by J. R. Trtek
The clerk stared my friend straight in the eye for some time, his lips pursed. Then he declared, “In truth, sir, my wife is Dutch, but that’s close enough for me. I reckon, after that performance, that you must be Sherlock Holmes. Here, allow me to bring out the parcel for you.”
“You have obtained the information?” Holmes asked Pike as the clerk stepped to the back of the office.
“Yes, sir,” said the agent. In his pale hand, he held out a packet, which Holmes took. “There’s enough in those pages to spark a great deal of interest by the Yard in Mr. Girthwood,” Pike commented. “Though I cannot guarantee that they will suffice for a conviction.”
“To delay him will be sufficient,” said Holmes, handing me the large envelope. “When I have received what we’ve come for, please see Mr. Galloway safely back to his house.”
“We shall,” said Stannard.
The clerk returned with a wrapped parcel, slightly more than one foot in length. “It’s a mite heavy,” he said, setting it upon a counter. “Just sign for it here on this paper, Mr. Holmes, and it’s yours.”
The detective took a pen and signed his name across the bottom of the sheet.
“Thank you, sir,” said Galloway. “Would you like to open her up, Mr. Holmes, just to be certain it’s what you expect?”
“That will not be necessary,” replied my friend. “The integrity of your firm is unquestioned.” He then took the parcel in his arms and carried it toward the door.
“I bet the owner’s got something valuable in there,” Stannard whispered in my ear.
“We believe it to be,” I replied, following Holmes out the door and into the street. The detective and I bade Pike, Stannard, and Mr. Galloway a good-night and entered our cab, the package sitting in the space between us.
“And so within this parcel is the Hapsburg falcon,” I said.
“Certainly it is not my latest supply of shag,” Holmes answered. He put one hand upon the bundle and gave it a firm pat then rapped the hansom roof with his knuckles. “Back to—”
“Baker Street,” completed the cabby. “Aye, right away, sirs.”
“What was the business with the cream paper?” I asked as the cab jerked to a start and then moved into Upper Swandam Lane.
“Aberdeen Shipping is a reliable firm, most scrupulous in its accounting and procedures. This parcel was sent from Paris by Miss Adler, with instructions that it be transferred only to her or her proven representatives. Written on the cream paper was a signed statement declaring me to be acting in Miss Adler’s stead and authorizing me to take possession of the parcel.”
“When did you obtain permission from her?”
“Oh, never,” said Sherlock Holmes as the cab reached Cannon Street. “I simply wrote the note myself.”
“What?”
“Yes, I employed the letter I had her write to Jasper Girthwood the other day as a model from which to copy both her script and signature.” He smiled. “It was for just such a purpose that I had her write it in the first place, should such a ruse prove necessary.”
“You anticipated such a need?”
Holmes looked languidly out into the darkness. “Sadly, yes, I did.”
“Does she suspect that was your purpose?”
“I cannot say if the thought of such a tactic entered her mind on that earlier day, but I believe she now understands we will be returning with the statue, to her great disappointment.”
Several minutes passed in silence. Then, patting the parcel myself, I said, “The woman lied about this as well then.”
“Are you surprised, old fellow? Still, in the end, it is we who have the falcon.”
“Yet we still do not have Robert Hope Maldon.”
“No,” replied Holmes, turning his attention to the passing streetlights as our hansom cut swiftly through the deepening fog. “No, we do not.”
The last half of our return was, for me, but a blur, a memory muddled by lack of sleep. When, at length, we returned to Baker Street, I found I had to be assisted from the cab by our agent Hollins, who took the packet from my hands and guided me toward the door of 221. Mercer was there and informed us that all had been quiet during our absence and that Miss Adler had retired for the night.
“Well, Watson,” said Holmes as we ascended the stair, he with the parcel cradled in his arms and I gripping the railing more tightly than usual. “Shall we at last have our look?”
“By all means,” I replied with, I fear, a sleepy slurring of my words.
We entered the sitting room, still in our hats and waterproofs. Holmes carried the parcel across to his deal-topped chemistry table. Then, from one of his pockets, he produced a small knife and cut the twine from the paper, which he slowly unwrapped, eventually uncovering what lay within.
“Come here, Watson, and observe.”
I shuffled over to the table and looked down into a nest of string, brown paper, and shredded newspaper. There, staring up at me, was a stocky ebony form I barely recognized as a falcon.
“We have it, Watson!”
“Indeed, we do,” I must have said in a most uninterested manner, for at that moment, all I wished for was a soft, clean bed. Holmes said some few words in reply, words I cannot recall, and then he led me by the arm out to the landing and delivered me into the care of Mercer. The sight of my feet touching down on risers returns to me when I remember that night, as does the brilliance of a lamp at my bedside, followed by sudden darkness, the warmth of blankets, and peace.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN :
Kismet
It seemed only an instant later that I was awakened by Holmes. “Quick, Watson,” he said, looming over me in the darkness. “The game may still be abed, but it will be afoot soon enough.”
Shaking myself from drowsiness, I sat up. “It is early,” were my first words.
“Yes, I suppose it is,” replied my friend as he slowly retreated toward the door. “Certainly, it is not your usual rising time, but then we have a bit of unusual business to transact this morning. Would one of Mrs. Hudson’s breakfasts induce you to stir?”
“I thought she was to remain in her quarters.”
“She insists on providing sustenance before barricading her door,” Holmes reminded me.
“I can ready myself in a quarter hour, if her ham and eggs are in the offing.”
“Good. I shall see you down in the sitting room shortly then,” he said, closing the door behind him.
Ten minutes later, I stepped into the sitting room, where Mrs. Hudson was delivering the meal to our table.
“Ah, I timed it to perfection,” said Holmes. “Thank you, Mrs. Hudson. Come, Watson! We’ve not a moment to lose!”
I greeted our smiling-if-heavy-lidded landlady as she stepped past me on her way out and took my place at the table. “Is Miss Adler about yet?” I inquired.
“I convinced Mrs. Hudson to raise her, and I expect she will descend in a while. We all must be present when Jasper Girthwood appears at our door.”
“The falcon is safe?” I asked, looking about as Holmes took a generous portion of eggs. “Have you hidden it?”
“Oh, it’s sitting over by the window, behind your writing chair.”
I looked in the indicated direction and saw the statue on the floor, noticing as well a dull, rusty object leaning against one leg of Holmes’s chemistry table. “What in God’s name is that?” I asked.
“What? You don’t recognize my old portable basin?” Holmes replied. “I took it down from the lumber room last night. Many years have passed since it was in regular use, have they not?”
“For what purpose did you employ it?”
Holmes tilted his head back and forth as he speared a slice of ham. “Oh, I simply wished to while away the hours with some old experiments.”
“Did you get any sleep at all?”
“None that I am aware of. Toast, please.”
“Holmes?”
“Yes? Thank you, Watson.”
“Holmes, for all the
time this matter has taken, I feel we are no closer to finding Robert Hope Maldon than we were at the start.”
“The resolution of all things is nigh, Watson. Trust to it.”
“Speaking of resolution, are you still entertaining Mr. Stephenson’s plea to return the shares without Lord Monsbury’s knowledge?”
“You say the lad is truly penitent?”
“My heart tells me he is, Holmes.”
“Hum. Well, we have performed such ruses before; no doubt we can offer another encore. ‘Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.’”11
Holmes checked the clock and then complained about the lack of a fresh newspaper to read. “As Briggs,” he continued, “I have already sent a message to Girthwood at the Waymore Hotel telling him that I, as Holmes, am once again at 221. The message suggests he meet me, as his henchman, here and confront me, as myself, regarding you, Miss Adler, and the falcon. We should expect him, perhaps, within the hour.”
At that moment, Irene Adler made her appearance for the first time that morning. She was attired in the white linen blouse and grey skirt that had once created such an airy, ethereal impression, but as she took a place at the table, her mood seemed that of stony depression.
“Eggs?” asked Sherlock Holmes, and our guest received them with a silent nod. “Watson? Do you wish more? No? Then allow me to finish the lot,” he said, somewhat out of character, for though he enjoyed a fine meal, I knew him to eat sparingly. “Mr. Girthwood will arrive within the hour,” he repeated for the benefit of the woman. “And within a quarter hour after that, this case should, by my reckoning, be history. You may then begin, so to speak, your literary post-mortem, Watson.”
Irene Adler stared at the table and ceased to show interest in the meal, other than her coffee. Seeking to ease her obvious discomfort, I sought to occupy her with conversation by first asking if she had obtained any sleep.
“I believe I did,” were her only words, and I ceased my efforts, believing they would be embarrassing as well as useless.
At length, Mrs. Hudson came to clear the table. Holmes instead herded her to the sitting room door, where he whispered instructions to her. Our landlady swiftly vanished down the hall, and my friend strode to the bow window, which he unlatched but did not open. Staring down into Baker Street, Holmes smiled faintly for several minutes. Then he gave a start.
“None of our agents are in sight,” the detective said. “That is good. Ah, our moment has arrived somewhat sooner than expected. The rope gently tightens; the noose quietly forms.”
“Girthwood approaches?” I asked from the table.
“Yes,” said Holmes. He turned round, rubbing his hands together. “Our last act.”
I heard the house bell ring.
“Up from the table, if you will,” Holmes asked of Miss Adler and myself. “Please, quickly take comfort round the hearth.”
The bell rang again, and then I heard loud knocking upon the front door.
“I suppose I could have asked Oakes and the boys to return this morning,” said Holmes in a wistful tone. “But they’ve earned their rest.”
At length I heard the house door open. “Halloa!” came Girthwood’s squealing voice. “Briggs, are you in here? Anyone? By gad, what a mess!”
“Up here!” shouted Holmes in the voice of Briggs. He sat down in his armchair beside Miss Adler, who had reluctantly taken to the sofa. I claimed the basket-chair.
“We’re up here, cosy and all!” Holmes cried. “Come on, boss!”
The intruder’s heavy ascent of the stair reverberated all the way to our sitting room. “This isn’t like you, Briggs!” the man said in a huffing voice as he reached the landing. “The door was unlocked! Where are your men? Where is Holmes? I need to—”
Jasper Girthwood stopped as he entered through the open doorway. Glancing about the room, his eyes suddenly became wide with alarm. “Briggs?” he called, looking frantically among us. “They’re untied and here! With Holmes! Unguarded! Briggs, you fool! Briggs, where are you?”
“Right here, boss,” grunted Holmes in the criminal’s voice.
Girthwood stared in shock at my friend.
“Briggs be here, sir.”
“You,” whispered the corpulent one.
“Me,” replied my friend in his own voice.
Our visitor began to back out of the sitting room.
“If you wish to ever hold the Hapsburg falcon in your hands, Mr. Girthwood, I advise you to remain,” declared Sherlock Holmes, rising to his feet and striding across the room toward the bow window.
Girthwood stopped and stared at the detective with malevolent suspicion. His flabby face seemed, in some improbable manner, to grow taut, while his spine almost appeared to arch above his massive bulk. “You’ve got it after all then, sir?”
“I do now,” said Holmes. “After you submit to a search of your person for weapons, you may see it.”
“Well, there’s an offer that’s straight and sure,” replied Girthwood, regaining some composure. The man adjusted his coat and pulled himself back into the sitting room. “Mr. Holmes, I’ll tell you right out I have no weapons. Must I suffer indignity piled atop injury?”
“Yes. Watson, see to it, please.”
I rose from the table and searched the man—a hunt that produced brass knuckles, two knives, and an unloaded pistol.
“Perhaps,” Girthwood said, “I should have said I had no weapons of consequence.”
“Watch him closely, old fellow,” Holmes told me as he reached down behind my writing chair and held up the statue, its form seeming even blacker against the morning light.
“The falcon,” whispered Girthwood, momentarily enraptured by the vision of it. Slowly, as if in a trance, he stepped forward. The glint from its enamelled surface seemed mirrored in the large man’s greedy eyes. He stroked his chin, and I thought I saw his tongue moisten his lips, as a gourmand’s might when contemplating a sumptuous meal.
“Charles of Spain never saw it, gentlemen. Now I have. By gad!” exclaimed Girthwood, his dry voice wavering. “May I...may I now have the pleasure of holding it?”
“As you wish,” said Sherlock Holmes, pushing open the unlatched window. “You’ll have to catch it first, however.” Casually, the detective tossed the bird out into Baker Street.
“Good Lord!” screamed Girthwood. “You’re mad!”
“And you’re without the falcon,” replied Holmes as he closed the window. “Unless you hop to it, sir.”
In an instant, Girthwood was out the sitting room door. The entire house seemed to shake as he charged down the stair. I bolted to the window and looked down into the street to behold the falcon moving off in the back of a wagon piled with straw. Suddenly, Jasper Girthwood’s bouncing form emerged from the door of 221 in pursuit.
“Ha!” cried Holmes, who stood beside me. “He runs as a woman might.”
“But what if he catches the wagon?” I asked.
“Where is my clay?” my friend said, turning from the window.
“Holmes?”
“The driver of the wagon is Stanley Hopkins,” the detective said as he strode to the mantel. “Baker Street is lined with his fellows from Scotland Yard. Mr. Girthwood’s part in our drama, I believe, is now played out. “
“But the statue!” I said.
“Sometimes a statue is merely a statue,” said Holmes, filling his pipe. “Such is true in this instance—that and nothing more.”
“But the jewels!”
“There are no jewels.”
“The jewels have been removed? Even so, it is solid gold beneath the enamel—”
“The jewels never were there, Watson,” said my friend, lighting his clay. “And whatever lies beneath the black enamel is certainly not gold.”
In the corner of my eye, Irene Adler gave a start.
“How can you be certain?” I asked.
“Because I tested it, Doctor,” said Holmes, tossing his vesta onto the coals. “I used my old port
able basin there to float the statue in a pot borrowed from Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen and then employed the well-worn principle of Archimedes to determine the statue’s density. The value I obtained was not that of gold, though it was rather close to what one would expect of lead.”
“That statue is a leaden forgery?” I said. “Then where is the real one?”
“If by that you mean the priceless statue supposedly created by the Order of St. John, then I must say I have no idea,” replied Holmes. “Perhaps there never was such an object, the story Girthwood quoted being pure myth. Perhaps Konstantinides, the Parisian art dealer, had it made to pose as the real one. No matter, Watson. The falcon has played out its role along with Mr. Girthwood, which leaves but one more among our dramatis personae to deal with.”
Holmes silently directed me back to the basket-chair, where I sat down.
“I am truly sorry about the statue,” the detective said to Miss Adler as he stood by the armchair. “It is to be regretted that you suffered so much for something so worthless.”
“There are always risks,” the woman replied, her first words in several minutes. “No matter where one goes or what one does, there are risks.”
“Yes,” said Sherlock Holmes. “Life plants them everywhere, does it not?” He contemplated the ceiling briefly then removed the pipe from his mouth as he sat in the armchair. “You understand this is the final accounting,” he declared. “The lies have kept peeling away, one after the other, Miss Adler, and time is short. In a moment, Scotland Yard will come through that doorway. We’ve time only for the core now, the truth and nothing else.”
“You wish the satisfaction of the truth?”
“I believe I have the truth already, madam. My satisfaction, as you term it, would derive from hearing its admission in your own voice. That, indeed, is all that I have ever desired in all of this.”
They stared wordlessly at each other, and then Miss Adler said, “Proceed.”
“In the beginning, you were a reluctant ally of your husband and half brother in obtaining the falcon,” said Holmes. “However, you soon determined to betray them both and take the statue for yourself alone. To accomplish that, you enlisted an ally of your own in the person of young Robert Hope Maldon. Whether you loved him or he you is no matter. What does matter is that you allowed him to learn the legend surrounding that avian objet d’art and then persuaded him to join with you in reaping its treasure, minus your husband and half brother.”
