The Investigations of Sherlock Holmes

by John Heywood

  It had begun some five weeks earlier, when I had come down one morning to find Holmes already seated at the breakfast table, drinking coffee and reading the morning’s paper, for all the world as if he were an ordinary professional man like myself, ready for a day’s work at his office. I pointed out that his company at breakfast was a rare pleasure for me, and hoped that he had the time to take another cup of coffee with me.

  He put down the paper and glanced up at the clock. “Yes, I have a few minutes to spare. My train leaves Victoria Station at fourteen minutes past eight. The cab is waiting downstairs.”

  “Victoria, you say - you have a case on the south coast?”

  “On the Continent.”

  “I must congratulate you, Holmes. Your reputation knows no bounds. It must be an important matter that takes you so far afield.”

  “Several important matters, but you will forgive me if I go no further in satisfying your curiosity. I am enjoined to silence.”

  “My dear fellow, I quite understand. Do you know how long you will be engaged?”

  “I do not. Even on the surface the business is complicated enough, and heaven knows how deep its roots go. To make matters yet more difficult, I must act in secrecy, for where the highest in this and other lands are concerned, one cannot create a stir that might alarm our people at home or warn our enemies abroad.”

  “Of course.” I had taken the other place at table and begun to make inroads upon the kedgeree. “You know I take the keenest interest in your cases, Holmes, and I should dearly like know the outcome of these enquiries as they unfold, but as they are to be so discreet, I assume that I shall hardly be able to follow your progress in the newspapers.”

  “Not directly, no; but if during the next fortnight they carry no reports of the Foreign Secretary’s resignation or an outbreak of hostilities in the Balkans, then you may take it that the first part of my commission has succeeded.” He drained his cup and rose from the table. “I fancy I have already said more than I should; but I know,” he added with a meaning glance, “that I can rely on your complete discretion. Where did I put my bag? Ah, there it is.” He seized his travelling-bag, and with a breezy “Fare thee well, Watson!” bounded down the stairs.

  Week followed week, bringing news neither of war in Eastern Europe, nor of the fall of her Majesty’s Secretary for Foreign Affairs. I was not in the least disconcerted by my friend’s continued absence, for years of sharing rooms with him had inured me to his unpredictable ways. I had every confidence that one evening I should come home to our Baker Street lodgings to find Holmes lying on the sofa in his dressing gown, greeting my entry with a casual wave as if we had last seen each other that morning. I expected no more warning of his return than that; but I was mistaken, for it fell out that I learned of his return, as I have just described, in the daily press.

  So, discarded newspapers at my feet, I was brooding unhappily upon what I had read when my train of thought was interrupted by a sharp double rap. The door opened and round it appeared a face I recognised as that a Scotland Yard police officer who had been involved in several of Sherlock Holmes’s cases.

  “Inspector Lestrade, is it not?” I asked. “Come in, come in. I take it that you have come to see Mr Holmes. If so, I’m afraid I must disappoint you.”

  “Good evening, Dr Watson. Yes, I understand from your landlady that he is still away from home. That is a pity; I should very much like to have a word with him.”

  “I have not seen him myself these last five weeks, inspector. Well, take a seat. You are welcome to a word with me, if I can help.”

  “If I do not intrude.”

  “Not at all. I dined some time ago and was merely reading the evening paper.”

  “So I see,” he replied, glancing at the newspapers that lay around me. “You have been following Mr Holmes’s latest escapades, I suppose.”

  “I have read a couple of reports about his work since he returned from the Continent, yes. I have no idea where he is now, though, or what he is doing. I take it that you know nothing of his whereabouts?”

  “I’m afraid you’re right, sir. He seems to come and go quite unpredictably - it’s hard to put your hand on the man.” The inspector frowned, and began to pick at his cuffs. “That latest case of his in the paper there,” he said, with a gesture towards the newspaper, “and the Hanseatic Bank robbery - what do you make of them?”

  “I’m sure you know more than I about these things,” I replied. “I haven’t seen Holmes since he left for the Continent weeks ago. Evidently he’s now back in this country, and too busy to come home yet. I assume he was called away to the Hanseatic Bank immediately after the Birmingham business.”

  “But what do you make of the way your friend has handled these cases?” insisted Lestrade. His question embarrassed me, for I was obliged to admit to myself that Holmes did not seem to have been successful in either case. I had wondered if his continental exertions had exhausted him, and I said as much to Lestrade.

  “Perhaps,” he answered drily. “In any event, there’s something wrong. I have spoken with both the officers investigating these two cases, and they are not happy about the part played by your friend Holmes. Neither of them was of the opinion that he had been of any assistance. That’s not his job, you may say, to assist the police, but it goes further than that; both men felt that Holmes had actually obstructed their enquiries. I don’t say deliberately, of course,” the inspector added before I could object to this slur on my friend’s honour, “but I do say that he has been obstructing police work. We can’t have it, Dr Watson.”

  “Come now,” I answered, “have you not on other occasions thought that he was wasting your time and his own, only to find that he was on the right track after all? I appreciate your anxiety, inspector, but it might be unfounded, you know. Perhaps time will prove him right. It often has before.”

  Lestrade shook his head. “No, it won’t wash. Let me tell you one or two things about the Hanseatic Bank robbery, things that did not appear in the papers, and you’ll understand me better. Do you know who called Holmes in? I thought not. It was one of the curious things not mentioned in the newspapers. He called himself in. You may well look surprised, doctor - it’s not the usual way of things, even for Mr Holmes. Nevertheless, that is what happened. Let me explain. The day before the ship carrying the diamonds was due to dock, the director of the bank received a telegram from Holmes demanding a meeting. Holmes warned that through his usual network of criminal connections he had learned that a robbery was afoot, and that it was planned to break into the bank’s vaults overnight. Together Holmes and the director devised a plan to foil the attempt. The diamond shipment was to be escorted by police to the bank, where it was to be unpacked without delay in the presence of Holmes and the police officers. Once checked, it was to be sorted into separate parcels for the various buyers, and the parcels despatched or collected within a few hours at most. That night, when the gang broke into the vaults, the police would be waiting for them. The risk was slight; for if anything were to go wrong, and the gang somehow succeed in their theft, they would find they had stolen an empty safe-box. Well, you have read in the paper what happened. There was indeed an attempted robbery, not in the night but within a few minutes of the diamonds arriving at the bank. Four or five ruffians tried to force their way into the building; blows were exchanged, and a gun fired. While this fracas was taking place at the entrance, Holmes ordered one of the constables to take the box down to the vault, in case the gang should force its way into the building.”

  “A wise precaution,” I commented.

  “I am not so sure of that, as events turned out. The gang was repelled, and off they ran down the street. When the coast was clear, the box was brought back upstairs so that the parcelling out of the diamonds could proceed as planned. The box was empty.”

  “How on earth could that have happened?�
� I asked. “Did you not tell me that they checked the diamonds were in the box as soon as it arrived?”

  “Quite right, and as far as I can see there is only one explanation: one of the gang must have snatched the diamonds in the confusion.”

  “Unless an employee of the bank had taken it,” I suggested.

  “No, that is out of the question. The three bank employees there were all utterly trustworthy men, and not only that - they all emptied their pockets, as did the men from the force, so we know it was no ‘inside job’. Even Mr Holmes went along with it, and emptied his pockets too, I’ll say that much for him. Now, we all know that Mr Holmes has his own methods, which they aren’t regular police methods, and he can take short cuts where we in the Force cannot, and as you know, we sometimes turn a blind eye to his irregular ways and go along with them, because they get results. But when they don’t get results, it’s a different matter. Then it’s harder for us to turn a blind eye. Here, you see, with this robbery at the bank, he has walked in unasked and set up a plan which has allowed diamonds worth almost one million pounds to be stolen from under the noses of the police. It’s rank interference, Dr Watson, and we can’t have it.”

  The inspector leaned forward and jabbed his forefinger towards the newspaper I had been reading. “This murder in Birmingham you were reading about - it’s the same story there, I’m sorry to say. In comes Mr Holmes, with his short cuts and special methods, and the police investigation goes by the board. Again I say, we’d bear it if he got his man, but he hasn’t in this case any more than in the other. I’ll tell you about the case, Dr Watson. First of all, we have the discovery of the body of Mr Montague Jarret, a local business man. His housekeeper comes down in the morning and finds Jarret lying dead in the hall, with his skull smashed in. Blood everywhere. Mr Sprague, Jarret’s business partner, when he hears about it, asks Holmes to conduct an independent investigation, and Mr Holmes promptly arrives and pronounces it to be a case of burglary, which, given the forced casement, ransacking of the house, and missing items, it didn’t need Europe’s greatest detective to deduce that. Holmes presents the examining officer with the name of the burglar; a man named Scotty, well known to the police. Off goes Mr Holmes, and off go the police to pick up Scotty. They find him easy enough, the worse for wear after spending spent the night of the murder out drinking with some friends who he can’t quite remember exactly who they were. They think they’ve found their man, but he tells them that from two o’clock in the morning until six o’clock he was in a police cell in Yardley for drunk and disorderly. All well and good; he burgled Jarret’s place, they suppose, was surprised by him and killed him, and then got drunk with his friends. But when the police surgeon’s report comes in, it says that death took place between four o’clock and five, and certainly no earlier than three o’clock. Impossible, they say, but he won’t be budged. So it couldn’t have been Scotty, after all, with him being in a police cell at the time; so no suspect, and no Mr Holmes, who by this time, having sent the local force off on a wild-goose chase, has vanished again.”

  My guest pulled out his watch. “I have taken enough of your time.” He stood. “You’ll have a word with your friend, I hope. He wouldn’t listen to me, even if I could find him, but a friendly word from you might persuade him to take a rest. I’m not here officially, you understand, and we hope it won’t become an official matter, but it can’t carry on like this, really it can’t. He isn’t above the law, you know. Goodnight, doctor.”

  Some days after Inspector Lestrade’s visit, when I had still had no sight of Holmes, a telegram arrived for me at Baker Street.

  = ESSENTIAL I HAVE CASE RECORDS FOR LAST THREE YEARS = DELIVER TO BLACK BULL LURKE STREET STEPNEY TOMORROW FRIDAY NOON IN COMPLETE SECRECY = YOU MUST ACT ALONE = I WILL SIGNAL = DO NOT APPROACH = GRAVEST DANGER = HOLMES +

  For as long as I had known him, Holmes had kept records and mementoes of all his cases. They were crammed into a large tin box, the size of a small trunk, with rope handles on either end, and my first action on reading his telegram was to drag the box from his room into the parlour. To haul its dead weight across a wooden floor was not too difficult; but to carry it across London to Stepney would be quite another matter. Even to take it down the stairs would require two pairs of hands, and yet to engage the help of a colleague, however trustworthy he might be, was forbidden by the telegram in clear terms. There was only one answer; I must separate the last three years’ cases from the rest, in the hope that they would be compact enough for me alone to carry. The task was no easy one, for the papers were in a state of utter disarray. Some of them gave no year, so that I was obliged to read through them searching for some indication of the date. Many cases, such as the hunting of Captain Falco, were entirely new to me; many more were familiar because I had assisted Holmes in them; the mystery of the moving well of Camber, for instance, and the horrible case of the Four Blind Mice of Dereham Priory, as they became known, a story widely reported in the press at the time. The sheer mass of material was forbidding; but, undeterred, I knelt by the dusty box, as piles of papers grew on the floor around me, and doggedly pored through these relics of Holmes’ career, until finally, in the small hours of the night, my task was done and the cases of the last three years were all docketed together. I put them in a stout suitcase and retired gratefully to bed.

  The next day, late in the afternoon, I set off in search of the Black Bull in Stepney. As the cab took me eastwards, the busy streets of the city of London gave way to dark, winding lanes where few other carriages were to be seen. No more splendid offices lined the streets; only narrow, hunched rows of sooty houses, or great wharves towering over us where ships debouched cargoes from all parts of the Empire. We twisted and turned and jolted along the cobbled alleys until I had quite lost my bearings, when at a street corner the cab suddenly came to a halt. “The Black Bull!” cried the driver, throwing up the top, and added, grinning down at me, “A very agreeable evening to you!”

  The Black Bull stood a storey taller than the neighbouring houses. Squalid and forbidding, its doors and shutters were closed as if its purpose were to repel travellers rather than welcome them. I glanced around me; but for a gang of urchins further up the street throwing stones at a fire-pump, Lurke Street seemed to be deserted. I knocked at the door of the gloomy building, and receiving no reply, I asked myself whether anyone was inside, and whether perhaps I had misread Holmes’s telegram and come on the wrong day. But my doubts were unfounded, for at last the door was opened by a large, red-faced man. He looked me up and down.

  “Delivery for Mr Sherlock Holmes?” he asked, and put out his hand to take the case.

  “That is so,” I admitted, “but you will understand that this is a most important package. I must be sure that it is not going into the wrong hands.”

  The fellow gave a hoarse cackle of appreciation.

  “Very good, sir! Quite right, quite right! Cautious is the word. Now, I do believe I can give you that assurance. I’ll thank you to look down there in the snug.” He stood aside so that I could see past his large frame down a corridor to a cramped public bar where the gas burned low. He turned and called out hoarsely “Mr Holmes!” To my astonishment I saw, in the far side of the room, the familiar figure of my friend rise to his feet. He nodded to me, raised his hand silently, and moved off through a side door.

  “You see it’s all above-board, Dr Watson,” said the man. “Mr Holmes sends his apologies that he must stay in the dark for now. It’s a dangerous game he’s playing, and he can’t risk appearing at the door himself.”

  I handed the fellow the case, and he bade me good evening and hurriedly closed the door.

  My errand accomplished, I was turning to see if my cab had stayed for me, for I had no desire to linger in this shady neighbourhood while night was falling, when I felt a touch on my elbow. It was a policeman. “Excuse me, sir. I believe you are Dr Watson?”

 
“I am.”

  He handed me a sheet of paper and shone his torch on it for me.

  Kindly do as the constable asks. You will find it a most interesting evening. S.H.

  “Would you come with me to that house across the street? Through here, if you will,” said the constable, and we entered a house opposite the Black Bull. In the dark we climbed the narrow stairs to the first floor, where he unlocked the door to an empty room. I crossed to the window which gave a view of the inn.

  “We must remain in the dark, I’m afraid, sir. We mustn’t be seen. Now, you might like to keep your eyes on those first floor windows of the inn.”

  I looked across to the Black Bull. The place was still dark and lifeless, but after a few minutes a light sprang up in the upstairs window. Somebody was lighting a lamp. The figure bent over it, adjusting the wick, and as the yellow flame flared up it flashed across the hawk-like features of Sherlock Holmes. As he tended the lamp the big man to whom I had spoken earlier entered the room behind him. (“That’s the landlord,” whispered the policeman.) I watched transfixed as Holmes turned to greet him, and the fellow shambled up to the table where the lamp stood and placed upon it the suitcase I had handed him a few minutes earlier. They exchanged a few words, and the landlord left the room. Holmes opened the case and turned up the light the better to see its contents. He drew out a bundle of papers, and glanced through them; then another, and another; and suddenly he jumped to his feet and clapped his hands together in delight. He then drew up a chair and began to look at the case-records more carefully, reading through the pages one by one with that concentration of attention I knew so well. So absorbed was he as he read that he did not notice that the door behind him was opening. I gave a start on seeing it, but the constable put his hand on my shoulder: “Not a sound, sir,” he whispered. “Those are our instructions.” Holmes read on, unaware that the door behind him now stood ajar; it was all I could do to restrain myself from banging on the window to warn him of the danger that threatened. The door slowly inched open; I felt the constable’s hand clench on my shoulder; across the street Holmes continued to read, hunched over the papers, as behind him the door opened wider and wider, and somebody crept slowly into the room. As the figure entered the circle of lamplight it was revealed as none other than Sherlock Holmes. Suddenly the other Holmes at the table spun round and leapt to his feet, knocking over his chair. His hand went to his coat pocket, but too slowly, for his double, quick as lightning, reached forward with a crop and lashed something from the other’s emerging hand. That figure made a grab for the fallen weapon, but again he was too slow, for the other instantly launched himself upon his opponent, sending both crashing into the table. The lamp fell to the floor, where it flared up and rolled wildly to and fro, flinging onto the ceiling gigantic shadows of the struggling figures; then it went out, and all was darkness.