Prelude to a Partnership

by Miss Roylott

  Then Holmes sighed and recounted his experiences shadowing Mrs. Sawyer. She had after a while hailed a cab and ordered it to the address she had given in Houndsditch, so Holmes had surreptitiously perched himself on the back of the cab and rode the whole way without a stop. He hopped off the cab a little early and waited for the passenger to alight. At that point the driver jumped down for his fare, only to find his cab empty.

  Holmes explained that the supposed old woman must have been an active young man in disguise, who had noticed Holmes's pursuit and thus used the cab to give him the slip. Because of this skilled accomplice, we were no nearer to finding the murderer than we were before.

  I wished to stay awhile and commiserate with Holmes over his setback, but he looked at my tired eyes and insisted that I go to bed. "Come with me," I said unthinkingly.

  He glanced at me sharply, then shook his head. "No, Watson."

  I finally obeyed him, going to my room and leaving him seated in front of the smouldering fire. I can still hear the low melancholy wailings of his violin now, and I hope desperately that he is not regretting moving in with me.

  Holmes has not mentioned last night at all. Since breakfast I have tried carefully to not show that I dreamed of him last night, holding me again, kissing me in a far less chaste way. It helped that he kept his eyes squarely focused on the many newspapers he had ordered this morning. I was so nervous that I at first forgot all about Mrs. Hudson's dog.

  We read the accounts of the "Brixton Mystery" as it was dubbed in the Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Standard, and the Daily News, among others. Holmes was amused by the notices and asked me to make clippings.

  "I told you that, whatever happened, Lestrade and Gregson would be sure to score."

  "That depends on how it turns out."

  He chuckled. "Oh, bless you, it doesn't matter in the least. If the man is caught, it will be on account of their exertions; if he escapes, it will be in spite of their exertions. It's heads I win and tails you lose. Whatever they do, they will have followers. Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire.[16]"

  I could not help but smile. Holmes had read poetry; more, he could speak it very well. Before I could reply, there came a tremendous pattering of many steps in the hall and on the stairs, accompanied by audible expressions of disgust upon the part of our landlady.

  "What on earth is this?" I cried.

  Holmes answered, "It's the Baker Street division of the detective police force."

  Into the room rushed half a dozen of the dirtiest and most ragged street Arabs that ever I clapped eyes on, and I recognised two of them from the day that Holmes first moved in.

  "'Tention!" cried Holmes, in a sharp tone, and the six dirty little scoundrels stood in a line like so many disreputable statuettes. "In future you shall send up Wiggins alone to report, and the rest of you must wait in the street. Have you found it, Wiggins?"

  "No, sir, we hain't," answered one of the youths I had seen before.

  "I hardly expected you would," he sighed. "You must keep on until you do. Here are your wages." He handed each of them a shilling. "Now, off you go, and come back with a better report next time."

  He waved his hand, and they scampered away downstairs like so many rats, and we heard their shrill voices next moment in the street.

  "There's more work to be got out of one of those little beggars than out of a dozen of the force," Holmes remarked. "The mere sight of an official-looking person seals men's lips. These youngsters, however, go everywhere and hear everything. They are as sharp as needles, too; all they want is organisation."

  "Which you give in the form of an army of sorts? Is it on this Brixton case that you are employing them?" I asked hopefully.

  It was, and he referred vaguely to some point that he needed to ascertain. Was he no longer confiding in me about his case? I would have questioned him further had he not turned and pointed out Gregson coming towards our street door, bringing fresh news for us.

  Gregson violently rang the bell and rapidly came up our stairs three at a time, bursting into our sitting-room. "My dear fellow," he cried, wringing Holmes's unresponsive hand, "congratulate me! I have made the whole thing clear as day."

  "Do you mean that you are on the right track?" Holmes looked a shade anxious.

  "The right track! Why, sir, we have the man under lock and key."

  "And his name is?"

  "Arthur Charpentier, sub-lieutenant in Her Majesty's navy."

  Holmes gave a sigh of relief and relaxed into a smile. He offered Gregson a seat and a cigar, asking for an account of how the man was caught. Holmes even poured a whisky and water for the detective.

  Gregson half reclined in the chair, and, gloating that he alone had efficiently solved the murder while Lestrade had gone off after Joseph Stangerson, he related all that he had done since yesterday morning. First he had traced Enoch J. Drebber's hat to its maker, who had been able to provide Drebber's London address, a boarding house belonging to Madame Charpentier. Next he called upon Madame Charpentier, who at first attempted to protect her son Arthur from suspicion, only to have her daughter Alice insist that no good could come of falsehood.

  Thereupon Gregson recorded Madame Charpentier's reluctant confession, and he read out her exact statement to us from the shorthand in his notebook. Drebber had been a drunken, brutish, ill-mannered boarder, only tolerated for the fourteen pounds a week he paid, and after he had the nerve on one occasion to embrace the lady's daughter Alice, he had been given notice to leave the house. However, on the night that he and his secretary Stangerson were supposed to depart on the Liverpool express from Euston Station, Drebber had unexpectedly returned alone. He forced his way into the house and endeavoured to get Alice to elope with him. The poor girl had shrunk away from him in fright, and the mother's scream had brought the son Arthur into the room.

  Arthur instantly came to his sister's aid and chased away Drebber with a heavy stick. Remarking that he would follow after Drebber to make sure that he had left for good, Arthur took his hat and coat and started off down the street. He did not return home until four or five hours later, as far as Mrs. Charpentier could tell; she had already gone to her bed.

  "What was he doing during that time?" Gregson had asked.

  "I do not know," she had answered, turning white to her very lips.

  After hearing such a bleak, convincing case against Arthur Charpentier, Gregson of course quickly located the sub-lieutenant and arrested him. The young navy man was not at all surprised to be arrested, having no illusions about how suspicious things looked against him; he still had his heavy stick with him, which was a stout oak cudgel. Gregson believed that a blow to Drebber's stomach from such a weapon might have easily killed him without leaving any mark upon his body.

  "I flatter myself that I have managed it rather neatly," Gregson spoke with pompous delight. "The young man volunteered a statement, in which he said that after following Drebber some time, the latter perceived him, and took a cab in order to get away from him. On his way home he met an old shipmate, and took a long walk with him. On being asked where this old shipmate lived, he was unable to give any satisfactory reply. I think the whole case fits together uncommonly well. What amuses me is to think of Lestrade, who had started off upon the wrong scent. I am afraid he won't make much of it," he sneered.

  Just then, Lestrade burst into the room, having ascended the stairs while we were talking. His face was disturbed and troubled, while his clothes were disarranged and untidy. Evidently embarrassed and put out at seeing Gregson, he stood in the centre of the room, fumbling nervously with his hat and uncertain what to do. "This is a most extraordinary case," he said at last—" a most incomprehensible affair."

  "Ah, you find it so, Mr. Lestrade!" cried Gregson, triumphantly. "I thought you would come to that conclusion. Have you managed to find the secretary, Mr. Joseph Stangerson?"

  "The secretary, Mr. Joseph Stangerson," said Lestrade, gravely, "was murdered at Halliday's Private
Hotel about six o'clock this morning."

  We were dumbfounded, and Gregson sprang out of his chair, upsetting the remainder of his whisky and water.

  "Stangerson too!" Holmes muttered. "The plot thickens."

  "It was quite thick enough before," grumbled Lestrade, taking a chair. "I seem to have dropped into a sort of council of war."

  "Are you—are you sure of this piece of intelligence?" stammered Gregson.

  "I have just come from his room," said Lestrade. "I was the first to discover what had occurred."

  Holmes asked Lestrade to detail all that he had done since yesterday morning at Lauriston Gardens, and he did so.

  Lestrade had been of the opinion that Stangerson was concerned in the death of Drebber, so he set out to discover what had become of the secretary. They had been seen together at Euston Station about half-past eight on the evening of the 3rd, and at two in the morning Drebber had been found in the Brixton Road, which made it imperative to find out what had become of Stangerson in all that time.

  Therefore Lestrade had telegraphed to Liverpool, giving a description of Stangerson, and warning them to keep a watch upon the American boats. He then set to work calling upon all the hotels and lodging-houses in the vicinity of Euston. "You see, I argued that if Drebber and his companion had become separated, the natural course for the latter would be to put up somewhere in the vicinity for the night, and then to hang about the station again next morning."

  Lestrade spent the whole of yesterday evening in making his inquiries, entirely without avail. "This morning I began very early, and at eight o'clock I reached Halliday's Private Hotel, in Little George Street. On my inquiry as to whether a Mr. Stangerson was living there, they at once answered me in the affirmative."

  Stangerson, they said, had been waiting at the hotel for a certain gentleman for two days. Hoping to catch the fellow unawares, Lestrade immediately went up to Stangerson's room, for they said he was still in bed at this hour. As the boots showed Lestrade to the door, they soon perceived to their shock a little red ribbon of blood curling from underneath the door and meandering into the passage. The door was locked on the inside, but they put their shoulders to it and knocked it in, finding the window open and beside the window, all huddled up, the body of a man in his nightdress. He had been dead for some time, stabbed on his left side into his heart, and the boots recognised him at once as Joseph Stangerson.

  "What do you suppose was above the murdered man?" Lestrade asked.

  Holmes answered, "The word RACHE, written in letters of blood."

  "That was it," said Lestrade, in an awestruck voice; and we were all silent for a while.

  Then Lestrade continued his remarkable tale. "The man was seen. A milk boy, passing on his way to the dairy, happened to walk down the lane which leads from the mews at the back of the hotel. He noticed that a ladder, which usually lay there, was raised against one of the windows of the second floor, which was wide open. After passing, he looked back and saw a man descend the ladder. He came down so quietly and openly that the boy imagined him to be some carpenter or joiner at work in the hotel."

  I wondered at the arrogance and coolness of the assassin, to let himself be seen in broad daylight. As I listened to the description of the man that Lestrade had got from the milk boy, I noticed that it tallied almost exactly with Holmes's description of Square-toes.

  Holmes asked gravely, "Did you find nothing in the room which could furnish a clue to the murderer?"

  "Nothing." Lestrade told us that Stangerson's pockets had contained Drebber's purse, filled with eighty-odd pounds, and one unsigned telegram dated from Cleveland about a month ago, consisting of the words, "J. H. is in Europe."

  "And there was nothing else?" Holmes asked.

  "Nothing of any importance. The man's novel, with which he had read himself to sleep, was lying upon the bed, and his pipe was on a chair beside him. There was a glass of water on the table, and on the window-sill a small chip ointment box containing a couple of pills."

  At this, Holmes sprang from his chair with an exclamation of delight. "The last link! My case is complete."

  We stared at him in amazement, and he continued exultantly, declaring that he had all the threads in his hands and now knew with certainty what had happened. The Yard detectives were understandably sceptical, and Holmes replied, "I will give you a proof of my knowledge. Could you lay your hand upon those pills?"

  Lestrade produced a small white box, remarking that he had only picked it up by chance along with the purse and the telegram. He attached no importance to the pills.

  "Give them here," said Holmes impatiently, and showed the pills to me. "Now, Doctor, are those ordinary pills?"

  They certainly were not. They were of a pearly grey colour, small, round, and almost transparent against the light. I remarked that they were probably soluble in water.

  "Precisely so." Then without explanation, Holmes asked me to step downstairs and fetch Mrs. Hudson's poor little devil of a terrier, mentioning its condition for the benefit of the two Yard detectives. Up until that moment I had forgotten about the suffering animal, and thought that Holmes had too.

  I did not understand Holmes's request, but obeyed him and returned with the old dog in my arms. Gregson and Lestrade showed sympathy for its laboured breathing and glazing eye, but remained puzzled while I placed it upon a cushion on the rug.

  Holmes appeared unaffected by the sight of the ailing dog and simply embarked on his demonstration. He cut one of the pills in half with his penknife, returning one half to the box "for future purposes" and dissolving the other half in a teaspoonful of water, in a wineglass.

  Lestrade impatiently interrupted, not seeing what this had to do with the murder of Stangerson.

  "Patience, my friend, patience!" He next added a little milk into the mixture and poured it out into a saucer that he set before the dog. Ill as it was, the terrier licked the saucer dry. Holmes watched it earnestly, and we all sat in silence waiting for something to happen.

  But minute after minute passed without result, and the dog continued to lie stretched upon the cushion, breathing in its laboured way. Holmes took out his watch, growing more chagrined and disappointed as time passed. By the time he gnawed his lip and drummed his fingers upon the table, the two detectives were derisively smiling at him.

  "It can't be a coincidence," Holmes cried, springing from his chair and pacing wildly. "The very pills which I suspected in the case of Drebber are actually found after the death of Stangerson. And yet they are inert. What can it mean? Surely my whole chain of reasoning cannot have been false. It is impossible! And yet this wretched dog is none the worse." Finally Holmes's desperation ended as an idea came to him, and he shouted, "I have it!" just like old Archimedes and his bathtub cry of "Eureka!"

  Holmes rushed back to the box, cut the other pill in two, and repeated the same procedure on half of it that he had performed before. This time when he presented the mixture to the terrier, the unfortunate creature's tongue seemed hardly to have been moistened in it before it gave a convulsive shiver in every limb, and lay as rigid and lifeless as if it had been struck by lightning.

  Holmes expressed his relief and wiped the perspiration from his forehead, explaining that of the two pills in the box, one was deadly poison while the other was entirely harmless.

  I verified that the dog was dead, and knew that I would soon be able to bring our landlady bittersweet news. For the moment, though, I remained in the room consumed with curiosity about the mystery. The dog's convulsive posture reminded me of the terrible contortions of Enoch J. Drebber's body.

  Chapter 7

  The Capture of Square-toes

  Unfortunately, Holmes explained nothing further then, instead taking the time to lecture Gregson and Lestrade about recognising an important clue and using the strange and ostensibly complicating aspects of a case to unravel the mystery faster.

  Gregson spoke up first, complaining that we needed more than mere theory and pr
eaching at the moment. "You have thrown out hints here, and hints there, and seem to know more than we do, but the time has come when we have the right to ask you straight. Can you name the man who did it?"

  Lestrade agreed. "Surely you will not withhold it any longer."

  Lest Holmes prove petulant against the two Yard detectives, I also pressed him. "Any delay in arresting the assassin might give him time to perpetrate some fresh atrocity."

  Holmes glanced at me irresolutely. He paced up and down the room with his head sunk on his chest and his brows drawn down, lost in thought.

  "There will be no more murders," he said at last, stopping abruptly and facing us. "You can put that consideration out of the question."

  I wondered how he could possibly be certain of that fact.

  Holmes admitted that he did know the name of the assassin but that he was not yet able to lay his hands upon him. He did expect to do so very soon, however, and until then, Holmes considered the matter too delicate to entrust to the police force. "As long as this man has no idea that anyone can have a clue there is some chance of securing him; but if he had the slightest suspicion, he would change his name, and vanish in an instant among the four million inhabitants of this great city."

  I was about to ask Holmes whether the assassin might not already suspect, considering that he sent his ally to retrieve the ring last night, but then I remembered Holmes's chagrin at having been fooled by the "old woman" and so I refrained from mentioning it in front of Gregson and Lestrade.

  "If I fail," Holmes said, "I shall, of course, incur all the blame due to this omission; but that I am prepared for. At present I am ready to promise that the instant that I can communicate with you without endangering my own combinations, I shall do so."

  Gregson and Lestrade seemed far from satisfied by this assurance; rather, they seemed insulted by Holmes judging the murderer and his ally to be "more than a match for the official force." Gregson had flushed up to the roots of his flaxen hair, while Lestrade's beady eyes glistened with resentment.