by J. R. Trtek
“Of course. But you said something was missing?”
“They are corporate shares, Dr. Watson. They first came into the safe some time ago. I know not from whom the earl obtained them; however, after you and Mr. Holmes paid your visit two days ago, I had the opportunity, while Lord Monsbury was away, to again perform a survey of the assets stored in the safe. The shares were gone, sir!”
I writhed slightly in my chair, reaching for a comment that was on the tip of my tongue. “They were gone, you say,” were, however, the words that tumbled out.
“Gone, yes! Suddenly, just like that! Everything else was still there: the jewels of his late wife, various deeds, and other contracts.” He paused for one moment and then, in a hushed tone, added, “The Victoria Cross awarded his late brother.”
“But why should the shares be considered missing?” I asked, grasping what I wished to say. “Perhaps Lord Monsbury removed them himself. To be absent is one thing, to be missing quite another.”
Stephenson looked down and blushed. “Perhaps. I cannot help but think, however, that if the shares truly are missing, Lord Monsbury might well cast his suspicions upon poor Robert.”
“You are truly concerned for the young man’s welfare.”
“I am, Dr. Watson. I told you at Lennox Square that I have seen Robert socially without the knowledge of his father. Let me now add that Robert has confided a great deal to me. He is now as a younger brother to me,” he declared with a wistful smile. “I have, I suppose, gone behind Lord Monsbury’s back in this, but to me even imagined blood is thicker than employment.”
“What is the nature of these confidences?”
“They are personal,” said the young man. “I refer to them only to underscore my genuine affection for Robert. We have spent several afternoons of comradeship at the Criterion and other—”
“The Criterion?”
“Yes. You are familiar with the place?”
“It has a place in my heart as well as my palate,” I said. “Mr. Stephenson, I regret that I cannot reveal to you any of the confidential details to which Sherlock Holmes and I have been privy during the short course of this investigation. I will note your concerns to my friend, and I am certain he will gladly offer all that he can to ease your anxiety.”
“Any such assurance I gladly accept. May I, however, ask but one more question? Does Lord Monsbury know the shares are gone from his safe? Has he mentioned them to Mr. Holmes?”
“If I knew the answer, I would not say,” I replied.
“And do you know?”
“I cannot say yes or no even to that,” I replied. “Surely you understand my position.”
“Oh, I do,” Stephenson said earnestly, rising to his feet. “Please forgive my presumption. Mark it down to concern for Robert, if you will.”
“I shall,” I said, standing also. “I think it speaks well of you and your character.” After brief parting pleasantries, which included comparisons of the Criterion, I showed him the door, bade him farewell, and ascended the stair.
“Who was the visitor?” Irene Adler asked as I entered the sitting room.
“It was Diarmund Stephenson,” I answered. “The secretary to your young man’s father.”
“Ah, yes,” Miss Adler said. “Robert has mentioned him to me many times, describing him as a dear friend. Did he refer to me in any way?”
“No. Would you have expected him to do so?”
“I cannot say. Robert claimed to have never revealed his relation to me to anyone else, but that is not to say he did not.”
Just then I heard the house door open and close.
“It is so early,” I said. “Could that be Holmes?”
It was. I quickly began down the stair to provide him with the details of Stephenson’s visit, but my friend halted me midway and forced an upward retreat before his relentless tread.
“Quickly to work, Watson!” he said, his hat and coat not yet removed. “Yet another caller approaches!”
“Who?” I asked as he shepherded me back into the sitting room.
“Miss Adler, please retire promptly to your quarters and bolt the door.”
“Is it Mr. Girthwood?” I asked.
“No, I believe it to be his emissary.”
“What is his appearance?” the woman asked, with sudden alarm.
“I do not know his name, but I am acquainted with his like,” replied Holmes. “Trust me when I say all will be well. Upstairs, please.”
With some trepidation, our guest quickly ascended the stair to the maid’s room. As I heard the bolt slide shut, the house bell rang below. From the stair, we could see Mrs. Hudson approach the door. Our landlady looked up to see Holmes nod vigorously. The detective then, again, herded me back into the sitting room and closed the door.
“I gave her instructions as I entered. You will recall that when Shinwell Johnson last rang us up Mister Girthwood had yet to call here.”
“Yes, I suppose,” I said out of courtesy, my mind unable to sort out the last two days’ chronology in so short a time.
“I told Johnson to station himself in Baker Street,” Holmes continued, taking off his coat and hat. “He was outside in Baker Street when Girthwood arrived. If you also will recall, when Girthwood left, I went to the window and pointed at him three times with my pipe.”
“A signal to Johnson to follow the man,” I declared.
“Yes,” said my friend. “Please take a chair at the table. We should make these plates appear to be our own. Did you say that Mister Stephenson had called in my absence?”
“Yes, just as Miss Adler and I finished breakfast. But back to Shinwell Johnson.”
“Yes, of course. Well, Johnson followed Girthwood back to his rooms and rang me a second time to inform me of the man’s location.”
A knock came at the sitting room door.
“Enter,” said Holmes.
Mrs. Hudson came into the room. “A Mr. Starkey, sir,” she said with a touch of disdain.
“Is he a short, weaselly, young fellow with a tattered silk waistcoat?”
“That’s the one.”
“Send him up, Mrs. Hudson, if you will. Oh, and one more instruction…”
“Yes, Mr. Holmes?”
“Once you bring him here, please retire to your room and bolt the door.”
“Mr. Holmes, is—”
“There is no need for worry,” said the detective. “I am merely becoming more protective of those around me as my active career draws to a close. Go now, please, and bring up this Mr. Starkey.”
“As you wish,” said a disappointed Mrs. Hudson.
“I truly doubt we have much need for alarm,” Holmes assured me. “But have you your service revolver stored somewhere?”
“It is in the writing-desk but unloaded, as you directed. Shall I quickly get my ammunition?”
“I think not,” said Holmes, joining me at the table. “We have better arguments at present than an Eley’s No. 2. But allow me to finish my tale before our visitor ascends the stair. Having ascertained Girthwood’s base of operations—he has rooms at the Waymore—I made a point of ostentatiously nosing about. I then paid another visit to the offices of Mr. Crabbe, which produced nothing new, then set back for Baker Street. Along the way, I acquired this young fellow”—he motioned toward the door, whence we could hear the tread of approaching feet—“who trailed me home with all the furtive clumsiness he could muster. I had no absolute certainty he would call at 221, but here he comes now.”
“Mr. Holmes,” said our landlady. “Mr. Vic Starkey.”
Our visitor was but a youth, perhaps not even twenty years of age, and Holmes’s description of him as weaselly was most apt. His muted yellow waistcoat was silk but ragged beyond belief and in combination with his dirty brown pants and jacket produced an unpleasant vision. A dusty billycock remained perched upon his pale head.
“Greetings,” said Holmes evenly, rising from the table as Mrs. Hudson quickly closed the door and retreated down the hall. “Will
you take a chair by the—”
“What I’ll take won’t be a chair!” snarled our caller, the weasel suddenly trading places with a runt of a badger. “Just hope I don’t take both your lives in the bargain!” he cried, pulling a knife from his coat.
“Doctor,” said Holmes evenly, “please refrain from any writing just yet.”
“What’s that?” said the young man.
“Nothing,” replied Holmes. “After Dr. Watson and I finished our meal here, he was going to—”
“So you’re the croaker,” said Starkey, staring at me. “And you,” he continued, turning toward my friend. “You’re Holmes, the bogey.”
“And you must be Starkey, the whizzer.”
“Vic Starkey ain’t no whizzer!” protested the man. “Haven’t lifted pockets since I was ten. If you two are looking for Barney, then say otherwise, eh?”
“I’m not wanting to fight you, but if you don’t pick pockets, then what do you pick?” Holmes asked calmly.
“Pickings,” said Starkey, waving the knife ostentatiously. He began to laugh disdainfully. “I pick pickings. I blag what I choose.”
“What do you want here?” asked Holmes, stepping slowly toward the young man.
“I heard you got dabble here yourself,” Starkey replied. “And halt that! Stop, or get a taste of the chiv here. That’s it. Don’t advance no farther. And you stay in that chair,” he ordered me sternly.
“Mr. Girthwood sent you, did he not?” asked Holmes. “He told you we have property stolen from him that he wants back. Is that the story?”
“I don’t needs to tell you nothing.”
“Did you learn your manners in that district known as the Jago,5 Mr. Starkey?” Holmes inquired.
Our visitor smiled and brandished the knife again.
“Tell me, where do you live now?” Holmes continued. “The Jago, after all, has been torn down.”
“Hoxton, mostly. I live in Hoxton. You got a better place to recommend?”
“Hoxton, eh? Tell me, have you ever worked with the likes of Cupperly, Warren, or Uncle Bill Briggs?”
“No, never had the pleasure or the honour—yet. Two of them is all away, anyway.”
“In the jug?”
“That’s what I heard about Cupperly and Warren. Maybe when they gets out, you’ll give me a reference, eh? But for right now, I’m wanting the dabble.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to describe it,” insisted Holmes.
Starkey’s eyes narrowed. Motioning with the knife, he directed Holmes to move away from our table.
“As you wish,” said the detective with a smile. “But, if you please, a description of Mr. Girthwood’s property?”
“Black bird,” Vic Starkey muttered. “A black bird statue’s what I’m after, and no mind about whose it is. The man what paid me—and I’m giving no names—he paid me enough dropsy so as I believe it’s his.”
“Could more from us change your mind?”
“I don’t want no rent from you,” Starkey said with a laugh. “And they all used to say you was Saint George and more. There was days when you had everybody in the old Jago trembling, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, but I guess you’re no more what you were than the Jago is now, eh? Look at me, nineteen, and who wants to pay me rent? Sherlock Holmes. Ha!”
Holmes shook his head. “The more common the criminal, the greater the bluster.”
The ragged youth laughed so hard that he was forced to sigh, and in that moment of relaxation, Holmes’s left foot snapped sharply into the air, kicking the knife from Starkey’s hand. I heard a cry of pain then saw my friend turn round once to his right, and as all of time seemed to expand in my perception, his left shoe wheeled in a graceful orbit of his body, only to strike sharply upon our visitor’s chest.
The sense of eternity popped as might a bubble. Starkey stumbled backward and then surged forward to the table where I sat. Again, I heard the shout of pain, and then I realized it was coming from Holmes. Looking up, I saw Starkey, with eyes wild, holding tightly onto the table edge and shaking his head to recover his senses. At once I grasped a fork and plunged it into the back of his right hand.
The youth screamed and frantically flailed his fists about. I darted from my chair, throwing it into Starkey as his wild blows missed me. Scrambling toward my writing-desk, I looked back to see Holmes writhing on the floor, clutching his leg. Starkey’s motion had regained some method, and amid constant cursing, he careened toward the hearth, where his dagger had landed.
“I cannot reach my crop!” cried Holmes. “Stop him, Watson!”
Acting rather than thinking, I grasped the most immediate object—a thick pile of foolscap that was my latest set of manuscripts. Striding forward toward the coals as Starkey reached down for his blade, I swung the mass of paper in a low arc and landed a blow that was enough to send our lurching assailant to the floor. As my sheets scattered across the room, I took the slightly bent fire iron from its stand near the hearth and struck the young man a vicious blow upon the knee. As he seized his joint in agony, I ran—still clutching the iron—to my writing-desk, took up my old service revolver, and held a steady bead upon the enemy.
“Well done!” cried Holmes, who had crawled to the edge of the room to seize his riding crop and now sat with his back to the wall, massaging his outstretched left leg with his free hand. “I congratulate you for, at last, putting that foolscap to good use, Watson.”
“Holmes,” I said nervously, edging closer to both him and the still-writhing Starkey. “Are you injured?”
“Somewhat,” was his reply. “Though it is self-inflicted and largely to my pride. At my age, I must not permit several years to elapse between exercises of baritsu.”
“Shall I help you up then?” I offered.
“No, keep your revolver trained,” said he, crawling closer to the fire. “I shall call Mrs. Hudson after performing one last urgent task.”
“And what is that?” I asked, keeping careful watch of Starkey. “Recovering the knife from his reach?”
“No,” said Holmes, reaching the hearth. “Saving, against my better judgment, a good portion of your manuscript.” He reached out and pulled several pages of foolscap from the dwindling fire and patted out the flames. “There,” he said. “I have made the ultimate sacrifice so that you may continue to torment the reading public. Now for the knife,” he added, taking the dagger in hand and lightly tossing it across the room so that it landed at my feet.
Keeping a vigilant watch on our visitor, I kicked the knife into the corner behind me.
With great but careful effort, my friend rose to his feet and limped across the room and rang for our landlady. “Mrs. Hudson!” he called loudly down hall. “All is well! Please attend us!”
Leaning on the doorway frame, Holmes surveyed the disorder and then fixed his attention on Vic Starkey, now sitting sullenly on our hearth rug, holding his bleeding hand. “I’ll do what I can for you, Mr. Starkey,” the detective offered.
“And I’ll remind you that I am a doctor,” I added.
“They can give me a carpet or a stretch,” muttered the youth. “Throw me in the Scrubs, if they like. I won’t break! Not Vic Starkey!”
“Well, I shall ring up Hopkins, if I can,” said Holmes, limping to a chair as I heard Mrs. Hudson’s door open at the end of the hall. “And, in either case, we shall tell one of the agents outside to go for a policeman.”
In the ensuing minutes, that is what occurred. In due course, Vic Starkey was taken away, and Holmes rang up Stanley Hopkins. Our sitting room was restored to its usual state—“Disordered, but by your own doing,” was how Mrs. Hudson described it—and Irene Adler emerged at length from what I now considered her prison cell.
“I heard a struggle,” were her first words. “Was anyone hurt?”
“Injuries were suffered,” said Holmes with a smile, “but all is well for the moment.”
“Did you gain any news of Robert?”
“No,” my friend replied. “B
ut we do know the identity of Mr. Girthwood’s quarry.”
“What is it?” the woman asked.
Holmes set himself down on the sofa and stretched out his left leg. “The statue of a bird,” he said. “A black bird.”
CHAPTER EIGHT :
Four Interviews
“This means we must now pay our respects to Jasper Girthwood,” said Holmes as he turned Vic Starkey’s knife round in his hands. Then, with some discomfort, he set the blade down and shifted his weight upon the sofa, where he lay, his left leg elevated by means of several pillows. “Watson, might you ring up the Waymore? Ask that someone there convey to Mr. Girthwood the message that we wish to pay a call at half-past three.”
“Of course,” I said and strode to the telephone.
“Do you care to join us?” the detective asked Miss Adler, who sat stiffly in the basket-chair.
“Must I?” she said. “I thought your position was to deny my presence here.”
“I now tend to believe that ruse will not be productive and that you would be safer in our company rather than here. And—Oh, Watson! Make certain that it is conveyed to Mr. Girthwood that we here do not have the object he seeks. He has that by my word. Miss Adler, are you willing to make that same declaration?
“That this black bird object is not in my possession? Of course I am.”
Holmes nodded. “Have you knowledge of its whereabouts?”
“I do not know the statue’s location,” said Miss Adler at once.
The detective smiled. “Did you know of its existence before its mention by Mr. Starkey to Watson and me?”
“I told you earlier that I knew there was something that both Robert and Mr. Girthwood sought.”
Holmes did not respond to her failure to directly answer but merely shifted his weight upon the sofa again and turned toward me. “The message has been relayed, Watson?”
“It has,” said I, putting down the telephone.
“Very well. We shall all journey to the Waymore to see Jasper Girthwood once I am rested.”
“Mr. Holmes,” said the woman. “Do you intend for me to participate in the interview?”
“Only if you wish,” my friend said. “Knowing your aversion to Mr. Girthwood, I suppose you might choose to not even leave the cab, to which I would not object. You may decide your own fate in that regard.”
