The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories

by Otto Penzler

  “Very well, Mr. Holmes,” the young inspector replied. “You know that I try to follow your methods, and I will reveal to you what I have learned. As to the body of the doctor, you may examine it if you wish. I have determined that the wounds were made by a right-handed man, about six feet in height, with a broad-bladed knife, while standing close to the victim.”

  “Very good, Hopkins! I presume that you determined his height and habits from the angle of the wounds.”

  “Exactly, Mr. Holmes. The body revealed nothing further of an unusual nature, except that the doctor’s left arm was bandaged tightly to his body, although he had no apparent wound on it.”

  “Indeed!” interjected Holmes, his eyes twinkling. “Were the bandages fresh?”

  “I did not note,” said Hopkins. “I also examined the ground near the body as carefully as I could in this morning’s rain. The footprints were quickly washing away, and it was not easy to tell, but I could see no signs of a struggle. Of course, the rains may have taken their toll already by the time I arrived at the scene.

  “Later this morning I went ’round to the doctor’s house and spoke to his assistant, Philip Buckram, who lives with him. He could add little. No caller had come for the doctor after supper, and he had no idea why the doctor should be at the waterfront so late. Buckram did see the doctor go out last evening, bundled up in his greatcoat. He noticed that the doctor was carrying under his arm a long, narrow box, which he had not seen before. We could find no sign of the box this morning. When I questioned him about the doctor’s recent behavior, he reported that Smithfield had been extremely agitated since his return from America a fortnight ago.”

  “From America, you say?” said Holmes. “On what ship?”

  “The barque White Star from Virginia,” Hopkins answered, looking pleased.

  “Excellent, excellent, my boy! You shall be a fine detective yet!” Holmes cheered.

  “Thank you, Mr. Holmes,” murmured the young man. “Now, if you would like to inspect the body…”

  “I would rather see where the body was found,” said Holmes, leaping up and seizing his hat and cape. “Come, Watson, there is sunshine on even the foggiest day!”

  A quarter hour later, we were alighting from a cab in a grimy street near the waterfront. A constable welcomed us to the gloomy wharf, where the shadows of soot-covered warehouses made it ever twilit.

  “Good afternoon, Constable,” said Hopkins. “Show Mr. Holmes here to the spot where the body was found.” The constable led us to a corner of the wharf near the road, where a street lamp hung.

  “You are right, Inspector,” said Holmes. “The rain seems to have left us little.” Holmes bent to the ground and walked in widening circles, like a hunting dog seeking a scent. “Halloa!” he cried. He dropped to his knees in the dirt under the eaves of the adjacent warehouse.

  “Halloa! Watson, what do you make of this? Inspector, you have not cast your eye far enough afield!”

  I looked where Holmes pointed. A wide, flattened channel with straight sides was clearly visible on the patch of dry earth. “A box, Watson! Someone has pushed a box through the dirt here!” He peered under the building, where a small but cavernously dark space had been left by the builders. Seizing my umbrella, he flung himself on the ground and stretching out his long arm, proceeded to angle in the blackness until we heard a solid thump. Holmes manipulated further and then slid out by the handle a long, narrow box.

  “Holmes!” I cried. “It is a casket, a child’s casket!” Holmes nodded and, whipping out his glass, bent to examine the exterior of the box.

  “For God’s sake, Mr. Holmes, let us open it!” cried Hopkins. Holmes reluctantly pocketed his glass. “Go ahead, Constable,” he said. The stalwart policeman stepped forward, hesitated a moment, then lifted the cover. He staggered back, uttering a cry of surprise. Hopkins and I pressed forward and gasped. There, amidst velvet cushions, lay a raggedly severed human arm. Holmes’s eyes shone.

  Reminding myself of the numerous men I had treated in the field and the cadavers I had dissected in the laboratories, I bent to the box and examined the arm professionally. “It is a male arm,” I stated, determined not to be outdone by Hopkins, “adult, probably about thirty years of age. It appears to have been severed by a ragged series of cuts.”

  “Cut off in an industrial accident?” asked Hopkins.

  “No,” I said, remembering my patient Victor Hatherley, whom Holmes had consented to help. “No, it appears to have been cut off with a surgical saw, but rather clumsily.”

  “Or quickly,” suggested Holmes. He stooped to examine the hands and fingers. “How long has it—he—been dead, would you say, Watson?”

  “Well, the saw marks appear fresh. But the decomposition of the flesh is too advanced for death to have been recent, Holmes.”

  “Would you agree that the arm was not cut off a living man, Watson?”

  “I can’t say for certain, Holmes, but why…”

  “The lack of blood, man! This arm, and presumably the remainder of its owner, has been embalmed!” He turned to Hopkins. “Inspector, I suggest that you inquire after a carpenter, approximately thirty years of age, about five feet ten inches in height, who smoked heavily, was of Semitic descent, and who recently died of heart disease. I should like to speak to his physician.”

  “But, Mr. Holmes…” Hopkins blurted, gesturing feebly at the coffin.

  “Come, Hopkins, I thought you were learning my methods. His height we may estimate from the length of the arm. His heavy smoking is evident from the tobacco stains on his fingers, and the calluses on the hand are characteristic of carpentry. I thought I had lent you my little monograph on that subject. Dr. Watson will confirm that the clubbing of the fingertips displayed there suggests recent heart disease, and the color and texture of the skin manifest his descent. Elementary, eh, Watson?”

  I nodded.

  “And his age, Mr. Holmes?” asked Hopkins.

  “Ah, there we must make a stab! The calluses are not so heavy as to indicate long years of carpentry, yet the profession requires a significant apprenticeship. I should estimate that our friend had just begun to establish himself as a master carpenter.”

  “We’ll get on it right away, Mr. Holmes,” Hopkins demurred.

  “There is nothing further to see here, Inspector. I think, however, that I should like to talk to the captain of the White Star. He may be able to cast some light on Dr. Smithfield’s anxiety. Watson, can you join me, or is your wife due back from the country today?”

  I resisted his chaff regarding my domesticity, and we left the inspector to conduct his search for Holmes’s one-armed carpenter. Once we were on our way to Pall Mall in a cab, I queried Holmes on his theories. “Really, Holmes, did you expect to find that gruesome box?” I asked.

  “I rather expected to find something, Watson,” he replied, “although not even I could have foretold its grisly nature. One does not expect a surgeon to keep a midnight assignation with a man unless something is to pass between them. If it were information, a telegram or a letter would suffice. Therefore I searched for some clue as to that box with which he had left and which must have been intended to pass. I hardly expected to be so dramatically rewarded. We must now wait to see whether the find is as informative as it is ghastly.” With that, Holmes drew out his pipe and leaned back into the seat.

  A brief inquiry in Pall Mall brought us to the offices of Jos. Brunard and Sons, Shipping Merchants, where the manager shook his head in dismay. “I’d like to help you, Mr. Holmes,” he said, glancing covetously at the guinea in Holmes’s hand, “but the White Star and all her crew have sailed for Boston. We can’t afford to leave our ships idle in the harbor, and she docked here over a fortnight ago.”

  “I am interested in her last voyage,” said Holmes. “Had she any untoward incidents?”

  “None reported, sir,” said the shipper.

  “Might I see the list of crew and passengers?” asked Holmes, pressing the guinea
on him.

  “Certainly!” he responded eagerly, passing over a bound notebook.

  Holmes glanced down the page. “Odd,” he murmured. “Smithfield’s name is not on the list. Think, man,” he said to the shipper, “is there no one who can tell us of this ship?”

  “Well,” said the manager after some thought, “there is Billy Morse. He was a mate on the voyage, but he’s caught sick and couldn’t ship out. He’ll be at the Royal Hotel down the street.”

  The Royal Hotel little reflected its name. Holmes inquired briefly with the clerk, then led the way up decrepit steps to a thin, greasy door. He knocked with authority.

  “Leave me alone, I’m sick,” a voice rasped.

  “I must talk to you,” said Holmes.

  The door inched open. “What d’ye want?” asked the sailor, peering cautiously through the crack.

  “Dr. Smithfield,” said Holmes. “Was he a passenger on the White Star from Virginia?”

  The sailor laughed, then coughed gaspingly. “A passenger—you might say. But what’s it to you?”

  “The doctor is dead,” said Holmes. “Murdered by a sailor.”

  “A sailor, eh?” snarled Morse. “Well, I ain’t surprised, a sniveling one, that. But it weren’t me, matey.”

  Holmes pushed open the door, and the sailor staggered back to his cot. “I know it wasn’t you, Morse, but Scotland Yard might not believe me. I must know how Smithfield came to be on board the White Star. After you tell us, you can get some more medicine.” Holmes looked meaningfully at the empty gin bottle on the bedtable.

  The sailor sighed, coughed rackingly, and lay back in the bedclothes. “We was sailing down to Cuba for some trade on our way back from Virginia,” he began. “We had but two passengers, two tobacco traders bound for Scotland on holiday and too cheap to sail on a finer ship. We was passing through the Providence Channel when we spotted wreckage floating off the port bow. It was pieces of a ship, we could see, and broken up small like it had been chewed up by the sea. She must have foundered on the rocks—there are hidden troubles there for an unwise skipper. Anyway, we made a search for survivors in the water, but there weren’t none. Just before we was ready to weigh anchor again, the bo’sun spotted men dancing and waving from one of the far-off islands. We sent a skiff on over there—I was in command—and when we beached, we found four howling maniacs, so’s I thought. They was the sole survivors of the Virginia Dare, out of Savannah. Their ship had been smashed in a storm, and the four of them had managed somehow to be washed up on the island. I don’t know how they lived there for two months—that island had nothin’ on it, just a few bushes and a little water. They must have had a queer time of it, those four. Anyway, we took ’em on board and brought ’em by way of Cuba to London with us.”

  “And Smithfield was one of them, was he?” asked Holmes.

  “Aye,” said the seaman, “and not the queerest of the lot!”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Them others,” he said, “they all had only one arm!”

  As we rode back to Baker Street, my thoughts whirled. Visions of one-armed men and that bloody arm we had discovered danced in my brain. “Holmes, why did you say Smithfield was murdered by a sailor?” I began. “And what did you make of Morse’s tale?”

  “One question at a time, Watson. It was obvious that Smithfield was murdered by a sailor the moment I saw the knife wounds. First, wounds of that width could only have been made by a broad-bladed knife, such as seamen carry. Second, the upward angle of the wounds also suggest that the assailant was a sailor, who tend to carry a knife underhanded, while an amateur wielding a knife holds it with his thumb away from the blade. Those points, along with the district itself in which the body was found, strongly indicated a sailor. I admit that it is not certain, but the assertion was not lost on Morse.”

  “Then you do suspect him.”

  “No, no, Watson, that would be the sheerest coincidence. I merely wished to speed his cooperation. Every sailor has an innate fear of the law, and I used it to our advantage. As to Morse’s tale, it provides the pattern into which our pieces now fit, I believe.”

  “I don’t see how, Holmes. Did the arm in the casket belong to one of the castaways?”

  “It is not likely, Watson. It is a long voyage for an arm in a small casket, from Georgia to London. And there are no carpenters among the list of castaways Morse gave us. You recall them? Smithfield, John Bennett, Savannah planter, Alfred Winton, a London merchant, and Jack Tiptree, a member of the crew of the Virginia Dare. I believe we should pay a visit to Mr. Winton’s establishment, Watson, early tomorrow.”

  Early Tuesday, following a scanty breakfast, I found myself accompanying Holmes into a substantial-looking shop. “Mr. Winton, please,” Holmes pleasantly inquired of the clerk. “One moment,” he said. He turned, and a young man, more a schoolboy than a shopkeeper, stepped forward. “If it’s my father you’re looking for, gentlemen,” he blurted, “I’m afraid he can’t see you.”

  “It is important,” said Holmes. “My name is Sherlock Holmes…”

  “The Sherlock Holmes?” he cried. “And you must be Dr. Watson! Oh, I read of you every month in the Strand! Oh,” and he turned gloomy, “but my father cannot see anyone, not even you, Mr. Holmes. They’ve sent him away!”

  “Where?” I cried.

  “For a rest,” he said, obviously holding back tears. “When he came back from America, he was…sick. The doctors said he must stay with them until he’s better. He doesn’t talk right, Mr. Holmes, just gibberish!”

  “There, there, now, lad,” I offered, patting his shoulder, “you seem like a capable fellow. I’m sure he’ll be proud of the way you’ve run the store while he’s away.” He shook my hand gratefully and went in the back of the store.

  “It is as I feared,” said Holmes when we were outside. “I hope we are not too late to save Bennett.” I pondered his words and the fate of Winton as we rode back to Baker Street in silence. When we arrived, however, Mrs. Hudson handed Holmes a telegram.

  “Too late, Watson!” He handed me the telegram. It was brief:

  BENNETT TOOK HIS OWN LIFE SATURDAY IN HOTEL ROOM.

  —HOPKINS

  “Why, Holmes?” I cried. “What is it that drove Winton mad and Bennett to suicide? And what about this Tiptree?”

  “Soon it will all be clear,” Holmes said. “Allow me to reveal the truth to you in my own way. Meanwhile, I think a meal and a pipe are in order, Watson, while we wait for the seeds I have sown to germinate.”

  Several hours later, a light tapping at the door woke me from my reverie. Holmes leapt up, and I could see Wiggins, chief of those street urchins whom Holmes employs, standing in the doorway, his cap in hand.

  “Well?” said Holmes. Wiggins whispered in his ear. “Excellent, Wiggins!” cried Holmes. “Share this with your fellows!” He gave the boy two guineas.

  “Once again my lads shine,” he rejoiced, turning to me. “Come, Watson! The game is at an end!”

  I hurriedly took up my hat and coat and raced down the stairs, following closely on Holmes’s heels. He summoned a cab, and, yelling “Old Yew Place” to the driver, we whistled off.

  “Holmes, where are we going?” I shouted as we bounced along at a rapid rate.

  “To the land of oblivion, Watson, to oblivion!” was his cryptic reply.

  The cab pulled up in a dimly lit corner of the city which I had never seen. The district looked unsavory, and when Holmes led me by the arm to an unmarked door in a dark alley, I was glad to feel the bulk of my service revolver in my coat pocket. Holmes knocked twice, then once, and the door swung slowly open. “Tiptree,” he whispered to the shadowy figure inside, and as we stepped in, the door slammed behind us. Immediately my nose identified my surroundings—an opium den!

  Holmes led me knowingly through the candlelit gloom of the parlor to a low divan in the back room. There on the pallet lay a young man, of rough appearance, but with a face now bathed in drug-ind
uced peace. This angelic face looked like part of a broken statue, for the man’s left sleeve was empty. Holmes shook the sailor, and he stirred.

  “Tiptree!” Holmes called. “Tiptree!” The young man started awake and lunged for the floor, but Holmes held his remaining arm in a vise-like grip. “We’re not here to harm you, Tiptree. We know all about the island and the doctor’s death. We only want to talk to you. Are you awake?”

  The sailor peered at us, visibly shaking off his stupor. “Are you the police” he asked.

  “No,” said Holmes. “I am Sherlock Holmes. We are the—um, unofficial investigators. But do not let that deceive you,” Holmes warned. “I want to hear your story, even though I believe I know it already, and if I am not satisfied that you are telling the truth, it will go hard with you. An American like you has few friends here in London.” Holmes gripped his arm again, and Tiptree shivered.

  “I feel as if I have stumbled into the inferno itself,” he began, “and you may guide me out of it. My last moment of peace was on board the Virginia Dare. I shipped on her from Savannah, where my pa owns a plantation. I shipped for adventure, to see England, to make my own way. I remember that last night, looking out over her bow, where the sea was calm and stars shone, when the storm came upon us in a fury. I was swept over the bow in an instant by a giant wave, and I thought my life had ended as I plunged down under the sea. But I am a strong swimmer, and I strove upwards, up, my lungs burning, until I split the surface. I looked ’round just in time to see the ship thrown against the rocks, like a child’s toy, the crew, my mates, and the passengers wailing and jumping for their lives. I was lucky, I guess, for I missed being caught in the rigging or the spiky rocks like most of ’em. A piece of the ship’s keel came floating by me, and I lit out for it, and when I reached it, I hung on for dear life. I could hear the moans and cries of the others as they were tossed about by the gale, and each scream burned my soul, for I knew that they were a’gone.

  “I guess I slept some, thought I don’t know how, and when morning came, my piece of the ship—my savior, I thought then—had floated me up near an island. I blessed the Lord for his good grace and struck out for the land, leaving my little raft behind. With my remaining strength, I pulled myself up on the shore, where I lay for a while.