But this time he was not able to run down his quarry. Holmes stepped on a particularly treacherous piece of ice that ended the chase. Down on one knee, he called out, “Hu Wei-Yung!”
The fleeing man stopped, turned, and raised a fist which he shook at Holmes. Then he rounded a corner and made good his escape.
Limehouse was only slightly less menacing in the daylight. The main difference was that now I could see the ramshackle slums more clearly, not that that was an advantage. We were there to locate the abandoned Salvation Army mission house on Northey Street Mr. Chu had told us about.
“I strongly doubt we’ll find Lord Edgar there,” Holmes said. “Mr. Chu’s information about the mission house was delivered before the kidnapping took place. Most likely the house on Northey Street is where Hu Wei-Yung will meet his fence to dispose of Lombard’s jewels, and he won’t want Lord Edgar on the premises at the same time. But we must search nevertheless. Besides, we want to be there before the villain arrives and we want to be well-hidden.”
“It would have helped if Mr. Chu had provided us with an exact hour.”
“We can’t ask for miracles, Watson.”
We found the house on Northey Street, a wooden two-storey affair in a state of serious disrepair; I could barely read the faded lettering that spelled out SALVATION ARMY on the painted sign. We’d each brought a lantern, and Holmes carried a pry bar. The main entrance was fastened with a new padlock. “We don’t touch that,” Holmes said.
Around to the rear of the building we found an exterior staircase; it looked fragile enough to collapse if so much as a bird lighted on it. But Holmes would hear no objection, so up we went, frequently stepping over empty space where treads were missing.
At the top of the stairway we found a door and another padlock, only this one was old and rusty. “That we touch,” Holmes said. He got to work with his pry bar and soon had the door open. Inside was pitch black; we lighted our lanterns.
And found ourselves standing on the brink of an enormous gaping hole where the floor had fallen in. Holmes edged forward as far as he could and held his lantern over the hole. “Excellent,” he said.
We made our way cautiously around the hole to a door in the wall opposite to where we’d come in. It opened onto a landing at the top of a flight of stairs, and directly opposite was another door. That door opened to an empty room, not so much as a box or a scrap of paper to be seen. We did not test the floor.
The flight of stairs leading down was in better condition than the exterior stairway, since it had not been exposed to the elements. Downstairs we found a kitchen, a small scullery, and a storage room cramped into a small space together; the kitchen door led to another room, the largest in the house. The large room showed signs not of occupancy but of recent presence. We found a table with candles and matches on it, and five wooden chairs were grouped haphazardly around it.
“This is where they will meet,” Holmes said. “Look upward, Watson.”
I raised my eyes; we were standing directly under the hole in the floor above. “Umm.”
“And that is where we will be, seeing but not seen. If luck is with us, Hu Wei-Yung will arrive first and we can put an end to this business before his cohorts get here.”
“Let me see if I understand you,” I said. “We are to teeter precariously on the brink of a dangerous hole for who knows how many hours, awaiting the arrival of a villain we are in no way certain will even appear in this place at all—all on the word of a Chinese criminal opium-seller who profits from the misery of others?”
“Yes, that is approximately right,” Holmes said. “Although in the country of Mr. Chu’s origin, selling opium is not a criminal activity. Mr. Chu has provided me with reliable information in the past and I have no reason to doubt him now. Come, let us take up our posts.”
We went back up the stairs and into the room missing most of its floor. After a bit we selected spots that with luck would not collapse under our weight and settled in to begin our vigil.
“Holmes, there is something that has been puzzling me,” I said. “Lady Blanchard was with her husband when he was kidnapped. Why did those brutes not take her instead of him? They did not know Lord Edgar was suffering from concussion, and surely a woman would be less able to resist than a man.”
“That is the Englishman’s point of view,” Holmes replied. “But to the Oriental mind, women are servants. There is no profit in kidnapping a servant.”
At a word from Holmes, we both extinguished our lanterns. The resulting blackness was disorienting. It was only six o’clock, but not a glimmer of light showed anywhere; all the windows had been boarded up from the inside. I heard a faint rustling sound: rats.
“I say, Holmes, I have spent jollier Christmas Eves.”
“And so you shall again, old chap. But now we must maintain silence. We don’t know when Hu Wei-Yung will arrive.”
If he arrived. I made myself as comfortable as I could and prepared to wait.
It was difficult to judge the passage of time under those conditions, but after what seemed like an hour, I felt my muscles beginning to stiffen. I shifted my weight slightly and could hear Holmes doing the same.
Approximately another two hours passed, and to my dismay I found myself nodding off. I fought against it, but the darkness and the silence defeated me. I fell asleep with my chin resting on my chest . . .
. . . only to awaken with a cry to a loud clamor in my ears. As I became more alert, I realized I was hearing bells. Church bells.
“It is Christmas Day,” said Holmes.
Christmas bells, that rang at midnight all over London. We had been waiting for six hours. I listened until the last of the bells died out and said, “How much longer must we remain here?”
“All night, if necessary. We don’t—hist!”
I’d heard it too—a sound from below.
Silence for a moment, then we heard a chair scrape on the floor. The scritch of a match was followed by a tiny flame as a candle was lighted, then another, and another—twelve candles in all. We could see only the top of the Chinaman’s head as he placed six candles at one end of the table and six at the other.
The man whose face we’d not yet seen placed a burlap bag on the table between the two rows of candles. He sat down and reached into the bag without looking; what he pulled out was a diamond brooch. He turned it this way and that, prisms of color shooting out as the various facets caught the candlelight.
“He is alone,” Holmes murmured—and jumped.
“Holmes!” I cried, and tried to rise. My cramped muscles delayed me; but when I did manage to get to my feet, I peered into the hole. I could see neither man, although the sounds of a struggle going on outside the circle of candlelight were unmistakable.
I lighted my lantern and made as much haste as I could in working my way around the hole. Out the door to the landing, down the stairway, through the kitchen to the large room—where I found the Chinaman slumped in a chair, his hands tied behind his back. Holmes was replacing some candles that had been knocked over in the struggle.
“Ah, there you are, Watson,” he said with maddening nonchalance. “Meet Hu Wei-Yung, thief and kidnapper.”
I threw up my arms. “Holmes, sometimes I think you must be out of your mind!”
“Quite possibly.” He leaned in so close to his prisoner that their noses were only inches apart. “Hu Wei-Yung also turns children into criminals. He teaches them Christmas carols and instructs them in what lies to tell if they are ever questioned.”
I took my first good look at Hu Wei-Yung—and was disappointed, he was so ordinary looking. He was younger than I thought he’d be. With the exception of those Oriental eyes, there was nothing distinguishing about his features at all. He didn’t look evil; he didn’t look anything. I examined his bound hands.
“And of course you just happened to have a piece of rope in your coat pocket,” I said to Holmes.
“No.” He sounded surprised. “I brought it with m
e for this purpose.”
Of course he did. I sighed and said, “What now?”
“Now Hu Wei-Yung is going to tell us where Lord Edgar is.”
The young Chinaman’s lips tightened. “I tell you nothing. Your English lord dies where he is.”
“In which case you will most certainly die on the gallows,” Holmes said. He picked up the burlap bag from where it had fallen on the floor and upended it over the table; the jewels came tumbling out. Holmes ran his long fingers through the gems and lifted out a necklace that was the authentic version of the paste model Lombard had shown us the day before. “Lady Blanchard’s necklace,” Holmes said and slipped it into a pocket. “That goes to her. The rest goes back to the man you stole it from. You gain nothing, Hu Wei-Yung. Not one farthing have you profited from this theft or kidnapping. So why let Lord Edgar die? What do you accomplish?”
The man’s voice was thick. “You do not understand.”
“Do you understand?” Holmes countered. “If Lord Edgar dies, you die. You are committing suicide if you do not take us to him. Do you want to die?”
“No!”
“Then show us where he is, man! Quickly!”
“I cannot! If I take you to him . . .”
“Yes?”
“If I show you where I hid him, I lose face.” His head drooped.
Holmes was silent for a moment. “And death is preferable to losing face,” he murmured. “I see.” He folded his arms and closed his eyes, thinking. “What if there were a way to release Lord Edgar without losing face?”
“That is not possible.”
Holmes opened his eyes. “Is it not? Consider. What if I offered you the lives of all your Christmas carolers in exchange for the life of only one Englishman? Would that not be considered an honorable arrangement?”
“You arrest the boys?”
“If Lord Edgar dies, everyone even remotely connected to his death will be tried, convicted, and hanged. Including the boys. Would not sacrificing yourself to save the boys be considered an honorable act? You not only save face, you gain respect.”
Hu Wei-Yung looked hopeful for a moment, but then his head sagged again. “But no one will know of my sacrifice.”
“On the contrary, everyone will know—once I tell Mr. Chu how you put the boys’ well-being above your own.”
His head snapped up. “You will tell Mr. Chu?”
“If you lead us to Lord Edgar. You have my word on it.”
The Chinaman wanted to believe him but still hesitated. I spoke up. “Sherlock Holmes has given you his word. And he never breaks his word.”
He looked at Holmes. “Your honor is in your word?”
“It is. The boys will not be touched if Lord Edgar lives. I promise you that.”
The two of them exchanged a long look, and then Hu Wei-Yung bobbed his head, once. “I take you to him.”
“A wise choice. Where is he?”
“On a canal barge. We put him in a storage locker.”
“Regent’s Canal? That leads from Limehouse Basin?”
He said yes. We left the Salvation Army’s abandoned mission house and headed east. I led the way with my lantern; Holmes’s was still upstairs in the house but we didn’t want to take the time to fetch it.
It was a good half hour’s walk before we reached the tow path alongside the canal. Even in the dead of winter the canal water was odorous. I thought of the effect on a man with a concussion of that nauseating smell combined with the constant motion of the water and picked up the pace.
Holmes said, “Was your purpose to hold Lord Edgar for ransom?”
That had been the plan, originally. “But with my companions locked away behind bars, it is too difficult for one man alone.”
“So you were just going to leave him there to die?”
Hu Wei-Yung said nothing.
We walked another ten minutes before he said, “Here.” The barge was moored under a narrow bridge that spanned a break in the tow path. We stepped aboard and gathered around the storage locker; an air hole had been drilled in the lid. Holmes broke it open with his pry bar.
Lord Edgar lay curled inside. He was not moving. Holmes stepped back to allow me to examine him; I lay my hand at the base of his neck and detected a faint pulse. “He’s alive, but unconscious. We must get him to hospital immediately.”
“You will keep your word?” Hu Wei-Yung asked.
“I will,” said Holmes.
So Lady Blanchard got both her husband and her necklace back for Christmas, a day she spent in a chair by Lord Edgar’s hospital bed. His condition was serious but not critical, and in time he would recover from his ordeal. I wondered if Lady Blanchard would ever be able to wear the necklace without remembering that it had almost cost her her husband’s life.
The other part of our story did not end so happily. James Lombard was overcome when we returned his goods to him. “You have restored my livelihood to me, Mr. Holmes! I had nothing, and now I have everything again. You have given me back my life.”
“And Wilfred?” Holmes asked.
A cloud passed over Lombard’s face, his joy in the return of his jewels forgotten. “I have disowned Wilfred. He is no longer my son.”
Not unexpected, but nonetheless a sad thing to hear. Holmes said, “Yet his concern for you was genuine when he first learned you had been beaten.”
“Oh, yes, Wilfred is always sorry afterward. Sincerely sorry.”
“It took courage to admit his part in the robbery to you.”
“He did not do even that. I discovered him packing some clothing—he was planning to run away without a word to me. I forced the truth from him. What you’ve seen, Mr. Holmes, is only the most recent chapter in a story that has been going on a long, long time. Wilfred has always been a liar and a thief, from the days he was a small boy. When his mother lay dying, he crept into her room and took all her jewelry. When he was found out, all he had to say was that she wouldn’t be wearing it again. Wilfred understood when I took him into my business that this was to be his last chance. He has had one opportunity after another to reform, but the truth is he does not wish to reform. He is what he is. But he is no son of mine.”
There was nothing more to be said. We took our leave.
Back in Baker Street, Holmes threw himself into his armchair without removing his coat. “I have saved Lombard’s jewels, but I have lost him a son.”
“Nonsense, Holmes. Wilfred lost himself long ago.”
“Nevertheless, if I had not insisted that Wilfred confess his role in the robbery—”
“You would not only have deceived your client but also made it possible for Wilfred to betray his father again.”
“Oh, I daresay you are right, Watson. But there should have been some solution other than the one at which Lombard ultimately arrived.”
“Perhaps. But Lombard is only half the story—you have prevented a death this day. Surely that is more rewarding than unmasking a killer! This has to be one of your most successful cases, unquestionably.”
“As you no doubt will claim in your scribblings.” He stretched out a long arm and picked up his largest pipe.
My heart sank. Whenever Holmes reached for that particular pipe, it invariably meant he would spend hour after hour smoking and thinking. Or smoking and fretting. Mrs. Hudson was preparing a Christmas goose, but it would be several hours before it was ready. More than anything I wanted to spend those hours sleeping, but I did not relish the thought of coming back to a sitting room so thick with tobacco fumes I would be unable to taste the goose.
There was only one thing to be done.
“Come, Holmes—this self-blame is not like you. You mustn’t sit there and brood. Let us go take a stroll in Regent’s Park. You need to be out and about.”
“I’ve been out and about. I just got back.”
“From visiting an unhappy man. But today is Christmas. A time for rejoicing!”
“I don’t want to rejoice.”
“Of cour
se you do. A brisk walk in Regent’s Park will do you worlds of good. Besides, I have a desire to hear some real carolers, ones who sing for the joy of the season rather than for some nefarious purpose. Come, Holmes, let us be off!”
“Oh, very well, since you’re so set on it. Although I fail to see why we cannot sit here quietly until Mrs. Hudson brings us that plump goose she is cooking.”
“Because I worry you may be growing stale. Sit quietly, indeed!” He stared at me in disbelief.
For once, I had the last word.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE
GREATEST GIFT
Loren D. Estleman
“You know, Watson,” remarked Sherlock Holmes, “that I am not a religious man. Neither, however, am I a blasphemous one, and I trust I won’t offend one of your fine sentiments when I wish that the Great Miracle could be repeated in the case of the late lamented Professor Moriarty. I do miss him these foul evenings.”
The date, according to the notes I have before me, was the twenty-third of December, 1901. The fog that evening was particularly dense and yellow, and to attempt to peer out through the windows in Holmes’s little sitting room in the digs we used to share yielded results no more satisfactory than looking into a filthy mirror. Beneath that Stygian mass, the fresh snowfall of the morning, which had carried such promise of an immaculate yuletide, had turned as brown as the Thames and clung to hoof and boot alike in sodden clumps, exactly as if the Great Grimpen Mire of evil memory had spread beyond Devonshire to fill the streets of London. The heavens themselves, it seemed, had joined us in mourning the loss of our queen, dead these eleven months.
I was concerned by my friend’s remark, not because it stung my faith, but for the evidence it gave of the depth of his depression. Weeks had passed since he had last been engaged upon one of the thorny problems that challenged his intellect and distracted him from the unsavory pursuits that endangered his health, and to whose sinister charms he was never wholly immune no matter how long he stayed away from them. Indeed, although the ugly brown bottle and well-worn morocco case containing Holmes’s needle had gone sufficiently untouched for an industrious spider to have erected a web between them and the corner of the mantelpiece, that gossamer strand posed no barrier to inactivity and ennui, which were the only things on this earth that Holmes feared. He feared them no more than I dreaded their artificial remedy.
More Holmes for the Holidays Page 8
