The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part III Page 9

  “Chapmans are working on a new weapon which, they claim, will revolutionise warfare and guarantee Britain a suzerain role in world affairs, as well as a head start should recent unpleasantness in Africa escalate further. Really, Lestrade, we have no time for this music hall melodrama!”

  Holmes’s intervention rendered the Inspector mute with fury. His small eyes were almost forced close as he struggled to retain his temper and not cause a public scene in front of his men. There was no doubting, however, the degree of his unhappiness with Holmes.

  “Mr. Holmes,” he hissed, “I would be obliged if you would modulate your voice before every man from here to Norwich is made aware of Her Majesty’s government’s future plans!”

  Sensing that Holmes was unlikely to react positively to a rebuke from Lestrade, I quickly interposed myself, suggesting that, if we had seen all we could in the street, we now go our separate ways, the better to speedily conclude this important case.

  “That is a capital suggestion, Watson,” Holmes agreed. “If you would accompany the Inspector back to Scotland Yard, there to collect the missing note, I have an idea that my own time might be best spent in speaking to one of his colleagues.”

  “One of my colleagues, Mr. Holmes?” Lestrade enquired quickly, a readiness to take offence evident on his face. “I can assure you that you will receive no more information than I have already supplied from any other Inspector at the Yard!”

  “Calm yourself, Lestrade,” Holmes snapped. “I mean no disrespect to your own position. But there are branches of the force other than your own. It is to one of them that I now turn.”

  Lestrade was immediately mollified. “You refer to the Special Branch, Mr. Holmes?”

  “I do. Perhaps they may shed some much needed light on Chapmans, and on this fellow before us.” He pulled on the gloves he held in his hand and turned to leave. “If you will meet me at Baker Street in two hours, Watson, that would admirable.”

  “Of course.” I motioned to Lestrade that I was ready to leave. “Time would seem to be of the essence, so shall we return to your offices, Inspector, while Holmes makes his enquiries?”

  Holmes’s reference to Special Branch had obviously satisfied the detective that sufficient serious attention was being paid to his wider concerns, and he was quick to acquiesce to my suggestion. With a brisk farewell to Holmes, he led the way to his carriage. I looked back as I entered, and saw Holmes bent once more over the body where it lay. For a moment, I also thought I saw a figure in the shadows of a nearby doorway observing my friend, but then the carriage door closed and when next I looked the figure, whoever it had been, was gone.

  Two hours later I made my way back to Baker Street, only to find Holmes already present. He sat in his favourite chair by the fire, wreathed in pipe smoke, his eyes closed as though in sleep. I had taken no more than a step inside the room, however, when his eyelids opened and he regarded me with a baleful expression.

  “I hope that you have had a greater degree of success in your mission than I, in mine.”

  “That remains to be seen, Holmes. But let me hear your news first. Was Special Branch able to shed any fresh light on the issue at hand?”

  Holmes allowed himself a thin, humourless smile. “They were much as I expected. A group of men who habitually maintain a cloak of utter secrecy around their every action are not easily convinced of the need for transparency, even in a situation such as this. Had it not been for my own small fame - and, I would conjecture, the intervention of certain figures in government - I would have gone no further than the front door and would, even now, be standing there, awaiting an audience. As it was, a polite, if largely unhelpful, junior detective was able to spare me half an hour of his valuable time and provide me with a modicum of somewhat general intelligence.”

  “Somewhat general?”

  “Indeed. Detective Johnson was able to confirm that no gentleman matching the description of the dead man is known to them, either as an agent himself or a spy for a foreign power. He did, however, allude to an operation currently underway, in which several detectives, working out of uniform and in disguise, have infiltrated a collective of enemy operators. He could not be certain, he said, but it was possible that our man belonged to this collective.”

  “Only possible?” I asked. “How is it that he could not be certain?”

  “I cannot say, only that one of the Branch’s agents might be in a position to shed much-needed light on our anonymous victim.”

  “Victim? You now believe the man killed by other than this own hand?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Holmes would say no more on the topic, but instead reminded me of my own recent mission. I pulled the scrap of paper I had been given at the Yard from my pocket and handed it to him. I had, of course, already made my own inspection, but confessed myself baffled as to its import. Physically, it was an unprepossessing remnant of a larger sheet, four inches across and approximately three deep, where it ended in an uneven tear. Both sides were lined for writing, though only one had been so used, the other bearing only the stamp of a company name, “Chapmans”. On the reverse, as the young constable had intimated, were written three lines in the German language with, just below them and only partially visible due to the tear in the paper, most of the name of a town - Johannesburg - which was, at the time, gaining a degree of notoriety for its swift growth from a gold mining hovel to a heavily populated centre of Boer strength.

  Holmes took the paper and examined it in silence for several minutes, holding it up to the light at one point, before laying it on the table beside him.

  “Trust the police to remain blind to the obvious, while seeing treachery in the most innocent of actions,” he said finally. “You do not have any German, if I recall correctly, Watson? No? You at least may then be forgiven for failing to recognise the words of a Teutonic love poem when you see it.”

  He crossed to the bookcase and pulled from it a thick, leather bound volume, which he opened at the index, before turning to a page within and reading a passage aloud.

  Brechen Sie Ihre Fesseln

  und lassen Sie Ihre Blut freien Lauf

  Wir müssen vereint sein oder sterben

  “Penned by a German poet of the eighteenth century for his aristocratic lover, and most assuredly a poem of passionate regard, not of revolution and anarchy. Roughly translated, it reads:

  Break your fetters

  and let your blood run free

  We must be united or die

  “It may still be a code, of course, or a call to arms, but if so, it is cunningly disguised.” He frowned and tilted the page in the light. “And it seems that you are not the only one whose German is less than perfect, Watson. These lines are almost correct, but not quite. See here, and here? The tense is wrong and the final word mis-spelled.”

  “Could it be a code? The incorrect vocabulary deliberate and containing a secret meaning, known only to the Boer recipient?”

  “Possibly, though if so, it is a code whose key eludes me. Besides, the errors are commonplace ones, which any non-native might make.”

  “Copied in haste perhaps, then?”

  “More likely written down by someone with a less than complete grasp of the language.”

  “A student?”

  “Exactly, Watson. And there cannot be too many German language schools in London. I wonder if any of them are missing a student?”

  Energised by this breakthrough, as was his wont, Holmes leapt to his feet and would, I think, have rushed away, had not the door to our rooms opened at the exact same time, revealing a gaudily-dressed young man of about twenty-five, fair haired, with a small moustache and neatly trimmed beard, which complemented the yellow checked suit he wore.

  “Sherlock Holmes?” he asked, stepping inside as he did so, and closing the door softly behind him. I thought
of my revolver, lying in a drawer in my room, but if this man meant us harm there was little chance of my reaching it in time.

  Holmes, however, appeared unperturbed.

  “You must be the colleague of whom Detective Johnson spoke,” he said, calmly. “Will you take a seat and dry yourself by the fire? I see that you have wet the bottom of your trousers when leaving the dockside public house in which you were engaged earlier this morning. I am obliged that you have come directly from there to here, signifying as it does a comprehension of the urgency with which Scotland Yard views this case. Were you successful in infiltrating the socialists, might I ask?”

  Familiar as I was with Holmes’s methods, I still marvelled at the inferences he was able to make from often miniscule clues, but the effect on our visitor was striking, even so.

  He strode towards Holmes and stood only an inch or so away, so that their faces almost touched. “Explain yourself, Mr. Holmes, or the next conversation we have will be far less pleasant than the current one. Have you followed me, sir, to know so much about my doings today? Come,” he raged, “I will have an explanation!”

  Holmes was unruffled and resumed his seat and took up his pipe before speaking further. “I have no need to follow you, when the story of your day is written so plainly on your person. I simply deduce from the facts displayed clearly before me.” He filled the pipe bowl and lit it with a splinter from the fire, taking his time to get the flame going properly, while the detective fumed in front of him. Only when he was satisfied did he reveal the path down which his thinking had taken him.

  “There is a spillage of cheap gin on the right-hand cuff of your shirt, but little or none on your breath, which suggests that you were in a public house but only pretended to drink. That variety of gin is only sold in the dockland area, favoured as it is by sailors. This, plus the fact that a detective such as yourself would not normally be drinking low quality spirits first thing in the morning, suggests to me that you were on an assignment for Special Branch. That you have not changed your soiled garments indicates that you came directly from there to here.”

  “And the socialists?” asked the Special Branch man, his suspicions as yet not entirely answered. “How do you come to deduce that they, and no other, were the subject of my work today?”

  “A section of a socialist pamphlet projects from your jacket pocket, detective. Consequently, I would hesitate to claim that as a deduction at all.”

  To his credit, the detective took Holmes’s amusement in good stead and, placated by the demonstration of my friend’s professional competence, took a seat beside us. He explained that, though he had been working that morning amongst the socialists who congregated in the pubs near the docks, generally he was employed in work of more immediate utility, seeking out spies and enemy agents working in England. Recently, such work had taken him to Birmingham, and Chapmans’ main factory there.

  “Word had reached us that certain suspected foreign agents had been seen in the city, asking questions in the local hostelries, and making friendly overtures towards workers from the Chapmans’ factory. Fortunately, the Midlands breeds patriotic men, and the agents received short shrift for their troubles, one at least barely escaping with his life. Even so, we were unable to infiltrate the gang, nor were we able to bring any man into custody. Buying drinks for factory workers is no crime, and every foreign agent and spy knows it.”

  “But you think that perhaps the nameless corpse we examined this morning is one of your foreigners?” I could not readily envisage a way in which a spy in Birmingham should end up dead and bereft of identification on the streets of London, but the reason for Special Branch’s precipitous arrival on our doorstep was, at least, made clear. I could hear the frustration in his voice as he spoke of these agents who thumbed their noses at the English police force and hid behind England’s sense of justice and law. Any possible advantage would, therefore, be taken up assiduously and promptly. Who knew what secrets our dead man might give up to someone experienced in the shadowy world of international espionage?

  “All I know, Doctor Watson, is that any man found dead with the imprint of Chapman’s on a document in his pocket is of interest to Special Branch. Especially now.”

  “Now?” I asked.

  Holmes cut in quickly. “Presumably the reference is to Chapmans ongoing negotiations with the German firm of Baumgartner and Sons. A merger has been in the air for several months, and yesterday’s Times reported that a deal might very soon be struck.”

  The detective nodded his agreement. “Exactly so, Mr. Holmes. A merger between the two companies is viewed in Westminster as very advantageous for British interests, and much to be encouraged.” He examined his pocket watch. “But I’m afraid my time is extremely limited, so perhaps we could take a trip down to the Yard and take a look at the unfortunate soul?”

  There being nothing to argue against such an eminently sensible suggestion, Holmes and I took hold of our coats and hats and followed the detective out into the cold evening air.

  The mortuary was dark when we arrived, with only the light of a single lantern low on the far wall ameliorating the gloom. A central aisle bisected the room, separating two sets of metal beds, each covered with a white sheet. The rough form of a body could be made out on those nearest us, but those further away were all but lost in the dim light and seemed more like the outline of mist shrouded hills than the remains of once living souls.

  In spite of this, Holmes led us down the aisle and directly to a specific bed.

  Without preamble, he pulled back the sheet, exposing a familiar face beneath which he illuminated with the lantern he held. The Special Branch detective, whose name I realised I still did not know, leaned in close and examined the man closely, then shook his head firmly.

  “This isn’t my man.”

  The disappointment in his voice was clear, and matched by Holmes own. “That is a pity. It would have been a tidy solution.” He straightened, and smoothed out his waistcoat where it had become crumpled. “Still, the facts are what they are, and if this man is not known to you then we must look elsewhere.” He restored the sheet and indicated the exit. “Perhaps we should leave now, gentlemen? I confess I feel this man and his lack of a name as a rebuke to me.”

  In down-hearted mood, we made our way outside and into the light London drizzle. Holmes uttered no word during the entirety of our return to Baker Street, and I found myself glad of our earlier thought regarding German language students, else I could not say what we should do next. Lestrade had made it clear that a quick resolution was vital - and thus far we had made little concrete progress.

  The following day was one of those rare autumnal days when the weather makes one final effort and the sun beats down warmly all day. Holmes and I breakfasted early and were already in a hansom by the time the clock struck eight. London, it turned out, had a surprisingly large number of foreign language schools, all of which taught German, and we hoped to visit each one in short order.

  With a large part of the city to cover and a limited time to do so, we split up as we reached the first school, a crumbling three storey building in one of the shabbier, but still genteel, areas of London. Holmes went inside, leaving me with a brief journey to the next address on our list, off Westcott Road.

  The weather being particularly fine, I left our carriage for Holmes and walked the short distance, revelling in the early autumn sunlight. London can be a dirty city at times, but seen in this golden light, there was something magical about it, which I have never seen replicated elsewhere. So pleasant was it, in fact, that in spite of the urgency of my mission, I was not as swift in my footsteps as I might have been.

  Fortunately so, for had I been rushing pell-mell, I might not have been aware of steps echoing my own in the quiet morning air. Even then, I might not have noticed my shadow at all, had I not stumbled on a loose stone in the road and heard someone c
ome to a similar halt a small distance behind me. I quickened my pace briefly, then slowed again, repeating the pattern until I reached Walcott Road, at which point I walked briskly round the corner, laid my hand on my revolver (which Holmes had fortuitously suggested I bring,) and waited to confront whoever followed me. The man had obviously become suspicious of my staggering movements, however, for he did not appear, and when I carefully looked back the way I had come, there was nobody to be seen.

  I told myself that my imagination had become inflamed by recent events, but whether that were true or merely a happy fiction, I had no choice but to continue my errand. The language school had at one point been a residential address, but some enterprising soul had thought to divide the space up into individual apartments, which several small businesses now occupied. Miss Sharp’s Language Emporium was on the first floor.

  The lady who answered my knock was dainty in every way. No longer in the first flush of youth, and with her grey hair tied in bun, she beckoned me to enter with tiny hands, like those of a china doll, and smiled a greeting from a face likewise diminished in size from the commonplace. The remainder of her person was similar in proportion. Not so small as to draw remark, but sufficiently so for it to be noticed, Miss Sharp quickly belied her size, with a wit and intellect to match her name.

  “A missing student, you say, Doctor?” she asked in response to my enquiry. “Studying German, you say? You mean William, I’m sure. William Simon Edwards, to give him his Sunday name. Not, perhaps, the greatest linguist the world has ever known, but enthusiastic and with real ambition.”

  “He has not been seen recently?”

  “Not a sign for a week or more. He has missed four classes so far, after missing none in the first six months of the course.”