The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part IV

by David Marcum

  “Thank you, Doctor.” Lestrade’s face creased in relief, and he even grabbed my hand in thanks. “Well, to finish, I was just starting to get sick. We’d been out in the wet for days, and I’d given him my coat for a bit, because Lord knew, he didn’t have any protection. So I stayed behind, with my wolf wrapped inside the lantern and hidden in the swag-hole. Tom took the other one and told me he would leave a message on where to find it after he’d put it up safely... and that was the last I saw of him. I spent a whole day in a fever, and when I came out of it, I’d missed my rendezvous with Gregson, and all I could do was stay put and hope Tommy could find Gregson.”

  “I believe Sir Reginald originally hid both wolves back in the well, Lestrade. Who would think to look? A metal wolf cannot go walking back to its tomb! In his cleverness, Sir Reginald failed to consider that he was being followed by a shabby-genteel, who had some interesting connexions with Sir Reginald’s London Regale.”

  “How did you know?” Lestrade shouted.

  “Rees’ paper cuffs and collar were many layers of newspaper wetted together and shaped into a mold to dry stiffly. The lack of any print on the paper told me the paper was from the remnants off the large rolls of newsprint-paper on the press. Rees would have performed little chores for his collar and cuffs, pretending to be harmless whilst keeping his eyes and ears open as his mouth stayed shut. He had to have some connexions with The London Regale, and I suspect it was someone with enough status to let him have the humble bits for his dress. Was it, I wonder, your selfsame ally that falsely told Sir Reginald the well was flooded and impossible to excavate?” Holmes held out the articles in question, and Lestrade nodded with a dazed expression on his thin face.

  “It is all as you say,” he agreed. “We didn’t have time to talk. It was an awful risk, but I can see how Tommy thought. Sir Reginald stole the wolves and hid them in the well, thinking to come back when it was safe... and then we stole them out of the well. Once he realized they were gone, he sent Amscott and that brute half tore London apart looking for us... and Tommy must have figured that if he played his own trick back on him by returning his wolf to the well, it’d be safe until he could get to Gregson.” He rubbed at his head. “I tell you, every time I heard a single sound, I thought it was Tommy. I’d hoped it was Tommy. But you came instead.”

  “I am afraid so, Friend Lestrade,” Holmes said gently. “We have seen the body, and I can assure you there was nothing anyone could have done, but I can promise you his death was quick as anyone could hope for. Had you been with him, there would have been two dead men in His Majesty’s Service.”

  Lestrade looked away for a moment. “He was sticking with Gregson’s plan. At first I thought... I thought that smug, fat-handed Saxon was jumping at shadows, but then... but then I remembered that this was Gregson. He doesn’t jump.”

  “No,” I hastened to assure him, “but he was concerned enough for his men’s safety and that included you.”

  “Two wolves,” Holmes murmured. “How preposterous are the powers of my intellect, Watson! How swiftly the arrogant are lain into the dust!”

  “Here, now!” Lestrade protested feebly. “How were you supposed to know there were two? That’s a bit of a reach, isn’t it?”

  “A reach for you, perhaps! But in my arrogance I failed to remember the possibility! One may as well slam a door upon one’s entire head, if one is to eliminate one portion!”

  “Dear me,” the little professional groaned. “I’m sure I don’t know what to say to any of this. It is all I can do to keep up with what I was doing. Not to mention I had to follow Gregson’s orders on top of it.” He twisted sourly at the thought. “Might have known it would be a mix-up! Never work with a man who likes to play blindfolded chess, Doctor. It will all come to tears.”

  Part V

  Holmes and Lestrade took turns upon the telephone to send ciphered messages: Lestrade to his sworn contact within the Foreign Office in Gregson’s absence. On his behalf, I called up his family household and gave them a coded phrase that assured his wife he was alive and all was well.

  Holmes was still placing his calls as Mrs. Hudson brought up a hot tray. Lestrade accepted this gladly, but refused our offer of my old bedroom. His honour would not be satisfied for less than to catch his sleep in the same room as the Wolves, now resting inside the fireproof safe. As an old campaigner, I was better at assisting than Holmes, who cared for nothing outside a clean collar and cuffs when he was on manoeuvres.

  At long last, Holmes finished his final message and closed the telephone. It was quite late and Lestrade was sound asleep on the floor by the safe under my old carpet, with his shoes for a pillow. The Great Detective made a point of employing exaggerated care as he stepped back and forth over him on his way to tobacco, a glass of brandy, and the fireplace.

  For nearly half-an-hour, the two of us sat in silence before the fire with our cigars.

  “What are you thinking, Holmes?”

  He was slow to answer. “When Gregson asked for a guarantee, he knew you and I might not have the full implications of this covenant, Watson. I have divined his true cause and choose to remain silent. If I am to satisfy your curiosity it would be upon the promise that you will not reveal what I have to say until some distant day where the information is no longer of value. I obfuscated to Lestrade when I assured him you knew all.”

  “I would be honoured to share your confidence.”

  “And if you cannot write of this adventure?”

  “I will always have other things to write!”

  “Good man!” Holmes pulled out his pipe and tapped at the forlorn foot-wraps left upon the carpet. “Had you not been distracted by your fatigue, you would have seen I had first wrapped the bindings around our poker. I had hoped that its approximate width and height to Rees’ lost walking-stick would let me see a message. What I did not expect to see were a string of numbers.”

  “Numbers? Were they coordinates? Or a fateful time and date?”

  For answer, Holmes silently took up the wraps, and repeated his manoeuvre:

  ₤108/197/63.25

  “I cannot see through this puzzle.”

  “Nor I for a few laggard moments. It was my own fault.”

  “I do not know what you mean.”

  “Hah. I ought to have paid more attention to Lestrade years ago, back at Norwood, Watson.” Holmes rubbed his chin with a smile that was amused and thoughtful and I have never seen it save when Holmes was having a private laugh about something unfathomable and possibly philosophically ironic. “We do live in strange times, yet it is true. Lestrade was building his case then upon the falsified fingerprint - I should have seen it for what it was.”

  “I have not the slightest notion of your meaning!”

  “Gregson, Watson! The great competition between the two prize beauties of the Yard! If one is learning something, then the other will be learning it too!” At last he took pity on me. “We can depend on Lestrade and Gregson both studying-up on Alphonse Bertillon, Watson - and to study that man is also to study chemistry.”

  “Then you truly have seen something I have not.”

  “Ah, but you have, Watson. Look upon these numbers and think as a scientist who studies both organic and inorganic chemistry.”

  I stared at the grease-pencil scrawls until my brain ached, but I cannot say how the answer came to my brain save it happened swift as a thunderstroke.

  “Are those numbers from a periodic table?”

  “Aha, you see it after all!” he crowed. “Of course it is! - Ag is silver with the numerical value of 108 - he placed that number there first, exactly where one would put the pound sterling as both a pun and a clue.”

  “Sterling silver. Then the rest must be gold and copper! The last portion of numbers is his indirect way of giving us the number 4 without revealing too much!” My elation m
elted almost instantly. “But, Holmes... what does it mean?”

  “That England’s fate dangled at a thread.”

  “For three common metals? I am as excited as you are to see the hidden code, but its purpose eludes me.”

  “That is all the better. The fewer who know this, the safer rests the world. All will be revealed in its own time, but not before. Timing is the bugbear of this case, more than most, and we must be careful.” As I watched, he threw his cigar aside for his disputatious cherrywood.

  “The metals are the composition of the wolves, which makes them more valuable than either of us can imagine. Gold, silver, and copper in unknown quantities under unknown techniques. But the result would be a metal lost to us since ancient times: æs Corinthiacum, known to the schoolboy or hopeless romantic as Corinthian Bronze, an alloy of copper and electrum.”

  “If this is true, either wolf is priceless!”

  “Scientifically far and beyond calculation until the secrets are plumbed - alchemical pun not at all intended, I assure you.” Holmes growled and struck a fresh match. “Electrum in itself is vital to any country. It is highly reflective, conducts heat and electricity with above-par efficiency, and yet it is also quite malleable, resistant to corrosion, and enviably pliable to shaping and stretching. If a productive blending of copper could be created without the need to layer the metals, the end result would be an alloy uniquely suited for communications technology. War smoulders, Watson, and the hawks seek every advantage they can find - the more obscure the sources for their advantage, the better their security!”

  “Rees was murdered because Sir Reginald hoped to make mercenary use of the Wolf and sell it to a rival of England? A country that would use the knowledge to stack its odds against us in war?” It was a terrible thought, but we had seen such depraved beasts before. “I begin to dimly see Amscott’s risk. Facing a trial for manslaughter is a far lighter and preferable sentence to being caught in treason!”

  “I doubt he or Sir Reginald ever stopped to think of patriotism. All they want are the means to supply desired information to the highest bidder, even if that is an Anarchist, Dynamiter, traitor to the Crown, or even a Skoptsy! They think of money, their only country, kin, and godhood! Even if England won the bid - and the Foreign Office would have paid without a qualm - it was still forcing much-needed monies from England’s coffers to his own greed - money we can scarcely spare! And that is why this must join the rest of your collection at Cox.” Holmes kept his voice down, but he was still agitated even at the end of a successful case.

  “But there were two wolves, and we have only discussed the fate of the one.”

  “Ah, you have noticed. Well done! You are correct. The second wolf, which was clearly being kept secret, was to be Sir Reginald’s personal guarantee. Let one country or another take the half-melted specimen for their secret studies. I have said he was versed in chemistry and metallurgy, with ties to the military. What better way to aggravate a second auction to the highest depths of panic-induced bidding than to produce at the last moment a second wolf, along with the identity of the rival country’s acquisition of the first? Through it all I think, though I do not have proof, that Sir Reginald had the conceit to imagine he might discover the secret formulae for Corinthian Bronze before either well-paying country.”

  My friend’s long, pale face was even longer with his observations, and though the stem of his pipe was pressed to his lips, he was not smoking.

  “Oh, Watson, the mind of man is as cunningly twisted as any scarlet thread of murder, and this beast has many within his skull. He may yet avoid the touch of British Justice, for once confronted, he may fail to panic and protest that he was operating under a private scheme to benefit this good country.”

  I leaned forward to better see his face. “How so?”

  “It is pure imagination on my part, but my brain has conjured up a powerfully convincing scene, worthy of MacBeth, where Sir Reginald will claim that he wished only to drain the funds of our foes by having them purchase these wolves, whilst he quietly discerned the secret recipe for the Bronze on his own merit.” He sighed heavily and rapped his pipe against his thigh. “This is not a case that demonstrates my powers.”

  “I happily disagree, Holmes. Perhaps a time will come in which these events will transform from sensitive secrets to an example of your work.”

  “List it as one of my most fortunate failures of mental process. It is as much an example of my work as it is Gregson’s, for he could not openly hire me, but he could take advantage of an opportunity. That opportunity came as we smoked our pipes at the same Hammam. He set events in motion, and in his favour as soon as he acquired my services, but in the excitement of finally gaining a whiff of the Wolf, I overlooked a crucial detail: Gregson had been at the Bath-house to listen to his own informants!”

  “It is an obvious conclusion when you say so, Holmes - but many men would hesitate to make it. It would be too much like an assumption.”

  “No? That is precisely why I paused and did a little investigating upon a tangent.” Holmes steepled his fingers as he leaned back against his chair, and his eyes half-shut before the fire. “Gregson’s pipe was all the information I needed, though I did not know it at the time. I consider myself thoroughly chastised, Watson, for in my declaration of studying crime, I frequently forget that my allies are equally necessary for study.”

  “That would be a never-ending study, Holmes! Our allies are legion.”

  “And I have been neglectful. I ought to have recalled my own freely-given advice and observed them more. Gregson’s nephew, the pipe carver, has the last name of Sword. His father and brothers are indeed fine carvers of meerschaum, but his mother is as stubborn as anyone in her own family and sticks to her own trade, which is selling flowers and keeping watch in service to her country.”

  “I can scarce believe it!”

  “Did you know,” Holmes murmured, “The common name for the gladiolus is ‘Sword Lily’?”

  “I think Gregson and his family are fond of a little wordplay.”

  “None of us are perfect.” Without warning, Holmes chuckled, long and low. “That pipe was far more than his gift from a nephew, I am certain of it.”

  “I am certain of nothing now.”

  “If one was to meet with an unknown ally in an exchange of information, what would you trust? An appearance that is, shall we confess, rather bland and generic? He has no truly distinguishing features, save the little you exposed in the newspapers. He is a broad, blond, and light-eyed Saxon with all of the cool, competent arrogance known to the species.” Holmes spoke with not a little pride in this observation, for he has long been satisfied at this element in his family.

  “You are deducing the pipe was his passport. His contact would be looking for the pipe, knowing the work of the Swords?”

  “Deducing means to draw a logical conclusion by removing selected data from an equation, Watson. Here I am adducing my outcome. I have been given evidence, and thus from this I must make a decision.” Holmes laughed again, long and low, and finally long and loud. “Ah Watson! I must be more careful about making wishes. This case was everything I could have hoped... and I did not know it!”

  The following morning we accompanied Lestrade to the Foreign Office, surrounded by a small army of grim policemen who wanted nothing more than to see their Inspectors back safe at the Yard. Between the little professional and Sherlock Holmes, the visit was timed by the release of the morning papers: The Wolf of Britannia grinned in the faces of the Foreign Office Secretary in full detail through every newspaper in London, save for The London Regale.

  Gregson was released before noon. He ignored the scowling men in grey and strolled calmly from their sulking shadows with a half-smirk upon his bruised face. He had gambled mightily with powers greater than his own, and he had won. This was no dull feat of calculation, and Lest
rade did not bother to hide his relief at his safe return. The two Yarders stood on the street for a moment in silence before Lestrade offered up his cigarette-case. Gregson made a terrific face to this peace offering, but accepted one, and the two walked off as though they had just begun an ordinary day. I did not see them again until a few days later, at the funeral of Tom Rees, which Holmes honoured with full payment and burial honours. Both men were deeply moved at this gesture of kindness for their old acquaintance, but Holmes merely said that some of his debts took longer to pay.

  The half-melted Wolf’s face was secretly cut off with a fake portion welded on, and the damaged face given to the nameless mysterious scientists and chemists in the employ of the British government - of whom I understand include Holmes as their brother and use the Museum as a popular depot of information and resource. With the samples, England may well unlock the secret of Corinthian Bronze in a few years, and Holmes feels this will be with no time to spare: he has long said war is coming, and his greatest efforts can do no more than win us time. Sir Reginald’s fate was as quiet as the recovery of the artefacts: he simply disappeared without a trace, and not even Holmes was inclined to pursue “the way of Nature”, as he said it.

  And so ended a bizarre affair that began with the war between Briton and Roman, and cumulated with the descendants of these warrior-races millennia later, to prepare for a far darker battle in the future. I would grant that part of it is due to the unexpected craft of Inspector Gregson, who, faced with an impossible situation, invoked undreamt-of skills in guile. Holmes has a hunter’s appreciation for cleverness, and I believe it reassured him that the police had some small merit for their survival to demonstrate such finely plotted deception. Even into Christmas, I could not see him viewing Gregson’s image in the newspaper without laughing to himself, and lifting his battered old pipe in salute.

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