by Marvin Kaye
Enzo listened carefully.
“I saw Sutter sitting innocently, while the painting hung a few inches off level, tilted. Keep in mind, fellas, I keep that painting a particular way. I knew Armando had discovered the safe. So I threw him out. Before he walked out the door, he threatened me. ‘Watch yourself,’ he said, ‘and don’t forget, I know you have a daughter. Think it over.’ Then he left. But I’ve been so afraid for the past few days.”
Enzo slapped his knees. “Sutter’s intent is to crack your safe and steal the Chinese currency.”
Marshall thought it over. “I’ve been thinking that I should give Sutter some of the gold if it would mean he’d leave me alone. I was especially nervous today when Emily, and later, the police, showed up. If Armando Sutter knew…that’s why I sent Emily away…and then you two show up.”
“Armando Sutter has a close watch on you, Mr. Marshall.” Enzo gazed at the Giordano painting. “Sutter will make a move soon.”
Enzo’s cell phone rang and in the brief conversation, a worried look came over his face. He grabbed my arm. “That was Marianna. She said little Enzo has a bad fever. She’s taking him to the hospital.”
I placed my hand on Enzo’s shoulder. “It’ll be all right, Enzo.”
“Will you go, Jack? Go to the hospital and stay with my baby. You’re his godfather, after all.”
I wanted to do as he asked, but I wasn’t going to leave Enzo alone during this investigation. I felt danger was in the air and revulsion to leaving Enzo alone. “Listen, I love Enzo Jr. as much as you, but I’m staying. He’ll be in the hospital. He’ll be fine.”
Marshall watched Enzo with an affectionate gaze. “There’s nothing like love between a father and son,” he said, rubbing his chin.
We sat in silence for some minutes.
Marshall picked up the Chinese coin from the table and specks on it glittered. “Ah!” His eyes lit up. “I need to put this away!” He walked towards the safe.
Amid the howling of the October wind outside, the three of us heard a thumping from inside the house. Enzo and I froze.
Again we heard it. Thump!
Enzo remained calm and lifted his ear.
I knew danger was imminent. Thump! “Someone’s in the house,” I said.
Marshall hurried to the safe. “Are you sure?” he asked.
Enzo looked out the window. I breathed deeply. Enzo told me to wait behind the door. If anyone came in, I was to stop them. Marshall was busy with the safe. He punched in the access code on the small buttons. A green light sparkled to life.
Thump! The noise got louder.
He punched in the second access code. A second light turned on.
Thump!
I heard it clearly. Someone was approaching.
Thump!
Enzo backed away from the window and rushed to me. “The glasses!” shouted Enzo. “I’m so stupid.”
The sound got even louder. Thump! Thump! Thump!
Marshall pressed a button and the safe door clicked open. He kissed the coin and placed it into the safe. He eyed me and Enzo. By his feet was a leather bag full of various Chinese coins. “This is such a good safe,” he said, caressing the steel door.
Enzo spoke slowly. “You’re right. The safe is a very good one. I trust the safe. On the other hand, I don’t trust you—Armando Sutter!”
“Armando Sutter?” I yelled.
The old man snarled. He pulled his arm out of the safe and aimed a pistol at Enzo. With an innate swiftness, Enzo pulled his own gun from his coat and pointed it towards the old man. Gunshots blazed and bullets ricocheted across the room. Dust and splinters exploded, with some of it landing in my eyes. I felt a bullet whizz by my head.
“Stay down!” whispered Enzo, pressing me to the floor. He kept me down until the man emptied his gun. I wiped tears and debris out of my eyes and I smelled gunpowder. Armando Sutter was still standing by the safe, with his gun arm down. He had been shot in the arm. He stared at Enzo with hate.
Then I saw Sutter pull the knife. A rage came over me. I thought of Enzo, and his wife and child. Before I knew it, I was on top of the man, wrestling him onto his belly. Enzo rushed over and took the man’s knife and gun. I pinned the man to the floor as he moaned in agony. In the distance, sirens approached.
The police broke through the door. Emily had convinced them to do so. Enzo asked the officers for a crowbar and then enlightened a rotund man with a red mustache named Detective Borkowski as to the situation at the Marshall Estate.
“For all my suspicions,” said Enzo, “I never thought that Sutter would impersonate Mr. Marshall. Keep in mind that I never got a chance to see a photo of Armando Sutter, and Emily had actually seen her father at the window this morning, and due to that fact, I believed the man I encountered was James Marshall and not Sutter, the imposter.”
Enzo had some of the police officers open the crates scattered about the room. Most of the men crowded around us to hear Enzo tell the story.
“Mr. Vincenzo Morcelli,” said Detective Borkowski, “What made you suspect anything at all if the imposter fooled you?”
“You see,” said Enzo, “the first thing that Sutter—posing as James Marshall—did when we entered the home was search for his glasses. Armando Sutter was never searching for his glasses. He meant to pull his gun on us. Here’s how it went down:
“Prior to our arrival, Sutter was already in the process of stealing the treasure from the safe. He must have been holding his gun when he opened the safe and placed it in there while he started looting the treasure. When we rang the doorbell, he was more than likely caught off guard and quickly shut the safe—with the gun still inside—and came downstairs. We told him our reason for coming here, and he planned to invite us inside and shoot us, then go back to looting. When he went to draw the gun on us, he realized it wasn’t tucked in the waistline of his slacks, and he was left to ponder where it had gone. So he feigned losing his glasses to cover up his actions and to buy more time. You may recall, Jack, that he searched his hips and his waist and even his pants, but never his shirt, or the top of his head where most people place their glasses. Who searches for glasses on their waistline?”
Enzo shook his head. “Later I realized that the imposter who had been looking for his glasses was punching in the codes for the safe on a tiny alpha-numeric pad. How could he see those small letters and numbers if he needed glasses?
“When he said he was going to place the coin in the safe, he actually meant to get the gun; he had finally realized where it was. He nearly killed us.”
Detective Borkowski looked over his notes while three big officers restrained Armando Sutter. It was growing dark outside.
Enzo inspected all the crates the police officers had opened. He gazed in my direction, then came over, pushed me aside, and stuck the crowbar into the weathered crate on which I had been sitting. Enzo pressed all his weight onto it and it creaked open.
Inside the crate, a shirtless, portly man with short white hair and beard sat up. He was bound and gagged, and his bloody chest had been scored repeatedly with something sharp.
Enzo cut the man free. “I’m guessing Sutter used his hunting knife to maim you, Mr. Marshall. I’m sorry I wasn’t at my best today. I should’ve known he was an imposter.”
“Emily…is she okay?” asked the real James Marshall. He was barely able to speak. “That Sutter…he started torturing me this morning until I gave him…codes…didn’t want him to hurt Emily.”
“It’s all right, Mr. Marshall,” said Enzo.
One of the paramedics gave Marshall an injection of pain killers.
“The thumping noise we heard was you trying to warn us,” said Enzo.
“I was,” said Marshall, “too weak to do anything, but had energy to kick the crate.” Emily came into the room and threw her hands around her father.
Enzo turned to the detective. “Because Emily involved the police and me in this, Sutter’s situation became urgent enough to change plans; he
would torture Marshall to get the codes to open the safe, as opposed to laborious hours of safe-cracking.”
The paramedics had Armando Sutter on a gurney, ready to take him away. Enzo looked dismayed. He went to the wretched man and asked, “Why, Sutter? A man like you would know the value of this treasure years beforehand. So why didn’t you come to steal it years earlier? Why now? What is the urgency?”
Armando Sutter coughed, shaking the I.V. tubes attached to his arms.
Enzo’s eyes widened. “I should have known. From your emaciated look and pallor, and that cough. You don’t have much time left, do you?”
The scarecrow on the gurney looked away.
“But why the treasure?” insisted Enzo. “What good is money to you—unless—the man with the burned face!”
“For my son,” said Sutter. His voice was muffled by deep breathing. The paramedics dressed his wound. “When he was a boy, he came into my lab. He was a curious boy. The acid was an accident. It disfigured him for life. I did all this for my son. He hasn’t been able to do anything worthwhile in life with that burned body…that pink face…and those eyes. The least I could do was set him up with a fortune.”
A young officer appeared at the door and called to Detective Borkowski. “Detective, we caught an armed man. He was approaching the house through the woods. His face looks awful, sir.”
Borkowski leaned over Sutter’s bandaged face and said, “Looks like you and your son will spend a long time in prison.”
Sutter coughed again. “The cancer will kill me in less than a month,” he said with a woeful gaze. “I wanted to leave something for my son. But now I’ve condemned him.” The scarecrow man gazed at Emily and James Marshall, embraced in a hug. Sutter’s eyes welled with tears as the paramedics took him away.
Enzo called his wife. He then led me outside into the cool autumn evening. “Hurry up, Jack,” said Enzo. “We have to get back to the train station. My son still has a burning fever.”
THE CASE OF VAMBERRY THE WINE MERCHANT, by Jack Grochot
Our visitor at Baker Street this crisp, sunny autumn afternoon was overcome with anxiety, pacing back and forth in front of the settee and, alternately, seating himself on it momentarily, then rising to pace once more. “My dilemma,” he said with agitation to my friend Sherlock Holmes, “is profound. If I act to engage your services, Mr Holmes, it could mean her death. But if I do nothing, her life is nonetheless in danger.”
Holmes sat speechless, his bony elbows resting on the arms of the chair, his slender fingertips touched together, and his dark eyes vacant. He waited patiently for Bascomb McHugh to complete his laboured thoughts. After an elongated silence, McHugh blurted out: “Damn! It’s your advice that I need this instant. Can I pay you for that alone? I must find a way out of this predicament and protect my sweet little sister.”
As he had explained earlier, McHugh found himself in the midst of a problem that had no simple answer, and the fate of his kidnapped sister hung in the balance. She was married to Heathcliff Vamberry, a wine merchant in the Hampshire countryside west of London, and upon a visit there the day before, a Sunday, McHugh learned that the petite and comely woman was missing from her home. He questioned his brother-in-law harshly, for the two never got along, and finally came to find out that Mrs Vamberry had been abducted while alone in her house adjacent to the winery as her husband was tending to his vineyard. Vamberry discovered a ransom note, pasted together with letters and words cut out from a newspaper, on the dining room table. He reluctantly showed it to McHugh. It demanded fifty thousand pounds for Mrs Vamberry’s safe return, and it warned in bold letters:
“No coppers, else she dies.”
The crude communication instructed the husband to leave the money in a canvas sack on a bridge over the River Avon about two kilometers from the winery on Tuesday night at ten o’clock.
“And here it is, Mr Holmes,” Bascomb McHugh stated, “late in the day on Monday, and my brother-in-law has gone to the bank to withdraw his savings, which amounts to a sum of around thirty thousand pounds. I am well fixed, and I can lend him the remainder, but what guarantee do we have that my poor, beautiful sister will be unharmed?” His icy blue eyes flashed, anticipating the worst outcome. It was at this point that McHugh emphasised his profound dilemma and begged Holmes for advice.
Holmes rose and approached the mantle to retrieve a cherrywood pipe half full of shag tobacco. Ever calm in stressful situations, he contemplated briefly while he nonchalantly struck a match and inhaled the mixture. “Advice I can offer free of charge,” he told McHugh, adding: “If I were Mr Vamberry, I would send someone such as yourself to the authorities—rather than go himself, for he might be under surveillance—and allow the police to become involved, because they are experienced in delicate matters that require discreet maneuvering. If this is what he and you decide, there is no need for my involvement whatsoever.”
Sounding disappointed, McHugh exchanged farewells with Holmes and me, donned his well-brushed top hat, straightened his black silk waistcoat, smoothed the wrinkles out of his grey Harris-tweed trousers, glanced at the pocket watch on the end of a gold Albert chain, and went down the hallway steps with erect bearing toward a waiting brougham. That he was prosperous was of no doubt, but that he was a London barrister was evident only to Holmes when McHugh entered our flat.
“He seemed shocked, Watson,” observed Holmes, “that I knew his occupation, especially when I explained that it was a peculiarity of mine to surmise one’s means of a livelihood merely by appearances. If truth be known, the not-too- infrequent mention of his name in the dailies for passionately winning acquittals against Scotland Yard’s most competent inspectors gave him away when he arrived. Perhaps now that he is so close to the victims of a crime he’ll have a different opinion of the miscreants he represents and the necessity for justice. In any event, if I am not mistaken, I believe we shall see Mr McHugh again, and soon.”
That evening, Holmes and I dined at home after Mrs Hudson, our landlady, surprised us with a supper of smoked pork chops, scalloped potatoes, and a fresh spinach salad. Afterward, we walked leisurely to the Strand for a copy of the evening Globe and shared it by the crackling fireplace, commenting to each other about the articles we determined to be of notable interest. “Here is a man after my own heart, Watson,” murmured Holmes when reading a feature story. “He has taken up beekeeping in retirement and earns as much as he did as a groom by selling honey to London grocers and village neighbours.”
“The work is not as light as one would imagine, Holmes,” I countered, “and in the winter there is no profit.”
“All the same, the lifestyle is appealing,” Holmes noted, then folded the newspaper onto the armchair next to mine and began to busy himself at the deal-topped table, where he was in the middle of an experiment that required a dash of sugar and a splash of white vinegar to disguise the taste of the poison he was concocting.
“It is colourless and odourless, right where I want it, Watson,” he intoned. “Now all we need do is capture a rat behind the Chinese restaurant around the corner to test how deadly my formula can be. That it is lethal I have no worries, but the trick will be to see if it can be detected in the blood or in the organs. The result will be the subject of my next monograph.”
I was in no frame of mind to go out and trap a rat, so I retired for the night, but Holmes fashioned a box out of some loose cardboard under the table and left the apartment.
In the morning, the box was sitting on top of the table and the small beast inside was stiff as a board. Before breakfast, Holmes occupied himself dissecting the unfortunate creature and examining the innards under a microscope. After we ate, we spent the rest of the forenoon on a trip to the Great Peter Street library, where Holmes researched articles and books in preparation for his writing the monograph, while I perused The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, and The Morning Chronicle, finding very little in them to be noteworthy. On the way back to Baker Street, we spoke at length about Mc
Hugh’s problem and wondered if Mrs Vamberry was still alive. “Tomorrow we shall hear from him if all is not resolved tonight,” Holmes conjectured. “Kidnappings usually end miserably, despite the best efforts of the official police.”
At about one o’clock on Wednesday, McHugh’s carriage pulled up in front of our building, and he alighted, along with a companion, both looking sombre. As I watched from the window and described their arrival to Holmes, he put down his pen on the desk where he had been writing. “It appears last night and this morning didn’t go well,” he assumed. “I would hazard a guess that Mr McHugh has brought Mr Vamberry and they will want me to locate Mrs Vamberry in perfect health.”
We heard Mrs Hudson’s footsteps on the stairs a minute or so after the door bell had rung, and she came in to announce that McHugh and Vamberry were anxious to see Holmes immediately. “It’s about the missing woman that Mr McHugh spoke of the day before yesterday,” Mrs Hudson said. “The man with him is her husband. They are both very distraught.”
“Send them up at once, then,” Holmes directed, and thanked her for the warning. “You may leave the door open,” he said as he slipped into his green double-breasted jacket and buttoned it.
In an instant, McHugh was standing on the threshold, with Vamberry meekly behind him. McHugh waved his index finger at Holmes, as if making a point to a jury in a tense courtroom, chastising Holmes for giving poor advice. “We did as you suggested and contacted the Hampshire district’s special constable, who proceeded to make a horrible and thorough mess of an already disastrous situation,” McHugh began. “Our Phoebe is still unaccounted for and the ransom money is gone.”
“Give me the precise details of your experience, calmly,” Holmes answered unapologetically while casually offering the two guests the armchairs with his outstretched hand.