by John Hall
‘Find out, if you’re so clever!’
Holmes shrugged, and nodded to old Jakob, who had appeared with a length of rope. ‘Tie this fellow up, would you? And the other two as well. Watson, we must search the house.’
We tried a couple of rooms, before finding a door which was locked. Holmes started back to search our prisoners for the key, but by this time von Gratz and Markus had joined us, and Markus gave the door a single glance, then raised his boot and simply kicked it in.
‘It would have been the work of moment to find the key, and thus do no damage,’ said Holmes mildly. To which Markus replied that damaging the property of a kidnapper and traitor did not weigh heavily upon his conscience.
We entered the room, and found it occupied by a man who sat tied to a chair. Holmes quickly cut the ropes which bound him, and asked, ‘Mr Godfrey Norton?’
‘I am, sir. And who may I thank for this timely rescue?’
‘I am Sherlock Holmes, and –’
‘Ah! I have heard of you, Mr Holmes, from my wife. And this, I take it, is Doctor Watson? I am delighted to meet you, sir.’ Godfrey Norton was a tall young man, handsome, and with a firm handshake, although his face bore signs of his recent ordeal.
‘And this is Colonel von Gratz.’
‘Again, I know the name, sir, though I have not the honour of your acquaintance.’
‘And Captain Markus,’ Holmes finished.
‘It is an unfeigned pleasure to meet you all, sirs,’ said Norton. ‘As indeed it would have been, even if the circumstances – oh, Irene!’ And he broke off, his face lighting up with sheer joy as he looked beyond us to the doorway.
We turned, all of us at once, to see Mrs Norton standing there, her face mirroring the delight that shone from her husband’s countenance.
‘Godfrey! Are you well? They have not harmed you? Oh, Mr Holmes, gentlemen, how can I thank you properly?’ Mrs Norton came into the room, and threw her arms around her husband. ‘Mr Holmes, I know that you wanted me to wait in the carriage, but I could not. You are not too angry with me?’
‘Not at all, madam. Indeed, I was just about to call you in and reunite you with Mr Norton.’
‘How very touching!’ came a sneering voice behind us.
‘Karl!’ cried Mrs Norton, looking beyond us.
We swung round, to see Karl von Ormstein standing there, a revolver pointed at us. We had now relaxed our vigilance, thinking that we had been successful, and so we were totally unprepared for this latest shock. Both Holmes and Markus instinctively reached for their pistols, but Karl told them, ‘I should not try it, gentlemen.’
‘How on earth did you get here?’ I asked him.
‘I followed you, of course.’
‘Ah!’ said Holmes. ‘I thought as much, but when nothing happened, I told myself that I was being fanciful. More to the point, what are you doing here? You have lost the game, you know.’
‘Up to a point,’ said Karl, with an air of reluctant agreement. ‘I began to suspect that all was not well shortly after my meeting with the good doctor here. I examined the plate, just to be certain, and noticed that it was not the same one – there had been a minor blemish in the real plate. So I followed you, and paid Maurice a visit. We had a little – talk – in the course of which he told me his part in all this. I checked the plate you had given him, and saw at once that it was still not the genuine article! And so, Maurice having told me where Mr Norton was hidden, I took a special train, and got here only an hour or so after you did. Does that explain matters?’
‘It still does not tell us why you are here,’ Holmes pointed out. ‘If you hope to seize the real plate, you will be disappointed, for it is broken into a hundred fragments.’
Karl nodded. ‘An elementary precaution.’
‘And, since your confederate Gottfried can no longer aspire to the throne –’
‘Or, indeed, to anything else,’ Karl put in. ‘Once I had seen the second counterfeit plate, I paid Gottfried a little visit. Neither he nor Maurice will trouble the king again.’
‘You scoundrel!’ said von Gratz.
‘Oh, come now! Were you not going to advise the king to have them arrested, banished, perhaps even executed? I have merely saved you the trouble,’ said Karl.
Von Gratz said, ‘There may yet be a way out of all this. The king has said that he wished to speak to you, and I am sure that some continuation of the old arrangement might be –’
‘He wants to buy me off, you mean? As my father did?’ Karl laughed. ‘It is too late for that. And in any case, though the king might overlook my actions, the people and the council would never agree, not after the deaths of Gottfried and Maurice, little though either will be missed. And for good measure, I have already made some provision for my immediate future, for although both Gottfried and Maurice had houses and lands which I cannot hope to touch, they were both cautious men, and both had some considerable portable wealth, which I have appropriated since they cannot use it now.’
‘So it is revenge and nothing more?’ asked Holmes.
‘Your grasp of the situation is admirable. And I think I shall start with you, Mr Holmes.’
As he spoke, Karl moved his revolver to point it directly at Holmes, and I clearly saw his finger tighten on the trigger. Suddenly, Godfrey Norton leapt forward, not towards Karl, but directly in front of Holmes, shielding him. At that instant Karl fired, and Norton gave a grunt and collapsed.
Several things happened at once. Holmes made to leap at Karl, but stumbled over the body of the unfortunate Norton. I pulled out my revolver, and von Gratz also found his. But Mrs Norton moved faster than any of us; she threw herself at Karl, who swung his pistol round and fired at her, once, twice, and she fell to the floor.
Then von Gratz and I fired at the same time. I shot Karl only once, but von Gratz emptied his pistol, firing again and again at Karl even as he too slumped to the floor.
‘Watson? Are they badly injured?’ Holmes asked me, as I rushed to the inert form of Mrs Norton.
A single glance told me all I needed to know. ‘She is dead, Holmes.’
‘And Norton?’
‘I fear that he too is beyond my help.’
Holmes shook his head. ‘We had just been introduced, yet he gave his life to save mine. Who could have thought it?’
Evidently not Norton himself, I thought, for there was a distinct look of surprise upon his face. What had prompted him to act in such a fashion, I asked myself. Had he thought of what he did, or was it merely some primitive instinct? Whatever the reason, it was indeed the act of a brave man.
‘And Karl?’ Holmes’s voice recalled me to the present.
There was no need for me to examine Karl. His body, riddled with bullets and soaked with blood, told its own tale.
Holmes shook his head again. ‘This is not the ending I had foreseen, Watson.’
‘None of us could have predicted it,’ said von Gratz. ‘But at any rate, the king is safe, and so is all Bohemia.’
‘That is something, I suppose,’ said Holmes, as he turned away, a look of sadness on his face.
TWELVE
The two coffins lay side by side, their lids open. I glanced inside the first, to see the body of the unfortunate Godfrey Norton, a look of surprise still upon his face. Upon his chest were the broad ribbon and the star that marked the Grand Cordon of the Order of Saint Wenceslas. I gazed in silence for a moment. ‘A brave man, Holmes.’
‘Indeed he was.’
I stayed a moment longer, then moved to the other coffin, which bore the form of Mrs Norton. Again, the ribbon and star had been placed in the coffin, together with a single red rose. I shook my head sadly and then looked at Holmes, who was by my side.
He nodded to the attendant, and we walked slowly out, blinking in the spring sunshine, while behind us the lids were screwed down.
I said, ‘You know, Holmes, so often I have said that “one thing puzzles me” about our cases.’
He smiled thinly. �
�And what puzzles you about this one?’
‘A small point, but it niggles. Why did Gottfried and Karl leave the safety of the castle and return to the city, where they were in much greater danger?’
‘I have considered that myself, and I can only suppose that they feared a siege.’
‘A siege?’
‘It was always the one danger facing even the stoutest castle. If the king had sent a couple of regiments, invested the castle so that nobody could leave it alive –’
‘Then they could not have used the photograph!’
Holmes nodded. ‘The whole point of the photograph was that it must be available to show to the King of Scandinavia. Effectively locked inside the castle, safer than any bank strongroom, it would have been no threat. They might have plenty of food, and there is probably a well inside the castle grounds, but what of that, if they could not get out to use the photograph? The king did not plan a siege, of course, but Gottfried and Karl could not know that.’
‘Indeed, I am surprised that none of us thought of surrounding the castle, Holmes. It would have saved a good deal of trouble!’
He gave me a sidelong glance. ‘One cannot always think of the obvious, Watson. A pity, perhaps, as you say, for it might have saved the lives of the Nortons.’ And he walked on in silence.
There were but the four of us at the grave side a little later that day; the king, von Gratz, Holmes and myself. When the brief ceremony was done, von Gratz saluted the graves, bowed to the king, and returned to the carriage.
‘Mr Holmes?’
‘A moment, Your Majesty. I shall perhaps make my own way back,’ said Holmes, staring in silence at the graves.
The king nodded. ‘Doctor?’
‘Ah, yes, sire.’ I followed the king, realizing that Holmes wanted a moment to himself.
I did not venture to break the silence, but the king evidently had that urge to talk which sometimes comes at such sad times. ‘You saw the insignia of the Order?’ he asked me. ‘I placed them there myself.’
‘A truly royal gesture, sire.’
He waved this away. ‘The least I could do, Doctor. And, alas, the most! Would that it were otherwise.’
‘It would have been much appreciated, Your Majesty.’ Emboldened, I added, ‘And I suspect that perhaps the red rose left in Mrs Norton’s coffin would have been even more highly esteemed.’
The king stopped, turned, and stared at me. ‘Red rose?’ said he. ‘I left no red rose.’
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