Let me go ahead and admit, these were not my best days.
I probably should have cut my fingernails.
I probably should have combed my hair.
I probably should not have made a pact with the darker powers to provide me with pot after pot of soup, just so I wouldn’t have to go down to the shops.
But again… hindsight.
Watscroft and I boarded the 10:35 to Birmingham on Monday morning. It was one of those pretty red ones, which made me happy. We talked rather more than I’d have liked. Watscroft kept trying to teach me all about stock-brokery. But then he kept stopping to ask me if I thought he’d got it right.
At last, we reached Birmingham. We were slightly behind our hour, which was a matter of some concern to Watscroft, for he seemed quite mortified to reflect that he hadn’t made any progress at all on his second list. He very much wished we might beat Mr. BothPinners to the office, so he might at least have a heading and a few entries done when his boss arrived.
This anxiety was only compounded when he spotted Mr. BothPinners’s freshly shaved head in the crowd, only a few steps ahead of us. BothPinners’s mood seemed to be exemplary; he whistled one of the tunes from those music-hall shows he loved so well. Bully Billy Big-Pants, I think it was. Sadly, his joie de vivre did not seem to extend to his only subordinate. Watscroft began to fret in guilty whispers. He feared he had let down the possibly fictional firm of Franco-Midland Hardware Company Limited. I tried to comfort him, keeping my voice low enough that Mr. BothPinners’s suspicions might not be aroused. Yet, Watscroft was inconsolable. Luckily for us, Arthur/Harry Pinner took a sudden detour. He stopped at a news vendor’s stall to pick up a paper, allowing Watscroft and I to slip past behind him, quietly hissing, “Now’s our chance! Go, go, go!” to each other. Once past, we redoubled our pace. My companion raced up the steps to 126B, flung himself into his seat and began furiously reviewing the Paris directory for furniture dealers.
Mr. BothPinners was rather slow in coming so—much to his relief—Watscroft had a few entries scrawled onto his list before his possible employer arrived. The instant Mr. BothPinners entered, Watscroft jumped up, waving the list and shouting, “Look! Look! I’m working, Mr. Pinner! And not only that, I did what you said. You see? I made a friend! There he is!”
Mr. BothPinners did look at me. But not very much. And he didn’t seem to mark me. He just gave a half-stunned sort of nod and plopped down at one of the desks with the newspaper spread out in front of him. His hands shook. He was pale and seemed quite distracted. I was not the only one to notice, either. Watscroft gave him a quizzical look and asked, “Mr. Pinner, are you well?”
“Oh, um… ermf,” he replied.
“Mr. Pinner, that is hardly an answer,” Watscroft remonstrated.
BothPinners shook his head to clear it, then mumbled, “No, no. I’m fine. It’s all… It’s all…” and he rolled his eyes back and forth across the room in the manner of a man whose next words are going to be “in ruins” or “coming down” or “turned out rather badly”. But instead he only said, “…fine.”
Watscroft and I looked at each other. He gave me some “what do we do?” eyebrows and I gave him a little “I don’t know, do I?” kind of shrug. Watscroft looked at me hopelessly and I cursed to realize he was going to be very little help. Apparently, everything was going to be left to me.
Which is a dashed stupid place to leave things, I must say.
I cleared my throat, marched to BothPinners’s desk and loudly proclaimed. “Yes. So. It’s all good. Mr. Pycroft has made progress on his list—please wave that about triumphantly, won’t you? Thank you—and he’s also followed your instructions to do extracurricular work as well. Behold he has made a friend—please indicate me, proudly, with both hands. Well done—so, what do you think of that, eh?”
BothPinners gave me a look like he didn’t think anything of it at all.
So, I improvised. “But I’m not a good friend, it turns out, as I was only using him to procure employment. Give me a job, all right?”
“Yes. Fine,” Mr. BothPinners said, and turned his attention back to the newspaper.
I knew I could not let him go, so I shook his desk and insisted, “All right, but what’s my title, eh? What are my duties?”
“I don’t know!” he shouted, jumping to his feet and crumpling the newspaper into an untidy wad. In just a moment, he recovered himself, dropped the paper into his rubbish bin and said, “I… I shall have to think on it for a moment. Yes. Please excuse me.”
He then walked to a dusty old door at the back of the office, opened it, stepped inside, gave us a little nod, and closed the door behind him.
“Where’s he going?” I wondered.
“I don’t know,” Watscroft shrugged, “but that’s a closet.”
From behind the door came the gentle swish of someone hanging his jacket from the doorknob and that funny snapping sound trouser suspenders make.
“What? Well that doesn’t make any sense, does it?” I cried, and began to pace back and forth. “There’s something I’m missing here… What am I missing?”
“Nothing,” came Watscroft’s voice, strained and frustrated.
“What am I to do?”
He gave a sigh of exasperation. “Deduce it. Concentrate.”
“Oh, easy for you to say! Just deduce it! Deduce! Well, how? It’s hard!”
“No. It isn’t. We’ve had this same case before.”
“What? You’re not supposed to know that!” I cried. I ceased my pacing and turned my gaze on Watscroft.
He didn’t look well. He was leaning on his desk, sweating, with just a hint of blood visible at one nostril and a strained expression on his face. “All wrong…” he mumbled. “I feel all wrong… Not me… Done this case before…”
“No! No! I’m sure you must be mistaken!” I shouted. “Though, as a point of interest, which case?”
“Red… heads…”
“Eh?” I could hardly fathom his meaning. He did seem to be regaining some of Watson’s memories. Yet there were no charming skull-hair-spiders here. No red-headed soul-sucker. So, he must be wrong, right? There were also distracting grunt noises coming from behind Mr. BothPinners’s door.
Yet I had more pressing worries, for at that moment Watscroft fixed me with an exasperated—and all-too-familiar—gaze and said, “Holmes!”
“Aaaaaagh! No, no, no! Hey, um, what was that expression your mother had?”
“Hip! Pip! To—uuugh!”
“Hip! Pip! Top!” I prompted.
“Derpy, derp—ow!”
“There,” I said, with a self-congratulatory smile. “Now, don’t you feel better, Mr. Pycroft?”
“Yes… Yes, I…”
“Now you just relax over there and be Hall Pycroft. I shall reason this out, all right?”
He nodded his agreement and slumped down at the desk, looking utterly exhausted. Still, I was glad to see it, for the fierce spark of Watson’s intellect had died within his eyes, replaced by a dull, tired stare.
I was so relieved, even the sound of something heavy falling to the floor and a sudden curse from behind the closed door could not dampen my spirits.
“Good,” I sighed. “Good. But you must give me some time, all right, Mr. Pycroft? It’s hard.”
“No! Easy!” he shouted, and pounded his fist upon the desk. A fresh spurt of blood spattered down from his nose. When he looked up at me the sharp, disapproving gaze of John Watson was unmistakable.
“Oh no! Oh no! Quick! Hip! Pip! Top! Derpy-derpy! The whole thing! You must say it! Quickly!”
He did try. I really think the part of him that was Hall Pycroft did its very best. Say what you will about Mr. Pycroft, but this much must be conceded: he always gave forth his maximum effort. He clutched the desk, rocking back and forth with his eyes clenched shut and his nose practically rocketing blood, shouting, “Hip! Pip! Top! Derpy- derpy! Hip! Pip! Top! Derpy-derpy! Hip! Pip! Top! Derpy-derpAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
A—”
And then came a horrible sound. Well… I’m not sure if “sound” is the right word. It probably was not audible. Not to most. But to those of us who can hear the hidden voices, who have smelt the sacred smoke and felt the furtive touch of the lonely damned, the sound was unmistakable.
Rhett Khan’s most powerful spell. All my hard work and careful foresight.
Tearing right in half.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAod damn it, Holmes! Don’t you see? Pycroft wrote to the director of Mawson and Williams’s! He never met the man! Therefore, anybody who was able to present themselves Monday morning, bearing a letter that appeared to be written by Hall Pycroft, could pass himself off as the new stockbroker’s clerk. And let us remember: Pycroft was utterly incapable of doing that job, as Mawson and Williams’s well knew. The impostor would not even need to furnish himself with any knowledge of the trade in order to pull off the substitution. All he’d have to do is make up one or two scandalous stories about Coxon & Woodhouse’s and his new employer would be absolutely satisfied!”
“Oh…” I said, somewhat horrified, but still interested to learn what was going on. “So then, Franco-Midland Hardware Company…”
“Is a complete fabrication! Look around you, Holmes! This is not an office! This is a storage room! This is somewhere to stick Hall Pycroft to keep him far from his actual place of business, just like when John Clay dreamed up the League of Red-Headed Men to keep Jabez Wilson away from his pawnshop four hours per day! Remember? He even used the task of repetitive copying to distract his victim!”
“Ah! But then, why would—”
“Last time the motive may have been difficult to divine, Holmes, but this time it is clear. Hall Pycroft—or whoever chose to use his name—would have been expected to handle any number of valuable securities. Many of those bonds are payable to whatever man is currently bearing them. If one could secure a position within a house like Mawson and Williams’s, well… even the very clumsiest of thieves would be in a fine position to duplicate keys, to look over shoulders at safe combinations, to learn where the most valuable and negotiable papers were kept. Why, in a week or two, he might be in a position to lift a king’s ransom!”
“So then, Mr. BothPinners is a bona-fide criminal masterm—”
“No, he’s an idiot. Please! That feeble attempt to get a handwriting sample? That unnecessary complication of the letter to his fictional brother? No, no. Whoever Arthur/ Harry Pinner is, he’s perfectly awful as a conman. Only Hall Pycroft’s credulous simplicity allowed him to carry it off. And it was still a close-run thing; he let his story get so badly out of his control that he had no choice but to shave every single hair of his head, run up to Birmingham on the next train and rent out the first vacant room he could find. Even then he nearly ruined it. He badly underestimated Pycroft’s work ethic, thereby short-shrifting his confederate on the amount of time they had to carry off the crime.”
I wanted to say something smart, to prove I was keeping up, but it was hard to think of anything. Especially since more strange suspender noises were coming from behind the door. Still, I triumphantly declared, “Ah-ha! Just as I suspected! There is a c—”
“Of course there’s a bloody confederate!” Watson howled. He looked as if he were about to faint. Yet he also looked as if—even if he did—he was likely to go on yelling everything he’d figured out about this case. I guess that’s what I get for not letting Watson talk for five or six months. “Mawson and Williams’s expected somebody with the name Hall Pycroft to come walking in last Monday morning. And believe me, someone did. The man we know is only half of the plan. From what we’ve seen of his criminal ability, probably the lesser half. Still the confederate may not be the aptest hand either, for he seems to have messed things up badly enough to have wound up in the newspaper.”
“The newsp—”
“Yes! You saw Mr. Pinner just now! Did he look like a man for whom everything’s going swimmingly? No, he looked like a fellow at the very end of his rope! You cannot pretend that it was our brilliant intervention that caused the change—he was dazed before we even said hello. Yet he was whistling a happy tune when we first saw him on the street. What changed? What source of information caused this sudden reversal? The newspaper, Holmes!”
And he was correct. Halfway through his harangue I’d dived for the bin and pulled forth the crumpled pages.
“By the Twelve Gods! You’re right, Watson!” I cried. Oh, it was a refreshing change to get to finish a sentence. But that’s Watson for you: always a decent listener if you had anything he wanted to hear. “According to this, the notorious criminal Harold Pinner was taken as he fled the brokerage firm of Mawson and Williams’s. It seems he’d gone in Sunday night, using a set of cleverly duplicated keys, and stolen nearly a million pounds’ worth of securities. He might have made it, too, were it not for the timely intrusion of a night watchman named George Boyd.”
“Who apprehended Pinner?” Watson asked.
“No. Who got cut in half by Mr. Pinner.”
“In half?”
“Well, apparently Mr. Pinner is usually a smash-and-grab man and is more known for his ferocity than his intellect.”
“Apparently, yes.”
“Mr. Pinner tried to cover both of his crimes by emptying the contents of Mr. Boyd’s torso into an office rubbish bin, stuffing all the stolen securities into the hollow, tying the dead man’s shoelaces to his own, tucking the dead guard’s shirt into his pants real hard to hold his halves together, throwing Boyd’s arm over his shoulder like they were good friends and attempting to walk out of the place.”
“Only attempting, you say?” said Watson. He was very good at spotting meaningful words in stories.
I turned the page and looked for the details he craved, doing my best to ignore the sound of something tapping gently against the closet door. “Yes. It seems it was early morning by then and a few of the neighborhood lads were gathered on the steps of the building for a game of conkers. As he came down the stairs, Mr. Pinner nodded to them and explained his friend had had a bit too much to drink. Just as the boys were starting to wonder, ‘Eh? In an office building?’, Boyd’s bottom half fell out from under his top half, spilling blood-smeared financial papers all down the steps. The boys… you know… noticed. There seems to have been a great deal of screaming. This was overheard by the neighborhood constable, who cried a challenge. Mr. Pinner fled. But not very well, it seems, as the laces of his right shoe were quite well secured to half of Mr. Boyd. He made it less than a hundred yards. Once apprehended, he made no attempt to conceal his crimes. He only asked for help reclaiming his shoelaces and expressed regret that his idiot brother had talked him out of simple, direct burglary and into such a complex infiltration.”
“That’s all bad news for… I mean… I can only assume his name actually is Arthur Pinner,” Watson harrumphed. “Not only is his brother bound for the gallows, but he let himself be taken alive. That means he’ll have more than enough time to fill the authorities in on the entire plot. Arthur Pinner is going to find himself an accessory to robbery and to murder. That’s probably why he ran into the other room to hang himself.”
“To what?”
“Rather badly, from the sound of it. Can’t you hear him bumping around in there?”
I gave Watson an urgent—and I must admit, probably ungenerous—look.
“What are you glaring at me for? I’m the one who solved the case! I’m the one who…” but he trailed off. I think that as his diatribe about what had been happening was now spent, he had some time to turn his brain to what was happening now. A look of shocked realization spread across his features and he stammered, “Oh! Right! We should probably… right.”
I reached the door a second later and yanked it open. Sure enough, there was Mr. Arthur Pinner, dangling from the neck by his own suspenders, with his face turning purple. Watson always tells me I should call them “braces”. He says I sound disgustingly American when I use the word “su
spenders”. Yet, as Mr. Pinner was currently being suspended by some, I stand by my decision.
“Melfrizoth!” I cried, and my trusty soul-blade materialized in my hand. A simple flick of the wrist sent its black blade slicing through the offending, suspending suspenders like a hot knife through butter.
Or, no…
That’s not quite right…
Like a razor-prowed battleship through a slice of wet bread. More like that.
Mr. Pinner fell heavily to the floor, as I screamed out, “Help him, Watson!”
“Me?”
“Yes, you! You’re the doctor!”
“No, I’m the… Oh! Wait! I am! Help me get him over to the window, Holmes.”
Which I did. Watson told me to stand back, then threw the window open, crossed both of Mr. Pinner’s arms over his chest, and began pumping them up and down as if the man were a bellows. I had rather an uncomfortable moment where I’ll confess I began to worry about any potential damage my spell may have done to Watson’s cognitive facilities.
He must have seen the look I gave him, for he explained, “The two fundamental pillars of Victorian medicine, Holmes, are ‘By God! Get this man a brandy!’ and ‘By God! Get this man some air!’ Now tell me: do you happen to have any brandy on you?”
“Well… no.”
“Air it is, then!”
I watched Watson pumping furiously for a few minutes, though it was clear he had passed the point of exhaustion. After a time, he panted, “Come on! Breathe, you fool! I’ve got to save you!”
“Hmm,” I reflected, “and I’ve got to save you.”
“No, you bloody well don’t, Holmes.”
“You’ll die if I don’t.”
“So what? I’m a goddamn soldier!”
“All right, but maybe you’re a stockbroker’s clerk instead. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Don’t you see?” Watson shouted, his brow slicked with sweat. “I was a soldier who nearly lost his life in a country he didn’t care about, in a war he didn’t understand. That is how tenuous my hold on life is: I should be gone already. Now, I did not choose that war. And I would not choose that war. It was pointless. But your war isn’t! It’s right! And it’s noble! And I do care! That’s why I choose to fight by your side! If it happens to cost me my life… well… what of it? That is the soldier’s price, Holmes, and I’m not above paying it! I never have been!”
The Finality Problem Page 25
