He paced the room for a moment but the exertion soon caused him to pause. “A brandy!” he exclaimed.
I poured out two glasses. He took the first, drank it down in one swallow, and then took the second.
“Better?” I queried.
“Wipe that priggish look off your face, Sherlock. This is a matter of the utmost urgency.”
“It generally is when you pay me a visit. It means that you have gotten yourself into a sticky mess and wish me to clarify it.”
“Not I,” Mycroft said. He swallowed the second glass of brandy and then leaned back heavily in the chair. His cheeks were flushed to a brazen pink, but underneath the skin was the color of bleached parchment. A vein at his neck pulsed rapidly. I sat opposite and waited for him to explain. His demeanor told me all that I needed to know regarding the gravity of his visit, and I knew this was more than a sticky mess.
“I cannot help if you do not tell me,” I said to him.
Mycroft ran a hand through the scant few strands of hair remaining on his nearly bald head. He patted the beads of sweat with an already sodden handkerchief, and then finally turned his attention to me.
“As you know,” he began, “these past few days Crown and Country have been celebrating the end of this horrendous South African War. The Boer War, as it is will be called in the books, will go down in history as the fiercest bloodiest clash of all time! And God only knows how we were thrust into the middle of things! It will be an unhealing scab on the Crown for years to come!”
I merely nodded. What could I say? He was correct. Murder and worse atrocities had been committed on both sides of that conflict.
“So you can understand when I tell you the King was more than reticent when he was called upon to act as an intermediary in their dispute.”
“A dispute? With whom?”
“Don’t interrupt, Sherlock. Allow me to finish. As you know, for some time now King Alexander Obrenovic of Serbia has been attempting to get into bed with Russia, for protection purposes. We all know it. Obrenovic is aware of what is happening in his own country, the dissent of his people regarding his marriage to his Queen Draga. It was a farce and done in an underhanded manner. The people will not forget his treachery and deceit any time soon. An alliance with Russia would give him the peace of mind that he has an ally, should one be needed at his side.
“But Nicholas II has been keeping him at arms’ length, refusing to meet with him. He, too, understands Obrenovic’s ploy and does not wish to become embroiled in a family dispute that will spill onto the populace.”
“What has King Edward to do with all of this?” I asked.
“Everything! The King was approached by Obrenovic’s emissary to play host to a meeting between Nicholas and Obrenovic here in London. The emissary played on the King’s recent triumph in the Boer War and his relief at its end, pointing out that should another conflict, possibly between Serbia and Russia, arise, it would be nearly at the King’s own doorstep. ‘The King wouldn’t want that, would he?’ The emissary queried.”
“And so he agreed?”
“Yes,” Mycroft sighed. “The King agreed.”
“And Emperor Nicholas and King Alexander Obrenovic will be coming to London for this meeting?”
“They will. They arrive this Saturday. Sunday will be a day of pleasantries, but the real meeting is to begin on Monday.”
“It all sounds as though you have things well in hand. What am I to do about it?”
“This.” Mycroft pulled an envelope from his inside pocket and handed it to me. “This is what you’re to do, Sherlock.”
I took the envelope by my fingertips and, using forceps, extracted the scrunched piece of brown wrapping paper from inside. Laying it beneath my lamp, I opened it and read one single line: The King will die.
“You must find who sent this. Find him and stop him.”
But I wasn’t listening to Mycroft. Something was amiss with the envelope. It wasn’t in keeping with the note. “What of this?” I held it up to him.
“Never mind the envelope. It is one of mine. That crumpled up note was brought to me by the butler at the Diogenes Club exactly as you see it. I put it into the envelope simply as a means of bringing it to you. What do you make of it?”
“I’m surprised at you, Brother,” I said to him. “Your instincts are keener than mine, as you have told me time and again.”
“I have enough on my mind, what with the King’s security, as well as the protection and running of the government. I’ve brought this to you for your full attention.”
“Of course. I have several questions. First, how many people are aware of this meeting?”
“Good lord, Sherlock! Hundreds! The kings of each state, their guards, the hired help, the chamber maids...”
I held up my hand. “Too many. Next, when did you receive the note?”
Mycroft looked at his watch. “An hour past. As soon as I read it, I rushed over here immediately!”
“And you say the butler gave it to you? Exactly like this?”
“Yes, crumpled like a ball in his fist is exactly how he handed it to me. He stated a young woman with a veil was at the front door, and when he went to see her away, she thrust it into his palm and said for Mycroft Holmes. Then she was gone.”
“I see.” I looked once more at the paper. It was ordinary brown wrapping paper, a piece torn from a larger section. The words appeared to be crudely written in ash. “Hearth ash,” I muttered.
“What? What’s that you said?”
“I said it is hearth ash. Soot from a fire place. The granular texture of the wood or coal burned is rough and thick due to the coarseness - not at all like the delicate residue of tobacco ash. It means that the writer used what he had at hand.”
I stood up abruptly, indicating that Mycroft need stay no longer. “You don’t give me much with which to work, nor much time, Brother, but I am up to the challenge. You see to our King. I will see to this.” At the door, I mentioned, “There is one question we haven’t asked, Mycroft.”
He turned, a glint of fear flickering across his face once more. “What is that?”
“We haven’t asked the most important, the most crucial, the most critical question. Which king is it that will die?”
I saw immediately the question did nothing to allay Mycroft’s agitated demeanor. He gasped as though his breath had caught in his throat, turned abruptly more pale than before, and then slammed the door behind him.
I instantly chose to disregard the King’s safety. After all, that was Mycroft’s affair, and I left him to it. Instead, I held up the brown paper and studied it once more.
It was a scant three by five inches, jagged on three sides, and with a razor cut clean edge along the fourth. This in itself wasn’t much, as every shop used this type of paper to wrap their customers’ items. But it was the three ragged edges that intrigued me. The note had obviously been torn from a larger piece, and as I scrutinized it beneath my microscope, I noted a faint print in one of the corners.
I went immediately to my stores of chemicals and mixed a combination of powders in minute portions. Once completely blended, I darkened the room and then added several drops of hydrogen peroxide. With a gentle breath, I blew a fine mist of the mixture onto the stain.
It wasn’t long before the chemical reaction of the iron in the stain reacted with my solution, and within seconds, the spot began to glow a luminous blue. It became clear that this was blood. What shop would wrap goods that might involve blood? A butcher shop, of course.
It was late, I knew, but Mycroft had received the note no more than two hours ago. The butcher shops were closed at this hour, but that didn’t deter me. Three butcher shops later, much to the dismay of the owner, Marcot Strange, I found what I was looking for. A roll of brown paper was sitting atop his counter, wh
ere the edge met the razor, was a segment where a piece had been torn free.
Strange had recently hired a young man, he told me, a foreigner who barely spoke the language and was down on his luck. He’d desperately needed the work, he said. And so for three days the young man appeared promptly, worked diligently all day, and left in good spirits at each day’s end.
Except for today.
“What was different today?” I asked of Strange.
“The young man came in as usual and worked as usual, but at closing time, a young woman entered and whispered something to him. I saw him tear off a scrap of paper from the roll there. He dipped his finger into the cold ash of the hearth and, after marking the scrap, he gave it to the woman.”
“Can you describe her?”
“No, sir. She was dressed all in black, her face covered by a dark veil.”
“Can you describe the young man, then?”
“He is of average height, and as I said, a foreigner. He has a swarthy complexion, dark hair, dark eyes, dark facial beard, and mustache. Always wears a knit cap pulled low to his brow.”
“And his name?”
“Sam was what he said, but I knew that wasn’t right. Still,” Strange shrugged, “who am I to question?”
“Who, indeed?” I thought upon leaving the shop.
* * *
It was mid-Friday when I met Mycroft at the Diogenes Club. I gave the butler a note for him to meet me in the Stranger’s Room, the only location within the establishment where conversation is permitted.
Soon I explained to Mycroft all I had discovered thus far. To the butler, when he joined us, I asked, “The woman said nothing more?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you recall anything special or different about her?”
“No, sir.”
“No hair out of place? The smell of a perfume perhaps?”
“No, sir.”
“No rings, or jewelry of any sort?”
“No, sir. She wore gloves.”
“Ah!” I exclaimed at last. “The man does have a vocabulary!”
“There is no need to be flippant, Sherlock. These fellows are trained to be unobservant.” Mycroft chastised, then waved the butler to dismissal.
“Of course. I quite forgot how completely unobservant most people are.”
“Is that all that you have accomplished?”
“Why, Brother, you do me foul! Of course I have my street eyes and ears out. I’ll have messages waiting once I return to Baker Street, to be sure.”
Mycroft rose to leave. “Be sure!” he commanded, and waddled away.
I did have messages when I arrived. My urchins were on the tail of several women in black, and others were shadowing the man described by Strange. A full report would be in soon. But the knock at the door surprised even me. Mrs. Hudson entered, a most perplexed look on her face.
“What is it, Mrs. Hudson? I am much too busy for trivialities today.”
“A young lady at the back door told me to wait five minutes, then give you this.” She held out her hand and there, in her palm, was another crumpled piece of brown paper. I snatched it up and raced to the back door, but there was nothing to indicate that anyone had been there, for Mrs. Hudson had been sweeping the back steps when the young woman approached her. Any signs or clues had been swept away.
“I’m sorry,” she said behind me on the stair. “It was such a silly request. I finished my sweeping and then came up.”
“It’s all right, Mrs. Hudson,” I soothed, my tone as cool as I could muster, despite the seething anger that boiled inside of me. The young woman! At my very door step! And I was too late!
I returned to the sitting room and carefully unfolded the crumpled brown paper. And I must admit that this time I was completely taken aback. The sooty scrawl on the paper was smudged but readable. Leave it alone, Holmes, it said, or Dr. Watson dies. And there, at the bottom, was a black sooty imprint of a hand
I read the note again. The handwriting was the same as that of the first note when I compared them side by side. I determined that the blood smudged finger mark on the first matched that of the second. The same man!
Watson, of course, was my immediate concern, but who were these new fanatics that threatened the life of a king, yet played with such childish threats as that of a hand print?
I missed Wiggins, my Baker Street detective of old, but he’d grown up and moved on. But there were always wayward and homeless urchins on the streets willing to earn a fast shilling, and it was Toby’s step I heard upon the stair. Just in time.
“I came in the back way, Mr. Holmes. We found the woman in black. She met up with the man of your description and they be lodged at-”
“Very good, Toby. Your crew is still on watch?”
“Yes, sir,” Toby answered smartly.
“Good, good,” I said. “Then I have a new assignment for you. I want you to-”
“But-” Toby interrupted. “Sorry, Mr. Holmes, but that man with the beard didn’t return to the lodgings alone, sir. He had Dr. Watson with him.”
“I see. That changes everything.” I thought for a moment. Toby’s message clearly told me they already had Watson, which indicated that someone was watching me as certainly as I was watching them. I feared that if I made a move to rescue Watson, it might just push them to murder.
I quickly wrote a note for Toby to deliver to the telegraph office, and then told him, “Quick, boy! Downstairs, and ask Mrs. Hudson for a scrap of brown paper just like this!”
Toby scurried quickly, returning just as fast.
“This was all she had, sir.”
“It will do.” I tore the paper to the same size as that sent to me, dipped my finger in the ash of my own cold hearth, and scrawled: The King is not coming - Pull back. I had Toby lay a hand to the ash and imprint his palm on the note. After crumpling it, I told him, “Deliver this to the man or woman at the lodgings. And be quick!”
“Sir!” Toby cried, and disappeared while I shouted, “Telegraph first!” at his retreating back. I could only hope that my ploy would work and that Watson would be released unharmed. It was some time later that a paper slipped beneath my door simply stated “Done”.
Not too long after, I heard the heavy tread upon the stair.
“Sherlock!” My brother cried from the door. “Sherlock! It is finished!” He came in with a heavy relieved sigh.
“To what are you referring?”
“It is finished. There is no further need of your assistance. I have just come from a meeting with the King. He is angry, to say the least, in his feeling that he was been played the fool.”
“What are you babbling on about?” I asked, peeved at his avoidance of getting straight to the fact.
“The meeting, what else? Nicholas has changed his mind. He is refusing to come, citing internal issues of his own.”
“Ah!” I thought to myself. My telegram to Russia had arrived on time.
“Needless to say,” Mycroft continued, “King Obrenovic, the hot headed Serb that he is, turned his ship around mid-way across the Channel and returned to the Continent. The meeting is canceled. The King is safe!”
“But Watson is not,” I retorted. I showed Mycroft the note.
“But this cannot be!” he exclaimed. “I myself saw Watson through the open kitchen door downstairs, having a tea with Mrs. Hudson!”
I jumped from my chair and rushed downstairs. Sure enough, there was Mrs. Hudson with Watson.
“Hello, Holmes!” he called out to me. “I was on my way to call when Mrs. Hudson insisted I try her new blueberry scones, fresh from the oven!”
“Watson! You are safe! You are unharmed?”
“Why, what has gotten into you? You see me standing here with your very eyes. Ah! But I did hav
e an urgent sick bed to attend to, and I have a message to deliver. Quite out of the ordinary, I might add, but here it is old chap.”
Watson took from his pocket a crumpled piece of brown wrap paper and, as he handed it to me, Mycroft crept up to read it over my shoulder. The only thing on it was a black hand print.
“Strange,” Watson remarked. “Who would use such a childish symbol for a message?”
“Who indeed, Watson? Who indeed?” For he had chosen the very words that I would have used.
It was just a little over a year later when news spread from the Continent of the assassination of Serbia’s King Alexander Obrenovic and his wife Daga in their private palace, done by a secret organization of insurrectionists on the rise. It was several years later into my retirement, as I tended my bees in Sussex, that the full implication of this was realized when the headlines screamed across the world of another assassination, that of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, in the same manner - an assassination at the hands of the militant insurrectionist group that called themselves The Black Hand, an assassination that would start a bloody conflict that would encircle the globe.
The Mystery of the Missing Artefacts
by Tim Symonds
Date: August 1916
Location: A dungeon under the Dolmabahçe Palace, Constantinople
I stared up at the patch of blue sky visible through a tiny grille high up on the wall. I was a prisoner-of-war in Constantinople, left to rot in a dank cell under the magnificent State rooms of Sultan Mehmed V Reşâd, my only distraction a much-thumbed copy of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent. Near-permanent pangs of hunger endlessly recalled a fine meal I enjoyed with my old friend Sherlock Holmes at London’s famous Grand Cigar Divan restaurant some years earlier. What I would now give for such a repast, I reflected unhappily. Every detail came to mind: The Chef walking imposingly alongside the lesser mortal propelling a silver dinner wagon. Holmes ordering slices of beef carved from large joint, with a portion of fat. I chose the smoked salmon, a signature dish of the establishment. For dessert, we decided upon the famous treacle sponge with a dressing of Madagascan vanilla custard. And a Trichinopoly cigar to top it off.
The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part X Page 48