Victorian Villainy m-1

by Michael Kurland

  “So what are we to do?” asked Baron van Durm.

  “Out of the myriad of possibilities,” said Mycroft, “there are three that appeal more than the others.”

  “And they are?” asked Lord Easthope.

  “One is to keep my brother and Professor Moriarty visibly at home, to reassure our antagonists, while using others to subvert their plans.”

  “Who?” asked Lord Easthope.

  “What others?” echoed Baron van Durm.

  “I have no idea,” confessed Mycroft Holmes. “The second possibility is to spirit Holmes and Moriarty away without letting the watchers know.”

  “How?” asked Lord Fotheringham.

  “Perhaps with wax dummies of the two placed in their windows and moved about to achieve a verisimilitude of life.”

  “Ridiculous!” said Baron van Durm.

  “The third possibility,” said Mycroft, “is for them to leave openly, but in such a fashion as to cause those watching them to conclude that their interest are elsewhere.”

  Sherlock looked at his brother. “Brilliant, Mycroft,” he said. “And just how are we to achieve that?”

  The possibilities of the situation appealed to me. “I’d suggest, Holmes, that you chase me to the ends of the earth, as you’ve so often threatened to do,” I said, smiling.

  Holmes glared at me.

  “Perhaps,” Mycroft said, “with a little modification, that is indeed what we should do.” He rubbed his right forefinger along the side of his nose. “If the two of you were to kill each other, nobody who knew you would be surprised. And I think it safe to assume that the watchers would cease watching in that event.”

  “Kill each other?” Holmes repeated incredulously.

  “How do you propose they do that?” asked Baron van Durm.

  Mycroft shrugged. “Somehow and someplace where there can be no suggestion that it was a sham,” he said. “Plunging over the side of a tall building together would suffice. Perhaps the Eiffel Tower.”

  Now this was being carried a bit too far. “And how do you propose we survive the fall?” I asked.

  Mycroft sighed. “I suppose it should be somewhere less public,” he said, “so you don’t really have to go over the edge.” He sounded honestly regretful. Which of us was he picturing leaping off a precipice, I wondered.

  Baron van Durm snapped his fingers. “I know just the place!” he said. “Near the town of Meiringen in Switzerland there is a great waterfall on the Reichenbach river.”

  “Reichenbach?” asked Holmes.

  “A tributary of the Aar,” van Durm explained. “This spot has but one path leading out to it, and if you were said to have fallen, nobody would expect to find your remains. The river at that point is rapid, deep, and, er, punishing.”

  “Why so far from home?” asked Lord Fotheringham.

  “It has several advantages,” said Holmes thoughtfully. “Our trip there will give our opponents time to see that we are chasing each other rather than hunting for them, and it will leave us in Switzerland, and a lot closer to Germany and the village of Lindau.”

  “Even so,” Mycroft agreed.

  “Won’t that make them suspicious, your ending up in Switzerland?” Lord Easthope asked.

  I ventured a reply. “They know nothing of our interest in Lindau, and if they believe us dead, it won’t matter anyway.”

  “That is so,” Easthope agreed.

  “So,” said Lord Fotheringham. “Do you two gentlemen believe that you can put your personal enmity aside long enough to serve your queen?”

  I was about to answer with a polite guffaw, or perhaps even a mild snicker, when to my surprise Holmes stood up and drew his shoulders back. “For queen and country,” he said.

  All eyes were at that instant on me. I shrugged. “I have nothing on for the next few weeks,” I said.

  With a slight change in the original plan, the race across Europe was to be carried out with a verisimilitude designed to convince Watson, as well as any onlookers, that it was genuine. The change was that I was to pursue Holmes rather than the other way around. Mycroft decided that would be more convincing.

  Two days later the great chase began. Holmes called upon Watson to tell him that I was trying to kill him (Holmes), and he must flee to Europe. The tale was that my “gang” was about to be rounded up by the police, but until that was accomplished Holmes was in great danger. Watson agreed to accompany him in his flight, and the next day joined Holmes in “the second first-class carriage from the front” of the Continental Express at Victoria Station. Holmes was disguised as a humble elderly prelate, but Watson wore no disguise, and so the watchers had no trouble watching. They saw Holmes and Watson flee in the Express, and watched me engage a Special Train to pursue them. Holmes and Watson appeared to elude me by abandoning their luggage and getting off the Express at Canterbury. They went cross-country to Newhaven, and thence by the paddle steamer Brittany to Dieppe.

  Shaking my fist and murmuring “Curses, foiled again!” I went straight through to Paris and lingered about their luggage for several days, apparently waiting for them to come and claim it. When they didn’t show I put the word out among the European underworld that I would pay a substantial reward for information as to the whereabouts of two Englishmen who looked thus-and-so. Eventually word came to me, and I spent several days pursuing them about Europe, followed in turn by several gentlemen who did their best to stay just out of sight.

  As planned, I caught up with Holmes and Watson in the village of Meiringen in Switzerland on May 6 ^ th. They had gone after lunch to look at the falls, about a two-hour hike away from the inn, and I sent a boy with a note to Watson designed to lure him back to the inn to care for a mythical sick woman. Holmes was then to write a letter to Watson, put it and some article of clothing on the ledge, and disappear; leaving it to be believed that he and I had gone over the edge in a mighty battle of good and evil. Humph! I would then fade away from the scene and meet Holmes in Lindau in four days.

  But it was not to be. Even as the lad scurried off to carry the note to Watson, I was forced to change the plan. I followed and concealed myself behind a boulder when I saw the lad and Watson hurrying back. Then I rushed forward to the ledge, where Holmes had already put the note in his silver cigarette-box, placed it by his alpenstock at the side of a rock, and was enjoying one last pipe of that foul tobacco he smokes before disappearing.

  “Aha!” he said, upon spying me approach. “I knew it was too good to be true! So it’s to be an all-out fight to the death, is it professor?” He sprang to his feet and grabbed for the alpenstock.

  “Don’t speak nonsense, Holmes,” I growled. “One of the men following us reached the inn just as I sent the lad off with the note. If I didn’t come after you while he watched, he couldn’t possibly be convinced that we both plunged off the cliff.”

  “So!” said Holmes. “It seems we must fight after all, or at least leave behind convincing marks of a scuffle, and perhaps a few bits of tattered clothing.”

  “And then we must find some way to leave this ledge without going back the way we came. Two sets of footprints returning on the path would give the game away.” I walked over to the edge and looked down. The way was sheer, and steep, and in some places the rock face appeared to be undercut, so that it would be impossible to climb down without pitons and ropes and a variety of other mountaineering gear that we had neglected to bring. “We can’t go down,” I said.

  “Well then,” Holmes said briskly, “we must go up.”

  I examined the cliff face behind us. “Possible,” I concluded. “Difficult, but possible.”

  “But first we must scuff up the ground by the cliff edge in a convincing manner,” said Holmes.

  “Let us run through the third and fourth Baritsu katas,” I suggested. I took off my inverness and put it and my owl-headed walking stick and hat on a nearby outcropping and assumed the first, or “waiting crab” Baritsu defensive position.

  Holmes responde
d by taking off his hat and coat. “We must be careful not to kill each other by accident,” he said. “I should hate to kill you by accident.”

  “And I, you,” I assured him.

  We ran through the martial exercises for about a quarter-hour, getting ourselves and the ground quite scuffed up in the process. “Enough!” Holmes said finally.

  “I agree,” I said. “One last touch.” I took my stick from the rock and gave the handle a quarter turn, releasing the 8-inch blade concealed within. “I hate to do this,” I said, ‘but in the interest of verisimilitude…”

  Holmes eyes me warily while I rolled up my right sleeve and carefully stabbed my arm with the sharp point of the blade. I smeared the last few inches of the blade liberally with my own blood, and then threw the weapon aside as though it had been lost in combat. The shaft of the stick I left by the rock. “For queen and country,” I said, wrapping my handkerchief around the cut and rolling down my sleeve.

  “Left handed, are you?” Holmes asked. “I should have guessed.”

  We retrieved the rest of our clothing and began climbing the almost-sheer face of the cliff above us. It was slow, tedious work, made more dangerous by the fact that it was already late afternoon, and the long shadows cast across the chasm made it difficult to see clearly.

  After about twenty minutes, Holmes who, despite a constant stream of muttered complaints, had been clambering up the cliff side with great energy, and was about two body lengths above me, cried out, “Aha! Here is a shelf big enough to hold us! Perhaps we should rest here.”

  I scrambled up beside him, and the two of us lay on the moss-covered rock shelf with just our heads showing over the edge as we peered down into the gathering dusk below. We were, I estimate, some two hundred feet above the ledge we had left.

  I’m not sure how long we lay there, as it was too dark to read the face of my pocket watch and we dare not strike a light. But after some time we could make out somebody coming onto the ledge we had recently deserted. He was carrying a small lantern, in the light of which he proceeded to make a minute study of the earth, the surrounding rocks, and the cliff face both above and below the ledge, although he didn’t cast the beam high enough to see us where we were peering down at him. After a minute he found the cigarette box that Holmes had left for Watson, and he carefully opened it, read the note inside, then closed it again and replaced it on the rock. Another minute’s searching brought him to the bloodied blade, which he peered at closely, tested with his finger, and then secured under his coat. Then he slowly went back the way he had come, closely examining the footprints on the path as he went.

  About ten minutes later we heard voices below, and four men approached the cliff edge: two Swiss men from the inn in their green lederhosen, carrying large bright lanterns; Dr. Watson, and the man who had recently left. “No,” the man was saying as they came into view, “I saw no one on the trail. I do not know what happened to your friend.”

  Watson wandered about the cliff, looking here and there without really knowing what he was looking at, or for. “Holmes!” he cried. “My God, Holmes, where are you?”

  Holmes stirred next to me and seemed about to say something, but he refrained.

  One of the Swiss men spotted the silver cigarette box. “Is that a belonging of your friend?” he asked, pointing to it.

  Watson rushed over to it. “Yes!” he said. “That is Holmes’s.” He turned it over in his hand. But why-” Opening the box, he pulled out the letter, tearing it halfway down the middle in the process. “Moriarty!” he said, reading the letter by the light of one of the lanterns. “Then it has happened. It is as I feared.” He folded the letter and put it in his pocket, and went over to the edge of the cliff to peer down into the inky blackness below. “Goodby, my friend,” he said, his voice choked with emotion. “The best and finest man I have ever known.” Then he turned to the others. “Come,” he said, “we can do no good here.”

  As we were unable to safely climb down in the dark, Holmes and I spent the night on that rock shelf, our greatcoats offering what protection they could from the chill wind. Shortly before dawn a cold rain fell, and we were drenched and chilled before first light, when we were finally able to make our way back down to the ledge below. We traveled overland on foot, with an occasional ride on the ox cart of a friendly farmer, for the next two days until we reached Wurstheim, where we settled into the Wurstheimer Hof, bathed, slept for twelve hours, bought suitable clothing, and altered our appearance. The next morning I went down to a stationer’s and procured some drafting supplies, and then spent a few hours in my room creating a few useful documents. Leaving Wurstheim late that afternoon were a French officer of Artillery in mufti-Holmes speaks fluent French, having spent several years in Montpellier during his youth, and makes quite a dashing officer of Artillery-and a German Senior Inspector of Canals and Waterworks. I have no idea whether there actually is such a position, but the papers I drew up looked quite authentic. I also crafted one more document that I thought might be useful.

  “The world lost a master forger when you decided to become a, ah, professor of mathematics, Moriarty,” Holmes told me, looking over the papers I had produced with a critical eye. “The watermarks would give the game away, if anyone is astute enough to examine them, but you’ve done a very creditable job.”

  “Praise from the master is praise indeed,” I told him.

  He looked at me suspiciously, but then folded up the laisser-passer I had created for him and thrust it into an inner pocket.

  In the early afternoon of the 14 ^ th of May we arrived in Kreuzingen, a small town on the east shore of Lake Constance, or as the Germans call it, Bodensee-a great swelling in the river Rhine some forty miles long and, in places, ten miles wide. It is where Switzerland, Germany, and Austria meet, or would meet if there weren’t a lake in the way. We boarded the paddle steamer Konig Friedrich for the four-hour trip across to Lindau, a quiet resort town on the German side of the lake. Holmes, as Le Commandant Martin Vernet of the Corps d’Artillerie, had his hair parted in the middle and severely brushed down on both sides and sported a quite creditable brush mustache. He wore a severely-tailored grey suit with the miniature ribbon of a Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur in his button-hole, and cultivated a slight limp. He would effect a complete lack of knowledge of either German or English, and thus stood a good chance of overhearing things he was not meant to overhear.

  I became Herr Inspektor Otto Stuhl of the Buro des Direktors der Kanale und des Wasserversorgung, and thus could be expected to take an interest in water and all things wet, which gave me a plausible reason to poke around in places where I had no business poking around.

  We amused ourselves on the trip across by discerning the professions of our fellow passengers. The Swiss, like the Germans, make the task simpler by dressing strictly according to their class, status and occupation. We disagreed over a pair of gentlemen with ruffled shirts and double rows of brass buttons going down their overly-decorated lederhosen. I guessed them to be buskers of some sort, while Holmes thought them hotel tour guides. On overhearing their conversation, we determined them to be journeymen plumbers. Holmes glared at me as though it were somehow my fault.

  We took rooms at the Hotel Athenes, carefully not knowing each other as we checked in. There would have been some advantage in taking rooms in separate hotels, but the difficulty in sharing information without being noticed would have been too great. Holmes, or rather Vernet, was to go around to the inns and spas in the area and discover which ones had public rooms where a group might gather, or more probably large private rooms for rent, and listen to the conversation of the guests. Stuhl would speak to various town officials about the very important subject of water, and partake of such gossip as they might offer. Town officials love to pass on tit-bits of important sounding gossip to passing government bureaucrats; it reaffirms their authority.

  “Three white clothespins,” Holmes mused, staring out the window at one of the great snow-capp
ed mountains that glowered down at the town. It was the morning of the 15 ^ th, and we had just come up from our separate breakfasts and were meeting in my room on the third floor of the hotel. Holmes’s room was down the hall and across the way, and had a view across the town square to the police station, and then the lake beyond. My window overlooked only mountains.

  “The last line of that letter,” I remembered. “‘Proceed to Lindau on the Sixteenth. The company is assembling. The first place. Three white clothespins. Burn this.’ Very terse.”

  “The first place implies there was a second place,” Holmes mused. “So it would seem they have met here before.”

  “More than that,” I offered, “one of their leaders probably lives around here.”

  “Perhaps,” Holmes agreed. “Consider: If the company is ‘assembling,’ then they are gathering in order to do whatever it is they are preparing to do. If they were merely coming together to discuss matters, or to receive instructions, then they would be meeting, not assembling. The study of language and its connotations holds great value for the serious investigator.”

  “Even so,” I agreed.

  Holmes-Vernet-went out that day and passed from inn to cafe to public house, and drank cassis and coffee and ate pastries. The man has an amazing ability to eat and eat without gaining weight and, conversely, to go without food for days at a time when on the track of a miscreant. I spent the morning studying a map of the town, to get a sense of where things were. After lunch I went to the town hall to see Herr Burgermeister Pindl, a large man in many directions with a massive mustache and a smile that spread broadly across his face and radiated good cheer. We sat in his office and he poured us each a small glass of schnapps, and we discussed matters of water supply and public health. He seemed quite pleased that the great bureaucracy in far-off Berlin would even know of the existence of little Lindau.

  If you would impress a man with your insight, tell him that you sense that he is worried about a relationship, about his finances, or about his health. Better, tell him that he fears-justly-that he is often misunderstood, and that his work is not appreciated. If you would impress a civic official, tell him that you share his concern about the town’s water supply, its sewage, or its garbage. Within the first ten minutes of our conversation, Herr Pindl and I had been friends for years. But the smiling giant was not as simple as he appeared. “Tell me,” he said, holding his schnapps daintily in two chubby fingers, “what does the ministry really want to know? You’re not just here to see if the water is coming out of the faucets.”