by Rob Nunn
Inside, Bartholomew Sholto sat dead. Watson examined the body and stated that death had come hours before. His body was hard as a board, possibly death from some powerful alkaloid. On the table next to the body lay a brown stick with a stone head like a hammer, rudely lashed on with coarse twine. Next to that was a torn sheet of notepaper with “The sign of the four” scrawled upon it.
“This means murder,” Holmes stated, pointing to a long, dark thorn sticking in the skin just above Bartholomew’s ear. “This is certainly not an English thorn.”
“The treasure is gone!” Thaddeus cried from behind them. “They have murdered my brother and robbed him! There is the hole through which we lowered it. I was the last person who saw him! I left him here, and I heard him lock the door as I came downstairs. The police will suspect that I had a hand in this. But you don’t think so? Is it likely that I would have brought you here if it were I? Oh, dear!”
Holmes grasped Sholto’s shoulder and stared into his face. “I know that you wished to resolve the matter with Miss Morstan without interference of the police, but that time has passed. Take my advice and drive down to the station to report the matter. Offer to assist them in every way. We shall wait here until your return.”
The little man stumbled out of the room and Watson asked, “Should we leave before the police arrive?”
“No. Too many people know that we are here and our absence would only turn the detectives on to our trail instead of the murderer’s. Now, Watson, we have half an hour to ourselves. Let us make good use of it, for I plan to find this treasure before the official force. My case is almost complete; but we must not err on the side of overconfidence. Just sit in the corner there, that your footprints may not complicate matters. In the first place, how did these folk come and how did they go? The door has not been opened since last night. Window is snubbed on the inner side. Frame work is solid. No hinges at the side. Let us open it. No water pipe near. Roof quite out of reach. Yet a man has mounted by the window. It rained a little last night. Here is the print of a foot in mold upon the sill. And here is a circular muddy mark, and here again upon the floor, and here again by the table. See here, Watson!”
“That is not a footmark,” Watson said.
“It is something much more valuable to us. It is the impression of a wooden stump. But there has been someone else - a very able and efficient ally. Could you scale that wall, Doctor?”
“It is absolutely impossible.”
“Suppose you had a friend up here who lowered you this stout rope which I see in the corner. Then you might swarm up, wooden leg and all. You would depart in the same fashion, and your ally would draw up the rope, shut the window, snib it on the inside, and get away in the way that he originally came.”
“This is all very well, but how about this mysterious ally? How came he into the room?” Watson asked.
“The grate is much too small. You must apply my precept. When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. We know that he did not come through the door, the window or the chimney. We also know that there is no concealment possible in the room.”
“He came through the hole in the roof! Holmes, I cannot but think what a detective you would have made had you turned your energy and sagacity in defense of the law!”
“Of course he came through the roof. If you will have the kindness to hold the lamp for me, we shall now extend our researches to the room above - the secret room in which the treasure was found.”
Climbing into the room above, Holmes and Watson spied a trap door leading to the roof outside. Holmes held the lamp to the floor of the secret room, looking for footprints and found prints of a clear, well defined naked foot, but one that was hardly half the size of an ordinary man’s.
“Holmes,” Watson whispered, “a child has done this!”
“There is nothing else of importance here,” Holmes said, as he lowered himself back into Bartholomew Sholto’s room. “We are certainly in luck!” he crowed suddenly. “We ought to have very little trouble now. Number one has had the misfortune to tread in the creosote in the room. I know a dog that would follow that scent to the world’s end. The answer should give us the - but hallo! Here are the accredited representatives of the law.”
A burly man with a pair of very small keen eyes came into the room, followed by a uniformed inspector and Thaddeus Sholto. “Here’s a pretty business!” the man cried in a husky voice. “Who are all these? Why, the house seems to be as full as a rabbit warren!”
“My name is Sherlock Holmes, Mr. Athelney Jones. I don’t know if you recollect me, but I’m sure if you ask Gregson or Lestrade, they may vouch for my good name.”
“Of course I do!” he wheezed. “It’s Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the theorist. I’ll never forget how you lectured us on causes and inferences. But here we are, bad business! Stern facts here - no room for theories. How lucky that I happened to be out at Norwood on another case! What d’you think the man died of?”
“Oh, this is hardly a case for me to theorize over,” Holmes replied dryly.
“No, no. Dear me! Door locked. Jewels worth half a million missing. How was the window?”
“Fastened, but there are steps on the sill.”
“Well, well, if it was fastened the steps could have nothing to do with the matter. That’s common sense. Man might have died in a fit; but then the jewels are missing. Ha! I have a theory. These flashes come upon me at times. Just step outside, Inspector, and you, Mr. Sholto. What do you think of this, Holmes? Sholto was, on his own confession, with his brother last night. The brother died in a fit, on which Sholto walked off with the treasure. How’s that?”
“On which the dead man very considerately got up and locked the door on the inside. You are not quite in possession of the facts yet. This splinter of wood, which I have every reason to believe to be poisoned, was in the man’s scalp where you still see the mark; this card was on the table, and beside it lay this rather curious stone instrument. How does all that fit into your theory?”
“Confirms it in every respect. You see that I am weaving my web round Thaddeus. House is full of Indian curiosities. Thaddeus brought this up, and if the splinter be poisonous, Thaddeus may as well have made murderous use of it as any other man. The card is some hocus pocus. The only question is, how did he depart? Ah, of course, here is the hole in the roof.”
Holmes and Watson watched the man spring up into the garret and heard him proclaim that he had found the trap door leading to the roof.
“He can find something, at least,” Holmes murmured to Watson.
Jones reappeared from the hole in the roof. “You see! Facts are better than theories, after all. My view of the case is confirmed. It shows how our gentleman got away. Inspector!” he called out into the hallway. “Bring Mr. Sholto this way! Mr. Sholto, I arrest you in the Queen’s name as being concerned in the death of your brother.”
“There now! Didn’t I tell you!” cried Sholto, looking at Holmes and Watson. “I brought you here on business, and now I am implicated in my own brother’s murder!”
“Don’t trouble yourself, Mr. Sholto,” Holmes said. “I think that I can engage to clear you of the charge.”
“Don’t promise too much, Mr. Theorist!” Jones snapped. “By the way, why is it that you are here tonight, Mr. Holmes?”
“Mr. Sholto wished to show the treasure to Miss Morstan, the young lady downstairs, and having never met either of the Sholtos before, she retained Doctor Watson and I to accompany her.”
Jones accepted this response with a nod and then turned back to the scene.
Holmes ushered Watson out to the head of the stairs. “The police involvement has caused us to lose sight of the original purpose of our journey.”
“I have just been thinking so. It is not right that Miss Morstan should remain in this stri
cken house.”
“No. You must escort her home. I will remain here and attempt to contain the tenacious imbecile that is complicating matters. We shall work the problem out independently and leave this fellow Jones to exult over any mare’s nest which he may choose to construct. When you have dropped Miss Morstan, I wish you to go on to No. 3 Pinchin Lan, down near the water’s edge at Lambeth. The third house on the right hand side is an old friend of mine, Sherman the bird-stuffer. Knock old Sherman up and tell him, with my compliments, that I want Toby at once. A queer mongrel, with a most amazing power of scent. I would rather have Toby’s help than that of the whole detective force of London.”
Two hours later, as the clock passed three in the morning, Watson returned to Pondicherry Lodge. Holmes was standing on the doorstep, smoking his pipe.
“Ah, Watson! You have him there! Good dog, then! Athelney Jones has gone. He has arrested not only Thaddeus, but our old friend McMurdo, the housekeeper, and the Indian servant. After you left, I inspected number one’s escape route and found these.”
Holmes held out a small pouch woven of colored grasses with a few beads strung around it. Inside were six spines of the dark wood, like that which had struck Bartholomew Sholto. “I’m delighted to have them,” Holmes said, “for the chances are that they are all he has. Are you game for a trudge, Watson?”
“Certainly.”
“Then here you are, doggy! Smell it, Toby, smell it!” Holmes pushed a creosote stained handkerchief under the dog’s nose and then fastened a stout cord to the dog’s collar, and led him to the foot of the water barrel that he had found to be the escape route.
Toby followed the scent from the property to the half-rural roads which led back into London, passing street laborers and dockmen.
“Does the rush of the chase outweigh the reward for you, Holmes?” Watson pondered as they moved down side streets of London.
“Hardly. Crime is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. I will enjoy our spoils when this adventure is over, but I cannot allow emotion to interfere now.”
As the sun began to rise, the two men followed Toby down towards the riverside, and right down to the water’s edge, where there was a small wooden wharf.
“We are out of luck. They have taken to a boat here,” said Holmes.
“Then the treasure is lost?” Watson asked.
“I don’t believe they have flown just yet,” Holmes smiled, looking at the small brick house next to the wharf. Above the door hung a sign that read ‘Mordecai Smith, Boats to hire by the hour or day.’
Within a few moments, Holmes had learned that a wooden-legged man had hired the steam launch, the Aurora, one of the fastest boats on the Thames.
Walking away from the wharf, Holmes commented to Watson, “This is just the time where the Baker Street Irregulars might be invaluable. I will wire their dirty little lieutenant, Wiggins, and I expect that he and his gang will be with us before we have finished our breakfast.”
That morning’s paper carried a short notice titled ‘Mysterious Business at Upper Norwood’ outlining the previous night’s activity and detailing all of Athelney Jones’ arrests.
“I think that we have had a close shave ourselves of being arrested for the crime!” Watson stated.
“So do I,” Holmes responded. “I wouldn’t answer for our safety now, if he should happen to have another attack of energy. We must wrap this matter up quickly.”As Holmes spoke, Wiggins appeared to receive his orders.
“Ah, Wiggins. I want to find the whereabouts of a steam launch called the Aurora, owner Mordecai Smith, black with two red streaks. She is down the river somewhere. I want one boy to be at Mordecai Smith’s landing stage opposite Millbank to say if the boat comes back. You must divide it out among the boys and do both banks thoroughly. Let me know the moment you have news. Now off you go!”
“If the boat is above water they will find it,” Holmes said, handing the scraps of his meal down to Toby. “Look here, Watson; you look done in. Lie down there on the sofa, and see if I can put you to sleep.”
Taking up his violin, Holmes began to play some low, dreamy, melodious air of his own improvisation as Watson drifted peacefully to sleep, thinking of the sweet face of Miss Mary Morstan.
It was late in the afternoon when Watson woke, finding Holmes sitting in his chair, deep in a book. “Have you had news?” he asked.
“Unfortunately, no,” Holmes confessed. “I am surprised and disappointed. Wiggins has just been up to report. He says that no trace can be found of the launch.”
“Then I shall call upon Mrs. Cecil Forrester. She asked me to when I escorted Miss Morstan home.”
“Call on Mrs. Forrester?” Holmes asked with a twinkle in his eye.
“Well, of course, on Miss Morstan, too. They were anxious to hear what happened.”
“I would not tell them too much. Women are never to be entirely trusted - not the best of them.”
Holmes waited for word of the launch all that night and the next day, pacing the floors and making himself worn and haggard. He directed Watson to stay in their rooms the third day while he donned the disguise of a sailor to investigate down the river. As Watson read the morning paper, he saw two items of interest to their current problem: Athenley Jones had had to release his prisoners for lack of evidence and an advertisement asking for information on the Aurora to be called upon at Baker Street. The long day of waiting for word continued until Holmes returned in his disguise around three that afternoon.
“I have been working in that get-up all day,” Holmes said as he tossed a white wig onto a chair and lit a cigar. “A good many of the criminal classes begin to know me, whether they work for us or not. I can only go on the warpath under some simple disguise, especially if I don’t want Professor Moriarty to catch a whiff of what we are on to!”
“Then you have news?”
“A break in the chain, to be sure. We will have a fast steam launch waiting for us at the Westminster Stairs at seven o’clock. But no more of this problem until then. Dinner will be ready in half an hour.”
Their meal that night was a merry one. Holmes talked brilliantly on a quick succession of subjects: miracle plays, medieval pottery, Stradivarius violins, Buddhism of Ceylon and warships of the future, handling each as though he had made a special study of it. When the dinner had ended, Holmes poured two glasses of port and handed one to Watson.
“One bumper to the success of our little expedition. And now it is high time we were off. Grab your pistol, Watson. It is well to be prepared.”
As they mounted the launch, Holmes turned to Watson and laid out his day’s activities for him. In his seaman’s garb, he inquired at all the repair yards down the river until he came upon one where the Aurora was being hidden. It was set to leave at eight o’clock that night and Holmes had stationed one of the Irregulars close by to signal them when it began to leave.
The lookout signaled to them, and the Aurora took off like the devil! Holmes commanded his engineer to take off at full speed and to catch the boat at all costs. The Aurora had slipped unseen behind two or three small craft and had fairly got her speed up before Holmes’ craft took after her, and she was flying down the stream, near the shore going at a tremendous rate. Holmes’ boat’s own furnaces roared, and the powerful engines whizzed and clanked like a great metallic heart, quivering like a living thing. They followed behind the Aurora’s wake, flashing past barges, steamers and merchant vessels, in and out, behind one and round another, following close upon her track.
“Pile it on, men, pile it on!” Holmes cried, looking down into the engine-room, while the fierce glow from below beat upon his eager, aquiline face. “Get every pound of steam you can.”
Suddenly, a tug with three barges in tow plowed in front of them. Only by putting the helm down did they
avoid a collision, and after they rounded it, the Aurora had gained two hundred yards on them. The boilers strained and the frail shell vibrated and creaked as the engineers piled on the coal, and still the Aurora chugged on. Holmes could see the figures upon her deck. One man sitting on the stern, stooped over something black between his knees.
The flying manhunt down the Thames continued as Holmes’ boat steadily drew in on its prey yard by yard. The man on the stern of the Aurora continued to crouch with his arms moving as though he was busy, glancing up every now and again as his pursuers came nearer and nearer. Next to him appeared a little man with a great misshapen head and a shock of tangled hair. When the pursuers closed to only four boat lengths away, the man in the stern of the Aurora sprang up on his wooden leg and cursed in a cracked voice.
“Fire if that little man raises his hand,” Holmes told Watson.
As the chase closed to only one boat length between them, the little man plucked a short, round piece of wood and clapped it to his lips. Holmes and Watson fired automatically, and the little man whirled around as the bullets hit him. He fell into the river with a choking cough as Holmes’ boat sped by his dying body.
The wooden legged man pulled hard on the rudder and the Aurora made straight for the bank. Holmes’ boat shot by them, but quickly pulled back around only to find that the wooden-legged man had run off the boat but had become trapped in the marshy soil. Holmes ordered a rope to be tossed around the fleeing man and he was hauled aboard like some evil fish.
Once the captive and treasure were loaded onto Holmes’ launch, he dispatched Mordecai Smith and the Aurora back to his wife. Striding into the cabin of his own boat, Holmes lit a cigar and faced his prisoner.
“Well, sir, I am sorry that it has come to this.”
“And so am I. I don’t believe that I can swing over the job. I give you my word on the Book that I never raised a hand against Mr. Sholto. It was the little hell-hound Tonga who shot one of his cursed darts into him. But it seems you’ve given him his punishment. I had no part in it, sir.”