He brightened a little as he went on, “But you are quite correct, of course. The inspector is bound to be of more help as we move forward, and we do now have two strong areas of interest that we might profitably pursue. Piennar, for the moment, has eluded us, for I doubt he will reappear at his old lodgings. But there is no reason why we should not pay a more formal return visit to Pastor Hoffmann. Blackmail requires two informed parties, after all. Any information we can obtain directly from the victim cannot help but aid our cause.”
I glanced up at the ornate clock that dominated the wall opposite me. It showed the time as a quarter after eight. “A task for tomorrow, Holmes,” I said firmly. We had spoken for longer than I’d thought and the realisation of the relatively late hour had reminded me that I had yet to dine. I doubted that Holmes had eaten either, a theory that was swiftly confirmed as Holmes acquiesced to my suggestion. It had been a long day all round, and after I had chivvied him upstairs to change, I hurried across to the dining room to procure a table, before he had a chance to change his mind.
Chapter Twelve
The following day dawned bright and crisp, with a chill in the air that promised a cold winter to come. We had breakfasted early, and then I had gone for a stroll while Holmes surrounded himself with what seemed to be every newspaper in the country. By the time I returned, some forty minutes later, there were discarded sheets of paper scattered across Holmes’s room, while the man himself sat in the middle, scissors in hand. A neat pile of articles, freshly cut from the ’papers, was stacked by his crossed legs.
“It is extraordinary just how much vital information slips by us, simply because local news is thought to be of no interest to the international citizen,” he declared as soon as I stepped through the door. “The Times is not to be bettered for the biggest stories, of course, and our lesser English press do what they can with the more sensational end of the market, but we have nothing to compare with the Americans.” As he spoke, he scouted amongst the discarded journals for one particular example, which he now held up. “See here, Watson. A body discovered in a locked bank vault in Des Moines, a train robbed at gunpoint in Arizona and a man convicted of selling Brooklyn Bridge to an Arab prince; all in the space of half a dozen pages of this single San Francisco newspaper!”
Clearly, a decent meal and a good night’s sleep had entirely restored Holmes’s equilibrium. He had even gone so far as to open one window, so that the smoke of his pipe did not, for once, obscure the entirety of the room. I took a seat and lit my own while he explained what he had in mind for us that day.
“Quite right, Watson – duty before pleasure,” he said, reluctantly dropping the newspaper he held to the floor. “This morning we must attend to Pastor Hoffmann. If he is, as I suspect, in the grip of a blackmailer, then he must be made to tell us the name of his persecutor.”
Easier said than done, of course, given the finale to Holmes’s last meeting with the pastor. “And if he will not?” I asked.
“Then he must be made to!”
“As simple as that, eh, Holmes?” I said, but with a smile which he returned ruefully.
“Perhaps not quite so simple,” he admitted, “but the pastor struck me as a man of much noise but little substance. A degree of carefully applied pressure should suffice to unlock his secrets.”
* * *
A curious incident occurred as we descended from the hansom outside the pastor’s residence. A young man, aged about twenty-five I should say, came up to us and tapped Holmes on the shoulder. He turned and the stranger stared at him intently for a few seconds, then swivelled on his heel and strode away. Not a word was said, nor was it possible to make out much of the young man’s features, for he wore a low-brimmed hat and a heavy muffler, between which two items the majority of his face was obscured. Fearing a trap of some sort I made to move after the man, but Holmes laid a hand on my arm to hold me back and instead we stood and watched as he strode to the corner, then disappeared around it. When nothing else occurred, Holmes gave my arm a gentle tug and suggested we make our way to Pastor Hoffmann’s front door. With no choice but to shrug off the peculiar confrontation, I did as Holmes had asked and gave the door a sharp knock.
Though this was my first visit to the house, there was no mistaking Isherwood, the butler, who stood in the open door before us, pale and thin, with bloodless eyes that protruded slightly from their sockets, the effect of Graves’ disease or some other problem of the thyroid, I suspected. As Holmes presented his card, Isherwood gave no sign of recognition, but simply stepped to one side and invited us to wait in the hall while he checked that his master was at home to visitors.
Holmes immediately sat in one of a pair of matching chairs and closed his eyes in thought. With nothing better to do, I examined an over-literal depiction of the death of Lot’s wife, done in oils. The small smile on Lot’s face was disturbing, I thought, and I would have remarked on the fact to Holmes had Isherwood not chosen that moment to return and ask us to follow him to the pastor’s study.
The study was also as Holmes had described it. A large fire, currently unlit but stacked with wood, took up one half of the wall opposite the door. Flanking it were two high-backed chairs covered in silver fabric, beside each of which sat a small wooden occasional table. A formidable desk of polished teak took up a large proportion of the rest of the room, save for the wall to our right as we entered, which was given over entirely to a splendid bookcase, crammed to the rafters with impressively bound volumes of church teachings. A Bible, laid open on a decorative plinth on one corner of the desk, was the only book in actual use that I could see, however.
The owner of the room sat in one of the chairs, staring up at us. My immediate impression was of an ascetic face – piercing eyes, thin lips and an aquiline nose – topped by grey hair. One foot tapped incessantly on the floor, which, combined with the purpling of his face as he viewed Holmes, convinced me that we were not likely to find a welcome here.
The first words he spoke confirmed my fears. “Your nerve astonishes me, Lestrade, truly it does!” he barked at Holmes, without so much as an acknowledgement of my presence. “Was the act of being tossed into the street like a bag of coal not enough to warn you off? Must I have my servants take cudgels to you, sir?”
Holmes was unperturbed, however. “You see,” he said, turning to me with a small smile, “how the English and American men of religion differ? I believe I can say, with no fear of contradiction, that I have never heard an English clergyman threaten to have a man cudgelled. Have you?”
“Very rarely,” I said, entering into the spirit of the thing. “Even less tossed into the street like a bag of coal.” I took a step closer and bent down in order to examine Hoffmann more closely. “Though I’d wager he has problems controlling his blood pressure.”
The pastor spluttered in outrage, barely managing to force each word out before it was tripped up by its successor. “How dare… why, I should… what is to stop me…” he spat, seemingly unable to decide which sentence to complete and so failing to finish any at all. It was the small but audible chuckle from Holmes that was enough to push the man over the edge, however. I think, had he been on his feet, he would have struck my friend a serious blow. As he was seated, however, he reached across to a speaking tube pinned to the wall and, after blowing in it, prepared to summon his servants.
Before he could do so, Holmes stepped in front of him and spoke a single sentence that caused Hoffmann to blanch and the tube to fall from his suddenly nerveless fingers.
“We know the secret with which you were blackmailed, Pastor Hoffmann,” Holmes said gravely.
The next few moments were spent in silence punctuated by the nervous tapping of Hoffmann’s foot on the floor. There could be no doubt now that blackmail lay at the heart of the duplicate’s plans. One look at Hoffmann’s terror-stricken face had been enough to convince me, and the next words he spoke served to confirm our suspicions in full.
“How did you find out? Did that swi
ne Rawlins tell you?”
Rawlins was a name seemingly conjured from thin air, but Holmes gave no indication that he was at all surprised to hear it.
“Is that how he named himself to you?” he asked, helping himself to a cigarette from a silver case on the desk and taking the chair opposite Hoffmann. I considered taking the chair behind the desk for myself, but it was too far from the others, so I contented myself with leaning against the desk itself while Holmes continued. “He called himself Sherlock Holmes when he spoke to us.”
“Do you think me an idiot, sir?” Hoffmann asked, with some spirit. I could see the panic abating in his eyes and was reminded that this was no fool before me. We would have to tread warily, for Hoffmann could prove himself a troublesome enemy if we made him so. “He called himself that when he first arrived at my door, but I knew the name already and almost had him chased from the premises. Sherlock Holmes is a famous detective from London, you see. It was not the worst lie ever, in fairness, for I had heard that the fellow was taking a busman’s holiday in New York, but from our first meeting I knew this miscreant was not he. I am an excellent judge of character, you see, sir. As a minister I must be, and I pride myself that I can tell an imposter from the genuine article every time. So tell me, Inspector Lestrade, what exactly did Noah Rawlins – for yes, that is how he then named himself – tell you about me?”
“Only that you had been indiscreet and that he had been able to extract what he would from you in return for his silence.”
“You have him in your cells then, Inspector?” A little of Hoffmann’s newly recovered confidence ebbed away again as he worried what else Rawlins (how good to have a name for the imposter, at last!) might tell us.
Holmes nodded. “We do. Incidentally, we have not – as yet – pried into the precise nature of your indiscretion. You are a pillar of the community, a moral force for good, and the city police with whom we are engaged would prefer that your name were not sullied in the gutter press. The last thing anyone wants,” he concluded with a cold smile, “is to see a headline concerning yourself in the Examiner.”
I feared for Hoffmann’s health as the colour drained once more from his cheeks, and he nodded vigorously in response to Holmes’s words. “For which I thank you from the bottom of my heart, Inspector, and so do my poor, sickly wife and my three children. I have been a weak man, I admit it, but I should consider it a great boon if you would allow me to exculpate my sin by providing what assistance I can.”
Hoffmann’s honeyed words strongly reminded me of those of a particularly unctuous Home Counties minister I had once heard preaching to a Scottish battalion in Afghanistan. They dripped with insincerity and a false humility that bordered on arrogance. The minister, I recalled with a smile, had been chased from camp by two kilt-wearing Highland privates after he suggested that Edinburgh was the only civilised city in Scotland.
Such a fate seemed unlikely to befall Hoffmann, even though he was currently in some fear for his reputation. “You smile at my predicament, sir?” he asked, with a minor note of bile in his voice that I suspected was closer to his usual character than the role of penitent sinner. “I do not believe we have been introduced.”
Holmes, in the guise of Inspector Lestrade, swept between us and made introductions of a sort, describing me as Constable James King of the London constabulary. “King is an invaluable aid to me,” he assured our host. “Why, without him I wonder that I could even recall what I was doing last week!”
Hoffmann laughed weakly, desperate to remain in the good graces of “Inspector Lestrade”, but Holmes kept him off-balance and more easily controlled by immediately playing the martinet. “You find this funny?” he snapped. “I find such an attitude astonishing, I must say. At home in England, I can assure you that a man in your position, facing professional ruin and personal disgrace, would not be laughing. Far from it. No, he would be begging anyone who might be able to help him to do so, with all possible speed.” He stopped suddenly and leaned forward in his chair until he was as close to Hoffmann as he could be. “If you want us to help you, Pastor,” he whispered fiercely, “now would be an excellent time for you to tell us everything you know about Mr Rawlins.”
The trap was sprung and closed around Hoffmann as though it were made of Sheffield steel. Holmes had reduced him to a shadow of himself, terrified that his secret, whatever it might be, would come out unless “Lestrade” saved him.
“What can I tell you?” he asked, finally.
Holmes was implacable. “Everything,” he said.
Without a word, Hoffmann rose from his seat and crossed to the study door, which he locked. He crossed the room to his desk, where he dropped the key. He then opened a drawer, removed a bottle of whisky and three glasses. He sat heavily in his desk chair, poured the drinks and pushed two in the direction of Holmes and myself.
“This is purely for the shock, Inspector,” he said defensively as he drained his glass and quickly poured himself another. Holmes turned his seat around to face the desk, and I did the same with the one recently vacated by Hoffmann. Only once we were all settled did Hoffmann tell his tale.
“If you are to understand the complete story, Inspector, it is necessary for me to begin, not last year, but more than three decades in the past, when I was a young man. I was ambitious, keen to make my mark on the world, as all ambitious young men are. You must understand that at that time I was not a religious man, far less a man of God, and I was prone to idleness, as the ungodly often are. I tell you plainly: I had it in mind to make my fortune with as little effort as possible, and with as little regard for the law as was strictly necessary.
“At that time I was acquainted with a youth named George Appo. Much later, he was a famed pickpocket and green goods man, but then he was just another half-starved orphan willing to do anything for a dime. As for me, I came from a decent family, but I warmed to the life that George led. It seemed to me to be filled with romance and danger, with no man to answer to and no boss but oneself.”
He shook his head and topped up his glass, before politely offering us the bottle. When we refused, he shrugged his shoulders and carefully placed it back on the desk before continuing.
“I was a fool, obviously. I see that now. But at the time I believed myself to be the very best and most fortunate of men, lording it in the Five Points with George, drinking and gambling and, now and again, helping him in the less skilful of his crimes. I learned to pick a pocket, though never to George’s standard, and how to cut the strap on a purse without the owner even being aware it had gone. I know how to cut a circle of glass from a window and what to place over the glass to prevent any noise being made.”
“And it is this you fear may be exposed?” I asked.
“No, Constable, it is not. If a few purloined coins were the sole sin I had to place one day at the feet of my Saviour, I should fear no man, but would admit to my failing and do penance for all such minor transgressions, made thirty years ago as they were.” He swallowed, and his eyes fell to the glass in his hand. He whisked the liquid round for a moment, then took a sip before speaking again.
“I took the life of a fellow man, Inspector Lestrade, though I assure you that it was done in self-defence. That’s the truth, sir. I swear it on this Bible,” he said, reaching across the desk and placing an unsteady hand on the open book, “and if you can do anything to aid me and keep this story from the newspapers, you will have my undying gratitude.”
“You killed someone?” Holmes asked. “Who?”
“Another man. A nobody. A filthy, drunken sot.” The whisky had not soothed Hoffmann, but roused his less manly emotions, awakening an unattractive self-pity in him. “His face had plagued me for years, but why should it?” he went on, pitifully. “Why should I be punished for the sins of Appo and the others? I didn’t want to dip his pocket, but George said I was scared and I couldn’t have that, could I? Couldn’t look weak in front of them all, not when I was already at a disadvantage, not being from the P
oints like the rest.
“And he’d been an easy mark. Drunk as a lord, he was, and already fallen once or twice from the look of him. Dirt down the front of his shirt and on the knees of his trousers, and his evening jacket ripped at the elbow. ‘But he’s got money,’ George said. ‘Why don’t you go and take it off him?’ George said. ‘He’s only going to lose it in any case,’ he said. And he would have done, that’s the truth of it. Fellow like him staggering through the Points at night, well – he was bound to get turned over. And George was right enough – better we relieve him of his wallet, gentle like, and him on his way none the wiser, than one of the other gangs should come across him and stab him through the heart first, just to be on the safe side.”
I could not fail to notice that the pastor’s speech had changed over the course of his recital. Even the words he now used spoke of a less well-educated man. He had been drinking, of course, but he was certainly not drunk. Yet I was certain that his accent had coarsened in the last few minutes.
“You can hardly be blamed, then,” Holmes said. “Egged on by your friends, and hoping to prevent a greater tragedy in the unfortunate man’s near future.”
“Exactly, Inspector!” Hoffmann seized on Holmes’s words as a drowning man clings to a lifebelt. “Rawlins would not have that, though. He has a black, black heart, that man. He laid all the blame at my feet – and said that others would too. He wasn’t wrong there. I’ve got enemies, you know, gentlemen. Jealous of the respect due to me on account of my calling, envious of my good name!”
“We understand, Pastor,” Holmes interjected smoothly, cutting off Hoffmann before he could expand further on this theme. “But you were talking of your youth, were you not? Of the crime that Rawlins said would ruin you?”
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes--The Counterfeit Detective Page 14