The Execution of Sherlock Holmes

by Donald Thomas

  Holmes closed the door as the man left and came into the bedroom.

  ‘Well done, Watson! A first-rate performance!’

  I looked at Gurney; I was convinced that I could have fired my revolver into the ceiling without waking him.

  ‘It was no act, I assure you, Holmes. His pulse is a little above normal. In the case of poisoning by chloroform, the rate may rise to one hundred forty or more, at which it is fatal. If it should increase now, I shall indeed summon whatever assistance is needed. He has taken a dose sufficient to put him to sleep. At least he is not one of those chloroform-eaters who prove to be suicides.’

  ‘Or victims of murder,’ said Holmes casually. ‘You will find at least three recent cases in Caspar-Liman’s Handbook of Medicine. Let us hope we can prevent anything of that kind. If someone were able to enter this room, think how easily they could pour a further thimble or two of chloroform over that sponge bag with the poor fellow already unconscious and knowing nothing further. You know how little coroners and coroners’ juries are to be depended upon. The whole thing would be put down to the dead man’s folly.’

  He withdrew to the sitting room and I could hear him moving about. I left Gurney for a moment and went into the bathroom to find the chloroform. It was necessary to calculate, if possible, what dose he might have taken. I opened the cabinet and undid the top of a dark green bottle to smell the sweet and colourless contents. A fatal dose would probably have been between four and six ounces. Not more than an ounce or two had been used from this bottle altogether, some of it perhaps on a previous night. That, at least, was a welcome discovery.

  From what little I knew of the man, I was not surprised that the rest of the cabinet contained an array of patent medicines and quack remedies. Carter’s Little Liver Pills, Beecham’s Powders, and the respectable potions of their kind rubbed shoulders with the Patent Carbolic Smoke Ball Inhaler, guaranteed to prevent influenza, Kaolin-and-Opium for the dysenteric, Propter’s Nicodemus Pills or ‘The Old Man Young Again,’ Klein’s Opening Medicine by Royal Appointment, Chocolate Iron Tonic, and goodness knows what. Holmes appeared in the doorway.

  ‘What have you found?’

  ‘Only that the poor wretch has turned his digestive tract into a druggist’s waste pipe,’ I told him. ‘At least he has not taken anything like enough chloroform to kill himself.’

  ‘Come in here,’ he said peremptorily. ‘I believe we are a little closer to knowing a useful fact or two about Professor Chamberlain. The hotel bureau was absurdly easy to open. Not least because Gurney had simply left the key to the top flap under a sheet of paper in the drawer beneath. I have always maintained that those who lock away their papers and valuables are far less fearful of thieves who may find the key than that they themselves will lose it or, more often, forget where they have put it. In this case there were no valuables in the upper section but a correspondence file and a series of letters.’

  The flap of the bureau was down, supported on the two runners that Holmes had pulled out. On the table at the centre of the room was a long cedar-wood letter box in which a series of papers had been filed in order of date. It was characteristic of Gurney’s punctilious and scholarly mind that the letters sent to him had not only been filed in order but had their envelopes pinned to them with the date of receipt written in pencil upon them. Holmes took one letter from the file, put the cedar-wood box back in the top of the bureau, and closed the flap without yet locking it again.

  I was still uneasy at the manner in which he had made free with Gurney’s possessions, but my friend had anticipated this.

  ‘It had to be done, Watson. There is a dark plot in these papers, unless I am much mistaken. What a fastidious fellow he is! Every letter kept and filed. These relate to his residence here and go back only a few weeks. When I think of my own unanswered correspondence, transfixed by a jackknife to the center of the mantelpiece in Baker Street, I become aware of deficiencies in my way of life. Look at this!’

  He laid before me a typewritten envelope addressed to ‘Edmund Gurney, Esq., The Royal Albion Hotel, Brighton.’ It was postmarked with a date several days earlier and was one of the most recent to be received. Gurney had noted its receipt in pencil with a date one day later than the postmark.

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘Now look at this.’ It was another typewritten letter also bearing the date of the postmark and a pencil date of receipt by Gurney a day later. It bore the address of ‘Marine Parade, Brighton,’ and was signed ‘Professor Joshua D. Chamberlain.’ I read it without waiting for any invitation from Holmes.

  My dear Mr. Gurney, I write to thank you for your generous letter and to express my delight that all differences between us have been resolved. I now see that they were never more than misunderstandings, for which I must hold myself entirely responsible. I should have made it plain that my performances, however much they may overlap your own more serious interests, were never meant to be more than entertainments of the kind offered by Jasper Maskelyne or the Davenport Brothers at the Egyptian Hall in London and elsewhere. You, for your part, are a well-respected investigator of second-sight phenomena and apparitions of the living. Though I maintain that Madame Elvira has remarkable abilities in respect of the former of these, I see that I must have caused you offence and for this I am truly sorry.

  I am gratified that we may now be partners rather than adversaries. It would give me great pleasure if, as you suggest, we were able to undertake a tour together in the eastern cities of the United States. Whether we should appear under the same billing, or myself as entertainer and you as the true scholar and investigator, is a matter we might discuss. The interest in your book Phantasms of the Living would be intense and I believe you would find yourself acclaimed there as perhaps you have never been in your own country. As you know, the work of Madame Elvira and myself in popularizing psychic inquiry has been nominated for an award by the Psychic Research Society of Philadelphia, though without our prior knowledge or consent. We would be honoured if it were possible for us to withdraw that nomination and to put your name forward in our place.

  My partner joins me in sending our sincere and cordial greetings.

  I looked up at Holmes.

  ‘A quite extraordinary letter. The fellow was still claiming his psychic powers last night.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said impatiently. ‘But I did not ask you to read it, Watson. Look at it! Do not read it! And look at the envelope.’

  I could see nothing. The date on the letter and the postmark were the same. Both bore a pencil date a day later, when Gurney had noted them, a few days ago.

  ‘The typing, Watson!’

  Those who have followed our adventures will recall that Sherlock Holmes quickly developed an interest in the new invention of the typewriter. ‘I think of writing another monograph some of these days,’ he had said, ‘on the typewriter and its relation to crime. It is a subject to which I have devoted some little attention.’ He believed, as he said, that ‘a typewriter has really quite as much individuality as a man’s handwriting.’

  In the present case, he took a magnifying lens from his pocket and handed it to me as I studied the black carbon lettering.

  ‘Had this correspondence been set in type by a printer, Watson, the level of the printed letters would be straight as the edge of a rule can make them. However, one can see immediately that this note was typed by bar-end letters. That is to say, capital and lowercase of each letter are at the top of a thin bar. The bars stand in a semicircle above the ribbon of the machine. When a key is pressed, the chosen bar comes down, hits the ribbon, and imprints the letter on the paper.’

  ‘There is no doubt, I assume, that this letter and the envelope were typed upon the same machine that Madame Elvira used in her performance?’

  ‘None whatever, though that is not the most significant feature. If you consult the paper that you were about to throw into the sea, you will observe certain similarities between it and these two items. Place a r
uler under this line of type, the letters e, s, a, and t drop slightly below. Whereas h, n, and m rise slightly above. The letter c drops when it is in lowercase but rises when it is a capital. That is caused by a minute variation in the metal casting of each bar that carries the capital and lowercase characters. So many parts are produced by machinery alone that any bar arm will vary minutely from the average setting. It is also evident that letters that drop are on the left-hand side of the keyboard and those that rise are on the right. That is not uncommon.’

  He looked up at me quickly, lips lightly compressed in a pantomime of calculation.

  ‘Forty bar arms carrying two characters each, each arm subject to slight variation. A further variation in casting eighty characters. The odds are easily half a million to one against two machines of the same make being identical. Add to this the wear caused to the machine by the individual user. A criminal who disguises his own handwriting has a better chance of escape.’

  It seemed to me a good deal of fuss about nothing very much.

  ‘Since Chamberlain signs the letter, it is presumably his machine. For the life of me, Holmes, I do not see what the dispute is about.’

  He stared at me.

  ‘When this matter comes before the Central Criminal Court, as I have no doubt that it will, there may be a good deal of dispute. It will not do to say that the machine is presumably his. It must be his without question. By then it may have vanished. The piece of paper that you so nearly threw into the sea may be all that will tie Professor Chamberlain to this letter and, therefore, perhaps tie him ready for the gallows.’

  ‘The gallows?’

  ‘Unless we look about us very smartly indeed. Do you not observe something psychopathic about his manner of speech? There is a man who would smile and smile—and be a villain. Now will you look at that letter and that envelope. Do not read—look!’

  I looked and still thought only that the letter and envelope seemed to have been typed on the same machine. I said so, but this was not what he wanted. At last I made the only comment that seemed warranted.

  ‘The letter is clearer than the envelope.’

  ‘Clearer? How?’

  ‘The letters are more distinct, blacker I suppose.’

  ‘Well done, Watson! The ribbon that typed the envelope is well worn. The ribbon that typed the letter is significantly less worn, though not new. It would seem that the letter and the envelope, though bearing the same date, were typed days apart—or more probably a week or two apart.’

  ‘Gurney has penciled the same date of receipt upon them.’

  ‘Such a jotting would be easy enough to imitate.’

  ‘The letter and the envelope may have been typed on the same day. The envelope was typed first, then a new ribbon was used to give the letter a smarter appearance.’

  ‘My dear Watson, I will wager you a small sum that not more than one in a hundred people usually type the envelope before the letter. Moreover, they would change the ribbon for both the envelope and letter—or for neither. In any case, this letter was not written with a new ribbon, merely a ribbon that was much less worn than when it was used for the envelope. You may depend upon it, this letter was written well in advance of the date now typed upon it. Indeed, if you will take the glass and look closely, you will see that the date, as it is typed, has a somewhat blurred appearance compared with the rest of the letter. I recognize the machine as a product of E. Remington & Sons of Ilion, New York. It is an admirable make of machine on which one may move backwards by one space and type a character again, if it has been rubbed out for correction. The date on this letter has been typed over two or three times on a worn cotton ribbon to give it superficially the same appearance as the rest of the writing done with a newer ribbon.’

  ‘Why should he write an undated letter admitting his fault to Gurney, withhold it for a week or two, then date it and send it?’

  Holmes returned it to its envelope and placed the envelope in the bureau again.

  ‘Because this letter was never sent.’

  ‘And the envelope with its stamp and postmark?’

  ‘The envelope originally contained a quite different communication, something innocuous and not ostensibly from Chamberlain. Why, then, the substitution?’

  ‘Why could Chamberlain not simply have sent the letter we have found?’

  ‘My dear Watson! This letter is utter nonsense! With our own eyes we saw Chamberlain practicing his old frauds some days after it was sent. This message of reconciliation was not intended to be read by Gurney. It was to be found by others when Gurney could no longer contradict it.’

  ‘Found by whom and when, if not by Gurney?’

  ‘His executors, no doubt, or perhaps the police authorities. This whole scheme depends upon the near certainty that once Gurney has filed away his post bag he is unlikely to consult this item again in the next few days or hours merely to reread—what shall we say?—some innocuous and dreary cutting from last Saturday’s paper.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then it will not matter, Watson. In this scheme of things, the next few days are all that Edmund Gurney has left to him.’

  I could not see murder in all this and, for the moment, dismissed it as melodrama. We looked again at the drugged and unconscious figure on the bed. He was in no danger now, but I was reluctant to leave him just yet. Holmes had opened the medicine cupboard and was going through the contents. Inspecting the pills and powders, he called out names from time to time and asked me to identify the ingredients. We went through the list, from the Carbolic Smoke Ball remedy to Propter’s Nicodemus Pills. Holmes gave a short sardonic laugh at the promise by the latter to make ‘The Old Man Young Again.’

  ‘And by what means is that to be accomplished?’

  ‘Chicanery and imposture,’ I said, coming into the bedroom for fear of waking Gurney. ‘I have had patients who take these and many other cure-alls. They are ineffective but usually harmless. You will see that Propter’s Nicodemus capsules contain a tonic dose of arsenic, but you could eat an entire box of them and not suffer the least harm. They have a pinch of aphrodisiac cantharides, but not enough to make the old man any younger than he was before.’

  Holmes drew an envelope from beside the bottles. It contained slips and receipts from the firms that had supplied Gurney through the post with the nostrums of the hypochondriac. He had no doubt kept these scraps of paper so that the addresses were to hand for his next order. ‘The Carbolic Smoke Ball Company begs to assure its clients that £100 has been deposited with the City and Suburban Bank to be paid out to any who shall suffer influenza for six months after using the smoke ball three times daily before breakfast during four weeks.’ ‘Learmount’s Patent Chocolate Iron Tonic is best taken in warm water upon rising. A further tablespoonful may be administered before retiring. It is entirely safe for children at five years of age.’

  Kaolin-and-Opium of Hackney Downs and Propter’s Nicodemus Pills of Fortess Road, Kentish Town, both contained a leaflet of praise from various invalids throughout the country whose health, if not their lives, had been saved by resorting to these concoctions. Propter’s added a circular to long-established clients, accompanying a complimentary box of twenty ‘improved’ capsules, ‘designed to prevent the nighttime restlessness that may previously have been consequent upon their use. To obtain this effect, it is of the utmost importance that the capsules should be taken in the order indicated, twice daily.’

  ‘At any rate,’ I said, looking into the box, ‘he can come to no harm from these, for he has taken eighteen of the twenty already and there is another box unopened.’

  We went back to the sitting room and occupied the two armchairs. It was close to the hour when Gurney might safely be left to sleep off the remaining effects of the chloroform. I proposed to read a lecture to him in the morning on the folly of meddling with anaesthetics.

  ‘As for that last letter of Chamberlain’s,’ I said to Holmes, ‘we can hardly discuss it with Gurney,
unless you choose to confess to having broken open his bureau.’

  ‘There was no breaking,’ he said indifferently. ‘However, as you say, it is not a matter for discussion. I think we must take the fight to the enemy. Tomorrow morning we shall have Chamberlain’s lodgings at the Marine Parade apartments in our sights and we shall not lose him from that moment on. I require to know everything about him—where he goes, what he does, who keeps him company. For that, I shall need your assistance. It is too easy for a man to give the slip to a single pursuer. Chamberlain is a most dangerous, I would almost say pathological, villain. I do not believe that he would stop at murder, if it truly suited his purposes. Do not tell me, Watson, that I am neglecting Miss Effie Deans. I swear that the solution to that poor girl’s difficulties lies somewhere in all this.’

  It was almost two o’clock in the morning before we summoned the manager to assure him that Edmund Gurney was in no danger and might safely be left. The courteous Italian was effusive in his thanks and assured me that whatever was in his power by way of obliging me for my help should be done. Prompted by Sherlock Holmes, I said there was one thing. On no account must Mr. Gurney be asked to leave the hotel until I had had the chance of a serious discussion with him. I undertook that I would settle the matter before the following night and would, I trusted, put paid to his pernicious habit of self-anaesthesia. I think the gaunt maitre d’hotel, with his pale features and black suiting, was a little uneasy at this, but he assured me that everything should be done as I instructed.

  4

  Holmes and I returned to our suite at the Royal Albion a little after two in the morning. I had earned a night’s rest and wanted no assistance in dropping off into a profound sleep as soon as my head touched the pillow. It seemed to me that this had lasted for no more than an hour or so when I was roused by a sudden tugging at my shoulder. I woke to find the electric light full on and Holmes standing over me, his face shining with energy. Before I could ask him whether Gurney had taken a turn for the worse, he said: