smack or a lugger, its ochre-coloured sails catching the faint breeze as it made its way out from Ostend or Dunkirk to the fishing grounds of the North Sea.

  After twenty minutes of standing amidships, I had lost the lights of the shoreline. The sea-mist closed in until it condensed into a silent fog whose droplets hung on my hat-brim and lapels. They call it mist, rather than fog, but it was so thick that from the bows of the Comtesse de Flandre I could no longer see the red, yellow, and black of the Belgian flag at the stern. Indeed, I could hardly make out the two life-boats on board, hanging aft in their hoists, conveniently close for first-class passengers. The first-class saloon, at present the “royal saloon,” was enclosed by a little metal gate across either side of the deck indicating to second-class passengers that they had reached the limit of their permitted territory.

  I heard a voice behind me.

  “Doctor Vastson, is it not?”

  For a moment I expected t
o turn and see the liveried waiter from the Hotel de la Plage, but this was the younger of the two French military figures in their dark blue uniforms who had accompanied the Prince Napoleon-Jerome aboard.

  “Lieutenant Theodore Cabell,” he said reassuringly with a slight click of the heels and a respectful inclination of his head towards me.

  It was an unexpected time and place for such formalities, but we shook hands. Lieutenant Cabell was a slightly built and flaxen-haired young man, more German than French in appearance. I thought he was the last person to be taken for an intelligence agent—or, indeed, a royal valet. He indicated the little gate to the first-class promenade, which now stood open.

  “Come, please, sir. His Highness wishes it.”

  I should have been happier keeping watch according to my own rules, but I could hardly ignore a claimant to the throne of France.

  Theodore Cabell repeated his invitation.

  “You come this way, please. It is all right. His Highness merely wishes to receive you.”

  The very thing I had been hoping to avoid was to be held answerable for the measures we had taken to protect Plon Plon and his possessions. I hardly knew what the measures were, in the absence of Holmes himself.

  Lieutenant Cabell slid back the outer door at one side of the first-class saloon and stood aside for me to enter. He followed and pronounced my name in his own way. At the far end of the casually furnished saloon, a bowed figure in formal frock coat and silk cravat looked up from his easy chair. I might easily have mistaken him for the manager of an important branch of one of our London banks. To one side stood a man in the uniform of the French general staff. Next to him was a middle-aged and formally dressed civilian, who I assumed to be General Georges Boulanger. These made up the “royal” party, so far as I could see.

  “Doctor Vastson,” the prince spoke as if in imitation of Cabell, holding out his hand but remaining seated, as befitted his rank.

  I took the hand and inclined my head over it. It was a suitable compromise in acknowledging a man who did not yet wear the crown of France but might very well do so before the summer was out.

  “Tell me,” he went on in his casual and slightly accented English: “I am a small bit puzzled. There was to be Mr. Sharelock Holmes. He was recommended to me by his brother, Sir Mycroft. Now there is you but, I think, no Mr. Holmes?”

  “My colleague has run to earth those who were suspected of trying to board this steamer. They are safely detained in Brussels and no danger to us. I have myself examined every passenger who embarked at Ostend. Now there is no port of call until Dover. Inspector Lestrade or Inspector Gregson of Scotland Yard will be waiting for us there with an escort. Mr. Holmes has arranged all that.”

  I hoped I was right.

  “Run to earth?” Napoleon-Jerome, whom I continued to think of as Plon Plon, balanced the phrase delicately upon his tongue. “I much like that. Run to earth. I am pleased to hear it.”

  Theodore Cabell looked at me with a deferential smile.

  “Very pleased,” he said warmly.

  Plon Plon looked up at him.

  “Oh? Oh, quite so. Very pleased. I am very pleased. Since there is no Mr. Holmes, perhaps you would do a small thing for me, sir. I should like you to go downstairs for a bit. See that no one has opened the gate to the mailroom where my box is deposited.”

  I wondered why Lieutenant Cabell could not go down and take a look. Presumably his instructions were never to leave the prince unprotected.

  “Of course, sir.”

  “You were brave in Afghanistan, monsieur. Sir Mycroft says so to me. A good deal brave.”

  “I hardly think that, sir. I was present when the battle took place at Maiwand. Not as a fighting man.”

  “But as a soldier!” He smiled as if at the comicality of my reply. “You must tell me everything about it soon. I should like that a great deal. I shall look forward to it.”

  He shifted himself in his chair, looking aside slightly at the man I took to be General Boulanger. Lieutenant Cabell touched my arm and bowed before his prince, rather as if at the altar of a church. Plon Plon did not look at me again as I lowered my head briefly and respectfully. Then I withdrew in company with my escort. I knew, of course, that the prince and I would never discuss Afghanistan nor anything else.

  I went down the steps of the companionway to the lower deck. It seemed most unlikely that any of the guards would open the mailroom door to me in the middle of the voyage, let alone would they permit me to inspect the so-called war-chest. In that case, I should allow myself a glass of Highland malt in the ship’s bar.

  Below-decks, a ship of this kind, with its engine-room on view from the passageways down either side, is a wonderland of mechanical devices. Amid the smell of warm oil and the glow of copper piping, two massive steel pistons drove the heavy shaft that connects the weighty paddle-wheels at port and starboard. Rising and falling, the two so-called diagonal cylinders with three hundred horsepower of steam behind them surged and retreated, rose and fell alternately, like captive beasts. No mere propeller could rival this display of mechanical might which had long ago conquered the ocean steamer routes to New York and Bombay.

  Further aft, the port and starboard passageways came together at the glass doors of the dining-saloon. To one side was a steel grille or gate. Behind it were the “high-value” parcels and boxes, as well as the wicker baskets of registered post, bound for England from the Continent. The vertical steel bars of the gate were about six inches apart but connected by a redoubtable cross-piece and lock half-way down. This mailroom was a self-contained steel compartment in the stern of the ship. The three armed guardians of the Messageries Impériales were somewhere out of sight behind their partition.

  Whether the prince’s strong-box was secure, I could not yet see. A long curtain hung immediately inside the grille, cutting off most of the view. There was a small hatchway to one side, the barred guichet of the bureau de change. It seemed that its clerk had access only through the mailroom. But even that cubby hole was closed on this occasion and hung with a brusque notice—Pas de service jusqu’au Douvres.—closure until Dover.

  There was no one in sight to answer inquiries. At one side, however, the curtain left a narrow gap. By taking a slant view, I could see most of the interior. Canvas bags of mail were ranged down one side. I made out a number of trunks, almost cabin-size, and a dozen or so wicker baskets which no doubt carried insured letters and small registered packets. Among the commercial consignments, there were a dozen or so wooden courier-boxes, reinforced by steel corner-pieces and lock-plates.

  That was all, except for what at first I thought must be a coffin or casket carrying home the body of an unlucky Englishman abroad. The quality of the polished wood was infinitely superior to anything else in the room, probably made of oak. The other boxes had merely the agent’s or banker’s name painted in black on the lid. From this one, I swear I caught a glint of gold leaf. If that was not Plon Plon’s “war-chest,” I was mightily mistaken.

  There was no means of calling attention. This was as far as I should get—or wished to get. I would go back, explain the situation, and suggest that Lieutenant Cabell should come down with me. He, at least, could try to make a formal request. I had nothing but my steamer ticket, no credentials whatever. No one would unlock that steel grille just to please me.

  As I passed the dials of the engine-room again, the pistons had settled to a crossing speed of thirty-three revolutions per minute, still driving us “Full Ahead.” The gleaming brass of the overhead telegraph dial, connecting the engine-room with the navigating-bridge, confirmed this. The engineers saw nothing of the outside world while on duty. A link that appeared like a bicycle chain connected the handle of the telegraph on the bridge with the hand on the repeater dial of the engine-room as the captain’s orders jangled down here. The engineers themselves had now found their perches, one with a pipe, another with a newspaper, glancing up at the dials from time to time as if the ship would d
rive herself.

  I put my hand on the steel wall to one side of this open view and snatched it off again. The heat would almost raise a blister. This was the partition of the passageway from the stokehold and the boilers. The crack of a metal door between the stokers and the engineers reflected an intermittent yellow flame-light.

  Just then, the donkey-man was attending to the machinery with his oil-can and wad of cotton waste. The second engineer was reading his paper by the reversing gear, as they call it. The door of the stokehold opened. A man like a tall hobgoblin was standing in the alleyway that leads to the furnace. The engineer turned and shouted at him. I knew enough French to understand “Allez-vous en!” as the soot-faced scallywag was ordered back to his work. He was a tall rather bent fellow in vest and overalls, with a cap worn back to front. Truly he looked like something from the underworld. Soot covered his face until nothing was visible but the pink of his lips and the whites of his eyes. Very likely he had come aboard more than a little drunk. The engineer swore at him again and scouted him back to his duties, just at the moment all the stokers were needed to shovel up coal from the bunkers and toss it into the furnaces. I guessed that this malingering lout might be dismissed next day.

  For a moment the man continued to defy the engineer, as if for the pure fun of the thing. It seemed he was demanding a “proper” drink, not the enamel jugs of water provided in the stokehold. He had presumably shovelled several hundredweights of coal into the furnaces since Ostend. But he was wasting his words. At length, having made his point, he shambled back down the narrow passage to the boilers, where reflected flames flickered on the white-painted iron. I thought after all that if I was condemned to work in such conditions—and for such wages—I might well take to the bottle.

  I was so far away in my thoughts that I almost jumped like a cat at a sudden voice behind me.

  “Dr.Vastson?”

  I turned and found myself staring into the spectacled face of the man who had rowed his boat from Ostend harbour pier to collect our heavy mooring rope. He had carried it back to the jetty, looped it over a bollard, and waved us farewell as the winch in the stern of the steamer turned our bows seawards and the rope was cast off again. He still wore his greasy cap, bulky donkey jacket, and moleskin trousers with worn-out knees. But I had watched him wave us off from the harbour pier, across a hundred yards of open sea, as we steamed away. He could never row after us at the speed of the ship’s engines! How was he here? The face with its eyes vastly magnified by his lenses was one I did not know—or so it seemed, until a slight change in his glance and the removal of the spectacles betrayed him by his smile as Sherlock Holmes!