"And you are convinced he is involved in this affair?"
"Yes. He now knows me well enough to fear my powers though how can I call them powers when my wits have deserted me? Two months in Cornwall, and the Empire at risk!"
He remained plunged in gloom until the train steamed into Paddington station. I shall long remember his long figure hunched at my side as if to spur the cab the faster to Baker Street. On entering the familiar rooms, he did not even wait to remove his ulster (for although it was May, the cool night air had been chilly) and despite the late hour plunged towards the tidy but huge piles of newspaper carefully stacked by Mrs Hudson.
Seldom have I felt more useless. No sooner had I read and absolved a newspaper of containing anything to do with our current problem than Holmes would seize it from me to ensure
I had missed nothing. After three hours I could endure no more and retreated to my bed for what remained of the night. I left
Holmes surrounded by newspapers, now in untidy heaps all around him, and occasionally scribbling a note on a pad. When I awoke in the morning, he was still where I had last seen him, red-eyed but still alert.
"I have it, Watson." He pushed the pad towards me.
I stared at his work in horror. It consisted merely of childish doodles; circles, squares, dots, crosses, and pin men and women. "Holmes, my dear fellow, what is this?"
"Hah!" he cried, as he saw the expression on my face. "You believe I have over-indulged in the syringe! No, my dear fellow.
See, this may be the saving of us." He thrust a copy of the Daily Mail before my eyes, stabbing with his finger at a message on the front page personal column. The issue was dated 9 March.
"The circle contains a stop," I read. "A cipher, Holmes?" I tried once more.
"You think of nothing save cryptograms, Watson. No, no, this explains why we may yet be in time. There is nothing more until the messages resumed early this month." He placed a second sheet before me.
"Turpin has a dog," I read. Against it, in Holmes's neat handwriting, was written: "issue of 6 May." Underneath were
more senseless jumbles of words. "Cupid strikes the right fox
four times"; that was the issue of Monday, the 10th. Thursday the 13th bore the legend: "The smiling cook bears a cross".
Friday the 14th: "The pinman and the pageboy take nine paces", and yesterday's, the 18th, the day of our return: "The circle has a cross."
"Surely you are mistaken, Holmes? I have passed over many such messages in the personal columns. Why pick upon these?"
"My dear fellow, have you no eyes?" He thrust under my nose the sheet of doodles to which I have already referred. "We
await only the time of our rendezvous. The date we have."
He paced the room in a state of combined exhilaration and disquiet, ignoring my request for further enlightenment. "Thank God we are in time."
"You speak in riddles, Holmes."
"Cannot you see," one finger impatiently jabbed at the doodles. "Well, well, perhaps you cannot. Argot, my dear Watson,
is a language even more worth studying than the Chaldean, and of more practical use. Consider what profession our Baroness follows."
"Lady-in-waiting?"
"Burglar, Watson. She has joined the underworld, what more natural than that she should amuse herself with burglar's argot? How often have you passed a garden fence with such childish scrawls chalked upon it? Frequently no doubt, and thought nothing of it. Yet such scrawls are the living language of two groups of outsiders in our world, burglars and tramps. Each has their own code — yes, Watson, your code at last, but these marks are the code of the illiterate. Since prehistoric times, drawings in simple form have portrayed messages left for those that come after. A burglar or a tramp goes about his trade with the same dedication as Mr Didier for his. Where the latter collects ingredients, our lawless and vagrant friends deal in information: which servants have been squared, for example."
"Ah! The cook bears a cross."
"You excel yourself,Watson," Holmes murmured. "Similarly they convey how many live in the house, whether there are dogs, how many servants, the best means of access; tramps have a similar code, more concerned with what their brethren might expect from the house. Here before us is all we need to know."
"Turpin?" I enquired.
"An exception, but simple enough. An acquaintance with the Dover Road should tell you that Turpin is associated with The Old Bull coaching inn on the summit of Shooter's Hill in Kent. Hence the reference to a dog. The old Old Bull no longer exists, but a new hostelry of the same name stands there."
"The meeting is there?"
"No, Watson, no. 'Cupid strikes the right fox four times' ." He pointed to the doodle of an arrow with the figure 4 written by it. "At the foot of Shooter's Hill stood the old Fox in the Hill public house, conveniently close to the gallows to whet the lips of the onlookers. Both are now vanished, but again a new public house stands close to the old. The hill is lined with villas and I have little doubt that the fourth on the right from The Bull is our place of rendezvous and that therein works a cook who will no longer qualify for the title of faithful retainer. She has been squared, and the gentleman and male retainer of the household step out at nine o'clock, we are informed."
"And the day, Holmes?" I was by amazed at the depth of my friend's knowledge of the underworld.
" 'The circle has a cross'. A tramp sign conveying that the householder is religious. A little more obscure, but let us take the religious connection. We lack a date and Ascension Day is tomorrow, Thursday the 20th."
"Suppose it implies Whitsun?"
"Would the gentleman of the house then leave it at nine o'clock? He would be in church or at breakfast. No, no, it is tomorrow, and surely today the last piece of the jigsaw must fall into our hands."
At this moment Mrs Hudson brought in the daily newspapers and with an eager cry Holmes sprang across the room to receive them from her hands. Mrs Hudson cast one look at the state of the room, then wisely departed without comment.
"I have it! See here,Watson.The cross gains a leg." In triumph he added it in pictorial form to his list. "Eleven o'clock."
"Should we not ask Lestrade to seek out the Baroness?"
"And lose the only hope we have of recovering the letter? No, Watson, we shall attend this auction sale. We are permitted to bid any sum, but I have other plans — I recommend you bring your pistol."
His pipe then claimed his attention, and it was not until the cab was taking us to Charing Cross station that I was able to ask Holmes why the Baroness had gone to so much trouble to disguise the rendezvous.
He answered readily enough. "Because I know our good friend Lestrade is hot on the track of both the Baroness and Meyer, though he has orders not to take them up. Why else did the first message, 'The circle contains a stop' appear? It conveys: `Danger of being quodded'. The Baroness feared arrest and that is what gave us our second chance, Watson, the delay between the messages. There must be no question of failure now."
We descended from the London, Chatham and South-Eastern Railway train at half-past ten at Blackheath station, whence it was but a short drive up from the village to the wild heathland and the Dover Road, and then to Shooter's Hill. All conversation had ceased, and one might well have imagined us
as Scarlet Pimpernels in a desperate race to Dover. Indeed, our own mission was of even more importance. Our driver halted at an old mounting block near the summit of the hill and no
sooner was he paid than Holmes was striding eagerly down the hill back towards London, ignoring the dust thrown up by
passing vans and carriages. A milk cart swayed dangerously
near, its measuring cans almost catching my friend, and its driver grinning infuriatingly. The air was sweet and fragrant
after the smoke of London, and in the villa gardens late tulips, giving way to the blue and purples of May, made a pretty sight after the grimy and blackened buildings bordering the streets of London.
door of a sizeable villa. I struggled to keep abreast of him, but
by the time I reached the door he was already rapping upon it for the second time. When no answer came, he thrust it open,
having found it unlocked. I patted the pistol in my pocket for reassurance, as I followed him in. There was something about the place I did not like. Perhaps it was its silence, its grey coldness. We walked into a surprisingly large and airy kitchen, and the sensation of an empty house intensified.
"We are somewhat early," I commented, merely for the sake of breaking the silence to counter my unease.
"Hush." Sherlock Holmes walked through into the main house, and hard on his footsteps, I came to the parlour door. This too was open.
The house was empty of life indeed, but the appalling sight that met our eyes told us that life had not long fled from it.
My hand was at my pistol even as my eyes took in the terrible
scene before us. Sprawled on the Persian rug before the hearth was a woman's body, clad in black bombazine, and its sightless,
staring eyes turned horribly towards us; blood covered the
carpet and was splattered on the walls. There was no weapon to be seen, only a profusion of blood to suggest a stab wound
in the chest. But there was worse. By the window overlooking
the rear garden lay the body of another woman. This one was of a somewhat younger woman, perhaps forty, old for the mob
cap and print gown she wore. The maid had died in the same appalling way as her mistress, whom I presumed to be the cook-housekeeper. I hurried to confirm what I knew must be the case, that there would be no pulse to be found in either.
"Is there life, Watson?"
"In neither, Holmes," I replied quietly, rising to my feet after a brief examination of both bodies. "What devilry is this? To stab the housekeeper and the maid?"
He made an impatient gesture. "You see, but you do not observe, Watson. This may well be the housekeeper, but that is no serving maid. What maid could afford such kid boots, or keep her hands in such fine condition? See the nails — and this." Gently he removed the cap and long, well-cared for auburn tresses tumbled from it. "No maid's face either, Watson. It is that of an adventuress who has lived by her wits these last few years and now died by another's. The Baroness did not deserve such a fate, of that I am sure. The maid's outfit was doubtless to give her anonymity until she could be sure of the identities of any bidders."
"And the letter?"
Holmes shrugged. "We can search, but we will not find. You will have noticed my silence on the way here. I had reasoned that the cross with the leg indicated eleven o'clock, since nine o'clock, with the leg on the other side, would hardly have been practical with the man of the household leaving at that precise hour, a deduction which the Baroness was fully capable of appreciating I would surely make. We were meant to arrive too late, Watson."
"She would hardly have connived at her own murder, Holmes," I protested.
"The game was planned to a different end, Watson. Had Meyer not been the evil monster he is, I have little doubt we should have arrived, only to have the cook hand us a note from the Baroness mocking us for our tardiness. As it is —" He broke off, as the door opened behind us.
"Good morning, Mr Holmes, Dr Watson." Lestrade's eyes went to the bodies. "A pretty pickle," he remarked after a moment.
"Meyer has preceded us both, Lestrade. I have no doubt that a certain rotund milkman I observed on his cart was he."
"Shall I set my men after him, Mr Holmes? We can hold him and search his house."
"And he will have the letter safely stowed elsewhere. He must hand it to his European masters."
"Every port will be watched. Even callers to the Legation." "Good, good," Holmes muttered absently.
"Suppose he sends it to von Holbach by mail or smuggles it by boat?" I asked.
"Such a prize is too valuable for that," Holmes replied. "No, he will hand it over personally."
"Then it won't be in Germany," Lestrade declared stoutly. "And we'll be watching lest von Holbach comes here, and hold him."
"On no account do so, Lestrade. Von Holbach is known to us, an agent who would then doubtless be sent would not be. Let the game continue."
The days then weeks passed, while Holmes fretted. The newspapers carried a short paragraph about an unfortunate stockbroker who had returned to find his home full of police constables, and his cook together with a total stranger, who was as yet unidentified, lying murdered on his floor.
As June opened, a heightened sense of excitement swept through London as it prepared for Her Majesty Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee on the 22nd of the month. Carpenters were already at work on a huge stand in Whitehall, another in the churchyard of St Martin's Church, and a colossal one by St Paul's churchyard. Large sums were being demanded of the visitors now flocking into London from all quarters of the globe, for space at windows. From the eleventh of the month when the official programme was published, the sole topic of conversation wherever one walked or dined was Jubilee Day. Everywhere, that is, save in our Baker Street rooms, where my friend paced in silence save for a few days when he disappeared, and, I suspected, disguised as a beggar or postman, tramped the streets of London in search of his prey.
Even Mrs Hudson's patience wore thin, as the air became thick with smoke, and meal after meal was returned uneaten. Pursuing the fiction of his illness, he avoided going out save in disguise, keeping the curtains drawn much of the time.
Of Adolph Meyer there was no sign whatsoever. Lestrade swore he had not left the country, but he was not to be found in London. His servants professed not to know his whereabouts. A watch on the Legation ensured he had not sought sanctuary there. Towards the end of the week of the 13th, decorations began to blossom all over the city, transforming grey stone into a veritable bower of flowers and coloured flags. Favours sprouted in buttonholes and hats, and bicycles and carriages streamed with red, white and blue.
Returning to Baker Street late on Saturday the 19th, I found to my relief that Sherlock Holmes was at last disposed to talk. "Sir George visited me today. Watson, he has come."
"Who, Holmes?"
"Von Holbach himself. He lodges at the Legation. He has no official invitation, of course, for his master's regrettable severing of friendly relations between his nation and ours at Cowes in 'ninety-five means that not only can he not cross the Channel, but his eminence grise is not officially welcomed here either."
"Then when Meyer goes to deliver the letter, we have him."
"He would be arrested before he pulled the bellrope. No, he will seek some other means." Holmes picked up his violin and I knew we were in for another long spell of waiting, though the sands of time were running out fast.
My friend's violin droned on that evening and again on the Sunday morning, the usual sign of great pressure bearing upon him. The hot, stifling air around us in the darkened rooms bore insupportably in upon me. "Holmes," I cried, "at least play some recognizable tune."
A screech from the fiddle. "Tune,Watson?" my friend replied icily. "What could my poor violin choose to please you? "God save the Queen" might be appropriate. Or a Sousa march? The Ride of the —Watson!" he exclaimed, "I have not been using the wits God granted me." In a moment, the violin lay disregarded on the table as his eyes took on the gleam with which I was so familiar.
"I grow dangerously near that practice of which our friend Mr Didier might approve, but I have always distrusted, that of assuming an end as yet unsupported entirely by fact. We have very little time left to us. Logical deduction is our only hope. The Times of yesterday, if you please, Watson, and the Jubilee programme you so kindly purchased for Mrs Hudson."
When I returned from my errand, having promised to return the booklet to her possession, he snatched the programme from my grasp, and after a few moments' perusa
l cried: "Come Watson, you will need your best straw hat, your smartest cane, and that unfortunate blazer you purchased for boating."
"Where are we bound, Holmes?" I asked eagerly, relieved beyond measure that at last we were taking action. "Shall I have need of my pistol?"
"To take a solitary turn round St James' Park, Watson?" he jested. "I trust not. Though you go alone, the ducks are not thought to be a hazard."
My hopes fell. I was in no need of a constitutional walk, but of a resolution of this affair. However, he was in no mood to bandy words; he was set upon my taking this walk.
"Very well, Holmes," I agreed, albeit reluctantly.
"Good old Watson. And after your stroll, I recommend to your earnest attention the concert advertised to begin at the St James's Park bandstand at noon."
"Concert, Holmes? Good heavens, how can I think of music at such a time as this?"
"What more obvious place for us to meet, my dear fellow?"
Relieved that Sherlock Holmes had indeed some plan in mind, I took a cab to the Birdcage Walk entrance to the park and had it not been for the urgency of the dark situation in which we were placed, would have enjoyed my stroll in this delightful park, now crowded with Jubilee visitors. Children bowled hoops in and out of the promenaders round the lake, sweethearts floated in a blissful world of their own, flowers spread a carpet of colour before my eyes, and as I crossed the bridge the sun chose to appear. The weather had been capricious for some time, but nothing could dim the enthusiasm of these crowds.
I obediently took my seat at the bandstand, towards the back of the rows of seats as befitted my cavalier holiday appearance. A travelling ice-cream vendor wheeling his bicycle passed by, as I looked anxiously for Sherlock Holmes. There was no sign of him. The front rows were filled with those of high social standing, amongst whom the ticket-seller was now moving, a rough-looking fellow despite his peaked cap and crumpled navy uniform. The German band, usually resident in Broadstairs in Kent, was already preparing to play by the time the ticket collector reached me; I handed over the sixpence demanded of me, my thoughts elsewhere.
The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures Page 48