The Mammoth Book of the New Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes

by Denis O. Smith

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked, breathing heavily. ‘You made me jump!’

  ‘Miss Summers?’ enquired Holmes, at which the girl nodded her head. ‘I’m sorry if we startled you. We are friends of Mr Hardy’s. He said we might have a look round. It is fascinating to see all these different costumes, I must say.’

  ‘It might be fascinating, if you could find one to fit you,’ she returned in an ill-natured tone, as she pushed past us and made her way down the corridor. Holmes waited until her footsteps had quite faded away, then turned his lantern up and led the way into the costume store. We had gone scarcely three paces, however, when he stopped again. He handed the lantern to me, stooped down and picked up a scrap of black cloth, about a foot square, which lay at his feet. As he held it up, I saw with a thrill that it had had two small eye-holes cut into it, and short pieces of tape tied through holes at either side.

  ‘It is a mask!’ I cried.

  ‘It must be the mask of your assailant,’ said Holmes. ‘It confirms that this was the way he came. It is probable that in his headlong flight in the dark, the mask slipped and he could not see where he was going. He would therefore have pulled it off as he ran in here. No doubt it was knocked from his grasp as he pushed his way between these rows of costumes and, in the dark, he could not see where it had gone. Before we proceed any further, let us see if Hardy’s seamstresses can shed any light upon it.’

  In the sewing-room, Holmes spread out our prize upon the cutting-table.

  ‘Have you ever seen this mask before?’ he asked.

  The women gathered round to look, but they all shook their heads.

  ‘I should like to know who was behind that mask,’ said the small, dark-haired girl, Katharine, dabbing at the eye-holes with her needle.

  ‘It’s a very wide mask,’ observed Kathleen. ‘Even with a head as big as Jeanie’s, which is as big as you could want, you’d find it a bit on the large side.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Holmes with a chuckle; ‘but the spacing of the eye-holes is quite normal, as you see. Evidently, the mask has been made as wide as it has so that it will cover not merely the front of the face, but the sides, too.’

  ‘Well, you can see it’s nothing we’ve made, sir, anyway. It’s not been finished off properly. The edges are all fraying!’

  ‘Never mind “finished off”, Kathy,’ interjected the blonde-haired girl in a soft voice; ‘it’s not even been started properly. See how badly it’s been cut out! It’s all crooked and the eye-holes aren’t even level!’

  ‘It was made, then, I take it, by someone with little sewing skill,’ said Holmes.

  ‘None at all, sir, I should say.’

  ‘Do you recognise the material? It is some kind of velvet fabric, is it not?’

  Kathleen stooped and looked under the table, where numerous rolls of cloth were stacked. After a moment, she pulled one out and unrolled it on the table-top.

  ‘It is this sort of thing,’ said she. ‘Yes, see!’ she cried, pointing to the uneven edge of the material. ‘Someone has cut the end off crookedly with a pair of scissors!’

  ‘I suppose it would have been a simple enough task for someone to come in here when you had all gone home and take a piece of this material?’ queried Holmes.

  ‘It would, sir. We might have noticed, if it was material we were using; but we haven’t used this black velvet for a little while now.’

  Holmes thanked the needlewomen for their assistance, folded up the mask and put it in his pocket, and we returned to the costume store. ‘Still only five black robes here,’ he remarked, as we paused at the rail on which the monks’ robes were hanging. ‘The width of that roll of velvet, incidentally, was a yard, only about a third of which has been used to make the mask. Your assailant therefore retains his robe, and has ample material left to make a replacement mask. Somehow, I do not think we have yet seen the last of him!’

  ‘But where has he gone to?’

  ‘We may be able to shed some light on that question if we take another look at the disused cupboards at the back of the next room,’ returned my companion.

  As he had done earlier, he subjected the floor in front of the middle cupboard to a close examination. When he rose to his feet again, there was a glint of excitement in his eye.

  ‘There are fresh marks here,’ said he, ‘marks which were certainly not here earlier. They were therefore made in the past hour and indubitably by your assailant. Now,’ he continued, taking out the large rusty-looking bunch of keys from his pocket, ‘let us try these, and hope for success!’

  I held the lamp up by the door, as, for several minutes, my companion tried each of his keys in turn in the keyhole of the middle door.

  ‘It is possible, of course, that none of these keys will fit,’ said he as he paused for a moment. ‘The correct key may already have been removed. But, wait! Ah! There it is!’ There was a note of triumph in his voice, as one of the last remaining keys turned without difficulty in the lock. ‘Now to see what lies behind this old door!’

  He took the lamp from my hand, and pulled at the door, which opened easily. There before us, rather than the shallow dusty cupboard I had expected to see, stretched a narrow corridor, which vanished into darkness. As my companion stepped forward with the lamp, however, and the darkness retreated before its light, I saw that at about a dozen feet from the door the corridor ended at a steep flight of stone steps which descended to a lower level. What might lie down these steps I could not imagine and I certainly could not see, for the foot of the stair was in utter blackness. In silence, and with every sense alert, I followed my companion down these steps to the bottom, which lay about fifteen feet below the level of the costume store. There, a passage went off to the left. This ran dead straight for nearly thirty feet and ended at the foot of another stone staircase, an exact duplicate of the one we had descended. Slowly, we mounted these steps, until, at the top, we found ourselves before an old and crumbling wooden door. For a moment, we stood and listened, but all about us was utter silence; then Holmes pushed open the door and we entered a bare chamber, festooned with dusty cobwebs. Directly opposite, another door stood ajar and, passing through it, we found ourselves in a long, narrow corridor, which stretched away into darkness in either direction.

  ‘We are now in the basement of the Southwark Palace,’ said my companion in a low voice. ‘The tunnel we have followed evidently passes deep beneath the narrow street which lies between the two theatres. It must have been constructed in Solomon Tanner’s day, to enable him to get quickly from the one theatre to the other, without having to go out into the street. Did you find any mention of it in that collection of historical cuttings you were reading?’

  ‘Not specifically. There were several references to the fact that Tanner was often on the stage of the Palace at the close of the programme there and on the stage of the Albion less than five minutes later, but no specific mention of the existence of a tunnel between the two theatres. But I had not finished reading through the scrapbook when I was interrupted. Perhaps it is mentioned on a page I have not yet read.’

  ‘Perhaps. But I observed that a leaf near the beginning of the scrapbook had been torn out. It is therefore possible that the tunnel was mentioned on that page, and that it was deliberately removed by our mystery villain to prevent anyone else learning the secret. He himself has evidently discovered it somehow, anyway. I think it is clear that he has used this tunnel to come and go whenever he wished, without being seen. You have done some fishing in your time, I believe, Watson?’

  ‘Fishing?’ I repeated, surprised at the question. ‘Certainly. When I was stationed with the Medical Department in Hampshire, some of my companions were keen anglers and we made many expeditions to the rivers there.’

  ‘And sometimes, perhaps, as you waded out into what appeared a shallow, rocky stream, you would find that the bottom was not as even as you had supposed and that the water was running over the top of your boots?’

  ‘What fisherman has
not had that experience!’ I replied. ‘But why do you ask?’

  ‘Because that is the sensation I have with this case, Watson. I was asked to investigate a series of spiteful, but largely trivial, incidents. But as we have stepped into these muddy waters, they have revealed themselves to be considerably deeper than was at first apparent. Come! Let us return now to the Albion and see if we can determine what this villain was up to on his last visit there. Careful where you step! We must not leave any indication that we have been here, to warn him that we are on his trail!’

  We retraced our steps, taking care to leave everything as we had found it, until we were once more in the basement corridor of the Albion, just outside the costume store.

  ‘You say that when you first saw the dark figure, he was twenty-odd feet this side of the room in which you were sitting?’ asked Holmes.

  ‘That’s right; making his way along in this direction, away from the room I was in.’

  ‘Could he have passed your door without your hearing?’

  ‘I doubt it. It was very quiet at the time and the door was not tightly closed.’

  ‘So, he was walking away from where you were, but had not passed your door. He must therefore have come from some point this side of Miss Ballantyne’s room.’

  ‘That must be so. Perhaps he had been in one of the other rooms. I had heard a door close, just before I looked out and saw him. It was that which first attracted my attention.’

  We made our way along to Isabel Ballantyne’s dressing-room, then turned and surveyed the corridor from that standpoint, as I had done when I had first caught sight of the masked figure.

  ‘The place from which he had come must have been quite close to here,’ remarked Holmes. ‘But if he had been in the next dressing-room, that of Ludovic Xavier, I think you would have heard him in there. Perhaps the door he closed was one of the pair on the other side of the corridor, which, as Mr Hardy informed us, give access to the understage area.’

  These doors were a dozen feet or so along the corridor from Miss Ballantyne’s room. Holmes opened one of them, then softly closed it again and looked at me enquiringly.

  ‘That certainly could have been what I heard,’ I remarked.

  ‘Then let us take a look inside!’

  Behind the doors, a short flight of stone steps led downwards, for the floor of this chamber was at a lower level than the corridor. We descended the steps, lit a gas-jet on the wall, and looked about us. It was a very large chamber, which evidently extended the whole width of the stage above. The ceiling was much higher than those of the other rooms in the basement, and was composed of thick planks and sturdy crossbeams, which were supported upon stout wooden pillars, as broad as tree-trunks. Stacked about the flagstones of the floor, in between these pillars, were a great number of boxes, crates and wicker hampers.

  ‘We are now immediately beneath the stage,’ remarked my friend and, as if to confirm his words, the orchestra at that moment struck up a lively tune and dancing footsteps began tripping across the boards above us. ‘There is only one person dancing and it is evidently a woman,’ observed Holmes, ‘so it is probably Miss Ballantyne. The intention this afternoon, as I understand it, is to begin the rehearsals with the closing scene of the first act, during which Miss Ballantyne is alone on the stage.’ As he spoke, there came a pause in the tap-tap of the feet and we heard Miss Ballantyne’s voice, slightly muffled, but still distinct enough for us to make out the words of her song:

  On the street at seven,

  Not home until eleven,

  On the corner with my flowers,

  Whether in sunshine or in showers

  As she sang, Holmes walked quietly about, his keen eyes darting hither and thither, as he sought for some indication as to why the mystery figure might have been in this room. Presently, he stopped and examined some dust on the floor. Then, after a moment, he turned his gaze to the ceiling. It was dark, especially in the shadows of the crossbeams, but it appeared that directly above his head was a trap-door.

  ‘This is presumably how the genie is produced on stage, in Aladdin and similar exotic productions,’ said he to me in a low voice, as I joined him beneath the trap-door. ‘That equipment,’ he continued, indicating a disordered heap of pulleys and poles and ropes, some of which were attached to a wooden platform, ‘must be how the actor playing the genie is raised to the level of the stage, above. The actor stands on that platform, the pulleys are attached to those large hooks in the ceiling above us and the stage-hands pull him up, the ascent of the platform perhaps being guided by some structure made out of those poles. For that purpose, of course, the equipment would be positioned immediately beneath the trap-door, but at the moment it is dismantled and pushed to one side. Does anything strike you about the trap-door itself, Watson?’

  I looked up. Above our heads, there came a pause in the singing and Miss Ballantyne resumed her skipping dance.

  ‘It is difficult to make it out,’ I said, ‘but there appear to be four bolts, two on each of the doors, which are placed sideways, so that the doors are secured to the underside of the stage. There is also a stout wooden bar, passing across both doors and presumably secured to the ceiling at either end. At one end of this wooden bar, a length of cord is attached, which passes along the ceiling, through a metal ring and down this pillar. What the point of that is, I cannot imagine.’

  Holmes nodded his head, a thoughtful expression upon his face. ‘There is a little sawdust on the floor here,’ he remarked after a moment, indicating the flagstone at our feet. ‘It was that which caught my attention. The inference is that some work has recently been done on the trap-door, or its fixings; but it is difficult to see from here what that work might be. Ah!’ he cried all at once, as he glanced rapidly about the room. ‘I see there is a long ladder lying by the wall over there. If you would help me bring it here, Watson, I shall climb up and take a closer look!’

  We put up the ladder directly beneath the trap-door, its top resting against one of the large crossbeams which supported the ceiling. Then, as I held it steady, Holmes climbed to the top. For several minutes, he examined the trap-door and the surrounding woodwork very closely. As he descended, his face was grave.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘It is as I suspected,’ said he. ‘None of the bolts is fastened, so that the only thing which is now preventing the trap-doors from falling open is that stout wooden bar which runs across beneath them. Under normal circumstances, that would be perfectly adequate, but the fixings of the wooden bar have been recently altered in a subtle and ingenious way. It is evident that it was originally screwed into the ceiling, but the screws which held it have been removed. The wood in the empty screw-holes – two at either end of the bar – is very clean and fresh-looking, indicating that the screws have only recently been removed. The bar is now held in place by two metal brackets, which are screwed into the boards of the ceiling at either side of the trap-door. The brackets are fixed and secure, but the bar itself is not. It can slide along within the brackets, or be pulled out of them altogether, in which case nothing would then be supporting the trap-doors and they would at once fall open. At one end of the wooden bar is a metal ring, to which a length of cord has been attached, as you observed. This cord, as you remarked, passes along the ceiling, through another metal ring and so down to a hook on this wooden pillar, around which the end of it is wound.’

  ‘What does it mean?’ I asked, as there came a pause in Miss Ballantyne’s dancing and she returned to the song, very loud and clear, immediately overhead.

  ‘I’m very much afraid it means murder, Watson,’ returned Holmes in a quiet voice.

  ‘Murder!’ I cried in horror. ‘Surely you are mistaken! If some malevolent person wishes to delay the production of this play, or even to destroy it altogether, there must be a thousand subtle ways he could achieve his end without resorting to such violence. I simply cannot believe that in these circumstances anyone would contemplate such a dreadful cri
me!’

  ‘Nevertheless, that is what the evidence indicates, Watson. If that trap-door falls open, anyone standing upon it will plunge on to these flagstones and I cannot think that anyone could survive such a fall. I agree that it would mark a considerable increase in violence compared with what has gone before, but that does not make it impossible. The matter is not so straightforward as you perhaps suppose. But, come! Let us put the ladder away, leave everything down here as we found it and see what is happening upstairs!’

  When we returned to the auditorium, Isabel Ballantyne had completed her rehearsal, and the stage was occupied by the dozen or so young men and women of the chorus, singing and dancing with energy and enthusiasm. Richard Hudson Hardy was personally directing the proceedings from the front of the stalls, standing with the script in his hand and shouting out instructions from time to time. A couple of rows further back, Miss Ballantyne was now sitting with her husband and Jimmy Webster, watching the progress of the rehearsal. Half a dozen rows behind them, a powerful-looking man, with dark hair and moustache, and a dark, sallow face, was sitting, smoking a cigar. For some time we stood at the side of the auditorium, watching the rehearsal, then Holmes plucked my sleeve.

  ‘We have seen all that is necessary for the moment,’ said he. ‘I doubt that Mr Hardy would welcome an interruption now, so I shall leave him a note in his office.’

  As we approached the doors at the back of the auditorium, they were pushed open and a middle-aged man entered, who stared at us for a moment. He was what some might describe as ‘well-groomed’, but there was an affectation about both his appearance and his manner which I did not much care for.