Sherlock Holmes--The Devil's Dust

by James Lovegrove

  Holmes caught the landlord’s eye and raised a finger. “Another pint of porter for my friend here.”

  “I will not be bribed,” the man said. “I have heard you asking after a certain member of our profession who’s been following up a lead over Notting Hill way. I am in no mood to help.”

  “Here is your beer anyway,” Holmes said as the glass of thick black liquid arrived. At his invitation, I handed the landlord threepence. “You would not do me the discourtesy of spurning it, would you?”

  The man, whose name I regret to say I failed to enshrine in my notes, eyed the drink keenly. Thirst overcoming scruples, he picked it up and took a deep draught.

  Wiping foam from his lips with his sleeve, he said, “I am still not prepared to talk. I am not some snitch to be plied with booze until my tongue loosens.”

  “Quite, quite,” said Holmes.

  “A stranger comes into this pub, free with his money, wanting to know about a journalist – it does not sit well with some of us. Do you see? It inclines some of us towards distrust.”

  “I fully understand. You are a betting man, are you not?”

  “What’s it to you if I am?” His eyes narrowed. “How can you tell, anyway?”

  “A fragment of torn-up betting slip poking out from your breast pocket is ample evidence. You have had bad luck at the racetrack lately.” Holmes brandished my half-crown. “This might help bring about a reversal of fortune. What do you say?”

  The man studied the coin even more thirstily than he had the beer. He cast a glance around him. Then he snatched the half-crown from Holmes’s grasp, slipped it into a pocket, and, in a low voice, said, “Dan Greensmith. That’s who you’re after. Daniel Greensmith is his name, but Dan to all of us. ‘Daring Dan’ we call him, owing to how intrepid he can be in his reporting – reckless, even.”

  Holmes said nothing, but there was a glint of satisfaction in his eyes.

  “It so happens Dan mentioned something to me just last week relating to Notting Hill,” the man went on. “Something about how he was venturing there shortly to meet a contact. Big story, he said. Potentially very big.”

  “A story of what nature?”

  “Ah, there I can’t help you. Us journalists, we aren’t in the habit of telling one another the details of anything we’re working on – especially if it’s juicy. We’re not exactly the honourable sort. I don’t mean me necessarily. I mean journalists as a species. Competitive is putting it mildly. We’d sell our own mothers for a front-page exclusive. If you’re on to something and you give a fellow hack even a hint about what it involves, you can bet he’ll nip in and steal it from under your nose if he can. It’s a basic rule of the job: keep your story your story. You learn it as a cub reporter and you don’t deviate from it, not if you want to get ahead in this business.”

  “So Greensmith did not even name the contact?”

  “No. All I know is the fellow came to Dan with some kind of exposé, and Dan was after it like a bloodhound.”

  “Where might one find Greensmith?” Holmes asked. “Would you happen to know where he lives?”

  “Southwark, I believe, but I don’t have an address for him. Someone official at The Times might be more use to you in that regard. What I do know is that he’s a regular here.” The man’s brow furrowed somewhat. “But I haven’t seen him for several days. Usually you can rely on him to be around in the saloon, holding court. The sociable type, is Dan Greensmith. Wit and raconteur. If he’s away for that long, it can only mean that he’s gone deep.”

  “Deep?”

  “When he sinks his teeth into something, professional-wise, Dan won’t let go. He loses sight of everything but the story. Doesn’t happen every day, but when it does, that’s it, Dan’s obsessed, to the exclusion of all else. That’s what I mean by ‘deep’. Immersed, like.”

  “Remind you of anyone?” I murmured to Holmes, who affected not to hear the barb.

  “Absent from the known world until he surfaces again,” the journalist continued. “He’ll even don disguises if it suits his needs.”

  “The resemblances mount,” I murmured again.

  “Disguises?” said Holmes.

  The man deliberated. “Well, you’ve paid for it. Might as well give you your money’s worth. I know for a fact that one of Dan’s most frequently used aliases is that of a petty crook. He’ll dress himself all scruffy, put a patch over one eye, grubby up his face so it looks like he hasn’t had a wash for a week, and then he’ll amble on over to the seedier parts of town so as to ask questions of the denizens there. Calls himself Black Jack Corcoran when he’s out and about like that. Speaks the lingo of the lower orders – policemen are ‘bluebottles’, handcuffs are ‘ruffles’, and so on – and passes amongst the felon fraternity like he’s one of their own. That’s one reason why he’s Daring Dan. Imagine if he got caught out. Imagine what those people would do to him if they discovered he’d been shining them on all this time.” The journalist shuddered. “Hardly bears thinking about.”

  “Might Greensmith be availing himself of his Black Jack Corcoran persona right now?”

  The man shrugged his shoulders. “Can’t say. Maybe. Wouldn’t surprise me. On the whole, see, it’s your criminal who has his ear to the ground. Dan knows that. We all do. If you want to find out what’s really going on, ask a crook. The crook sees more than your average, law-abiding citizen ever will. The crook’s antennae are sensitive to comings and goings, things being where they should or shouldn’t be, the city’s undercurrents, the secrets in the shadows. Most of us are reluctant to get down there in the dirt and scavenge. Reluctant or too scared. Not Dan. He positively relishes it. He’s a mudlark of the criminal demimonde. Oh, fancy that. My glass seems to be empty again all of a sudden.”

  He looked quizzically at Holmes, who in turn looked quizzically at me.

  With yet another pint of porter in his hand, the journalist fulfilled Holmes’s request for a physical description of Greensmith. By now he was being positively accommodating. Whether it was the drink or something else, I could not tell, but his curmudgeonliness of earlier was gone. I wondered if he was in fact a rather lonely man. Here he was, after all, in a busy pub, surrounded by comrades, but they seemed to shun him, like something tainted. He reeked of failure. Perhaps they did not want to be contaminated by him. And perhaps, in Sherlock Holmes, he was simply glad to have found someone to talk to.

  “About your height, maybe an inch or two shy,” he said. “In his thirties. Darkish hair. Quite a conk on him, but not sharp like yours. He’s fond of a drink – who isn’t? – and his nose shows it, all lumpy and red and mottled. What else? I wouldn’t call him handsome but he has a certain way about him. Suave. When he’s not playing the role of a wrong ’un, that is.” The man mused for a moment, then said, “That’s the lot. Can’t think of anything else.”

  “You have been more than useful,” said Holmes. “My thanks.”

  “Maybe…?” The man gestured at his glass, and, with a sigh, I yet again fished in my pocket for change.

  As Holmes and I left the pub, I could see the cogs whirring away in my friend’s brain.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked, but really, in the light of what was to come, my interrogative should have been: “What are you planning?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE PEREGRINATIONS OF BLACK JACK CORCORAN

  What Holmes was planning was made plain to me that night, when he returned home after being out all afternoon and most of the evening. During that period, I was conducting my rounds and was unaware that Holmes had absented himself from 221B Baker Street until I came in at dusk and spoke to Mrs Hudson. She told me that Holmes had departed sometime between two and two-thirty while she was at the shops. He had left her a note to say she should not expect him back by suppertime but should lay out some cold cuts, which he would consume at whatever late hour saw him grace the house with his presence once more.

  Not long after ten, as I was drowsily contemplating
turning in, a man with dirt-besmirched face, ragged clothing and a patch over his left eye shambled into our rooms. I could not help but assume that this was none other than Black Jack Corcoran, Daniel Greensmith’s down-at-heel alter ego, in the flesh. Who else could it be? He fitted the description we had been given by the journalist at the pub. I imagined Holmes had been searching for him, leaving messages in likely venues. Greensmith had got wind of this, and was now paying a call.

  I even addressed the fellow as Greensmith, thinking myself quite clever, whereupon the fellow reached for his bulging, rough-textured nose and tore it away from his face. The action revealed the nose to be an artful confection of theatrical putty which had been hiding the altogether more aquiline proboscis of my friend.

  “Holmes!” I cried.

  “Of course it is I,” said Holmes. “How could you not have realised that? Does Greensmith have a key to the front door? Could he have let himself in?”

  “Well, no,” I allowed. “I was taken by surprise, that’s all. I wasn’t thinking straight. The disguise is fairly convincing,” I added defensively. “You do not look at all like you.”

  “So I should hope. Ah! Food. I am famished.”

  Holmes fell upon the dish of cold cuts, which he washed down with a snifter of brandy.

  “I have had a most fascinating time,” said he when his hunger was sated. “Would you care to hear about it?”

  I made a gesture as though to say, “Be my guest.”

  “The East End is no place for a gentleman,” Holmes began, “but for a ruffian such as Black Jack Corcoran, whose face is known there and who speaks like one to the Cockney manner born, it fits as cosily as a cashmere glove. Someone else’s cashmere glove, for Corcoran has a reputation as a notorious pickpocket, so I have learned. A ‘mobsman’ or ‘cly faker’, to use the local slang. I say reputation because I find it hard to believe Dan Greensmith genuinely steals.”

  “Yes, just imagine if he were caught in the act. A police arrest would do little for his professional prospects. Thievery is thievery, whether or not it is in service of a false identity. He would be finished as a journalist.”

  “Nonetheless somehow he has promulgated rumours that he is a cutpurse, and a superior one. As Dan Greensmith he remains a law-abiding citizen but as Black Jack Corcoran he has residents of the East End convinced he is some sort of master criminal, his skill at ‘dipping’ second to none.”

  “He has clearly spent some while cultivating this persona.”

  “And done it well. Reportedly he is, too, rather free with his ‘uxter’ – that’s money, Watson – which inclines the locals to look favourably on him.”

  “Better to be free with one’s own money than with someone else’s,” I said under my breath.

  “What’s that, old fellow?”

  “Nothing. Pray, carry on.”

  Holmes resumed his account. “It was no mean feat pretending to be someone I have never met. I trusted that Black Jack’s distinctive appearance – the eyepatch in particular – would be so recognisable in itself that people would overlook any differences between my impersonation and Greensmith’s own. I was disabused of that notion fairly rapidly. I received numerous looks askance when I introduced myself. Anyone who knew Black Jack seemed uncertain that this was the same man.”

  “Which of course it was not.”

  “I was even challenged once or twice. Some wary individual would proclaim that my voice had changed or that I did not seem as stooped as normal. I would supply some excuse to account for the discrepancy, then make myself scarce. It was a process of trial and error. With each of these encounters I learned a little more about how Black Jack comported himself and I would adapt my performance accordingly. Soon enough I had it down pat. The voice, the mannerisms, the slope-shouldered shuffle with which he walked – to all intents and purposes I was Black Jack.”

  “But why?” I asked. “What did you hope to accomplish?”

  “Any titbits of data I could acquire about Black Jack, and hence about Greensmith, would have been welcome,” said Holmes. “To that end I frequented many a tavern and bought many a drink for a stranger. Black Jack, as I have said, is renowned as a ‘soft touch’. He can always be relied upon to reach a hand into his pocket at the bar. He is also happy to lend a sixpence here or there to those who claim to be in need, and never calls in the debt.”

  “Thus does Greensmith gain the confidence of the underclass with whom he mingles.”

  “And in return is rewarded with useful information.”

  “And were you?”

  “I am now somewhat wiser about a number of misdemeanours that have aroused my interest of late. The matter of the Bermondsey costermonger, for instance, who appears to have two right hands, and the macabre business of the Limehouse undertaker, the cat fancier’s wife and the missing gold teeth. When I have more time, I shall follow up on the revelations that have been vouchsafed to me and convey my findings to the authorities. My principal aim, however, was to see whether I could establish the whereabouts of the other Black Jack Corcoran.”

  “The real one,” I said, adding, “If a sham identity may be described as real.”

  “Through various conversations I was able to piece together a chronicle of Black Jack’s recent activities. Greensmith, it seems, has indeed been parading around the East End in that guise over the past couple of days. His itinerary has been wayward, taking in countless ports of call along the way. He has been a veritable Henry Mayhew in his peregrinations amongst the London poor, interviewing all and sundry. And then…”

  “And then?”

  Holmes rubbed his chin ruminatively. “Then, as of yesterday afternoon, nothing. No sign of him. No reports. Only rumours.”

  “Rumours?”

  “Troubling ones. Intimations that Black Jack is in dire straits. I met more than one person in the borough of Shoreditch, particularly, who was disconcerted to see me. To see Black Jack, that is. ‘I ’eard you was not at liberty,’ said a young wipe-hauler with whom I chatted briefly. A wipe-hauler, Watson, is a pickpocket who specialises in stealing handkerchiefs.”

  “How fortunate I am to have you to translate criminal parlance into plain English for me, Holmes.”

  “I pressed the youngster for more detail, asking him where he had come by that intelligence. ‘Just the word as is goin’ about,’ said he. His tone was harsh and he seemed to want to have nothing to do with me, as if merely by being seen with Black Jack Corcoran he might invite trouble down on his own head. I could not understand why he was so hostile, at least not until I met another youngster, this one a girl about whom the best one can say is that she was experienced beyond her tender years. She was a little more generous with her time, and a little more forthcoming, if no less chary. ‘Ain’t Mr Starkey got ’is ’ooks into you?’ said she. ‘So folks round ’ere is sayin’. If he ain’t yet, I’d do a scoot if I was you, mister, and sharpish. I’ve ’eard tell you’re a blower and Mr Starkey knows it and is gunnin’ for you.’”

  “A blower?”

  “Forgive me, Watson. I thought you had had your fill of my translations. A blower is an informant, someone who ‘peaches’ on his criminal brethren to the police.”

  “My goodness. If Black Jack – or rather, Greensmith – has gained that status somehow…”

  “Then one does not rate his chances of survival, not in that particular milieu. I could not establish beyond doubt whether the accusations against Black Jack were official or merely speculation. Either way, I thought it prudent, at that point, to hasten out of the East End, lest I fall foul of them.”

  “A wise precaution,” I said. “Who is this Starkey of whom the girl spoke? Do you know?”

  “I am afraid I do,” said Holmes. “He is a notorious gang leader who presides over a tenement full of cutthroats and thugs in Shoreditch. It is called the Hive, and Starkey is its queen bee, sitting pretty at the centre whilst his workers and drones go out and do his bidding. There is not a citizen within the vi
cinity who does not live in terror of him and his henchmen. Even the police are afraid to confront him.”

  “Then we can only pray to God that Daniel Greensmith has not wound up in his clutches.”

  “We can do that,” said Holmes, “but we can also do something more practical.”

  “I dread what you are to say next.”

  “If Starkey has indeed ‘got ’is ’ooks’ into Greensmith, then it is beholden upon us to rescue him.”

  I sighed. “That is exactly what I dreaded. And no doubt we must do it sooner rather than later.”

  “No time like the present. I shall unburden myself of this disguise, which has outlived its usefulness. And while I am about that, perhaps you should fetch your—”

  But I was already up and on my way to my bedroom to retrieve my service revolver from its berth in my chest of drawers.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ENCOUNTERS IN THE EAST END

  I had been tired before Holmes returned home, but now I was awake and alert, with apprehension prickling in my belly.

  We journeyed eastward from Baker Street, exchanging our safe, civilised corner of London for the capital’s least desirable region. The haunt of crooks, drunks, vagabonds, outcasts and other elements of the lapsed masses, along with the honest poor, the East End was a place so lawless and wild that somewhere like Notting Hill seemed an oasis of decency by comparison. Anyone with a modicum of respectability, let alone a modicum of common sense, avoided it. Even the police patrolled there in pairs, never singly, and were still not immune from harm. In short, this present venture of ours struck me as foolhardy indeed.

  As if to illustrate the point, our cabman was willing to take us as far as Aldgate Pump but no further. “Even in broad daylight, driving through the East End is more than my life’s worth,” he said. “But at this late hour? You’re on your own, gents. May God go with you.”

  On foot, Holmes and I entered this city within a city. As we forged deeper into its labyrinth, I found my hand straying to my pocket to clasp the butt of my gun. Around us the buildings seemed to glower. The very brickwork exuded menace, like a sweat. Figures darted furtively across our path. At any moment I expected we would be accosted or assaulted. Then there were the bodies which lay sprawled in the gutter. Whether they were insensible or dead, it was hard to tell, but they were obstacles one trod around with distaste, regardless.