by J. R. Trtek
“I see. And so this will not be the conclusion.”
“Far from it,” said Holmes. “It is but the end of the first act, and any bows we take tonight will not be our final ones.”
Later that evening, Holmes and I returned to the promontory of the Ruff and once more posted ourselves behind the great rhododendron. Lights shone from Trafalgar Lodge through the darkness, and as stars twinkled above, we were greeted by Hannay, Magillivray, and Scaife, who arrived at the head of a contingent of police, which also included Inspectors Hartley and Carter.
“They’ve not yet left, I hope,” Hartley said quietly.
“They remain inside,” answered Holmes, “though I expect them to make their move shortly.” He looked at Richard Hannay. “Are you certain you wish to take the lead in this?” the detective asked. “The inspectors and Sergeant Scaife can do so instead.”
“Yes,” said Inspector Carter. “We can handle the chore, Mr. Hannay.”
“You know,” the South African said, “I feel as if I am the greatest fool on earth, yet it is something I know I must do, after all that has happened—after Scudder, the milkman, Turnbull the roadman, the innkeeper, and Sir Harry. All of them—and all of you.”
Inspectors Magillivray, Hartley, and Carter nodded silently.
“I believe it’s getting on near ten o’clock,” Hannay declared. “When should I go to the door?”
“Once we see several lights dim,” Holmes replied.
A quarter hour later, we saw four windows go dark in turn. At a signal from Magillivray, Sergeant Scaife and a portion of the police contingent moved to the rear of the villa and crept slowly and silently onto the tennis lawn, to crouch behind benches and chairs. The three inspectors and their remaining constables, along with Holmes and myself, watched Hannay calmly approach the front of Trafalgar Lodge.
As he reached for the gate, the door to the front of the villa opened, and three silhouettes stepped onto the porch, only to confront our companion.
“Halloa,” Hannay said firmly. “I take it one of you is Mr. Appleton?”
“Yes,” replied the old man, and I thought I detected a sense of shock and strain in the voice. “I am just leaving with my nephew and a friend of his. I am afraid I cannot meet with you at present, whoever you are. If you have business with me, might you simply leave your card inside, Mister….?”
“Richard Hannay. We have met before, of course, and I guess you know my business.”
“Not really,” said Appleton. “I haven’t a very good memory, you see. I’m afraid you must tell me your errand, sir, for I really don’t know it.”
“Well then,” Hannay said, “I have come to tell you that the game’s up. I have in my coat a warrant for your arrest—the arrest of all three of you, in fact.”
“Arrest?” said Appleton in a shocked voice. “Good God, for what?”
“For the murder of Franklin Scudder in London.”
“I never heard the name before.”
The youngest of the three, the one who had arrived on bicycle, spoke up. “That was the man murdered in Portland Place,” he said. “I read about it. Good heavens, Mr. Hannay, or whatever your name is, you must be mad. Where do you come from?”
“Scotland Yard.”
There was a long pause. Then the third man, the plump one, had his turn. “Don’t get flustered, Uncle,” he said cautiously. In a most smooth and resonant voice, he declared, “It must all be a ridiculous mistake, but these things happen sometimes, and we can easily set it right. It won’t be hard to prove our innocence. I was out of the country when that murder occurred. Bob here was in a nursing home, and you were in London, yes, but you can explain what you were doing.”
“Right, Percy,” the old man replied, his tone now soothing and confident. “What was the date of that crime? Could it have been the day after Agatha’s wedding? I came up in the morning from Woking and lunched at the club with Charlie Symons. Then—oh yes, I dined at Fishmongers’ Hall.89 I remember, for the punch didn’t agree with me, and I was seedy next morning. Hang it all, there’s a cigar-box I brought back from that dinner.”
He stepped back onto the porch of the villa and opened the door.
“Come, Mr. Hannay,” coaxed Appleton. “Step inside with me. I can show it you.”
I found myself now almost believing the old man and certain our hunt for the German spies had gone astray. Then, as I tried to turn my opinion back the other way, I saw Hannay reach into his pocket. There was a dull gleam as he pulled out an object between his fingers and lifted it to his lips.
The shrill cry of a police whistle pierced the night, and the constables who stood beside us suddenly surged forward. I saw Appleton lurch toward Hannay and knock him to the ground before dashing back into the house.
“Schnell!” the old man rasped from the porch. “Das Boot, das Boot!”90
His two companions leapt for the railed entrance to the beach stairs. Inspector Hartley tripped the younger one, however, and he and two constables collared the fellow with ease. The plump man named Percy, however, made it to the staircase, locked the gate behind him and rushed down the cliffside.
Appleton stumbled inside, just a step ahead of Magillivray and Carter. Holmes and I reached the open doorway an instant later and looked into the entry, where we saw the two inspectors on the floor, their arms locked round the legs of Appleton, who remained standing but had reached out to brace himself against a wall.
Scaife and his fellows, who had been stationed behind the villa, came running through from the back of the house, accompanied by screams from the servants. Appleton, still on his feet but held at the ankles, hobbled a short distance, extended his left hand, and gripped a bell pull, which he yanked again and again.
“Ha!” the old man cried as Magillivray and Carter finally pulled him to the floor.
We all heard a low rumble. Turning round in the open doorway, I saw a murky cloud of dust erupt from the shaft of the rocky stairway.
“He is safe,” Appleton declared from his prone position, his eyes blazing. “You cannot follow him. He is gone; he has triumphed. Der schwarze Stein ist in der Siegerskrome!”91
I stared at him, taken aback, for what I saw before me now was nothing like the pleasant old English gent who had been playing tennis or calmly reading his paper on the edge of the Ruff. I saw that, as Hannay had described, his eyes were hooded like a hawk’s, and in my perception the man was transformed into a vicious predator suddenly held captive, those raptor eyes holding all of us in contempt.
“There, there,” said Scaife, who assisted Magillivray and Carter in hoisting our foe to his feet. The sergeant clamped handcuffs onto Appleton’s wrists and declared, “We’ve got news for you, Fritz.”
“I’m afraid that’s true,” said Hannay, who stood behind Holmes and me in the doorway. “The Ariadne has been in the hands of the British Navy for the past two hours. When your friend rows or swims out to her, it won’t be to freedom.”
The old man looked up at Hannay and, at the same time, noticed Holmes for the first time.
“You!” he said, staring at my friend. “Die Biene mann.”
“Yes,” said Holmes, who took two steps toward the elderly German and bowed slightly. “The bee man.”
* * *
77 In The Thirty-Nine Steps, this individual’s name is given as Royer.
78 This should not be confused with Queen Anne Street, the location of Watson’s residence. Queen Anne’s Gate was a housing development between St. James’s Park and Westminster.
79 In The Thirty-Nine Steps, the surname given is Czechenyi.
80 One of Holmes’s grandmothers was a sister of the French painter Émile Jean-Horace Vernet. The detective’s quantifying remark suggests that her husband was of a different nationality.
81 The Wash is a square-shaped bay on the east coast of England, where Norfolk meets Lincolnshire. The town of Cromer, previously mentioned as the northern boundary of the area under consideration, lies near the
Wash.
82 Clapham is a district of South West London.
83 In Hannay’s account as related in The Thirty-Nine Steps, it is the war minister who interrogates the coastguard officer. But then, Watson’s narrative diverges significantly from Hannay’s in this chapter.
84 In The Thirty-Nine Steps, the name used is Bradgate. In reality, the coastal town referred to was probably Broadstairs, which lies eighty miles east of London.
85 Magillivray refers to the Royal Yacht Squadron, founded in 1815 and based at Cowes. Member ships of the Squadron are allowed to fly the White Ensign of the Royal Navy instead of the merchant Red Ensign flown by most ships registered in the United Kingdom.
86 This is a reference to dueling scars, seen as a badge of honor among upper-class German and Austrian university students of the time.
87 Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name of Lewis Carroll, wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, in which there appears the oft-quoted phrase, “curiouser and curiouser,” a line uttered previously in the narrative—in a somewhat different sense—by innkeeper Ewan Clark. Of interest, perhaps, is Watson’s reference to “your late Reverend Dodgson.” This could suggest either that Holmes was an avid reader of Carroll’s work or that the detective had been personally acquainted with Dodgson, perhaps as a client or even student, since Dodgson lectured at Oxford, which Holmes may have attended, until 1881.
88 Sherlockian devotees will, no doubt, recognize portions of this conversation as appearing in “His Final Bow,” though in somewhat different form and context.
89 This building is the headquarters of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers, one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. A trade association derived from one of the city’s medieval guilds, the company originally had a monopoly over the sale of fish in London. Today it oversees the quality of seafood imported into the City, as well as acting as an educational charity. See also footnote 41.
90 “Quick! The boat, the boat!”
91 “The Black Stone is in the crown of victory!”
CHAPTER TEN: ANOTHER BOW
I glanced across at Sherlock Holmes from behind the steering wheel of the Fox Type-V that his brother Mycroft had provided me in London. Harwich was now miles behind us as we raced toward my friend’s South Downs cottage on the way to our final destination: Von Bork’s headquarters on the Essex shore.
“There is no reason to fret,” I said yet again, repeating my assurances of the past month, weeks during which the Continent had slid closer to the abyss of war as Britain watched. “You realise that, do you not?”
“The man escaped,” Holmes muttered.
“The man drowned,” I asserted.
“Have you a body with which to convince me?”
Holmes sat beside me, bundled in a riding coat with arms crossed. His wan expression was of the kind I had witnessed altogether too often during our many years together in Baker Street.
“I should have insisted on having a boat of our own stationed at the base of the Ruff,” he said glumly. “It was a sorry case of misjudgement.”
“But no one was seen wading ashore in the area that night,” I said. “Surely the plump man lies below the ocean—or floats dead atop it—as we speak.”
“And why is my brother Mycroft as sceptical as I of that hypothesis?”
I fell silent and gave my full attention to the road once more. While carefully steering round a horse cart and then avoiding an obstinate procession of geese, I said at last, “We should not yet give up hope.”
“Our worries have only increased,” Holmes said. “In addition to the elusive third head of Cerberus, we now must believe that the plump man has escaped with those naval secrets still in his head, and there is also a mole in our midst.”
“I beg pardon?”
“That is Sir Walter’s characterisation of the person or persons who let the Black Stone know that the meeting with Reyer was changed,” said the detective disconsolately. “‘A snivelling German mole with tunnels running the length of Whitehall,’ was how Bullivant put it.”92
“No doubt he or they will be caught as well.”
“We will see. The fact remains that our plump man, the Home Fleet mobilisation plans in his head, is roaming somewhere between here and Germany, if he is not already in Berlin.”
“And no one is aware of that, other than a very small number of people,” I said idly.
“Yes, not even Hannay was told the man slipped through our fingers.” Holmes grunted and then slouched in his seat. “Well,” he said, “at least you are getting an opportunity to judge the value of this American motorcar that has come to so fascinate you. Do you intend to trade your present vehicle for it?”
“It is entirely possible,” I replied. “She runs like a dream, just as Blenkiron predicted.”
My friend gave a discontented grunt as he turned away to gaze at the passing scenery, and little more was said until the motorcar had passed well into Sussex. We drove through the village of Foulworth and on to Holmes’s cottage, which was situated upon the southern slope of the Downs, commanding a magnificent view of the Channel. The coastline ran on as chalky cliffs, the Ruff of Broadgate multiplied manyfold.
As we approached Holmes’s residence, I saw to one side of the cottage the expanse of his apiary: a rectangular bee yard containing several rows of hives. And there, in the midst of it all, stood Sherlock Holmes.
“What is happening?” I asked as I brought the motor to a stop just short of the house. I slowly opened the door and stepped onto the ground, my eyes still locked upon the figure working patiently among swarming bees.
“Am I losing my mind?” I turned toward my friend, who had also left the vehicle. “Please tell me—”
“Perhaps someday we will learn how to replicate ourselves fully formed,” Holmes said with a chuckle. “But the explanation of your current confusion is child’s play, Watson. What is the only possible answer?”
“I am seeing an impersonator.”
My friend led me toward the apiary as the Holmes doppelgänger closed a hive box and turned toward us.
“The intent is to make others believe you are still here,” I said. “To have them think you are in Sussex, tending your bees, rather than flitting about Britain as an agent for Westminster.”
“You see?” my friend said. “You grasped it all in an instant. Yes, Mycroft and Bullivant were most insistent that there be no suspicion I had signed on with them, and so they recommended that this young chap attempt to portray me.”
“He does not appear all that youthful to me, nor all that different from you,” I remarked as we drew nearer the man, who was removing his protective gear. Indeed, as we continued to close on him, I kept seeing the very image of my friend, down to the walking gait and drape of his clothing.
“The fellow was skilled at disguise when he began this assignment,” said Holmes, “and with what additional knowledge I have imparted to him in the meanwhile, he has now become among the best at impersonation—and a rather admirable beekeeper as well. Ah, my dear Arbuthnot, how fares the flock?”
“Hale and hearty, Mr. Holmes. Hale and hearty,” the man replied.
He was tall, like Holmes, and possessed the same type of lean, high-boned face as the detective. As I studied him at close quarters, however, I noticed that the man’s eyes were brown and spritely, almost like those of a girl.93 That expression dissolved the illusion of Holmes at last, and I now perceived him as a different individual. Mentally casting aside his disguise, I judged him to be perhaps thirty years of age.
“Come then, and meet Dr. John Watson,” said Holmes. “Watson, this is Sandy Arbuthnot.”
“Actually, Ludovic Gustavus Arbuthnot,” corrected the man. “However, ‘Sandy’ does just fine. I have been waiting forever to meet you, Doctor.”94
I detected a slight Scottish tinge in his speech, and as we shook hands, I also noticed for the first time how brown was his skin.
“How are you?” I said.
“You have been beyond England, I perceive.”
“Very good, Watson,” said Holmes, patting me on the back. “Young Arbuthnot is in fact widely travelled—openly, as an honorary attaché at various embassies, but also clandestinely—and often atop camels, I understand.”
“I’ve done some work in Arabia, the Balkans, and Anatolia for Sir Walter Bullivant,” Arbuthnot explained as we ambled toward Holmes’s cottage. “Very little that Greats at Oxford95 prepared me for, but I hope I have fulfilled the expectations of the Secret Service.”
“Sir Walter has always spoken highly of you,” Holmes assured him. “It was he who recommended you for this assignment, remember—an assignment whose acceptance you may well have come to regret, for I fancy boredom set in long ago.”
“I confess that I’ve often found myself longing for Bokhara and Samarkand, but I put my mind to the bees when such moods strike me, knowing this is all for a vital cause. If I might ask, however, is your crusade anywhere near its culmination?”
“In fact, I was about to suggest that you resume your true identity as the second son of Baron Clanroyden and hie yourself back to London, where Sir Walter will explain in greater detail and perhaps provide you a new assignment more to your liking.”
Arbuthnot stopped before the cottage and looked at Holmes with surprise.
“Truly? Are matters vis-à-vis the Germans resolved in our favour, then?” he asked.
“Yes, for the most part,” Holmes replied without further elaboration. “I will allow Sir Walter to enlighten you in that respect, as I said. Dr. Watson and I must travel on to Essex, however, and I think it best that we continue the journey.”