by David Marcum
“No, he’s not exactly a friend of mine,” Holmes answered, with a grim chuckle. “I fancy he’s one of that very respectable family you heard about at Mr. Hollams’. Come along with me now to Chelsea, and see if you can point out that house in Gold Street. I’ll send for a cab.”
He made for the hall, and I went with him.
“What is all this, Holmes?” I asked. “A gang of thieves with stolen property?”
Holmes looked in my face and replied: “It’s the Quinton ruby!”
“What! The ruby? Shall you take the case up, then?”
“I shall. It is no longer a speculation.”
“Then do you expect to find it at Hollams’ house in Chelsea?” I asked.
“No, I don’t, because it isn’t there - else why are they trying to get it from this unlucky Irishman? There has been bad faith in Hollams’ gang, I expect, and Hollams has missed the ruby and suspects Leamy of having taken it from the bag.”
“Then who is this Mr. W. whose portrait you have in your possession?”
“See here!” Holmes turned over a small pile of recent newspapers and selected one, pointing at a particular paragraph. “I kept that in my mind, because to me it seemed to be the most likely arrest of the lot,” he said.
It was an evening paper of the previous Thursday, and the paragraph was a very short one, thus:
“The man Wilks, who was arrested at Euston Station yesterday, in connection with the robbery of Lady Quinton’s jewels, has been released, nothing being found to incriminate him.”
“How does that strike you?” asked Holmes. “Wilks is a man well known to the police - one of the most accomplished burglars in this country, in fact. I have had no dealings with him as yet, but I found means, some time ago, to add his portrait to my little collection, in case I might want it, and to-day it has been quite useful.”
The thing was plain now. Wilks must have been bringing his booty to town, and calculated on getting out at Chalk Farm and thus eluding the watch which he doubtless felt pretty sure would be kept (by telegraphic instruction) at Euston for suspicious characters arriving from the direction of Radcot. His transaction with Leamy was his only possible expedient to save himself from being hopelessly taken with the swag in his possession. The paragraph told me why Leamy had waited in vain for “Mr. W.” in the cab.
“What shall you do now?” I asked.
“I shall go to the Gold Street house and find out what I can as soon as this cab turns up.”
There seemed a possibility of some excitement in the adventure, so I asked: “Will you want any help?”
Holmes smiled. “I think I can get through it alone,” he said.
“Then may I come to look on?” I said. “Of course I don’t want to be in your way, and the result of the business, whatever it is, will be to your credit alone. But I am curious.”
“Come, then, by all means. The cab will be a four-wheeler, and there will be plenty of room.”
Gold Street was a short street of private houses of very fair size and of a half-vanished pretension to gentility. We drove slowly through, and Leamy had no difficulty in pointing out the house wherein he had been paid five pounds for carrying a bag. At the end the cab turned the corner and stopped, while Holmes wrote a short note to an official of Scotland Yard.
“Take this note,” he instructed Leamy, “to Scotland Yard in the cab, and then go home. I will pay the cabman now.”
“I will, sor. An’ will I be protected?”
“Oh, yes! Stay at home for the rest of the day, and I expect you’ll be left alone in future. Perhaps I shall have something to tell you in a day or two; if I do, I’ll send. Good-by.”
The cab rolled off, and Holmes and I strolled back along Gold Street. “I think,” Holmes said, “we will drop in on Mr. Hollams for a few minutes while we can. In a few hours I expect the police will have him, and his house, too, if they attend promptly to my note.”
“Have you ever seen him?”
“Not to my knowledge, though I may know him by some other name. Wilks I know by sight, though he doesn’t know me.”
“What shall we say?”
“That will depend on circumstances. I may not get my cue till the door opens, or even till later. At worst, I can easily apply for a reference as to Leamy, who, you remember, is looking for work.”
But we were destined not to make Mr. Hollams’ acquaintance, after all. As we approached the house a great uproar was heard from the lower part giving on to the area, and suddenly a man, hatless, and with a sleeve of his coat nearly torn away burst through the door and up the area steps, pursued by two others. I had barely time to observe that one of the pursuers carried a revolver, and that both hesitated and retired on seeing that several people were about the street, when Holmes, gripping my arm and exclaiming: “That’s our man!” started at a run after the fugitive.
We turned the next corner and saw the man thirty yards before us, walking, and pulling up his sleeve at the shoulder, so as to conceal the rent. Plainly he felt safe from further molestation.
“That’s Sim Wilks,” Holmes explained, as we followed, “the ’juce of a foine jintleman’ who got Leamy to carry his bag, and the man who knows where the Quinton ruby is, unless I am more than usually mistaken. Don’t stare after him, in case he looks round. Presently, when we get into the busier streets, I shall have a little chat with him.”
But for some time the man kept to the back streets. In time, however, he emerged into the Buckingham Palace Road, and we saw him stop and look at a hat-shop. But after a general look over the window and a glance in at the door he went on.
“Good sign!” observed Holmes; “got no money with him - makes it easier for us.”
In a little while Wilks approached a small crowd gathered about a woman fiddler. Holmes touched my arm, and a few quick steps took us past our man and to the opposite side of the crowd. When Wilks emerged, he met us coming in the opposite direction.
“What, Sim!” burst out Holmes with apparent delight. “I haven’t piped your mug[1] for a stretch;[2] I thought you’d fell.[3] Where’s your cady?”[4]
Wilks looked astonished and suspicious. “I don’t know you,” he said. “You’ve made a mistake.”
Holmes laughed. “I’m glad you don’t know me,” he said. “If you don’t, I’m pretty sure the reelers[5] won’t. I think I’ve faked my mug pretty well, and my clobber,[6] too. Look here: I’ll stand you a new cady. Strange blokes don’t do that, eh?”
Wilks was still suspicious. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said. Then, after a pause, he added: “Who are you, then?”
Holmes winked and screwed his face genially aside. “Hooky!” he said. “I’ve had a lucky touch[7] and I’m Mr. Smith till I’ve melted the pieces.[8] You come and damp it.”
“I’m off,” Wilks replied. “Unless you’re pal enough to lend me a quid,” he added, laughing.
“I am that,” responded Holmes, plunging his hand in his pocket. “I’m flush, my boy, flush, and I’ve been wetting it pretty well to-day. I feel pretty jolly now, and I shouldn’t wonder if I went home cannon.[9]
Only a quid? Have two, if you want ’em - or three; there’s plenty more, and you’ll do the same for me some day. Here y’are.”
Holmes had, of a sudden, assumed the whole appearance, manners, and bearing of a slightly elevated rowdy. Now he pulled his hand from his pocket and extended it, full of silver, with five or six sovereigns interspersed, toward Wilks.
“I’ll have three quid,” Wilks said, with decision, taking the money; “but I’m blowed if I remember you. Who’s your pal?”
Holmes jerked his hand in my direction, winked, and said, in a low voice: “He’s all right. Having a rest. Can’t stand Manchester,” and winked again.
Wilks laughed and nodded, and I understood from that
that Holmes had very flatteringly given me credit for being “wanted” by the Manchester police.
We lurched into a public house, and drank a very little very bad whisky and water. Wilks still regarded us curiously, and I could see him again and again glancing doubtfully in Holmes’s face. But the loan of three pounds had largely reassured him. Presently Holmes said:
“How about our old pal down in Gold Street? Do anything with him now? Seen him lately?”
Wilks looked up at the ceiling and shook his head.
“That’s a good job. It ’ud be awkward if you were about there to-day, I can tell you.”
“Why?”
“Never mind, so long as you’re not there. I know something, if I have been away. I’m glad I haven’t had any truck with Gold Street lately, that’s all.”
“D’you mean the reelers are on it?”
Holmes looked cautiously over his shoulder, leaned toward Wilks, and said: “Look here: this is the straight tip. I know this - I got it from the very nark[10] that’s given the show away: By six o’clock No. 8 Gold Street will be turned inside out, like an old glove, and everyone in the place will be - ” He finished the sentence by crossing his wrists like a handcuffed man. “What’s more,” he went on, “they know all about what’s gone on there lately, and everybody that’s been in or out for the last two moons[11] will be wanted particular - and will be found, I’m told.” Holmes concluded with a confidential frown, a nod, and a wink, and took another mouthful of whisky. Then he added, as an after-thought: “So I’m glad you haven’t been there lately.”
Wilks looked in Holmes’s face and asked: “Is that straight?”
“Is it?” replied Holmes with emphasis. “You go and have a look, if you ain’t afraid of being smugged yourself. Only I shan’t go near No. 8 just yet - I know that.”
Wilks fidgeted, finished his drink, and expressed his intention of going. “Very well, if you won’t have another - ” replied Holmes. But he had gone.
“Good!” said Holmes, moving toward the door; “he has suddenly developed a hurry. I shall keep him in sight, but you had better take a cab and go straight to Euston. Take tickets to the nearest station to Radcot - Kedderby, I think it is - and look up the train arrangements. Don’t show yourself too much, and keep an eye on the entrance. Unless I am mistaken, Wilks will be there pretty soon, and I shall be on his heels. If I am wrong, then you won’t see the end of the fun, that’s all.”
Holmes hurried after Wilks, and I took the cab and did as he wished. There was an hour and a few minutes, I found, to wait for the next train, and that time I occupied as best I might, keeping a sharp lookout across the quadrangle. Barely five minutes before the train was to leave, and just as I was beginning to think about the time of the next, a cab dashed up and Holmes alighted. He hurried in, found me, and drew me aside into a recess, just as another cab arrived.
“Here he is,” Holmes said. “I followed him as far as Euston Road and then got my cabby to spurt up and pass him. He had had his mustache shaved off, and I feared you mightn’t recognize him, and so let him see you.”
From our retreat we could see Wilks hurry into the booking-office. We watched him through to the platform and followed. He wasted no time, but made the best of his way to a third-class carriage at the extreme fore end of the train.
“We have three minutes,” Holmes said, “and everything depends on his not seeing us get into this train. Take this cap. Fortunately, we’re both in tweed suits.”
He had bought a couple of tweed cricket caps, and these we assumed, sending our “bowler” hats to the cloak-room. Holmes also put on a pair of blue spectacles, and then walked boldly up the platform and entered a first-class carriage. I followed close on his heels, in such a manner that a person looking from the fore end of the train would be able to see but very little of me.
“So far so good,” said Holmes, when we were seated and the train began to move off. “I must keep a lookout at each station, in case our friend goes off unexpectedly.”
“I waited some time,” I said; “where did you both go to?”
“First he went and bought that hat he is wearing. Then he walked some distance, dodging the main thoroughfares and keeping to the back streets in a way that made following difficult, till he came to a little tailor’s shop. There he entered and came out in a quarter of an hour with his coat mended. This was in a street in Westminster. Presently he worked his way up to Tothill Street, and there he plunged into a barber’s shop. I took a cautious peep at the window, saw two or three other customers also waiting, and took the opportunity to rush over to a ‘notion’ shop and buy these blue spectacles, and to a hatter’s for these caps - of which I regret to observe that yours is too big. He was rather a long while in the barber’s, and finally came out, as you saw him, with no mustache. This was a good indication. It made it plainer than ever that he had believed my warning as to the police descent on the house in Gold Street and its frequenters; which was right and proper, for what I told him was quite true. The rest you know. He cabbed to the station, and so did I.”
“And now perhaps,” I said, “after giving me the character of a thief wanted by the Manchester police, forcibly depriving me of my hat in exchange for this all-too-large cap, and rushing me off out of London without any definite idea of when I’m coming back, perhaps you’ll tell me what we’re after?”
Holmes laughed. “You wanted to join in, you know,” he said, “and you must take your luck as it comes. As a matter of fact there is scarcely anything in my profession so uninteresting and so difficult as this watching and following business. Often it lasts for weeks. When we alight, we shall have to follow Wilks again, under the most difficult possible conditions, in the country. There it is often quite impossible to follow a man unobserved. It is only because it is the only way that I am undertaking it now. As to what we’re after, you know that as well as I - the Quinton ruby. Wilks has hidden it, and without his help it would be impossible to find it. We are following him so that he will find it for us.”
“He must have hidden it, I suppose, to avoid sharing with Hollams?”
“Of course, and availed himself of the fact of Leamy having carried the bag to direct Hollams’s suspicion to him. Hollams found out by his repeated searches of Leamy and his lodgings, that this was wrong, and this morning evidently tried to persuade the ruby out of Wilks’ possession with a revolver. We saw the upshot of that.”
Kedderby Station was about forty miles out. At each intermediate stopping station Holmes watched earnestly, but Wilks remained in the train. “What I fear,” Holmes observed, “is that at Kedderby he may take a fly. To stalk a man on foot in the country is difficult enough; but you can’t follow one vehicle in another without being spotted. But if he’s so smart as I think, he won’t do it. A man traveling in a fly is noticed and remembered in these places.”
He did not take a fly. At Kedderby we saw him jump out quickly and hasten from the station. The train stood for a few minutes, and he was out of the station before we alighted. Through the railings behind the platform we could see him walking briskly away to the right. From the ticket collector we ascertained that Radcot lay in that direction, three miles off.
To my dying day I shall never forget that three miles. They seemed three hundred. In the still country almost every footfall seemed audible for any distance, and in the long stretches of road one could see half a mile behind or before. Holmes was cool and patient, but I got into a fever of worry, excitement, want of breath, and back-ache. At first, for a little, the road zig-zagged, and then the chase was comparatively easy. We waited behind one bend till Wilks had passed the next, and then hurried in his trail, treading in the dustiest parts of the road or on the side grass, when there was any, to deaden the sound of our steps.
At the last of these short bends we looked ahead and saw a long, white stretch of road with the dark form o
f Wilks a couple of hundred yards in front. It would never do to let him get to the end of this great stretch before following, as he might turn off at some branch road out of sight and be lost. So we jumped the hedge and scuttled along as we best might on the other side, with backs bent, and our feet often many inches deep in wet clay. We had to make continual stoppages to listen and peep out, and on one occasion, happening, incautiously, to stand erect, looking after him, I was much startled to see Wilks, with his face toward me, gazing down the road. I ducked like lightning, and, fortunately, he seemed not to have observed me, but went on as before. He had probably heard some slight noise, but looked straight along the road for its explanation, instead of over the hedge. At hilly parts of the road there was extreme difficulty; indeed, on approaching a rise it was usually necessary to lie down under the hedge till Wilks had passed the top, since from the higher ground he could have seen us easily. This improved neither my clothes, my comfort, nor my temper. Luckily we never encountered the difficulty of a long and high wall, but once we were nearly betrayed by a man who shouted to order us off his field.
At last we saw, just ahead, the square tower of an old church, set about with thick trees. Opposite this Wilks paused, looked irresolutely up and down the road, and then went on. We crossed the road, availed ourselves of the opposite hedge, and followed. The village was to be seen some three or four hundred yards farther along the road, and toward it Wilks sauntered slowly. Before he actually reached the houses he stopped and turned back.
“The churchyard!” exclaimed Holmes, under his breath. “Lie close and let him pass.”
Wilks reached the churchyard gate, and again looked irresolutely about him. At that moment a party of children, who had been playing among the graves, came chattering and laughing toward and out of the gate, and Wilks walked hastily away again, this time in the opposite direction.
“That’s the place, clearly,” Holmes said. “We must slip across quietly, as soon as he’s far enough down the road. Now!”
We hurried stealthily across, through the gate, and into the churchyard, where Holmes threw his blue spectacles away. It was now nearly eight in the evening, and the sun was setting. Once again Wilks approached the gate, and did not enter, because a laborer passed at the time. Then he came back and slipped through.