The Secret Notebooks of Sherlock Holmes

by June Thomson

  I, too, am not a dedicated card-player. After the excitement of the race-course, where the physical prowess of both horse and jockey can send the blood tingling through the veins, I found whist too static for my taste. I missed the roar of the crowd and the thunder of hooves on the turf. Even billiards had more allure, for in that sport the players at least have the opportunity to move about the table, while the co-ordination of hand and eye calls for real skill. In comparison, card games seemed quite tame.

  It was two o’clock in the morning before Colonel Upwood and Eustace Gaunt left the club, having won, according to Holmes’ calculation – for he had been surreptitiously assessing their play – the modest sum of about twelve guineas, not enough to warrant a charge of cheating.

  We waited for half an hour before taking our own leave, so that our departure should not coincide too closely with theirs and perhaps arouse suspicions.

  ‘I suppose,’ I remarked when we were inside a hansom, rattling our way through deserted streets towards Baker Street, ‘that the whole wretched experience will have to be repeated next Friday.’

  ‘I am afraid so, my dear fellow,’ Holmes agreed.

  ‘What a waste of an evening!’

  ‘Not entirely,’ he corrected me. ‘We have gained some very useful information about Gaunt and Colonel Upwood, including their methods.’

  ‘Have we, Holmes? I saw nothing out of the ordinary about their play. They were apparently not cheating or they would have won more than they did.’

  ‘So it would seem,’ Holmes conceded. ‘But we must wait upon events, Watson, rather than anticipate them. Like all greedy men, sooner or later they will succumb to the temptation of easy money. Meanwhile, I suggest we bear our souls in patience.’

  He said nothing more about the case until the next Friday evening, when we again presented ourselves at the Nonpareil. As we mounted the steps to the front door, he remarked to me casually over his shoulder as he rang the bell, ‘Perhaps tonight the game really will be afoot!’

  But events were to prove otherwise.

  As before, Godfrey Sinclair again introduced us to a pair of partners in the gaming-room and the four of us sat down together at one of the small baize-covered tables to play. On this evening, however, the ennui was broken a little by Holmes’ insistence that we rose from the table from time to time to stretch our legs by sauntering about the room as other gentlemen were doing, pausing on occasion at other tables to observe the play.

  We halted for less than a minute at our suspects’ table, no longer than at any of the others, and no one in the room, I am convinced, saw anything suspicious in either our expressions or our bearing. Holmes’ face, I observed when I took a sideways glance at him, registered nothing but polite interest. Only someone who knew him as well as I would have been aware of his inner tension. Like a fine watch spring wound up almost to breaking point, he was vibrant with suppressed energy, every nerve alert, every sense concentrated on the two men who sat before us.

  As far as I could see, there was nothing unusual about their behaviour. Colonel Upwood sat four-square upon his chair, hardly moving or speaking apart from an occasional jovial comment to the other players about the fall of the cards.

  ‘My monarch has been defeated in battle, I see,’ he remarked as his King of Clubs was trumped. Or, ‘Never trust a woman!’ when his partner’s Jack of Hearts was taken by an opponent’s Queen.

  As for Eustace Gaunt, I noticed his nervous habit of touching his cravat or his buttonhole, a red carnation on this occasion, was still in evidence. So was the restless movement of his eyes.

  The play was not very inspiring and we soon moved on to halt briefly at other tables. As we did so, I noticed that, as soon as we were no longer in the suspects’ vicinity, Holmes’ nervous tension subsided and he became merely bored, his eyes hooded with lassitude while his lean profile bore the pinched expression of insufferable weariness.

  The next two Friday evenings followed much the same pattern. Upwood and his partner neither lost nor won any large sums of money and even they seemed to be growing fatigued with the play, for they left early at half past midnight, to my inexpressible relief.

  I half expected the next occasion would be the same and I had to brace myself for the extended tedium of an evening of whist.

  Holmes, too, seemed in low spirits, sitting in silence as we rattled in our hansom towards the Nonpareil Club. I felt that, like me, he had begun to despair of ever reaching an end to the inquiry and that it would continue indefinitely as a weekly torment, much like that suffered by the man in the Greek legend who was forced to keep pushing a large stone up a hill, only to have it roll down again.8

  But as soon as we entered the gaming-salon, I detected an immediate and dramatic change in his demeanour. His head went up, his shoulders went back and he gave a low, triumphant chuckle.

  ‘I think we are about to witness the dénouement of our little investigation, my dear fellow,’ he murmured to me under his breath.

  I followed his gaze to the table where Eustace Gaunt and Colonel Upwood were already seated in the company of a pair of young men who, judging by their heightened colour and over-loud voices, had indulged themselves too liberally in the bar downstairs.

  ‘The sacrificial lambs are on the altar,’ Holmes continued in the same low tone as Colonel Upwood dealt the cards. ‘The ritual fleecing of them will begin any moment now.’

  We retired to another table and played a rubber of whist with two gentlemen who often acted as our opponents, but neither of us were at our best. Both of us were distracted by the game going on across the room, where soon a small, interested group of fellow members had started to gather. Even our opponents’ interest began to shift to this new centre of attention until eventually all four of us by mutual consent laid down our cards and, getting to our feet, strolled across the room to join the company, which now numbered about fifteen.

  It was clear from the bank notes and sovereigns lying on the table that Colonel Upwood and his partner had already won a considerable sum of money and were likely to win more, for their opponents, the two young gentlemen, although showing signs of unease, seemed determined not to admit defeat but to continue the game.

  They were encouraged in this frame of mind by Gaunt and Upwood, whose tactics were subtle. Like two experienced anglers fishing for trout, they kept their victims in play, using the bait of letting them win two or three games in a row, thereby lulling them with a false promise of imminent success. The following game, of course, they lost.

  From Holmes’ earlier remark about sacrificial lambs, I assumed Gaunt and Upwood were cheating. However, although I watched them with the closest attention, I could not for the life of me see anything in either their manner or their behaviour which could warrant such a charge. There appeared to be no sign of légerdemain in the way they dealt the cards. Their hands always remained in full view on top of the green baize and, unless they were accomplished magicians, which I doubted, they were not substituting one card for another.

  In all respects, they acted exactly as we had seen them behave on those other Friday evenings when we had watched their play. As before, Gaunt’s nervous mannerisms were in evidence, but no more than usual. Upwood also made the occasional facetious remark, referring to the Queen of Spades as ‘the Black Beauty’ and to the Diamonds as ‘sparklers’, an exasperating habit but one which appeared to be quite innocent of deception.

  After a few minutes only, Holmes touched me briefly on the arm and murmured, ‘I have seen enough, my dear fellow. We may leave.’

  ‘But what have we seen, Holmes?’ I demanded as I followed him to the door.

  ‘Proof of their cheating, of course!’ Holmes replied dismissively, as if that fact were self-evident.

  ‘But, Holmes …!’ I began.

  There was no opportunity to add any further protest for, just outside the salon door, we met Godfrey Sinclair hurrying across the upper landing, summoned no doubt to the gaming-room by one of his subo
rdinates, his normally urbane manner considerably ruffled.

  ‘Mr Holmes …!’ he began anxiously, but fared no better than I had.

  ‘Yes, Mr Sinclair, they are indeed cheating,’ Holmes informed him in the same brisk manner he had used to me. ‘I advise you, however, to do nothing about it at this moment. I have the matter in hand. Call on me on Monday morning at eleven o’clock and I will explain to you exactly how the situation may be resolved.’

  And with that he swept off down the stairs at a rapid pace, leaving his client standing at the top, open-mouthed at the decisiveness of Holmes’ conclusion.

  Knowing Holmes in this assertive mood, I did not mention the matter again and it was not until the following evening that he himself made any reference to it, although in such an oblique manner that at the time I was not aware of its significance.

  ‘Would you care to spend the evening at a music-hall, Watson?’ he asked in a negligent manner.

  I glanced up from the Evening Standard, which I had been reading by the fire.

  ‘A music-hall, Holmes?’ I repeated, puzzled by Holmes’ sudden interest in this form of entertainment, which I had never known him to favour in the past. An opera, yes; or a concert. But a music-hall?

  ‘Well, it would make a pleasant evening out, I suppose,’ I replied. ‘Which one were you thinking of?’

  ‘I understand the Cambridge9 has several excellent performers on its programme. Come then, Watson. We shall leave at once.’

  Seizing up his coat, hat and stick, he set off down the stairs, leaving me to hasten after him.

  We arrived in time for the second half of the evening’s entertainment, which consisted of several acts, none of which I could see might be of particular interest to Holmes. There was an Irish tenor who sang a sentimental song about a young lady called Kathleen, a lady wearing a huge crinoline which opened like a pair of curtains to release a dozen small dogs which then proceeded to jump through hoops and dance on their hind legs; and a lugubrious comic with a huge nose and a check suit who told sad jokes about his wife which the audience seemed to find extremely funny.

  The comic was followed by a certain Count Rakoczi, a Transylvanian of Gypsy origin, whom the Chairman10 announced with a thump of his gavel as ‘A Maestro of Mind-Reading and Mental Manipulation!’

  I felt Holmes stiffen in his seat beside me and, guessing that it was this particular act which he had come to see, I myself sat up and concentrated on the stage as the curtains parted to reveal a man who, although short of stature, was of striking appearance.

  His face and hands were of an unnatural pallor, enhanced by artificial means, I suspected, which contrasted dramatically with his black hair, dashing black mustachios and small pointed beard which gave him a Mephistophelian air. This black and white colour scheme was repeated in his apparel, in his gleaming silk hat and long black cloak which he removed with a flourish to reveal its white satin lining, as well as his black evening clothes and his shirt front, as blanched and as glistening as a bank of snow.

  He passed his hat and cloak to his lady assistant who, in contrast to Count Rakoczi, was more exotically attired in a long robe which appeared to be made entirely out of silk scarves of every colour of the rainbow and which floated about her with each movement she made. Her headdress was fashioned from the same multicoloured silk into an elaborate turban and was sewn all over with large gold sequins which flashed like fiery stars under the gas lights.

  As the applause died down, Rakoczi stepped towards the footlights to announce in a strong accent – Transylvanian, I assumed, should there be such a language – that he would identify by telepathic communication alone any object supplied by members of the audience, which his assistant would hold up. He himself would be blindfolded with a mask which he invited the Chairman to inspect.

  The mask of black velvet was duly passed to the Chairman, who made a great show of holding it up for the audience to see before fully examining it with meticulous care. Having assured us that it would be impossible for Rakoczi to see anything through it, he then handed it back to the Count who, to a dramatic roll on the drums, pulled it down over his eyes. He then took up his position centre stage where he stood very erect, his arms folded across his chest and his blindfolded face raised towards the upper gallery. While this was happening, his assistant, gallantly aided by the Chairman, who rose to offer her his arm, descended the steps from the stage into the auditorium to a rustle of anticipation from the audience.

  She moved up the aisle, stopping here and there to collect an item from individual members of the public which she held up for the rest of the audience to observe, addressing Rakoczi as she did so with various casual remarks in a strong contralto voice which also had a foreign accent, in her case more French than Transylvanian.

  ‘What do I have here, Maestro?’ she demanded, holding up a gentleman’s gold pocket watch and letting it spin gently at the end of its chain. ‘Oh, come!’ she protested when he hesitated. ‘It is a simple question. We are all waiting for the answer.’

  Rakoczi lifted his hands to his face, pressing his fingers theatrically against his temples as if trying to concentrate his thoughts.

  ‘I zee somezing gold,’ he said at last. ‘Round and shining. It iz hanging from a chain. Iz it a gentleman’s vatch?’

  ‘Can you tell me anything more about it?’ his assistant persisted as the audience began to murmur its amazement.

  ‘There are initials engraved on it,’ Rakoczi continued.

  ‘What initials are they? Let me have your answer!’

  Again the fingers were pressed against the temples.

  ‘I zee a J and an F.’

  ‘Is he correct?’ the lady assistant enquired, turning to the owner of the watch, who rose to his feet greatly astonished.

  ‘Indeed he is,’ the gentleman announced. ‘My name is John Franklin. Those are my initials.’

  There was an outburst of applause, which Rakoczi acknowledged with a bow as his assistant moved to another member of the audience.

  Altogether, Rakoczi correctly identified five more objects – a signet ring, a black silk scarf, a pair of spectacles, a silver bracelet and, as the pièce de résistance, a lady’s silk purse embroidered with roses, which he not only described in detail but named the number and the type of coins it contained.

  During this mind-reading demonstration, I found my attention being drawn more and more to the Count rather than to his assistant, despite her more obvious charms, although Rakoczi, standing there centre stage in his black and white apparel, was himself a compelling figure. There was, however, something else about him which fascinated me. I felt I had met him somewhere before, quite where or when I could not remember. All the same, there was a disturbingly familiar quality about some of his movements rather than his features or his bearing.

  I was still puzzling over this when the performance finished and the lady assistant returned to the stage, where Rakoczi, divested of his velvet mask, took her by the hand and, leading her towards the footlights, bowed with her to thunderous applause from the audience.

  Hardly had the heavy curtains been drawn across the stage than Holmes got to his feet.

  ‘Come along, Watson,’ he whispered urgently. ‘It is time we left.’

  Giving me no opportunity to protest that there were two turns still to be performed before the end of the programme, a unicyclist and a famous soubrette well-known for her comic Cockney songs, who was top of the bill,11 he hurried towards the exit, leaving me with no other option but to stumble after him.

  ‘Where are we going now, Holmes?’ I asked as I caught up with him outside the theatre, for it was clear from the purposeful manner in which he strode up the street that he had a specific destination in mind.

  ‘To the stage-door,’ he replied briskly.

  ‘But why there?’ I asked, much mystified by his answer.

  ‘To interview Count Rakoczi, of course,’ he retorted, as if the explanation were obvious.

  The s
tage-door, a dingy entrance poorly lit by a single gas flare, was situated in an alleyway which ran alongside the theatre. Once inside, we found ourselves facing a small, booth-like office with an open hatchway, behind which the doorkeeper, an elderly, bad-tempered looking man smelling strongly of ale, kept guard, who, from his glowering expression, seemed determined to refuse any request we might make. However, a florin soon weakened his resolve and he agreed to deliver one of Holmes’ cards, on which he had scribbled a short note, to Count Rakoczi’s dressing-room.

  Shortly afterwards he returned to conduct us to this room, where we found Rakoczi standing facing the door as we entered, a look of acute anxiety on his face.

  He had stripped off his stage persona, not just the evening clothes, which he had substituted for a shabby red dressing-gown, but also the appurtenances of his physical appearance, including the pallid complexion, the curly black mustachios and pointed beard together with the jet-black hair. He stood before us totally transformed from the dashing figure he had presented on the stage to a very ordinary man with reddish hair and a slightly undershot chin.

  ‘Mr Gaunt!’ I exclaimed out loud.

  Those restless eyes which I had noticed at the Nonpareil Club darted from Holmes to me and then back again to Holmes, while one hand went up in a characteristic gesture to pull nervously at the lapel of his dressing-gown.

  ‘You received my card and read the note, I assume?’ Holmes remarked in a pleasant voice which nevertheless held a touch of menace. When Gaunt failed to reply, Holmes continued. ‘I have several courses of action open to me, Mr Gaunt. I could go straight to the police or alternatively I could inform Mr Sinclair or the manager of this theatre of your criminal activities. Any of these choices could lead to your arrest and imprisonment. Alternatively, I could leave you to remedy the situation yourself without my interference.’