The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part II

by David Marcum

  Stunned by Kiefer’s callous attitude, Holmes made an excuse to exit after declining the arsonist’s invitation to stay for a smoke in his opium room. Upon his return to our diggings, Holmes rubbed his sinewy hands together and fished half a cigar from the coal scuttle, lit it, inhaled, and repeated for me the incriminating chat he had with Kiefer.

  “He is an amoral slouch with a haughty indifference toward the lives of the impoverished, as is Smisky,” said Holmes to preface his rendition of the dialogue. “Society will be better off with those two reprobates in their graves. And I have the material to put them there.”

  Just as he completed his version of the event, Mrs. Hudson appeared on our threshold to announce that a Gunther Williams was in the foyer asking for Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

  “Send him up with dispatch, Mrs. Hudson,” Holmes directed her.

  “It’s uncanny, Mr. Holmes, but you were on target with what you said would happen,” Williams praised. “He fell for it hook, line, and sinker. The name of the arsonist is-”

  “Let me guess, Gunther, it’s Frank Kiefer,” Holmes butted in.

  “If you knew that, why did you put me through-” the informant went on.

  “I am sorry, but it was because I needed confirmation, Gunther,” Holmes apologised. “I only had a suspicion it was Kiefer when I read in my Index at four o’clock this morning about the one-armed arsonist who was an expert with the properties of natural coal gas. Tell me more of your encounter, Gunther.”

  “Well, Smisky is planning something, probably to harm you fatally,” Williams postulated. “Like you told me to say, I mentioned that you would be having dinner at seven o’clock at Simpson’s. He asked me to describe you and said he might join you.”

  “Excellent, Gunther!” Holmes extolled. “Here are three guineas for your trouble. Let us fix you a ham and cheese sandwich, for I am certain you’ve had no lunch.”

  “Oh, thank you, Mr. Holmes, I am awfully hungry,” Hobo Willie admitted. “I’ll take it with me and eat it on the way home - in a cab, no less, now that I have the fare.”

  “Wait! Before you leave, Gunther,” Holmes boomed with concern, “I feel obligated to warn you to keep a low profile for a day or so - don’t patronise your usual haunts, don’t follow your usual pattern. Smisky is sharp and he could smell a rat, meaning you. He is capable of violence against you, too.”

  “He is an idiot and a weasel, Mr. Holmes, and he’ll never think to suspect me,” Williams quarreled. “He is the least of my worries.”

  As Williams left, devouring the sandwich, an incensed Joseph Smisky was standing at the entrance to Frank Kiefer’s brothel and opium den in the Limehouse district, summoning up the courage to do what he had come to do: eliminate the threat of a hardened criminal testifying against him at a trial that surely would spell his doom. He would silence Kiefer before he had the chance to speak under oath the words that would sway a jury to find the coin dealer guilty and send him to the gallows.

  Smisky burst through the door and was immediately confronted by a Chinese attendant, who asked him in broken English if he wanted a girl, a smoking room, or both.

  “I’m here to see Frank, that’s all,” Smisky barked.

  “I fetch Master Frank, you sit,” ordered the Chinaman, sensing an altercation. He climbed a stairway and opened a door.

  “Master Frank, angry man downstairs to see you, very mad,” said the agitated Chinaman.

  Kiefer retrieved a six-shot revolver from a drawer and leveled it at his waist, then went to the bottom of the staircase and saw Smisky stewing on the sofa.

  “Joe!” he hollered. “Yung-se says you’re upset. Excuse the pistol. What’s the matter?”

  “I came here to choke you to death, Frank,” Smisky acknowledged. “What’s this I hear about you cooperating with Sherlock Holmes?”

  “With who? Never met the man,” Kiefer insisted. “But I did meet a friend of yours today, Matthew McKinney, who wants me to pulverise his haberdashery.”

  “A friend of mine? I don’t know the name. What did he say about me?” Smisky queried.

  “He said you recommended me to him. He knew I took care of business for you,” Kiefer informed a puzzled Smisky.

  “What did this McKinney look like?” Smisky asked.

  “He was tall, skinny, a bird’s beak for a nose, piercing eyes, with dark hair that was perfectly combed,” Kiefer recalled.

  “That was no Matthew McKinney. That was Sherlock Holmes,” Smisky wailed.

  “Who is Sherlock Holmes anyway?” Kiefer wanted to know.

  “He’s a beastly private detective who is investigating us for the fire,” Smisky said to enlighten him.

  “That evil rodent! Let’s take care of him before he can do us in!” Kiefer roared.

  “He’ll be at Simpson’s in the Strand at seven o’clock. We’ll kill him there,” Smisky agreed. “We’ll make minced meat of him. But there’s somebody I want to dust before him, Hobo Willie. He set me up for Holmes. Lend me a gun and twelve rounds of ammunition.”

  Smisky and Kiefer made plans for the murder at Simpson’s, then Smisky left to hunt down Gunther Williams.

  Finding him at the same cafe where Holmes ran across him, Smisky sneaked up behind him as he drank coffee on a stool, knocked the cup out of his hand, pointed the muzzle of the weapon in his pocket at Williams’s ample belly, and coldly instructed him to walk outside. From there he escourted the victim to an alley, where he accused him of a double-cross.

  “You are a traitor, and traitors are shot!” Smisky howled, then pulled the trigger six times, pumping Hobo Willie full of lead even after he was dead. “Let that be a final lesson to you, you maggot,” Smisky seethed with abject bitterness, hovering over the corpse, “I’ll see you in hell.”

  Word of Gunther Williams’s demise would not reach Holmes that day, for the newspapers already had published their late afternoon editions, and the body was not discovered by constables until their evening rounds.

  Holmes was pensive, fiddling with his chemicals at the deal-top table, stroking his violin aimlessly, checking the firearm in his shoulder holster to make sure it was loaded, asking me twice if I had examined mine, talking idly about the theatre and concerts, and, ultimately, about what Smisky might be intending and how. The minutes until seven o’clock ticked away.

  When the timepiece on the mantel struck six-thirty, we donned our jackets, ventured casually out the door past Mrs. Hudson in the kitchen - “Enjoy your night out,” she called to us - and stepped onto the pavement to flag down a hansom at the corner.

  “Where to?” the driver sputtered, and Holmes gave him a light-hearted answer: “Simpson’s in the Strand beckons us for a delightful meal.” I boarded the vehicle first, and Holmes, ever vigilant, glanced in all directions before following me up into the seat. The horse moved forward and trotted through Cavendish Square, then beyond Regent Street near the intersection of Oxford Street, where Holmes raised up and surveyed the avenue behind us to determine if we were being stalked. “It looks clear, save for one cab about fifty yards to the rear,” he observed, almost under his breath.

  When we reached the Strand, my careful friend told the driver to pull to the curb around a bend in the road. “We’ll walk the rest of the way,” he apprised the driver. “Here is an extra two shillings if you continue on to Simpson’s and stop in front for a minute until the cab behind us passes you by.”

  “Will do, guv’nor, whatever you say. Appreciate the tip,” the driver concurred.

  We strolled briskly toward the restaurant past the familiar shops and hotels until we were within sight of our destination. I checked my pocket watch and noted to Holmes that the time was six-fifty. “Avert the front door, Watson - we’ll go in through the back and into the kitchen,” Holmes advised. “Keep your eyes peeled, Watson. Remember, he’s the stout fellow with
a handlebar moustache.”

  “I would never forget that face, be certain,” I assured my companion.

  We emerged from the busy kitchen and into the crowded dining area, where an astonished maître-de, Oswald, excitedly encountered us. “Good gracious, Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson, I never expected an entrance like this!” he cried. “Nonetheless, your table is ready.”

  We trailed after him to a setting in the centre of the room, seated ourselves, and scoured the faces of the patrons to see if the assassin had already arrived. There was no sign of Smisky, so we asked the waiter to bring us two glasses of dry sherry. It was seven o’clock.

  Our drinks were served and Holmes proposed a toast. “May the dinner be succulent, uneventful, and safe,” he prayed, “and may Joe Smisky be all bravado with no nerve.”

  Suddenly, two men with hoods covering their heads, their handguns thrust outward, appeared inside the front door, the weapons scanning the dining area as if searching for a target. One by one, the clientele noticed the intruders. The sounds of a vibrant atmosphere became eerily silent. One of the hooded figures trained his revolver on our table and a voice cracked the motionless air. “Holmes, you monster! Prepare to meet your Maker!”

  With that, four other men at a scattering of tables flashed weapons that were aimed at the two assailants. One of those men spoke authoritatively and loudly. “Drop the guns or we’ll fire. I am Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard and you are both under arrest for attempted murder.”

  “Murder it will be, then!” the second hooded man bawled, squeezing off two rounds in the direction of the lawmen, missing them and sending the bullets over the scalps of the diners into the wall. The four officers cut him down with a volley of shots as the hooded man closest to Holmes wheeled and tried to escape. He was accosted by two more members of Lestrade’s squad and engaged them in battle, killing one before the other policeman emptied his revolver into the belligerent’s chest and abdomen.

  The odour of sulfur penetrated the dining room, and the customers, especially the ladies, shrieked in horror before the pandemonium dissipated.

  The officials removed the hoods from the heads of the deceased assassins and Holmes informed Lestrade that their names were Smisky and Kiefer.

  “When I received your message this morning,” Lestrade remarked, “I thought it was another of your wild goose chases. But I couldn’t be certain, so I came, anticipating nothing of this sort.”

  “You should know better by now, Lestrade, that when I humble myself to ask for your assistance, I am certain,” Holmes scolded. “This outcome was predictable. I told you as much.”

  The next morning, after reading the account of the gunplay in the Times, Holmes saw a separate article, a small item, about the death of an ex-convict, Gunther Williams, also known as Hobo Willie. The newspaper said the police reported he was gunned down by an unknown attacker in an alley behind the Southpointe Cafe in Pope’s Court.

  The writer speculated that the killing was an act of revenge perpetrated by an enemy who also had been an inmate at Dartmoor Penitentiary. “Leave it to the naive press, Watson, to jump to such a conclusion without having the data to support it,” Holmes groused. “I shall make a contribution to the orphanage in Gunther’s honour.”

  The Saviour of Cripplegate Square

  by Bert Coules

  This play was commissioned by the BBC as the fifth episode in the first series of The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, sixteen pastiche mysteries based on some of the throwaway references to other cases which Conan Doyle scattered throughout the Canon. The shows followed the earlier dramatisations of all fifty-six short stories and four novels, the first time it had ever been done in any medium. Clive Merrison repeated his Holmes in the sequels, with Andrew Sachs taking over as Watson after the untimely death of Michael Williams.

  If you have the original broadcast, either on CD or as a download, and try following the script as you listen along, you’ll notice a few minor differences. Things almost always get changed during the recording: cuts for time, clarifications of plot points, smoothing out of lines that have proved unexpectedly tricky to say, and so on.

  Readers unaccustomed to radio scripts are sometimes surprised by the presence of detailed directions for movement and business, especially if they’ve imagined the studio sessions as a group of performers sitting round a table and acting to a single microphone. In fact the process is a very physical one: there are sets with practical doors, windows, staircases, and furniture which the cast can roam around, and most directors choreograph a scene in much the same way as they would for a stage, film or TV production. Action, even something as simple as crossing a room to open a door, is valuable for preventing a static feel, and even a gesture or the position of the head changes the voice and makes for aural variety as well as dramatic realism.

  INT and EXT in the scene headings stand for Interior and Exterior, distinctions achieved not only by the addition of appropriate background effects but also by recording in different acoustics: purpose-built radio drama studios are divided into areas with contrasting wall, floor and ceiling treatments which radically affect the sound.

  A note on dates: In general, I was careful not to be too specific about the dating of any of the Further Adventures. Not only was I well aware that we had a loyal audience of extremely knowledgeable Holmesians eager to pounce happily (and good-naturedly) on any inadvertent inconsistencies with the canon - Conan Doyle is himself often vague or completely silent on the subject of dates - so I was following in the best possible footsteps. But having said that, this particular story’s mood of reminiscence and revelation seems to sit nicely with the time of Holmes’s reappearance from his wanderings and Watson’s return to the old Baker Street rooms, twin events which in this instance Sir Arthur pins down exactly; so 1894 let it be.

  The case at the heart of the story though took place long before. It happened shortly after Holmes’s arrival in London following his years at university, when, as it says in the script, he would have been in his early twenties. And I’m happy to leave things at that.

  Finally, a playscript isn’t as easy to read as a story: the experience can feel disjointed as the eye and the brain moves from scene heading to character name to dialogue and directions. Any initial awkwardness usually disappears as the pages succeed each other and, with luck, as the world of the drama begins to form in the reader’s imagination. I hope this happens for you, and you find yourself transported back to a stormy Victorian night with the rain beating against the windows, the wind howling in the chimney, the fire crackling in the grate and Sherlock Holmes in the mood to tell a dark tale of his earliest days as a detective.

  This script is protected by copyright. For permission to reproduce it in any way or to perform it in any medium, please apply to the author’s agent. Contact details can be found at www.bertcoules.co.uk.

  THE CAST

  in order of speaking

  SMITH – Nathaniel Collington Smith, librarian at the British Museum. Mildly eccentric, soft-spoken, widely experienced and very wise in an unconventional sort of way: a mentor to the young Sherlock Holmes. Sixties or older.

  WATSON – Doctor John Watson.

  HOLMES – Sherlock Holmes.

  JENNY – Jenny Snell, a working class cleaner and general household servant. Early teens.

  GUTTRIDGE – A working class East Ender. Forties.

  LANDLADY – Ruler of a rough working class pub in the East End of London.

  WOMAN – A young working class mother. East End Londoner.

  MRS. GUTTRIDGE – An East Ender from the upper ranges of the working class. Forties or older.

  DOCTOR – Working in one of the most desperate and poor areas of the East End.

  MAN – An East End local.

  Plus a noisy bunch of REGULARS in the Landlady’s pub

  TEASER. INT. THE READI
NG ROOM, THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

  Huge, echoey. Very quiet atmosphere, occasional distant footsteps, the odd cough and similar. After a few moments, close and quiet:

  SMITH: Look around you, my young friend. A library is a perfect reflection of the ideal world. Every single volume in my care has its allotted place in the great scheme of things. Move one, even by an infinitesimal degree, and you diminish its value.

  What use is information if one cannot instantly obtain it, or see precisely how it fits into the universe as a whole? Nothing exists in isolation. It is the relationships between facts which give them their meaning. These connections may be subtle, they may be hidden, they may be... unexpected. But if you are to master the world of knowledge, it is these links which you must seek out and understand. However well concealed, the truth is always there to be... detected.

  At least, that is my view - and I should like to think that you agree with me... Mr. Holmes.

  Music: the opening sig.

  Opening announcements.

  The music fades into:

  SCENE 1. INT. THE SITTING ROOM, 221b BAKER STREET.

  It is the winter of 1894.

  An almighty thunderclap right overhead. Rain lashes, wind howls. Watson is off at a window, looking out.

  WATSON: What a filthy night.

  He pulls the heavy curtains shut. The sound of the wind and rain becomes more muted.

  (Approaching) God only knows what’s going on under cover of that.

  We become aware of the open fire crackling away.

  HOLMES: Crime, you mean?