That confirmed it. ‘I’m off to pack. Unlock your desk and have my chequebook out, or I shall break open the damned drawer.’ Normally I am a patient man, but perhaps it was the heat.
I was off within the hour, chequebook in hand and the mysterious box tucked safely in an inner pocket of my linen jacket. I would see to finding a locksmith in Bath, far away from prying eyes.
As the train steamed westward that evening, I slid open the window in my first-class carriage and felt the evening air rush in as a cooling breeze. I was relieved to be departing London, and to be honest, Sherlock Holmes.
An image of his thin face when I left, drawn and, dare I say, a bit sad, floated into my brain. Let him miss me, I thought crossly.
It was not one of my finer moments, and one I came to regret.
CHAPTER 3
You Left Me Hanging
Ten days later, even though lowering clouds darkened London with the promise of a summer storm, my mood was light as I returned in a cab from Paddington Station towards Baker Street. My extended holiday in Bath had been restorative. Given Holmes’s disputatious and dismissive mood of late, it was a welcome break to spend time with James Montgomery, a fellow soldier whom I had known in India, and two other comrades, whose ready laughter and playful demeanours had lifted my spirits.
Despite Holmes’s ill-placed concern, I had won a fair amount of money at cards. And while the best locksmith in Bath could do nothing with the mysterious box, I was sure a London expert would soon have it open. And so I had allowed myself to enjoy the baths every day and partook of wonderful cuisine: roast beef, oysters, champagne.
A dense tropical heat blanketed Baker Street. My medical colleagues who still believed in the miasmic transfer of disease were likely to be frantic at this weather.
As my cab pulled up to 221, I glanced up at our windows. The curtains were closed against the morning light, which was muted through a canopy of summer storm clouds. But the windows, too, were closed. That was odd.
Just as I descended from the carriage, the sky broke open and a torrent of rain dumped down as though some mischievous god had upended an enormous bucket on Baker Street.
‘Mrs Hudson!’ I exclaimed, greeting our landlady as she glided into the vestibule. But instead of her usual warm response, she took my drenched hat and coat wordlessly, her face cloudier than the sky outside.
While I may ‘see but not observe’, as my friend so often remarked, it would be difficult for any man to miss her distinct aura of reproach.
‘Dreadful weather!’ I put on my best smile. ‘But it is supposed to break the heat. Good to be home. How are you, Mrs Hudson?’
‘Just go on up, Doctor. It has been a challenging two weeks.’
‘Ten days, Mrs Hudson!’
‘Well, it seems a month. Go see to him.’ She disappeared downstairs. This was hardly the welcome I had expected.
I passed the sitting-room on the first floor landing, but the door was shut. Upstairs in my room, I set down my luggage and took out the small silver box from my mother. It gleamed in the morning light from my window, its tantalizing mystery intact. I locked the beautiful object in my drawer thinking I would find the right locksmith tomorrow.
I was not ready for what I found downstairs.
The first thing my eyes were drawn to was the floor, awash in clutter – inches deep with scattered papers, stained napkins, dirty ashtrays, pipe dottles, plates of dried food and random oddities. A box of snake-skins sat next to a carafe of something that looked like dried blood. Flies swarmed around it.
Mrs Hudson had clearly withdrawn her usual services, no doubt in one of her rare fits of pique.
And the room was as hot as a tea kettle on full boil. Yet a fire burned in the grate! Why? A gust of wind just then shot down the chimney and a spray of sparks escaped and landed on a pile of papers. One ignited, and I ran to it, just in time to toss the smouldering paper into the fireplace before it set the room afire. I drew the fire screen across it.
A near disaster! But that gust down the flue meant a breeze, so I next rushed to the windows and opened two of them against the stifling heat. The violent summer storm continued to pour down rain. But why was the room closed up like this?
And where was Holmes?
I turned to look and that is when I discovered him: hanging silently in a corner of the room. His body dangled from a rope and was suspended four feet off the floor. He was encased from the knees up in a straitjacket! One foot was bare, the other slippered. The bare foot wriggled.
He was alive, at least.
CHAPTER 4
New Skills
I stared at him for a long moment.
He frowned in concentration and began moving silently under the canvas of the restraint. It was a rather elaborate contraption, tightly bound, with leather straps and buckles, fastened with padlocks. The toes of his bare foot wriggled in concert with his efforts.
He must have seen me come in. I cleared my throat.
Nothing.
‘Holmes.’
‘Yes?’
‘Why the fire?’
‘Is that the first question you have, Watson?’
‘Yes. Why the fire?’
‘I was cold.’
‘In this weather! Are you eating?’
‘Burning papers.’
A plate of sandwiches sat untouched next to his chair. His movements under the straitjacket now involved his legs, hanging in the air, jerking from side to side.
‘Who helped you into that?’ I asked.
‘Billy.’
The page. A predicament of Holmes’s own devising, then. A minute passed. It did not look like he was making headway. A bead of sweat ran down his forehead and into his eye. He shook it away. Smiled at me.
‘You won in Bath, then. A tidy sum,’ he said.
‘What? Oh, for heaven’s sake, Holmes.’
‘Tie pin. A handsome one from here. But it is not like you to purchase adornments.’
‘Stop this. No one likes to be scrutinized in this way.’
‘You are usually amused.’
‘Never mind! What the devil are you doing there?’
‘I am attempting to replicate The Great Borelli’s hanging escape trick. I have almost got it, I think.’
‘The Great Borelli?’
‘Travelling escape artist and magician. A wonder, at least in his own mind.’
Why Holmes felt the need to emulate some itinerant performer was a mystery. He flailed about a bit, and I could see that one arm had escaped its sleeve and was snaking underneath the canvas of the straitjacket. But the other remained pinioned.
A chair which had been placed underneath him had tipped over, and his legs now dangled limply in the air. I stood up, walked over and replaced it under his feet.
‘Don’t help me!’ he shouted. ‘I kicked it over for a reason.’
‘What reason?’
He did not answer but struggled a bit more. His pale face grew red with the exertion. Had this been staged for my benefit? Holmes did so enjoy an audience. But, of course, he had not known my return date from Bath, so … no. I moved the chair back away from him, then took a stack of papers piled on my usual armchair and dumped them on the floor. I espied today’s Times and freed it from the clutter.
On the way to my chair I noticed on his chemistry table a black cylinder, perhaps eighteen inches long and six inches in circumference, mounted on a brass and wood device. Connected by cables were two small poles with a strangely shaped glass tube suspended between them. It had a somewhat malevolent look to it.
‘What the devil is this thing?’ I asked.
‘A Ruhmkorff coil,’ said he. ‘It’s a kind of induction coil. I can make tiny bursts of lightning at my desk. No, no, don’t touch! And a Geissler tube.’
I was sorry I had asked. It reminded me of the various quack devices I was constantly solicited to buy for my non-existent medical practice. It looked dangerous.
I sat and opened up the newspa
per. After a few moments I glanced surreptitiously at Holmes, whose eyes were now closed in concentration. His struggles were painful to watch. I looked about the room and debated tidying it but decided the task was beyond my reach.
As I flipped through the pages, a review of ‘The Great Borelli’s First London Appearance’ caught my eye. The magician was appearing at Wilton’s Music Hall. A lurid picture had the handsome, moustachioed Italian performer hanging from a similar contraption, but with many straps and padlocks all around, and a beautiful lady standing in attendance.
I heard a groan from across the room but ignored it.
‘This Borelli fellow has received an excellent review in The Times today. “Spectacular! Supernatural? How does he do it?”’ I read aloud. I tapped the advertisement. ‘Of course, Holmes, he is hanging upside down.’
‘That is the next phase.’
‘And there is a beautiful assistant standing by. I wonder what her role is?’
‘That is not his assistant. It is his wife,’ said Holmes, slightly out of breath. ‘And she designed the trick.’
‘Lucky man,’ I said.
A pause.
‘This is bit more difficult than I had imagined,’ he murmured.
‘Try harder,’ I said and returned to my paper. Utterly mad. If I had not been there, the room might have caught on fire and all my things would have burnt up. And oh, yes, Holmes would be dead. I wondered if I could entice Mrs Hudson to bring me a lemonade.
‘Watson, be a good fellow. Go over to the table and read me what’s in those pages spread open. Step three, if you would.’
‘I already was a good fellow and righted the chair. You didn’t like it.’
‘Watson!’
I complied none too graciously. On the table were three pages, spread open, typed with a faulty typewriter in uneven lettering, in Italian, with some diagrams and an English translation pencilled in. ‘Step three,’ I read aloud. ‘The left hand unlocks the lock which controls the sleeve of the right. Take pick and release, then with other arm which out the shoulder – shoulder is spelled wrong – with three fingers, find the fold where are hidden the ties—’
There was a faint metallic clatter. I looked over to see that Holmes had dropped something small onto the polished wood floor.
‘I dropped my lockpick. Hand me that, would you?’ said he.
‘What would you do if I were not here?’
‘But you are here. Hurry, now!’
‘No.’
I was being obstreperous, but a man can take only so much. Instead of retrieving his lockpick, I pocketed it, then picked up the chair and placed it under him again. He could give up this foolish nonsense and step down from there as a sane person might. I sat back in my old easy-chair and once again took up the newspaper. Silence.
He kicked the chair away and struggled on. A few minutes later, his face had grown redder and the struggling more pronounced.
‘You had no idea I would be returning,’ I said. ‘What was your plan, anyway, Holmes? It is clear that Mrs Hudson has given up on this room, the mess you’ve made! And that fire!’
No acknowledgement. I went back to my paper.
I heard the sounds of more struggling, a groan, some clicks, and I put down the paper just in time to see him slip free of the jacket and drop to the floor, landing almost soundlessly like a cat.
I will admit I was astonished. ‘Bravo, Holmes!’ I said.
He smiled in delight, then bowed with a flourish and a groan. He rubbed his shoulder. At thirty-four, Holmes was wiry and fit, far too thin by some accounts, but remarkably athletic in spite of never, to my knowledge, taking exercise for its own sake.
‘All right, how did you do that after dropping your lockpick?’ I asked.
‘The locks are the least of it. Preparation is all.’
He was paper-white, and his face was covered with a thin sheen of sweat.
‘What do you mean, “The locks are the least of it”?’ He was standing oddly, favouring one side. ‘And what is the matter with you?’
‘Well, some of the locks are left in place. One has to more or less dislocate one’s shoulder to escape that particular straitjacket. Borelli spent two years stretching his ligaments to accommodate it. I had only ten days.’
‘Oh, come Holmes! You haven’t dislocated your shoulder. You would be writhing in pain. And you would need me to yank it back in place for you.’
I glanced up at him. His dark hair, usually neatly groomed, was a mess and damply stuck to his skull. He inhaled shakily, then moved to a large bookcase and slammed himself against it. There was the sound of a loud pop.
‘Good God, Holmes!’
He carefully flexed his left arm. Back to normal. He smiled at me in amusement. ‘It worked, didn’t it?’
I threw the paper down. ‘What are you thinking, Holmes? You risk serious damage, dislocating a shoulder like that! How did you do it? And more to the point, how did you stand it?’
‘A touch of morphine, going in. Borelli uses it, I will wager, but he claims not. It does fog the thinking. I shall try to do without. And I’ve learned to pop it back myself.’
‘You have learned? How many times have you done this?’
‘This is the third.’
‘Idiotic, man! Of all your bad habits, this takes the prize. What of your violin playing? Boxing? You could do yourself permanent harm! Those ligaments don’t always return to their original length.’
‘Light me a cigarette, would you, Watson?’ Still rubbing his shoulder, he stepped out onto the landing outside the room. ‘Mrs Hudson! Some ice if you please!’
He came back in and sat before me.
‘There is no ice, Mr Holmes,’ came Mrs Hudson’s voice. I detected a note of irritation in it.
‘Send Billy,’ he shouted. Then as an afterthought, ‘Please!’
No reply. Manners had eroded in this terrible heat, I thought. Londoners were unaccustomed to tropical life. And Mrs Hudson’s new ice box, purchased for us all by Holmes, was often empty. Ice was very expensive, and income, of late, had been scarce. I felt a twinge of guilt about my recent holiday.
‘We really must clean this place up, Watson. Get back in her good graces.’
He picked up a cigarette and lit it with difficulty. I shook my head.
‘Foolish, Holmes. You forget that I am a doctor. I know more of injuries than you do.’
‘I am careful, Watson. One can train one’s muscles, extend the ligaments over time with repetition. How else might one dance the ballet?’ He waved his good arm in a dramatic arc.
‘Over time, perhaps some so built can do so. But with repetition, you can also have your arm hanging uselessly out of the socket, Holmes.’
‘Watson, you win the ill temperament sweepstakes today. And this, after a successful trip in which you won money, swam, ate well—’
‘Stop! I am not interested in hearing this!’
‘You have gained two – no, three pounds. And I see you have begun a diet, starting today. Failing, however.’
‘Holmes!’ He could not possibly know this. It had only been a thought that very morning.
He grinned at me. ‘You have celery in your waistcoat pocket. You hate celery. One cannot buy celery on the train, therefore you have brought it with you all the way from Bath. I wager you planned to eat the celery on the train instead of—’
‘Stop!’
‘But a sandwich must have won you over. Salmon, no doubt. Day One of your reducing plans, and already you have failed!’
I shook the newspaper roughly and returned to my article in a fury. I glanced down surreptitiously at my waistcoat. Indeed, a piece of celery poked out. He was right about it all. In a fit of pique, I tossed the celery to the floor.
It landed next to a plate of uneaten food, a collection of seashells, a revolver, a dog’s collar, and what might have been a piece of flesh-coloured rubber and was perhaps a false nose. Home.
I looked up at him. ‘The salmon, Holmes?’
‘I will admit that was a guess. But it is your favourite.’
‘You never guess!’
‘But of course I do. Watson, let us call a truce. No luck, then, with your secret box in Bath? You would be crowing over that, if so.’
I glowered at him. ‘Two locksmiths failed to open it.’
The sound of the doorbell interrupted us, and Mrs Hudson appeared, announcing ‘a lady who would not give her name but insists that you have some papers of hers.’ She glanced about with disdain. ‘If you can find them.’
Holmes glanced about, as if having forgotten the chaos with which he’d surrounded himself. ‘Give us a moment, please, Mrs Hudson. Watson, why don’t we quickly tidy up?’ He was on his feet, scooping up newspapers in a flash and, irritation notwithstanding, I took up a stack of papers near my chair and rose.
‘Not those, Watson!’ he cried, but I ignored him and threw them into the grate where the flames caught. ‘They are my laboratory notes!’ he cried.
Mrs Hudson shook her head and departed.
Holmes attempted to rescue the burning pages but failed.
‘Holmes!’ He would set us all alight some day!
We heard footsteps on the landing and he flung himself into his chair, instantly assuming a pose of casual interest.
Our client appeared on the threshold. She was a striking woman of perhaps thirty, in a long red dress and an enormous hat topped with a red plume. Her black hair was arranged in a voluminous pompadour, her high cheekbones and olive skin conveying a southern birth. A waft of Oriental perfume assailed my nostrils. She was stunning, forthright, and despite the heat seemed coolly impervious. She put me in mind of the bow of a mighty ship.
I rose politely but Holmes remained seated and smiled calmly at her, his hands steepled.
She paused at the doorway and waved a folded newspaper in one hand. ‘Mr Holmes, I did not know you were a famous detective!’ Her voice was a honeyed contralto, with the seductive lilt of an Italian accent. ‘You told me you write about science. But I read of you, in this paper—’
The Three Locks Page 2
