Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #3

by SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

  I beetled glumly up and down Streatham Hill.

  “Imagine, if you will, a Minister of State or a Colossus of Finance or a Royal Courtesan, protected at all hours by armed professionals, beyond the reach of any would-be murderer, vulnerable only to the indiscriminate anarchist with his oh-so-inaccurate bomb and willingness to be a martyr to his cause. Then think of a man with a rifle, stationed at a window or on a balcony some distance from the target, but with a telescopic device attached to his weapon, calmly drawing a bead and taking accurate, deadly shots. A sniper, Moran, as used in war, but brought to bear in a civilian circumstance, a private enterprise. While guards panic around their fallen employer, in a tizzy because they don’t even know where the shots have come from, our assassin packs up his kit and strolls away untroubled, unseen and untraced. That will be the murder of the future, Moran. The scientific murder.”

  Then the Professor rattled on about air-guns, which lost me. Only little boys and pouffes would deign to touch a contraption which needs to be pumped before use and goes off with a sad phut rather than a healthy bang. Kali’s Kitten would have swallowed an air-gun whole, and taken an arm along with it. The smell of cordite, that’s the stuff—better than cocaine any day of the month. And the big bass drum thunder of a gun going off.

  Finally, I located the right Laurels.

  Evening was coming on. Gaslight flared behind net-curtains. More shadows to slip in. I felt comfy, as if I had thick foliage around me. My ears pricked for the pad of a big cat. I found a nice big tree and leaned against it.

  I took out an instrument Moriarty had issued from his personal collection, a spy-glass tricked up to look like a hip-flask. Off came the stopper and there was an eye-piece. Up to the old ocular as if too squiffy to crook the elbow with precison, and the bottom of the bottle was another lens. Brought a scene up close, in perfect, sharp focus.

  Lovely bit of kit.

  I saw into the front-parlour of the Laurels. A fire was going, and the whole household was at home. A ripening girl, who wore puffs and ribbons more suited to the nursery, flounced around tiresomely. I saw her mouth flap, but—of course—couldn’t hear what she was saying. A handsome woman sat by the fire, nodding and doing needlework, occasionally flashing a tight smile. I focused on the chit, Fay-called-Rachel, then on the mother, Helen Laurence-alias-Jane Withersteen. I recalled the “daughter” was adopted, and wondered what that was all about. The woman was no startler, with grey in her dark hair as if someone had cracked an egg over her head and let it run. The girl might do in a pinch. Looking again at her animated face, it hit me that she was feeble-witted—which always suggested possibilities.

  The man, Jonathan Laurence-né-Jim Lassiter, had his back to the window. He seemed to be nodding stiffly, then I realised he was in a rocking chair. I twisted a screw, and the magnification increased. I saw the back of his neck, tanned, and the sharp cut of his hair, which was slick with pomade. I even made out the ends of his moustache, wide enough to prick out either side of the silhouette of his head.

  So this was the swiftest pistolero West of the Pecos?

  I admit that I snorted.

  This American idiocy about drawing and firing, taking aim in a split-second, is pure stuff and nonsense. Anyone who wastes their time learning how to do conjuring tricks getting their gun out is likely to find great red holes in their shirt-front (or, in most cases, back) before they’ve executed their fanciest twirl. That’s if they don’t shoot their own nose off by mistake.

  History has borne me out. Bill Hickock, Jesse James, and Billy the Kid were all shot dead by folk far less famous and skilled—taken from behind or while unarmed or when asleep.

  Dash it all, I was going to chance it. All I had to do was take out the Webley, cross the road, creep into the front garden, stand outside the window, and blast Mr and Mrs Laurence where they sat.

  The fun part would be snatching the girl.

  Carpe diem, they said at Eton. Take your shot, I learned in the jungle. Nothing ruddy ventured, nothing bloody gained.

  I stoppered the spy-glass and slipped it into my breast-pocket. Using it had an odd side-effect. My mouth was dry and I really could have done with a swallow of something. But I had surrendered my real flask in exchange for the trick-telescope. I wouldn’t make that mistake again. Perhaps Moriarty could whip me up a hip-flask disguised as a pocket-watch. And, if time-keeping was important, a pocket-watch disguised as something I’d never really need, like a prayer-book or a tin of fruit pastilles.

  The girl was demonstrating some dance now. Really, I would do the couple a favour by getting them out of this performance.

  I reached into my coat-pocket and gripped my Webley. I took it out slowly and carefully—no nose-ectomy shot for Basher Moran—and cocked it with my thumb. The sound was tinier than a click you’d make with your tongue against your teeth.

  Suddenly, Lassiter wasn’t in view. He was out of his chair and beyond sight of the window.

  I was dumbfounded.

  Then the lights went out. Not only the gas, but the fire—doused by a bucket, I’d guess. The womenfolk weren’t in evidence, either.

  One tiny click!

  A finger stuck out from a curtain and tapped the window-pane.

  No, not a finger. A tube. If I’d had the glass out, I could confirm what I intuited. The bump at the end of the tube was a sight. Lassiter, the fast gun, had drawn his iron.

  I had fire in my belly. I smelled the dying breath of Kali’s Kitten.

  I changed my estimate of the American, and of the whole business of gun-fighting. What had seemed a disappointing, drab day outing was now a worthwhile safari, a game worth the chase.

  He wouldn’t come out of the front door, of course. He needn’t come out at all. First, he’d secure the mate and cub—a stronghold in the cellar, perhaps. Then he could get a wall behind his back and wait. To be bearded in his lair. If only I had a bottle of paraffin, or even a box of matches. Then I could fire the Laurels: they’d have to come out and Lassiter would be distracted by females in panic. No, even then, there was a back-garden. I’d have needed beaters, perhaps a second and third gun.

  Moriarty had said he could put reliable men at my disposal for the job, but I’d pooh-poohed the suggestion. Natives panic and run, lesser guns get in the way. I was best off on my tod.

  I would have to rethink.

  Lassiter was on his guard now. He could cut and run, spirit his baggages off with him. Go to ground so we’d never find him again.

  My face burned. Suddenly I was afraid, not of the gunslinger, but of the Professor. I would have to tell him of my blunder.

  One bloody click, that was all it was! Damn and drat.

  I knew, even on brief acquaintance, Moriarty did not merely dismiss people from the firm. He was no mere theoretician of murder.

  Moran’s head, stuffed, on Moriarty’s wall. That would be the end of it.

  I eased the cock of the Webley shut and pocketed the gun.

  A cold circle pressed to the back of my neck.

  “Reach, pardner,” said a deep, foreign, marrow-freezing voice. “And mighty slow-like.”

  * * * *

  My bloody father always said I’d wind up with a noose around my neck. But even Sir Augustus Moran did not predict that said noose would be strung from a pretentious chandelier and attached firmly to a curtain-rail.

  I was stood on a none-too-sturdy occasional table, hands tied behind my back with taut, biting twine. Only the thickness of my boot-heels kept me from throttling at once.

  Here was a how-d’you-do?

  The parlour of the Laurels was still unlit, the curtains drawn. Unable to look down, I was aware of the people in the room but no more.

  The man, Lassiter, had raised a bump on my noggin with his pistol-butt, which throbbed angrily.

 
Somehow, I had an idea this was still better than an interview with a disappointed Professor Moriarty.

  On the table, by my boot-toes, were my Webley, broken and unloaded, the flask-glass, my folding knife, my (empty-ish) note-case, three French post-cards, and a watch which had a sentiment from “Violet, to Algy” engraved inside.

  “Okay, Algy,” drawled Lassiter, “listen up…”

  I didn’t feel inclined to correct his assumption.

  “We’re gonna have a little talk-like. I’m gonna ask questions, and you can give answers. You understand?”

  I tried to stand very still.

  Lassiter kicked the table, which wobbled. Rough hemp cut into my throat.

  I nodded my understanding, bringing tears to my eyes.

  “Fine and dandy.”

  He was standing behind me. I knew the woman was in the room too, keeping quiet, probably holding the girl to keep her from fidgeting.

  “You ain’t no Mormon,” Lassiter said.

  It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer.

  The table rocked again. Evidently, it had been a question.

  “I’m not a Mormon,” I said, with difficulty. “No.”

  “But you’re with the Danite Band?”

  I had to think about that.

  A very loud noise sounded, and the table splintered. A slice of it sheared away, and I had to hop to keep balance on what was left.My ears rang and it was seconds before I could make out what was being said.

  “Noise-some, ain’t it? You’ll be hearin’ that fer days.”

  It wasn’t the bang—I’ve heard enough bangs in my time—it was the smell, the discharged gun smell. It cleared my head.

  The noose at my throat cut deep.

  I had heard—in the prefects’ common-room at Eton, not any of the bordellos or dives I’ve frequented since since those horrible school days—that being hanged, if only for a few seconds, elicits a peculiar physiological reaction in the human male. Conoisseurs reckon this a powerful erotic, on a par with the ministrations of the most expert houris. I was now, embarrassingly, in a position to confirm the sixth-form legend.

  A gasp from the woman suggested the near-excruciating bulge in my fly was externally evident.

  “Why, you low, disgustin’ snake,” said Lassiter. “In the presence of a lady, to make such a…”

  Words failed him. I was in no position to explain that this was an unsought-for, involuntary response.

  Arbuthnot, Captain of the Second Eleven, now active in a movement for the suppression of licentious music hall performance, once maintained that this throttling business was more pleasurable if the self-strangulator dressed as a ballet-girl and sucked a boiled sweet dipped in absinthe.

  I could not help but wish Arbuthnot were here now to test his theory, instead of me.

  “Jim, Jim, what are we to do?” said the woman. “They know where we are. I told you they’d never give up. Not after Surprise Valley.”

  Her voice, shrill and desperate, was sweet to me. I knew from the quality of Lassiter’s silence that his wife’s whining was no help to him.

  I began to see the advantages of my situation.

  Again, I had been through the red rage and fear of peril and come to the cold, calm, chill clearing.

  “At present, Mr and Mrs Lassiter,” I began, giving them their true names, “you are pursued only by foreign cranks, whose authority will never be recognised by British law. If your story were known, popular sympathy would be with you and the Danites further frustrated. The fact that Elder Drebber engaged the services of those I represent should tell you that they can take no action by themselves.”

  “Who do you represent, Algy?”

  That was the question I’d never answer, not if he shot all the legs off the table and let me kick and splatter. Even if I died, Moriarty would use spiritualist mediums to lay hands on my ectoplasm and double my sufferings.

  “If I step off this table, your circumstances will change,” I said. “You will be murderers, low and cowardly killers of a hero of the British Empire.…”

  Never hurts to mention the old war record.

  “Under whatever names you take, you will be hunted by Scotland Yard, the most formidable police force in the world…”

  Well, formidable in the size of the seats of their blue serge trousers…

  “All hands will be against you.”

  I shut up and let them stew.

  “He’s right, Jim. We can’t just kill him.”

  “He drew first,” said Lassiter.

  “This isn’t Amber Springs.”

  I imagined the climate was somewhat more congenial in Amber Springs, wherever that might be. And the community’s relative lack of police-men, judges, lawyers, jailers, court reporters, and engravers for the Police Gazette, which in other circumstances would have given it the edge over Streatham in my book, was suddenly not a point in its favour.

  Even with my ringing ears, I heard the click.

  Lassiter had cocked and aimed his gun.

  He walked around the table, so he could at least shoot me to my face. It was still dark, so I couldn’t get much of a look at him.

  “Jim,” protested Helen-Jane.

  There was a flash of fire. For an instant, Lassiter’s fiercely-moustached face lit orange.

  The table was out from under me, and the noose dragged at my adam’s apple.

  I expected the wave of pain to come in my chest.

  Instead, I fell to the floor, with the chandelier, the rope-coil and quite a bit of plaster on top of me. I was choking, but not fatally. Which, under the circumstances, was all I could ask for.

  A tutu and a sweetie would not have made me feel more alive.

  Lassiter kicked me in the side, the low dog. Then the woman held him back. That futile boot was encouraging. The fast gun was losing his rag.

  Gas-light came up. Hands disentangled me from the brass fixtures and the noose, then brushed plaster out of my hair and off my face.

  I looked up, blinking, at a very pink angel.

  “Wuvvwy mans,” said the glassy-eyed girl, “Rache want to keep um.”

  * * * *

  Though still tied—indeed, with my ankles bound as well—I was far more comfortable in the parlour of the Laurels than I had been.

  I was propped up on a divan, and Rache—the former Little Fay—was playing with my hair, chattering about her new pet. She must have been fifteen or sixteen, but acted like a six- or seven-year-old. I remembered to smile as she cooed in my ears. Children can turn suddenly, and I had an idea this child-minded girl could be as deadly as her foster father if prodded into a tantrum.

  She introduced me to her doll, Missy Surprise. This was a long-legged, home-made, one-armed rag-doll with most of her yellow wool hair chewed off. She got her name because there was a hiding place in her tummy, where Rache kept her “pweciousnesses”—which were cigar-tubes full of sweets.

  The “Laurences” were still undecided about what to do with me. It’s all very well being a gunslinger, but skills that serve in the Wild West—or the jungle, come to that—need to be modified in the polite society of Streatham. Or, at least, that was the case if you were a fairplay fathead like Jim Lassiter. These were truly good, putupon people. That made them weak.

  Rache was kissing my ear, wetly.

  “Stop that, darling,” said her mother.

  Rache stuck out her lower lip and narrowed her brows.

  “Don’t be a silly, Rache.”

  “Rache not a silly,” she staid, knotting little fists. “Rache smart, ’oo knows it.”

  Jane-Helen melted, and pulled the girl away from me, hugging her.

  “Not so tighty-tight,” protested Rache.

  Lassi
ter sat across the room, gun in hand, glowering.

  Earlier, he had been forced to tell a deputation of concerned neighbours that Rache had dropped a lot of crockery. No one could possibly mistake gunshots for smashing plates, but they’d retreated. Blaming the girl had put her in a sulk for a moment, and inclined her even more to take my part.

  This blossoming idiot was heiress to a fabulous gold mine.

  I could do a great deal worse.

  “We could offer him money,” said Jane-Helen, as if I were not in the room.

  “He won’t take money,” said Lassiter, glumly and—I might add—without consulting me for an opinion.

  “You, sir, Algy…” began the woman.

  “Arbuthnot,” I said, “Colonel Algernon Arbuthnot, Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers…” A right rabble, that lot. All their war-wounds were in the bum, from turning and running away. “Hero of Maiwand, Jowaki and Kandahar…”

  I’d have claimed Crécy, Waterloo and Quebec if I thought they’d swallow it.

  “Victoria Cross.”

  “’Toria Ross,” echoed Rache, delighted.

  “Colonel Arbuthnot, what is your connection with the Danite Band?”

  “Madam, I am a detective. Our agency has been on the tracks of these villains for some months, with regards to their many other crimes…”

  She looked, hopeful, at Lassiter. She wanted to believe the rot, but he knew better.

  “…when we were alerted to the presence of several of the most dangerous Danites in London, well off their usual patch as you’ll agree, we made a connection to you. Of course, we knew you were here, living under an alias. We had no reason to bother you, but these comings and goings of incognito Americans—possessed of fabulous riches, but content to live in genteel anonymity—are noticed, you know. If we could find you, so could they. We’ve had men on you round the clock for the last two weeks…”

  That was a mistake. Lassiter stopped listening. Anyone who could hear a cocking pistol through a window and across the road would have noticed if he were being marked.