The Baker Street Boys - The Case of the Stolen Sparklers

by Anthony Read

  “Don’t ever do that again!” he told her. “Why are you always trying to tidy everything up? You ain’t our mother.”

  Polly’s lips trembled and she looked as though she might burst into tears.

  “I- I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I don’t have anythin’ else to do while you’re out all day. And I was only tryin’ to make the place nice for you.”

  “Course you was,” Beaver said soothingly. “You didn’t have to shout at her, Wiggins. She’s only doin’ her best.”

  The other Boys all agreed, and Wiggins backed away sheepishly.

  “Sorry,” he grunted. “I didn’t mean to, er… Sorry. Go on, now, all of you. Get to bed.”

  Wiggins flung himself into his special chair and prepared for another night of thinking. But hard as he tried, he couldn’t find an answer to the problem. When morning came he told the others that the only thing they could do was watch out for Gerald leaving Mountjoy House and follow him when he did.

  “We’ll just have to let him lead us to wherever he’s going,” he said.

  The fog had thickened during the night. As the Boys took up their positions in the street outside Mountjoy House, it lay over London like a woolly blanket. But unlike a blanket, it did not keep them warm, and they shivered in the morning chill.

  “We’ll warm up when we start movin’,” said Sparrow, trying to stay cheerful.

  “Can’t be no colder than hangin’ about ’ere,” grumbled Shiner. “I hope ’e comes out soon.”

  “And he’d better not go too fast when he does,” said Wiggins. “Don’t want to lose him in this blooming fog.”

  “Yeah,” Beaver agreed. “Can’t see to the end of the street. We’ll have to stick close to him.”

  “Right, but not too close. He mustn’t know we’re following.”

  “And not all in one bunch,” added Gertie. “We’d better split up into two lots, three of us in each.”

  “Yeah. He’d be sure to notice six of us all together if he looked round,” Rosie said.

  “All right, let’s split up now,” Wiggins told them. “Beaver, Rosie, Shiner, you go on the other side of the street. Sparrow and Gertie stay with me.”

  They had only just separated when the front door of Mountjoy House opened and Gerald came out. He pulled on a pair of gloves, wrapped his scarf more firmly around his neck and set off at a brisk pace. The two groups of Boys followed, trying to look casual.

  Keeping Gerald in sight was quite easy at first, since there weren’t many people on the quiet streets. When he reached Baker Street, with its crowded pavements, it became much harder, but the Boys still managed. Then he stepped out into the road, hailed a hansom cab and climbed into it. Wiggins was quite close behind him, but not close enough to hear the address he gave to the driver. All the Boys could do was trot along behind the cab and hope they could keep up with it.

  Fortunately the traffic was heavy, as usual. The streets were packed with cabs and carriages, vans and omnibuses, and the fog made them all go slower than normal, so the Boys were able to keep the cab in view. Their only fear was that with so many cabs all looking the same, it would be easy to mix them up and follow the wrong one. From behind, they could not see Gerald inside it. But luckily the cabbie, perched high up on his seat at the back, had a big red scarf wrapped round and round his neck and mouth and they kept their eyes fixed on that.

  Wherever Gerald was going, it seemed a long way. The cab headed east towards the City, past the shops and new department stores of Oxford Street and on for nearly two miles. They were not far from Newgate Prison and St Paul’s Cathedral when the cab – and all the other vehicles around it – came to a complete standstill in a massive traffic jam.

  Wiggins pulled out his battered pocket watch and consulted it.

  “Wherever he’s going,” he told Sparrow and Gertie, “he ain’t gonna be there by ten o’clock, unless he gets a move on.”

  “Looks like he knows that,” Sparrow answered.

  Ahead of them, Gerald had leapt out of the cab, handed some money up to the driver and set off on foot, almost running in his hurry. Signalling to Beaver and the others to cross over, Wiggins followed. They came to a shiny new red-brick office building, tall, ornate and glowing; the sign over the main entrance proclaimed it to be the headquarters of a big insurance company. For a moment, Wiggins wondered if this might be where Gerald was going – perhaps he, like Lady Mountjoy, was hoping to claim insurance money for the jewels. But instead of entering, Gerald walked straight past and turned into a small street alongside it. The Boys followed, as closely as they dared, and soon found themselves plunged into a maze of alleyways, with ancient buildings leaning out crazily over their heads.

  Gerald obviously knew the area well, and he scuttled round its many twists and turns so quickly that it became more and more difficult to track him. The fog was thicker still in the narrow lanes, and soon it swallowed him completely. Trying to guess which way he had gone in the gloom, the Boys took a wrong turning and found themselves facing a blank wall.

  “Oh, no!” wailed Rosie. “We lost him.”

  “Don’t panic,” said Beaver. “He’s gotta be round here somewhere.”

  “He must’ve gone the other way at that last corner,” said Wiggins, heading back. “Come on. Quick.”

  After two turnings they came out of the alleyways into a wider street, where the fog was not so dense. Even so, they could see no sign of Gerald.

  “He can’t have gone far,” Wiggins said. “We only lost him for a few seconds.”

  “Where are we?” asked Gertie.

  “It says ‘Hatton Garden’ up there,” said Sparrow, pointing to a street sign on a nearby building.

  “Don’t look much like no garden to me,” said Shiner. “It’s all houses and shops.”

  “Yeah, but look at the shops,” Rosie said. “They’re all jewellers.”

  The Boys looked around them. Sure enough, nearly all the shops on the street were selling rings and necklaces and watches.

  “And look at them geezers!” Beaver exclaimed.

  Among the people standing or strolling around were several men dressed in black. Some were wearing fur bonnets, but most of them wore wide-brimmed black hats from which their hair hung down in curled dark ringlets. Under their full-skirted coats they wore white shawls with long fringes. They had tight stockings to their knees instead of long trousers. To the Boys, who had never seen anything like it before, they looked strange and rather sinister.

  “Wiggins,” Rosie whispered, “have you noticed that one over there? I reckon he’s watchin’ us.”

  The man she was talking about was standing in a shady doorway, a little apart from the others. Wiggins glanced quickly in his direction, trying not to let the man see him looking.

  “Yeah, you could be right. Rum looking cove, ain’t he? Wonder what his game is. Wonder what they’re all doing, come to that.”

  His question was answered a moment later when two of the men approached each other. They greeted one another warmly and began talking earnestly in a foreign language. As the Boys watched, one of them drew a fold of paper from his inside pocket and opened it on his hand to show its contents. The other man nodded, reached out and picked up something small from it. He held it up to the light, then inspected it through a small magnifying glass which he screwed into his eye.

  “It’s a diamond!” gasped Rosie. “They’re sellin’ diamonds!”

  “Now we know what Gerald’s doing here,” said Wiggins. “We must be in the right place.”

  “If only we could find him,” said Beaver.

  “Fat chance,” Shiner groaned. “ ’E could be anywhere.”

  “That’s enough of that,” Wiggins said sharply. “Keep looking. He could be in any of these shops – spread out and look in all the windows!”

  On Wiggins’s order, the six Boys separated and began working their way along the street as fast as they could. But they couldn’t see Gerald in any of the shops. They met
up again on a corner, all shaking their heads.

  “D’you think there’s any more streets like this one?” Gertie asked.

  Wiggins shrugged and scratched his head, looking around for some indication. Suddenly he stiffened with excitement and pointed at the street sign on the corner.

  “Look!”

  The others looked.

  “ Greville Street,” Beaver read. “What about it?”

  “Go on. Read the next bit.”

  “Er, Leading to Bleeding Heart Yard?”

  “Coo, that sounds spooky.” Rosie shuddered.

  “Never mind spooky – think about the words. Bleeding Heart Yard.”

  “Gotcha!” Sparrow yelled. “BHY!”

  “Exac’ly! The telegram – BHY. Be there. Come on!”

  Wiggins led them along the little street and into a cobbled courtyard lined with stables and workshops. On the opposite side of the courtyard a black carriage was parked, its coachman dozing on the box. As they crept towards it they could make out the monogram painted on the door – it was the familiar curly “M”. Beyond the coach, behind a line of railings, they could see into the lit window of a workshop. On the workbench, resting on a raised stand, was a piece of jewellery. Wiggins recognized it straight away from the portrait of Lady Mountjoy.

  “That’s it,” he whispered. “That’s the Mountjoy tiara!”

  BLEEDING HEART YARD

  “We gotta get that tiara outta there,” Wiggins whispered.

  “Right,” said Beaver. “But how? That window’s got bars on it, look.”

  “We couldn’t reach it anyhow, with them railings there,” said Shiner.

  “And the front door looks like it’s locked,” said Rosie.

  “That coachman would see us tryin’ to get in, anyway,” Shiner added.

  “Hang on,” Wiggins said. “I’ll think of something.”

  “You’d better hurry up,” said Sparrow. “Look!”

  Through the barred window they saw three men enter the room and stand around the workbench, looking at the tiara. One, with his back to them, was a tall, gaunt man with a bald head. “Moriarty,” muttered Wiggins. Facing him was a small man with a face like a weasel and a pointed goatee beard, blinking through steel-rimmed glasses that had lenses as thick as bottle bottoms. He was wearing a brown apron and a shiny green eye-shade. The third man was Gerald Huggett.

  Although the Boys could not hear what was being said, the men were clearly in the middle of an argument. Gerald seemed to be pleading with Moriarty, who leant forward and poked him threateningly in the chest with a bony finger. Gerald shrank back, nervous and afraid, shaking his head and holding up his hands helplessly.

  “Something’s wrong,” said Wiggins. “Looks like Gerald’s in trouble.”

  “Shall I get the coppers?” asked Rosie.

  “No. By the time you’ve found one, they could be long gone. And the tiara with ’em.”

  “What we gonna do, then?” Beaver wanted to know.

  Wiggins thought as hard as he could. Then he grinned.

  “Got it! Listen careful now, and I’ll tell you…”

  Gertie crept forward with all the stealth she had learned from her father when he’d been avoiding gamekeepers on country estates. The others held their breath as she reached out and stroked the horse and whispered in its ear to keep it calm. Then, while the coachman still dozed in his seat, she silently unbuckled the harness attaching the horse to the carriage, and gave the others the thumbs-up.

  Wiggins had strolled over to the other side of the workshop door, and he now leant carelessly against the wall. When he saw Gertie’s thumbs-up, he raised his hand to the others and hissed, “Go! Now!”

  At Wiggins’s signal, they all sprang onto action. Rosie started screaming at the top of her voice. Sparrow and Shiner began a mock fight over her, shouting and yelling as loudly as they knew how. Gertie gave the horse a smack on its rump and yelled, “Giddy up!” It lunged forward, careered off across the yard and out through the entrance. The bewildered coachman woke with a start as the shafts of the carriage crashed to the ground. He stumbled down from his seat and began to chase after the horse. Beaver hurled a large brick at the workshop window and it shattered, spilling broken glass everywhere.

  The three men inside turned angrily, then rushed out of the door and into the yard to see what was going on. As they came out, Wiggins nipped behind them, through the open door and into the workshop. He grabbed the tiara from its stand, turned it on its side and slipped it through the bars on the broken window, then tossed it to Beaver who was waiting on the other side.

  As soon as Beaver had disappeared into the fog, Wiggins let out a piercing whistle and yelled, “Scatter!” The rest of the Boys stopped their fighting and screaming and ran for the narrow exit from the yard. Wiggins rushed to the door, but his whistle and shout had alerted the three men, who turned and saw the empty jewellery stand through the window. As Wiggins came out, they saw him and lined up to stop him. There seemed to be no escape. But just as one of them was about to grab this scruffy boy who seemed to have appeared from nowhere, he was interrupted by a cry from behind.

  “Oy, oy, oy! Vot’s going on here?” The newcomer was an old man, bowed down with age, wearing a big black hat and long coat and shaking his heavy stick at them. It was the diamond dealer who had been watching the Boys in the street. “Vot is all this shemozzle?” he demanded in a high voice.

  “He’s a thief!” cried the jeweller.

  “Ha! And what has he stolen?”

  “A tiara,” said Gerald. “A diamond tiara.”

  “Ah. This I would like to see. Show me, please, young man.”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Wiggins. He held out his hands, then opened his coat and turned out his pockets. “See? Nothing.”

  “He must have passed it to one of his gang,” growled Moriarty.

  “Vot gang?” the old man asked. “I see no gang.”

  “They’ve run off,” cried Gerald. “You must have seen them. Which way did they go?”

  “Ach, die kinder.” The old man nodded. “The children. Ja, I see dem. Dey run every vich vay, into de fog. You never catch dem now.”

  “What are we going to do?” Gerald whined.

  “Hold your tongue and keep quiet,” Moriarty snapped.

  “Need police,” the old man said. “I call police now, yes?”

  “No. No police,” snarled Moriarty. “I will deal with this myself.”

  “But, sir…”

  “I said no police. Now be off with you. Go on – clear off!”

  The old man shrugged. “Very vell. Come, young man, you come vis me.”

  He took hold of Wiggins’s wrist before the other three could do anything about it, and began leading him away. Wiggins was surprised to find that the frail old man had a grip like steel. He was even more surprised when the man spoke to him in a familiar voice, too quietly for the other men to hear.

  “Keep walking, Wiggins. And don’t look back.”

  “Mr H…!”

  “Ssh. Say nothing.”

  As they left, the coachman was returning with his horse. He would have blocked their way, but Moriarty waved him away, and Wiggins and Mr Holmes walked steadily out of the yard and back into Hatton Garden.

  The other Boys had run from the yard and ducked into the maze of alleyways across the street. Following Wiggins’s orders, they scattered, all in different directions. Anyone trying to catch them would not have known which one had the tiara, or which one to follow, even if they could see them. The fog that had been their enemy was now their friend. Melting into the murky gloom, Beaver knew that no one would be able to track him as he ran. But to be on the safe side he hid the tiara under his coat and kept a tight grip on it all the way home.

  Because he had gone straight to HQ, while the others had taken round-about routes to throw off any pursuers, Beaver was first back. After running almost non-stop from Bleeding Heart Yard, his legs felt b
endy as rubber when he crashed through the door. He fell into Wiggins’s special chair, puffing so hard he couldn’t speak. He was so out of breath that Polly thought he must be ill – or at least in mortal danger.

  “Beaver!” she cried. “What is it? Here, let me get you a drink of water.”

  “I’m all right,” he panted, shaking his head. “Everything’s all right. Look!”

  He reached inside his coat and pulled out the tiara. Polly let out a scream.

  “That’s it!” she yelled. “That’s the Mountjoy tiara! Oh, Beaver – you got it! You’re wonderful!”

  She threw her arms around him and hugged him in relief. Then she burst into tears. She was still sobbing and laughing at the same time when the rest of the Boys returned. Beaver put the tiara on her head and they all danced round the room together.

  Suddenly the door opened again. They stopped dancing and stared in shock at the strange man who stood there, regarding them with an amused smile behind his straggly beard. Beaver grabbed the tiara from Polly’s head and held on to it tightly.

  “It’s him!” shouted Sparrow. “The geezer what was eyeballin’ us in Hatton Garden!”

  The man gave a surprisingly hearty laugh.

  “Indeed it is!” he said. “Well done, Sparrow. Excellent observation.” And he stepped inside, smiling broadly. Wiggins followed him into the room, his grin stretching from ear to ear.

  “Mr Holmes!” Beaver exclaimed.

  While the Boys crowded round the great detective, Polly stood alone, quite confused.

  “Mr…?” she stammered. “Who?”

  “This is Mr Sherlock Holmes, Polly,” Wiggins explained.

  “Master of disguise,” added Sparrow admiringly. “Cor, Mr Holmes, that’s gotta be the best yet.”

  “Why, thank you, Sparrow,” Mr Holmes replied. “And you must be Polly,” he said, turning to her. “Wiggins told me all about you on our way back here.”

  He took off his big black hat and the side curls came off with it. Then he peeled off the false beard and rubbed his bare chin.

  “Ah.” He sighed with relief. “That’s better. These theatrical beards can be very itchy. Now then, let me see this famous tiara.”