Sherlock Holmes and the King of Clubs

by Hayes, Steve

  Lenhard allowed himself an ironic smile. ‘None, I’m afraid. The poor man drank some infected water; it was as simple as that. As for Franz Joseph’s wife … well, she was assassinated by an Italian anarchist in 1898 … all of which means that Franz Ferdinand is next in line.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Perhaps more interesting than you think, Mr Holmes. You see, there is no love lost between Franz Joseph and his nephew. Indeed, I have it on the highest authority that Franz Joseph will only allow Franz Ferdinand to succeed him at all on condition that his children – that is, the children Franz Ferdinand has had with a woman called Sophie Chotek con Chotkova, of whom Franz Joseph heartily disapproves – will not be allowed to succeed him to the throne.’

  ‘Could that change if Franz Joseph was somehow … removed from power?’

  ‘Not easily, and I suspect, certainly not in Franz Ferdinand’s lifetime. He has made too many enemies in the past, powerful ones who would I am sure do everything they could to delay or otherwise obstruct any attempt he made to change the line of succession.’

  ‘Nevertheless, we cannot afford to discount him,’ Holmes decided. ‘Please, continue.’

  But Lenhard began tapping at the arm of his wheelchair again, his mind wandering as he gazed aimlessly about the room.

  ‘Herr Lenhard?’ Holmes prompted.

  ‘Uh, my apologies. My mind was elsewhere.’ He took another bubbling breath and said, ‘Well, you could do worse than consider Count Franz Conrad as another suspect. Conrad controls the army and is known to favour an aggressive foreign policy enforced by military action. At the moment the only thing stopping him from plunging Austria into another crisis is Franz Joseph, who has, in light of our recent troubles, become rather more … diplomatically minded.’

  ‘I can see that he might be a possibility,’ Holmes agreed. ‘But surely he may come and go as he pleases at the Palace, and therefore has little if any need to find an alternative means of entry. Besides, I feel that there is something else at stake here, something less … obvious.’

  ‘There is always the Black Hand.’

  ‘The Black Hand,’ said Watson. ‘We have already had a run-in with those devils.’

  ‘Then you would do well not to underestimate them. It is known that they have infiltrated Austria. It is known that they are right here, in the capital, and are plotting some sort of terrorist act to destablize our government.’

  ‘It seems then that we are spoilt for choice,’ Watson said. ‘But forgive me, Herr Lenhard. You mentioned four potential threats. What is the fourth?’

  ‘The most dangerous threat of all, I am afraid. The threat we simply are not yet aware of. We know the Russians are fomenting discord throughout the Balkan States. The French? They have no love for our emperor, certainly not since we allied ourselves with Germany in order to limit French interests throughout Europe. And what of Italy? They are already threatening military action, should we send troops into Serbia to quell the growing unrest there. Who can say?’

  Holmes nodded. ‘Well, you have been most helpful, Herr Lenhard, and you have certainly given us much food for thought.’ He stood, and drew on his gloves. ‘Incidentally, I believe you are missing your favourite pipe. A cherry and birchwood Ropp?’

  Puzzled, Lenhard glanced at his wife then back at Holmes. ‘How on earth did you know that?’

  ‘Herr Lenhard, when I enter a room and smell the unmistakable aroma of Afrikander Colonial Flake, when I see a pipe-rack with one missing pipe and I see its owner displaying all the classic signs of the habitual pipe-smoker who is not able to indulge his craving, all that leads me to suspect that he has mislaid his favourite pipe. If it were not his favourite, he would simply take another from his otherwise well-stocked pipe-rack. Besides, sir, the mouthpiece of your favourite pipe shows ample evidence of its near-constant use.’

  ‘Remarkable!’ breathed Lenhard. ‘Yes … yes, I have indeed mislaid my favourite pipe. I cannot for the life of me remember where I put it. But how could you describe it so perfectly to me?’

  ‘It is within my line of sight at this very moment,’ Holmes said. Crossing the room, he picked up the pipe from the carpet behind the journalist’s desk. ‘It must have fallen here without your realizing it.’

  ‘Sir, you are a life-saver,’ Lenhard said as he eagerly accepted the pipe.

  ‘Let us hope so,’ Holmes said soberly, ‘for the sake of the people whose lives I am indeed trying to save.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  An Uncommon Anarchist

  AS THEY LEFT the overcrowded tenement behind and made their way back to the main thoroughfare, Holmes said, ‘I shall, of course, wire Mycroft later today and tell him that Herr Lenhard was of great help to us. Within a very short time thereafter I imagine Lenhard will receive some small and secret remuneration from His Majesty’s Government.’

  ‘Well, tell Mycroft not to make it too small,’ Watson said. ‘The poor fellow could certainly use it.’

  ‘Well said. Now, are you fit enough for the next stage of today’s itinerary, or would you prefer to stop and feed the inner man first?’

  ‘I need no break, thank you. That’s something else about growing old. The appetite – once such a source of pleasure – tends to desert one.’

  ‘Then we shall hail a cab and make directly for the church of St Petronius. It is my hope that in daylight I may discover something I overlooked last night – something that may enable us to find our quarry.’

  They caught a cab and once again followed the winding route out to Vienna’s Second District and the isolated Blutstrasse with its jagged remnants of a once-proud church sandwiched between tall, featureless warehouses.

  ‘What a godforsaken spot,’ said Watson as they passed through the sagging gates and moved towards the shell of the church.

  ‘A strange phrase indeed to bestow upon what once was God’s house,’ Holmes replied.

  They entered the desolate building. It was eerily silent and strangely claustrophobic; in daylight the original fire damage was much more obvious. The walls were smudged with great black patches that the elements had been unable to scour away. Here and there still lay the aged, charred remains of old pews and rafters.

  Holmes used his cane to indicate the position of the crypt entrance, which Houdini’s captors had concealed with dirt and rubbish before leaving. Then they went to the far end, crossing what Holmes could see now had once been a vestry. A moment later they stepped through the curtain of ragged ivy and out into the narrow dead-end alley through which the kidnappers had made their exit.

  In daylight the cobbled thoroughfare looked every bit as dismal and empty as it had the previous night. The thin strip of road ran arrow-straight until it reached a corner some hundred yards away. Every so often traffic passed in one direction or the other, but it seemed that there was no longer any need for anyone to pass along this lonely lane.

  While Watson watched, Holmes knelt and began to examine the icy ground. At length his attention was taken by a small, dark puddle little bigger than a two-coronae coin, which had gathered in a dip between the cobbles. He removed one glove and was about to dip the tip of his right forefinger into the liquid when he seemed to change his mind, and bent forward to sniff it instead.

  He looked over one shoulder. ‘Here, Watson. What do you make of this?’

  Watson joined him, resting his weight on his cane as he lowered himself to the ground beside his companion. ‘What should I make of it?’ he asked.

  ‘The smell.’

  Watson put his face close to the small puddle and sniffed. ‘Ammonia,’ he decided, and then wrinkled his nose. ‘Possibly some cat … maybe even that fox you told me about …’ He sniffed again. ‘It has a sort of … sulphur-like smell to it, as well.’

  ‘And what could account for that?’

  ‘I don’t know … some sort of bacteria? A natural gas of some sort?’ He straightened up. ‘Given that it is coming from that liquid, I would hazard a guess
at some sort of leak from the sewers below. There is a road gully just over there.’

  Holmes considered the possibility, but then shook his head. ‘I think not. I have spent enough years at my chemistry to recognize the unmistakable odor of sulphuric acid when I smell it.’

  ‘Acid! Where the devil did that come from? And what’s it doing here?’

  ‘I believe I know,’ Holmes said thoughtfully. ‘Come, let us follow this lane to its conclusion.’

  But the lane yielded no further information, and as they returned to the church, light snow began to fall again.

  It was just as they were pushing through the wall of ivy and back into the church that Watson was suddenly grabbed by the right bicep and roughly dragged forward. He let out a startled yelp and stumbled several paces. As Holmes reached out to help him, the ice-cold barrel of a handgun pressed hard against his temple, and a heavily accented voice hissed, ‘The decision as to whether you live or die is yours, stranac.’

  Holmes froze immediately and raised both hands. ‘We choose to live,’ he said quietly.

  Their attackers moved forward from where they had been hiding against the inner wall, and in seconds Holmes and Watson found themselves surrounded by five men, all heavily dressed against the inclement weather. One of them, a vaguely familiar-looking boy of no more than sixteen, shoved Holmes in the chest with both hands. As Holmes staggered back, the youngster snatched the cane from his hand and flung it as far as he could.

  ‘Stranac,’ he said with a disparaging curl of the lip.

  Holmes recognized him at once. Here was the hot-headed rioter whom he had encountered during their meeting with Freud at the Beserlpark Alsergrund. Holmes had shoved a chair into his path before he could reach them, and the resulting collision had sent the youth sprawling, but when he attacked again Holmes had been forced to employ baritsu to knock him unconscious.

  One look into the boy’s eyes told Holmes that recognition had been mutual. He also saw that what the boy lacked in height he more than made up for in sheer hatred. Pushing his face close to Holmes’s, he chattered for a few moments, then pulled his right hand back as if to administer a slap.

  ‘Princip!’

  The boy halted, turned to the man who had called his name and stopped himself. Holmes turned to regard the speaker, and again recognition was instant, for here was the black-bearded rabble-rouser who had been stirring up the crowd in the park that same day. He gave the youth, Princip, a firm shake of the head, and then put the pistol he had just held at Holmes’s temple back into the pocket of his pea coat.

  ‘Come,’ he said, and draped an arm around Holmes’s shoulders so that he could lead him out of the circle his men had formed around him. With his free hand he gestured to Watson. ‘You too, Herr Doktor.’

  Watson glanced at the bearded man’s companions. A rougher lot he had never seen. Then he eased past them to join his friend.

  ‘You must forgive Gavrilo,’ said the bearded man, referring to the youth. ‘Gavrilo is young and he has all the passion of youth, as well as all its recklessness. He is angry, and with some justification. He had to watch his parents struggle in the grip of poverty from which there was no escape. He saw six of his brothers and sisters die because there was no money for food. Ha! There was no food anyway, even if there had been money. And certainly there were no medicines available to save them when they weakened and fell sick. All Gavrilo could do was watch and know he could do nothing to prevent the inevitable.

  ‘When Franz Joseph – about whom you appear to have been making enquiries – annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, that was the last straw for Gavrilo; as it was for a great number of the Slav people, who did not wish to be part of the empire. So Gavrilo ran away from school and ended up here, determined to do something about it.’

  ‘And he fell in with the Black Hand,’ said Holmes.

  The bearded man stopped and studied him shrewdly. ‘It still takes some getting used to, that name,’ he said. ‘The Black Hand, as it has become known, was only formed a few months ago. Before that we were Mlada Bosna, and before that Narodna Odbrana. But always our aim has been the same – to liberate the Serbs under Austro-Hungarian rule.’ Abruptly he held out his right hand. ‘Forgive my manners, Herr Holmes, Herr Doktor. I am Javor Vasiljavic. Now we know each other.’

  As Holmes shook hands, he said, ‘You seem to have the advantage of us, Gouspodn Vasiljavic.’

  Vasiljavic raised one bushy eyebrow. ‘You speak my language?’

  ‘I am afraid Gouspodn is the extent of my Serbian,’ said Holmes. ‘This is clearly no chance meeting, sir. You obviously followed my companion and me from the home of Herr Lenhard.’

  Vasiljavic nodded. ‘His days as a reporter are more or less over, I fear. But he remains a man of many … useful … connections. Through him we can spread our message for a free Serbia, and every so often confound the Austro-Hungarian authorities with what we are pleased to call misinformation. But we are not so naïve as to imagine we are the only people who use Lenhard. And so we keep an eye on him, to see who else visits him. And when no less a figure than the great Sherlock Holmes himself visits Lenhard … well, I want to know why.’

  ‘And yet you have already answered your own question,’ Holmes replied. ‘You said I had been making enquiries about Franz Joseph. So I have.’

  ‘That was little more than an educated guess,’ Vasiljavic said. ‘Karl Lenhard is a man of many interests and he is knowledgeable about all of them, but he has one particular … is the word forte?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘And that forte is the political situation here in Austria. I cannot think of any other man who knows more about the intrigues of this country … and can thus think of no other reason why you would have visited him, Herr Holmes.’

  ‘I have reason to suspect that someone may be plotting the Emperor some harm.’

  ‘And you suspect the Black Hand?’

  ‘So far I have found no reason not to suspect the Black Hand.’

  ‘And I suppose you would like me to confirm such a fact for you?’

  ‘On the contrary, Gouspodyn Vasiljavic, I expect you to deny it and with good reason.’

  ‘I do deny it. Now, if we were under the command of a hot-head like young Princip Gavrilo over there, well … I think you might have some justification in suspecting the Black Hand. Left to his own devices, he would start a world war, that one. But he is nothing more than a foot soldier, and I suspect he will remain one, for his impulsive and sometimes violent behaviour is something I believe he will never grow out of.

  ‘But for now, older and hopefully wiser heads rule our group and those older and wiser heads have only one aim. The Black Hand wants a free Serbia and to get that it needs support. A political assassination is one thing. To destroy part of Austria’s heritage and kill many innocent members of staff in the process would only lose us whatever support we already enjoy. Besides, Herr Holmes, we are men. Proud men. If we kill, we do so in public, not behind closed doors.

  ‘As for Franz Joseph himself … he is almost untouchable as far as we are concerned. Were we to do anything to destablize this already destabilized country it might indeed end in war … and that is something none of us wants.’

  He stopped and chuckled. ‘Of course, I don’t expect you to take my word for it. I am, after all, just a common anarchist.’

  ‘You strike me as a rather uncommon anarchist,’ Holmes said. ‘If you give me your assurance that you are not engaged in anything involving the Imperial Palace or its inhabitants, then I will accept it.’

  ‘A wise thing to do when the man giving you that assurance carries a gun.’

  Holmes had no idea whether or not he was joking.

  Then Vasiljavic turned and called, ‘Princip! Fetch Herr Holmes’s cane!’

  The young Serbian had been lounging against the wall with the others. Now he stepped forward and took up a challenging posture, his fists clenched. ‘Let him fetch it himse
lf,’ he called back.

  Vasiljavic’s wide shoulders moved beneath the dark material of his jacket. ‘I gave you an order, Princip. You will carry it out, like a good soldier.’

  It was clear from his stance that Princip Gavrilo had no intention of obeying. He refused to move and continued to glare at his leader. But Vasiljavic only held his stare, accepting the contest of wills to which he had been invited and knowing that the boy would never ever beat him.

  Seconds passed. Snow continued to feather down around them. Then Gavrilo’s eyes dropped away from those of his commander, and grudgingly he slouched across the church until he located Holmes’s cane. Picking it up, he brought it over, his head down, his shoulders hunched, hating the humiliation that Vasiljavic was forcing him to endure.

  ‘Here.’ He thrust the cane at Holmes.

  Holmes took it.

  ‘Satisfied?’ Gavrilo demanded of his leader.

  Vasiljavic nodded. ‘But next time I tell you to do something, Princip, you do it immediately. Understand me?’

  Gavrilo looked up at him from lowered brows, his expression as surly as his tone. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Good. Now go back to the others.’

  As Gavrilo obeyed, Holmes said, ‘May I take it that Dr Watson and I are free to go?’

  Vasiljavic turned to him, surprised. ‘Of course. But remember this, Herr Holmes. You and I, we have no quarrel. You have your business to attend and we have ours. But should you ever turn your attentions to the Black Hand, we will have no option but to stop you by any means we deem necessary.’

  Holmes’s mouth tightened at the threat. Still, there was little point in taking issue with Vasiljavic now. He had delivered his warning and was already turning away, making quick gestures with his enormous hands and barking orders at his men. As one they filed through the ivy curtain out into the dead-end alley beyond. Gavrilo was the last to go, and then only after he had given Holmes one final, murderous glance.

  ‘How dare they treat us like that,’ Watson said angrily. ‘Especially that boy! He is well on the road to ruin, mark my words!’