Sherlock Holmes In Montague Street Volume 2

by David Marcum

  Nevertheless, the letter was never sent. There was suspicion, and the letter was found in a pocket and read. Then there was a meeting, and Gérard was confronted with his letter. He could say nothing but “Je le nie!” - found no explanation but that. There was much noise, and she had observed from a staircase, from which one might see through a ventilating hole, Gérard had much fear - very much fear. His face was white, and it moved; he prayed for mercy, and they talked of killing him. It was discussed how he should be killed, and the poor Gérard was more terrified. He was made to take off his collar, and a razor was drawn across his throat, though without cutting him, till he fainted.

  Then water was flung over him, and he was struck in the face till he revived. He again repeated, “Je le nie! je le nie!” and nothing more. Then one struck him with a bottle, and another with a stick; the point of a knife was put against his throat and held there, but this time he did not faint, but cried softly, as a man who is drunk, “Je le nie! je le nie!” So they tied a handkerchief about his neck, and twisted it till his face grew purple and black, and his eyes were round and terrible, and then they struck his face, and he fainted again. But they took away the handkerchief, having fear that they could not easily get rid of the body if he were killed, for there was no preparation. So they decided to meet again and discuss when there would be preparation. Wherefore they took him away to the rooms of Jean Pingard - of Jean and Émile Pingard - in Henry Street, Golden Square. But Émile Pingard had gone out, and Jean was drunk and slept, and they lost him. Jean Pingard was he downstairs - the taller of the two; the other was but le pauvre Pierre, who, with herself, was not of the club. They worked only; they were the keepers of the house. There was nothing for which they should be arrested, and she would give the police any information they might ask.

  “As I thought, you see,” Holmes said to me, “the man’s nerves have broken down under the terror and the strain, and aphasia is the result. I think I told you that the only articulate thing he could say was ‘Je le nie!’ and now we know how those words were impressed on him till he now pronounces them mechanically, with no idea of their meaning. Come, we can do no more here now. But wait a moment.”

  There were footsteps outside. The light was removed, and a policeman went to the door and opened it as soon as the bell rang. Three men stepped in one after another, and the door was immediately shut behind them - they were prisoners.

  We left quietly, and although we, of course, expected it, it was not till the next morning that we learned absolutely that the largest arrest of Anarchists ever made in this country was made at the Bakunin Club that night. Each man as he came was admitted - and collared.

  We made our way to Luzatti’s, and it was over our dinner that Holmes put me in full possession of the earlier facts of this case, which I have set down as impersonal narrative in their proper place at the beginning.

  “But,” I said, “what of that aimless scribble you spoke of that Gérard made in the police station? Can I see it?”

  Holmes turned to where his coat hung behind him and took a handful of papers from his pocket.

  “Most of these,” he said, “mean nothing at all. That is what he wrote at first,” and he handed me the first of the two papers which were presented in facsimile in the earlier part of this narrative.

  “You see,” he said, “he has begun mechanically from long use to write ‘monsieur’ - the usual beginning of a letter. But he scarcely makes three letters before tailing off into sheer scribble. He tries again and again, and although once there is something very like ‘que,’ and once something like a word preceded by a negative ‘n,’ the whole thing is meaningless.

  “This” (he handed me the other paper which has been printed in facsimile) “does mean something, though Gérard never intended it. Can you spot the meaning? Really, I think it’s pretty plain - especially now that you know as much as I about the day’s adventures. The thing at the top left-hand corner, I may tell you, Gérard intended for a sketch of a clock on the mantelpiece in the police-station.”

  I stared hard at the paper, but could make nothing whatever of it. “I only see the horse-shoe clock,” I said, “and a sort of second, unsuccessful attempt to draw it again. Then there is a horse-shoe dotted, but scribbled over, and then a sort of kite or balloon on a string, a Highlander, and - well, I don’t understand it, I confess. Tell me.”

  “I’ll explain what I learned from that,” Holmes said, “and also what led me to look for it. From what the inspector told me, I judged the man to be in a very curious state, and I took a fancy to see him. Most I was curious to know why he should have a terror of bread at one moment and eat it ravenously at another. When I saw him I felt pretty sure that he was not mad, in the common sense of the term. As far as I could judge it seemed to be a case of aphasia.

  “Then when the doctor came I had a chat (as I have already told you) with the policeman who found the man. He told me about the incident of the bread with rather more detail than I had had from the inspector. Thus it was plain that the man was terrified at the bread only when it was in the form of a loaf, and ate it eagerly when it was cut into pieces. That was one thing to bear in mind. He was not afraid of bread, but only of a loaf.

  “Very well. I asked the policeman to find another uncut loaf, and to put it near the man when his attention was diverted. Meantime the doctor reported that my suspicion as to aphasia was right. The man grew more comfortable, and was assured that he was among friends and had nothing to fear, so that when at length he found the loaf near his elbow he was not so violently terrified, only very uneasy. I watched him and saw him turn it bottom up - a very curious thing to do; he immediately became less uneasy - the turning over of the loaf seemed to have set his mind at rest in some way. This was more curious still. I thought for some little while before accepting the bomb theory as the most probable.

  “The doctor left, and I determined to give the man another chance with pen and paper. I felt pretty certain that if he were allowed to scribble and sketch as he pleased, sooner or later he would do something that would give me some sort of a hint. I left him entirely alone and let him do as he pleased, but I watched.

  “After all the futile scribble which you have seen, he began to sketch, first a man’s head, then a chair - just what he might happen to see in the room. Presently he took to the piece of paper you have before you. He observed that clock and began to sketch it, then went on to other things, such as you see, scribbling idly over most of them when finished. When he had made the last of the sketches he made a hasty scrawl of his pen over it and broke down. It had brought his terror to his mind again somehow.

  “I seized the paper and examined it closely. Now just see. Ignore the clock, which was merely a sketch of a thing before him, and look at the three things following. What are they? A horse-shoe, a captive balloon, and a Highlander. Now, can’t you think of something those three things in that order suggest?”

  I could think of nothing whatever, and I confessed as much.

  “Think, now. Tottenham Court Road!”

  I started. “Of course,” I said. “That never struck me. There’s the Horse-shoe Hotel, with the sign outside, there’s the large toy and fancy shop half-way up, where they have a captive balloon moored to the roof as an advertisement, and there’s the tobacco and snuff shop on the left, toward the other end, where they have a life-size wooden Highlander at the door - an uncommon thing, indeed, nowadays.”

  “You are right. The curious conjunction struck me at once. There they are, all three, and just in the order in which one meets them going up from Oxford Street. Also, as if to confirm the conjecture, note the dotted horse-shoe. Don’t you remember that at night the Horse-shoe Hotel sign is illuminated by two rows of gas lights?

  “Now here was my clue at last. Plainly, this man, in his mechanical sketching, was following a regular train of thought, and unconsciously illustrating it a
s he went along. Many people in perfect health and mental soundness do the same thing if a pen and a piece of waste paper be near. The man’s train of thought led him, in memory, up Tottenham Court Road, and further, to where some disagreeable recollection upset him. It was my business to trace this train of thought. Do you remember the feat of Dupin in Poe’s story, ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ - how he walks by his friend’s side in silence for some distance, and then suddenly breaks out with a divination of his thoughts, having silently traced them from a fruiterer with a basket, through paving-stones, Epicurus, Dr. Nichols, the constellation Orion, and a Latin poem, to a cobbler lately turned actor?

  “Well, it was some such task as this (but infinitely simpler, as a matter of fact) that was set me. This man begins by drawing the horse-shoe clock. Having done with that, and with the horse-shoe still in his mind, he starts to draw a horse-shoe simply. It is a failure, and he scribbles it out. His mind at once turns to the Horse-shoe Hotel, which he knows from frequently passing it, and its sign of gas-jets. He sketches that, making dots for the gas lights. Once started in Tottenham Court Road, his mind naturally follows his usual route along it. He remembers the advertising captive balloon half-way up, and down that goes on his paper. In imagination he crosses the road, and keeps on till he comes to the very noticeable Highlander outside the tobacconist’s. That is sketched. Thus it is plain that a familiar route with him was from New Oxford Street up Tottenham Court Road.

  “At the police-station I ventured to guess from this that he lived somewhere near Seven Dials. Perhaps before long we shall know if this was right. But to return to the sketches. After the Highlander there is something at first not very distinct. A little examination, however, shows it to be intended for a chimney-pot partly covered with a basket. Now an old basket, stuck sideways on a chimney by way of cowl, is not an uncommon thing in parts of the country, but it is very unusual in London. Probably, then, it would be in some by-street or alley. Next and last, there is a horse’s head, and it was at this that the man’s trouble returned to him.

  “Now, when one goes to a place and finds a horse there, that place is not uncommonly a stable; and, as a matter of fact, the basket-cowl would be much more likely to be found in use in a range of back stabling than anywhere else. Suppose, then, that after taking the direction indicated in the sketches - the direction of Fitzroy Square, in fact - one were to find a range of stabling with a basket-cowl visible about it? I know my London pretty well, as you are aware, and I could remember but two likely stable-yards in that particular part - the two we looked at, in the second of which you may possibly have noticed just such a basket-cowl as I have been speaking of.

  “Well, what we did you know, and that we found confirmation of my conjecture about the loaves you also know. It was the recollection of the horse and cart, and what they were to transport, and what the end of it all had been, that upset Gérard as he drew the horse’s head. You will notice that the sketches have not been done in separate rows, left to right - they have simply followed one another all round the paper, which means preoccupation and unconsciousness on the part of the man who made them.”

  “But,” I asked, “supposing those loaves to contain bombs, how were the bombs put there? Baking the bread round them would have been risky, wouldn’t it?”

  “Certainly. What they did was to cut the loaves, each row, down the centre. Then most of the crumb was scooped out, the explosive inserted, and the sides joined up and glued. I thought you had spotted the joins, though they certainly were neat.”

  “No, I didn’t examine closely. Luigi, of course, had been told off for a daily visit to feed the horse, and that is how we caught him.”

  “One supposes so. They hadn’t rearranged their plans as to going on with the outrages after Gérard’s defection. By the way, I noticed that he was accustomed to driving when I first saw him. There was an unmistakable mark on his coat, just at the small of the back, that drivers get who lean against a rail in a cart.”

  The loaves were examined by official experts, and, as everybody now knows, were found to contain, as Holmes had supposed, large charges of dynamite. What became of some half-dozen of the men captured is also well known: their sentences were exemplary.

  The Case of Mr. Geldard’s Elopement

  I.

  Many people have been surprised at the information that, in all Sherlock Holmes’s wide and busy practice, the matrimonial cases whereon he has been engaged have been comparatively few. That he has had many important cases of the sort is true, but among the innumerable cases of different descriptions they make a small percentage. The reason is that so many of the persons wishing to consult him on such concerns were actuated by mere unreasoning or fanciful jealousy that Holmes would do no more in their cases than urge reconciliation and mutual trust. The common “private inquiry” offices chiefly flourish on this class of case, and their proprietors present no particular reluctance to taking it up. In any event it means fees for consultation and “watching”; and recent newspaper reports have made it plain that among some of the less scrupulous agents a case may be manufactured from beginning to end according to order. Again, Holmes had a distaste for the sort of work commonly involved in matrimonial troubles; and with the immense amount of business brought to him, rendering necessary his rejection of so many commissions, it was easy for him to avoid what went against his inclinations. Still, as I have said, matrimonial cases there were, and often of an interesting nature, taking rise in no fanciful nor unreasoning jealousy.

  When, on its change of proprietorship, I accepted my appointment on the paper that now claims me, I had a week or two’s holiday pending the final turning over of the property. I could not leave town, for I might have been wanted at any moment, but I made an absorbing and instructive use of my leisure as an amateur assistant to Holmes. I sat in his rooms much of the time and saw more of the daily routine of his work than I had ever done before; and I was present at one or two interviews that initiated cases that afterwards developed striking features. One of these - which indeed I saw entirely through before I resumed my more legitimate work - was the case of Mr. and Mrs. Geldard.

  Holmes had stepped out for a few minutes, and I was sitting alone in his rooms when I became conscious of some disturbance in the hall. An excited female voice was audible making impatient inquiries. Presently the housekeeper came in with the message that a lady - Mrs. Geldard, was the name on the visiting card - was anxious to see Mr. Holmes at once, and failing himself had decided to see me, whom the housekeeper had calmly taken it upon herself to describe as Holmes’s confidential assistant. She apologized for this, and explained that she thought, as the lady seemed excited, it would be as well to let her see me to begin with, if there was no objection, and perhaps she would begin to be coherent and intelligible by Holmes’s arrival, which might occur at any moment. So the lady was shown in. She was tall, bony, and severe of face, and she began as soon as she saw me: “I’ve come to get you to get a watch set on my husband. I’ve endured this sort of thing in silence long enough. I won’t have it. I’ll see if there’s no protection to be had for a woman treated as I am - with his goings out all day ‘on business’ when his office is shut up tight all the time. I wanted to see Mr. Holmes himself, but I suppose you’ll do, for the present at any rate, though I’ll have it sifted to the bottom, and get the best advice to be had, no matter what it costs, though I am only a woman with nobody to confide in or to speak a word for me, and I’m not going to be crushed like a fly, as I’ll soon let him know.”

  Here I seized a short opportunity to offer Mrs. Geldard a chair, and to say that I expected Mr. Holmes in a few minutes.

  “Very well, I’ll wait and see him. But you have to do with the watching business no doubt, and you’ll understand what it is I want done; and I’m sure I’m justified, and mean to sift it to the bottom, whatever happens. Am I to be kept in total ignorance of what my husband does all day w
hen he is supposed to be at business? Is it likely I should submit to that?”

  I said I didn’t think it likely at all, which was a fact. Mrs. Geldard appeared to be the least submissive woman I ever saw.

  “No, and I won’t, that’s more. Nice goings on somewhere, no doubt, with his office shut up all day and the business going to ruin. I want you to watch him. I want you to follow him tomorrow morning and find out all he does and let me know. I’ve followed him myself this morning and yesterday morning, but he gets away somehow from the back of his office, and I can’t watch on two staircases at once, so I want you to come and do it, and I’ll - ”

  Here fortunately Holmes’s arrival checked Mrs. Geldard’s flow of speech, and I rose and introduced him. I told him shortly that the lady desired a watch to be set on her husband at his office, and a report to be given her of his daily proceedings. Holmes did not appear to accept the commission with any particular delight, but he sat down to hear his visitor’s story. “Stay here, Brett,” he said, as he saw my hands stretched towards the door. “We’ve an engagement presently, you know.”

  The engagement, I remembered, was merely to lunch, and Holmes kept me with some notion of restricting the time which this alarming woman might be disposed to occupy. She repeated to Holmes, in the same manner, what she had already said to me, and then Holmes, seizing his first opportunity, said, “Will you please tell me, Mrs. Geldard, definitely and concisely, what evidence, or even indication, you have of unbecoming conduct on your husband’s part, and substantially what case you wish me to take up?”