Sherlock Holmes in Orbit

by Mike Resnick (ed)

  I fancy myself a connoisseur of musical instruments, and as much taken as I was by her, I was almost equally taken with the guitar she played. It was a beautiful instrument, the front inlaid with carefully worked mother-of-pearl. The small pick with which she played it was also covered with delicate mother-of-pearl. I watched for what must have been the better part of a minute, then she glanced up at me and smiled. It would have taken a better man than I not to reach out for her, but as she had the night before, she retreated up the alley, strumming a last chord and singing a final refrain.

  Then suddenly she turned and ran, I hot on her heels. “No, you don’t, my girl!” I cried. We were now in the cul-de-sac and all at once it seemed to me she slowed. I almost had my hand on her shoulder when the ground gave way beneath us and we plummeted ten feet down to land on a thin pile of mattresses.

  By the time I caught my breath, she had disappeared, but in her place were two cutthroats. I was in a small, dark chamber lit by several torches fastened to the walls and by their flickering light I recognized Mrs. Daniels’s roomers, Josiah Martin and Willy Green, running at me with evil smiles on their faces and clubs in their hands.

  “Villains!” I cried. Then Martin swarmed all over me, hitting me about the head and shoulders with his club, while I fumbled frantically in a pocket for my revolver. I finally fired through the cloth of my coat, and he screamed and fell back, clutching at his side.

  Willy Green dropped his club and backed off a few paces. He dipped his hand to his belt and came up with a knife, tossing it into the air and catching it by the tip so he could throw it at me. I was still struggling to free my revolver from the ruins of my pocket and Willy, with a snarl, had drawn back his arm when I felt a sudden draft of air above me and there was the sound of another shot. Willy gave a high-pitched yelp and crumpled to the ground, a spreading splotch of red covering his chest.

  “Are you all right, Watson?”

  It was Holmes, of course, who had been playing the role of the itinerant violinist I had seen on the street comer a few minutes before. His small chest had held both his disguise and the violin.

  “Quite all right, Holmes, though I fear it was a close thing.”

  Holmes walked over to the body of Willy Green and turned it over with his foot. “This is one scoundrel who will never dangle at the end of a rope.” Martin was still groaning, and I scrambled over to see if he needed help, the doctor in me taking precedence over the angry victim.

  “He’ll live, Holmes, it’s only a flesh wound, though painful. Halloo, what’s this?” At Martin’s feet was a large gunnysack and a coil of rope.

  Holmes fingered it, frowning. “A few moments more and you would have been shanghaied to a life on the bounding main, Watson. The mystery of the employment of Mrs. Daniels’s roomers is now solved—they worked as crimps, one of the most profitable businesses in San Francisco. With their income, I am surprised Mrs. Daniels didn’t force them to fix up her house.”

  He suddenly sniffed. “Do you smell that, Watson? Sea air! Gag our friend here. We shall put him in the gunnysack and deliver him to the head of the gang who is, I am sure, expecting Josiah Martin and Willy Green.”

  We stuffed Martin into the gunnysack, took one of the torches from the wall and started down the one passageway that led out of the cellar. We had not proceeded more than a few feet when Holmes suddenly frowned, held up his hand and went back into the room. I watched him as he carefully inspected the walls of what might have been my burial chamber.

  “Just as I thought, Watson. These walls are at least forty years old and the timbers look like they had once been burned. This was probably the basement of an old deadfall. Upstairs would have been a rude shack with a few tables and a bar. Runners would have brought in sailors just off the boats for free drinks. Once inside, the bartender would have fed them a lethal concoction, then knocked them on the head and sprung the trap beneath their feet so they tumbled into this room below. Hoodlums would have been waiting to bag them and take them to ships in the harbor that needed crews.”

  I shivered. “You said the timbers had been burned?”

  “Decades ago the establishment was probably consumed in a fire set by the Sydney Ducks—a gang of ticket-of-leave convicts from the penal settlements at Sydney, in New South Wales. The government gave them permits to leave and find work elsewhere, and a number of them came to the States. The gang periodically set fire to the city so they could loot the burning shops. Many of the cribs along the waterfront went up in flames as well, and I imagine some of the prostitutes died in their beds. Sailors, being a superstitious lot, found it easy to believe that one of them had come back as a phantom to haunt the city and it quickly became legend. But let us hasten, Watson, somebody is expecting a delivery!”

  We hoisted up Martin, struggling in his sack, and hurried down the passageway, the smell of sea water becoming stronger by the minute. Holmes suddenly put a finger to his lips and we crawled forward to where the ruins of a small wharf jutted out a few feet below. A boat was tied up to it with a man in the bow staring anxiously up at the opening where we had suddenly appeared.

  “Did you bring him?”

  “Of course,” Holmes growled in a voice approximating Martin’s. But it was only an approximation, and the man in the boat narrowed his eyes in sudden alarm, then recognized us for who we were.

  “God damn you, Holmes!”

  He pulled a gun from his pocket and fired a sudden fusillade of shots. Holmes staggered, then fired his own revolver once. The man shrieked and clutched his shoulder. Holmes leaped in, hit him on the back of the head with the butt of his weapon, and the man slumped to the bottom of the boat. “Lower Martin down, Watson—carefully there!”

  I did so and clambered into the boat after him, then noticed a streak of red on Holmes’ sleeve.

  “Holmes, you’ve been hurt!”

  “A scratch, I assure you—nothing more, Watson.”

  I turned over the man in the bottom of the boat. The fog had cleared now and by the light of the moon I could make out the features of Lieutenant Michael Van Dyke, still elegantly dressed in his checkered coat and silk waistcoat.

  “My Lord, Holmes, it’s the lieutenant! What is he doing here?”

  “I imagine the man he regularly hired to ferry his victims out to the ships either is drunk or ill and he had to take over at the last minute. I confess, I’m surprised to find him here tonight, though I intended to have him arrested tomorrow.” I felt Van Dyke’s head and the knot at the back where Holmes had struck him. An hour or so more and he would be none the worse for wear.

  “I’m surprised you knocked him unconscious, Holmes. I would have thought you wanted to ask him some questions.” “I already know the answers to any question I could have asked, Watson. And what I don’t know, I imagine somebody else will be more than willing to tell me.”

  We made the struggling Martin comfortable in his gunnysack, then Holmes turned toward the bay. Nearby a ship rode at anchor, its running lights bright in the gloom.

  “Quick, Watson, changes clothes with our good lieutenant!”

  “Holmes,” I said weakly. “What on Earth are you thinking of?”

  ‘That this city is corrupt and our good Lieutenant will certainly find a way to evade justice. But that ship out there is expecting delivery of a crewman and they will be delighted to receive two instead of only one!”

  Two days later we had packed and were ready to return to London, though I was surprised to note that I was more cheered by the possibility of going back than Holmes seemed to be. Every night he had stayed out until the early morning hours prowling through the underbelly of the city, delighted by the crimes and villainy that were in evidence all about him.

  “The most evil city in the world, Watson; it would put Port Said to shame!”

  In a few more hours the baggage men would arrive to take away our suitcases and boxes, and Holmes had yet to tell me how he had solved the case of Leona Adler or exactly what the solution
was.

  I finally insisted on the answers early in the afternoon, when we both had our feet to the fire while rain spattered against the windows of our suite.

  “I haven’t told you, Watson, because it isn’t over yet.”

  “You can at least tell me the role that Lieutenant Van Dyke played,” I protested.

  He tamped more tobacco into his pipe, refilled his glass, and loosened the laces of his boots so he was quite comfortable.

  “When we first came to the city, Watson, I visited the local police department and told them of our quest. Lieutenant Van Dyke offered to help since he had handled the Adler case ever since they started receiving inquiries from the family in New Jersey a year ago. When Mrs. Daniels denied that the police had ever visited her, it seemed obvious to me that our lieutenant wanted no investigation of the Daniels family at all. It was quite natural to think he had a personal interest.”

  “You suspected Van Dyke of running a gang of crimps even then?”

  Holmes sighed. “I suspect he ran more than one and probably had other criminal interests as well. He was far too rich for an ordinary officer in the department and operating as a crimp was only one of several possibilities. The night he took us to ‘see the elephant’ convinced me of that.”

  “I was still mystified. “I don’t see how ...”

  “It was not really a mystery at all, Watson. By his own admission, Van Dyke was a gambler and he was also arrogant—and very fond of the theater, as he told us. There is a great temptation among Americans to ‘twist the lion’s tail,’ to show up us English as either incompetent or impotent. And here we were, the famous English consulting detective and his faithful Boswell—you have only yourself to blame for our notoriety, Watson—and the temptation was too great. He paraded his villainy before our very eyes and dared us to see through it He took us to see the phantom, and once the woman had disappeared up the alley with her victim, he dashed across the street crying for us to follow. It was very convincing but a risky thing to do. After all, we might have seen the outline in the mud around the trapdoor through which the lady and her victim had disappeared. But within a few seconds he had tramped around the cul-de-sac and deliberately obliterated any traces that might have given it away. Afterward, I believe I remarked on the excessive mud on his boots.”

  “The whole trapdoor device—” I began.

  “—was obvious,” he finished. “There was no exit from the cul-de-sac, no doorway through which the lady and the sailor could have disappeared. Since it was impossible for them to ascend into the heavens, they must have dropped down into the earth. Working for the police department, Van Dyke had probably discovered there had once been a deadfall there. But why go to the expense of rebuilding it and giving away free liquor when the essence of it remained— the trapdoor, the basement below, and the passageway leading to the ruined wharf in the bay. All he needed was to lure unsuspecting sailors into the cul-de-sac and over the trapdoor where Josiah Martin and Willy Green would be waiting down below with bludgeons and sling shots. It was a very profitable business—they robbed the poor sailors first, then rowed them out to ships in the harbor where Van Dyke collected not only his bonus but the two months’ advance on his victims’ pay. And this was probably only one operation of several.”

  “It seems like a complicated arrangement, the phantom and all,” I demurred.

  Holmes shrugged. “I remind you of his fondness for the theater, Watson. It must have pleased his vanity to have been responsible for the creation of still another legend in this city.”

  “You haven’t explained the phantom herself, the woman in white—”

  Holmes took out his pocket watch and glanced at it.

  “The answers will be arriving shortly, Watson. If I have timed it right, the first to arrive will be a gentleman whom you will show into your bedroom and close the door. He may listen to what we say, but under no condition is he to make a sound. Some minutes after that, I believe a lady will show up. At least, I have asked the police to invite her here.” He smiled bleakly. “Mrs. Daniels had a good deal more to say once I informed her she could be charged as part of the gang.”

  A few minutes later, as good as Holmes’s word, there was a knock on the door and I opened it to see a man in his late thirties, quite well dressed but with a workingman’s strength about him. I motioned for him not to talk and immediately showed him to my bedroom and told him Holmes’s stipulations. Holmes hadn’t turned around to greet him but remained by the fire, staring into the flames.

  It could not have been more than a few minutes after that when there was another rap on the door, but this time Holmes opened it. The woman who entered swept into the room with all the dignity and self-possession of one who rated highly in both wealth and position. She was extremely attractive and of an indeterminate age, though I would have guessed her to be in her middle thirties. She was dressed all in black wool, sporting a black silk cape with a brilliant scarlet lining.

  Then I caught my breath, finally recognizing her. She was as stunning in black as she had been in white a few nights before, though I was shocked by her cape, an obvious sign of her profession.

  “You wished to see me?” she said coolly to Holmes. She was aware that he also knew her profession, but there was no trace of shame upon her face.

  Holmes held out his hand, not to shake hers but to give her something.

  “I believe this belongs to you,” he said quietly. It flashed in the firelight, and even at a distance I recognized the mother-of-earl-inlaid guitar pick. Holmes had undoubtedly found it when he had descended into the basement room to save my life. In her haste to flee, the woman had dropped it in the straw on the muddy floor, and Holmes must have glimpsed reflections from it in the light from the torches.

  She gave a cry then and I leaped forward before she could crumple to the carpet. We helped her into a chair, and I poured a glass of brandy and held it to her lips.

  “You were working with Lieutenant Van Dyke,” Holmes said calmly. He said it as a statement, not a question.

  “That vermin!” For a moment her face contorted with anger and lost much of its beauty. Then she was calm once again.

  “Please tell us about it, Miss Adler,” Holmes said. His tone was respectful, and there was no sign of condemnation in his voice.

  “It’s simple enough, Mr. Holmes. He was blackmailing me. The Daniels family had told him who I was. He knew I didn’t wish to be found and threatened to tell my family, to tell the royal court, to tell my child.”

  “Your child,” Holmes repeated softly.

  “My daughter. She is eight now, being raised by Sisters in a convent across the bay. She lacks for nothing and knows me as her aunt” Her voice broke. “I tell her wonderful stories about her mother who died long ago.”

  “Your statements about Lieutenant Van Dyke,” Holmes said. “I don’t believe they are quite complete. How did you meet him?”

  She was defiant now.

  “Unlike so many others in my position, I had saved my money and was about to buy my own establishment. I approached him to purchase protection from the police. He recognized me from my former recitals and realized I could both sing and act. His scheme was now complete. He promised me both additional income and protection at a future date—and threatened to inform on me if I didn’t cooperate.”

  “And so you became the phantom, the woman in white who lured sailors down an alley where they could be shanghaied.”

  She lifted her chin slightly. “I had my knowledge of stagecraft and disguise. With rice powder and lip rouge and in the evening shadows, I could make myself up to look young and attractive. And I still had my guitar. As for the men I lured ... There is no excuse I can offer except I had little choice. And I tried to make sure the men who followed me were all true sailors who would have returned to the sea in any event. I am prepared to be charged, to testify against the villainous Lieutenant Van Dyke. The worst is that my family will now find out.”

  Holmes shoo
k his head.

  “I doubt there will be any trial. Willy Green is dead and both Josiah Martin and Lieutenant Van Dyke are hundreds of miles away by now and in no position to return to this country any time soon. As for Mrs. Daniels, I believe the fear of God has been put into her and she will keep silent.”

  Leona Adler finally broke down then, and Holmes laid his hand lightly upon her shoulder.

  “It is time to return home, Miss Adler.”

  She looked bitter. “I could not convincingly explain my daughter with no husband on my arm. My parents would be crushed. Nor could I flee to England, as my sister did. I could lie, of course, but in due time I would have had to tell still another lie to support the first one. Eventually my past would become a tissue of lies and finally the truth would out. I would then find myself in worse circumstances than I am now.”

  “Your profession—” Holmes began diplomatically.

  Her eyes flashed. “My profession, Mr. Holmes? After two years here I discovered I had no profession and with a young daughter to raise and no husband to help me. My talents had failed to find an audience, I had no other skills of any kind, I had no money. Finally I sold the only thing that every woman truly owns—her virtue. It is very difficult for a woman to rise in this society, Mr. Holmes. It is very easy for one to sink. There is little that I haven’t tried, little that I haven’t experienced—including weeks of solitude in an opium den. But as of this morning, I own my own house and am a Madame in the only city in the United States that respects the profession. Nor am I ashamed of it, though I have no doubt you think I should be.”

  “You would not give it up?” Holmes asked quietly.

  “It is what I am, Mr. Holmes, I am honest enough to admit it. And it will do you no good to charge me because of it, not in San Francisco.”

  Holmes smiled slightly.

  “But you will give it up,” he said. “And of your own volition.” He motioned to me and I opened the door to the bedroom.