by Bill Peschel
“Can you describe the mysterious treasure?” I asked.
“We always call it the ‘Maltese Cross,’ although it is not exact to that shape. A huge diamond shines in the centre, and one of smaller dimensions on each of the eight extreme corners. The gold between is richly set with rubies, I am told that its value is incredible, but in appearance it is of crude Oriental design, and bears a Persian inscription, which means ‘The homage of the wise is worthy of reward.’ For its value it is extremely light.
“I might add that whenever a suitably strong room can be secured, and this is usually demanded on some pretext or another, the Maltese Cross is taken out of its case, mounted on a special pedestal and exposed to open day as much as possible all the time the team is in the field. This, it is believed, or half-believed, gives full range to its strange powers.
“Mr. Warner has been fortunate enough to secure a room at the Cricket Ground on the second floor of the pavilion, which he has strengthened by adding certain locks specially devised. This room has the advantage of a window looking out on the ground from which the team can almost see the sparkle of the stones.
“Yesterday, which as you know, was the second day of the third Test match, the jewel was exposed as usual. At six o’clock, when he went to lock the jewels up, they had vanished absolutely. The locks and the door were apparently untouched, and the window could hardly have been entered in full view of the team, and the thousands of spectators. The only trace of intrusion was that a vase of flowers had been knocked, and that in the place of the Maltese Cross was a small stiletto, a gold-edged monocle, and a letter.”
“Where are these things?” asked Holmes.
“I have them,” replied Ashcroft, and he carefully drew from his pocket an envelope which he handed to Holmes. The latter took out a sheet of paper and laid it on the table. Then a rather elegant monocle with its cord twisted round the smallest stiletto I ever saw. The blade was finer than that of a bootmaker’s awl, and the handle was not as thick as a pocket knife.
Holmes was placing a finger on its point when the young man jumped up excitedly, “Take care, it’s poisoned—read the letter,” he said.
Holmes took up the letter and read it out.
“To the next warden of the infamous jewel.
“By the time this will be read by other eyes than mine, Mr. Warner will be dead. Others will follow until at last no man will dare to keep this bloodstained trinket. Why? Before I was born my father, who was attached to the suite of Governor-General of India, was imprisoned because it was believed he had stolen this jewel. In two months, the disgrace and containment killed him. My mother became insane, and a month later I was born in the Calcutta Lunatic Asylum. Into the embryo of my brain was indelibly stamped the horror of this jewel, and the years of my life have deepened the desire for revenge. That is why you’ll find Warner with a poisoned dagger in his back. I have wealth, power, and knowledge to aid me in the chase. If you will take warning by his fate, sink this cursed Cross in the deepest parts of the sea. If you do not the fate of Warner awaits you.—I remain,
“Your Assassin.”
“Has any attempt been made on Warner’s life?”
“None at all, Mr. Holmes. It is thought that the madman must have managed to enter the room in the hope of assassinating Warner, and was prevented, or changed his mind through some unknown event, and decided to carry away the Maltese Cross and destroy it.
I need not tell you that this treasure is only placed with Mr. Warner by way of trust, he will pay almost any amount to recover it. If this could be done without the team knowing that it has ever been lost their playing will not be disturbed.”
“Are any of the team suspected of—”
“Mr. Warner told me to impress on you that you must exhaust every other means of inquiry before you consider the possibility of any player being concerned. For one thing, he will stake his life on their innocence, and for another such inquiry would create a scandal, and ruin the tour.”
“Has the secret been well-kept?” queried Holmes.
“Absolutely, of that I am certain,” replied the young man. “It is the deepest point of honour with the whole team, and their feeling is moreover strengthened by a dread of the ridicule likely to follow were it known with what reverence this symbol of good fortune is regarded.”
“If you will excuse us now,” said Holmes, “we will join you in ten minutes, and take a cab out to the scene of the robbery.”
The young man withdrew, and Holmes hastily rummaged in his trunks for a microscope, some finely graded compasses, and other tools of his trade which I had fondly hoped were left behind in Baker-street.
“Have you any possible answer to the problem?” I asked.
“It is too early in the game for that yet,” he said; “but one thing I do know, I confess to very little liking for our friend, Mr. Harvey Ashcroft.”
“Why?”
“I do not like thee, Dr. Fell, no other particular reason.”
A quick drive through the bright mid-summer Australian day took us out to the fine temples which sport-loving Sydney has erected to its favourite deity of cricket. We climbed the staircase to the place where the robbery occurred, an isolated, strongly guarded little room with no furniture other than a table decorated with four or five vases of flowers (one of which was overturned) surrounding a handsome copper pedestal some eighteen inches high. On top of this lay a jewel case, open and empty.
Holmes glanced round quickly. “Good,” he muttered, “it is all undisturbed. The tracks have not been blundered over by dozens of heavy-footed dust-scattering policemen.”
From the moment he entered the room the man had been transfigured. His eyebrows set in a hard, straight line, from under which his eyes glittered with unnatural brilliance. With quickness and care he glided about the room with microscope and compass. The window sill, the door, the table, he examined with extreme preciseness, only answering with an impatient snarl any question or suggestion we made to him. Holmes, the indolent sea-passenger, the lazy violinist, the cocaine-taker, had been transformed into Holmes the sleuth-hound, the unerring Prince of Detectives.
For an hour he examined and measured before he was satisfied. Finally, he unscrewed the locks of the doors, and placed them in the bag. These, with the jewel case and a glossy feather which lay on the table, were the only articles he took away with him. He dismissed Mr. Harvey Ashcroft after making an appointment with him for the next day at ten o’clock, and Holmes and I returned in a cab to the Hotel Metropole together.
The journey passed in absolute silence, and I could see my friend had come across a problem subtle enough to call forth all his powers.
After the evening meal we retired to our room, and Holmes threw himself into his chair, and lighting his pipe, plunged into a concentrated reverie.
“This case, Watson, promises to be interesting. It is quite a five-pipe problem. By the way, would you mind getting me every Sydney paper of recent date you can lay your hand on.”
By the aid of a few shillings in tips to the maids, I managed to discover thirty or forty papers, and with these I returned. Holmes had unscrewed the locks, and was examining them minutely with his microscope. He took the papers without a word and threw himself again into his chair. Paper after paper he glanced through, stopping now and then to tear out a paragraph that interested him. When I finally retired to rest he was sitting huddled up among the cushions, his black clay pipe between his thin lips, like the beak of some uncanny bird of prey.
When morning came, I found him still seated in the chair, but at my footstep he rose quickly.
“Watson, I don’t like imposing on your good nature, but I should be grateful if you would ring up the book shops and ask them to send me every reliable book on Australian Natural History they have in stock.”
“What, have you found a clue?”
“I think I am on the track, but after my error in the affair of the Bizelmo patent, I will keep my conjectures quiet a little longe
r. For the present, I am about to indulge in a study of Australian fauna.”
After breakfast, he retired to study the books I had ordered, and I could see by the expression of his face that he was well satisfied with the results of his labours.
“We will call a cab, Watson, drive to a theatrical costumer, and then we go to pay a visit to the man who stole the Maltese Cross. Mr. Harvey Ashcroft, I am afraid, will have to call again. I shall narrate the case as we go along.”
From the costumier’s, Holmes emerged as a greasy loafer, and it took some argument on my part to induce the cabman to allow him to enter the cab again. We next drove to a brummagem jewellery shop, where Holmes instructed me to lay out ten shillings in the purchasing of glittering trinkets. The next directions he gave to the driver were, “Sydney Cricket Ground.”
“In the first place,” said Holmes, “that letter which was written to throw detective off the scent, gave me valuable assistance. For all the pretentions of wealth by the writer, and notwithstanding his insinuations of madness, it was plain to me that it was written by a man of extreme poverty, so poor as to be forced to use home-made furniture, but at the same time an exceedingly sane and clever man. That letter, I must say greatly increased my respect for the possibilities of Australian crime.”
“How did you deduce all this?”
“The paper on which the letter was written showed various lines where the pen had gone through it as if there were cracks in whatever it had rested upon. Moreover, in pressing down the paper to blot it, it showed the imprint of splinters and roughness. Adhering to it were particles of jam and other stains of food. Our man is probably a bachelor living by himself. No woman would allow her dining table to get into such a mess. Men of means also do not write with ink that obviously cost no more than a penny a bottle. The paper was smudged with the mark of a finger that had recently pressed down a pipe and from the ash, a matter as you know I have exhaustively studied, I ascertained that our friend is forced to be extremely economical in the price of that luxury. If so much was fraud, it was probable that the whole letter was a fabrication. No madman wrote that letter, anyway. Poverty was the incentive and robbery, not murder, the object.
“But the centre of the whole matter was that feather. The door had not been forced, and those locks bore no marks of a skeleton key; in fact, I am doubtful if they would have yielded to any such handling. The window I was inclined to favour, but I soon dismissed it as out of the question. By the way, when I read the papers there was one fact I noticed which slightly impressed me at the time. There have recently been a number of robberies around Moore Park of jewels and other objects, many of which would be apparently useless to any thief.
“But, and here was the remarkable point, every one of them was from rooms on the upper floor, in every case a window had been left open, but in no case were there signs of any person having entered. A further study of those papers you were kind enough to secure made all these facts more apparent than ever. The feather lit up the darkness, a peculiar feather with a sheen and color I knew belonged to a bird imported from England. Hence the study of Australian Natural History. You might read up the habits of the Bower Bird, Watson, it has possibilities for crime when properly trained that would make a trade in these parts with some of my London friends a paying speculation. It delights in picking up bright objects, glass, shells, jewellery, and carries them to its haunts. This was the gentleman unless we pursue the unlikely hypothesis that the thief happened to carry such unusual objects about with him.
“From the window of the cricket pavilion I noticed a number of rookeries or huts made of tins or bags. Just the sort of places to give that admirable letter its birthmarks. It was right in the centre of all the shrubberies. There we go to find our man and his trained bird. To add the last link, I am going round the huts trying to sell brummagem jewellery. It is a long shot, but I expect our friend has trained his net by the use of such toys as these to select similar articles from the dressing tables of the rooms he enters.”
“There is one important point left unexplained,” I said when he had completed from such slight and unusual data so extraordinary a superstructure of logic. “How do you account for the presence of the monocle, the note and the stiletto in the room?”
“My dear fellow, you have chosen the very points which instead of disturbing, helped me to form my theory. I was confident that almost every fact in the letter was a fable, and was written with the purpose of throwing suspicion right off the trail. It was the converse of the truth. It stated the miscreant was rich. I am certain he is poor, that he was mad instead of sane, and hated the jewel instead of desiring it. It was obviously a case of hiding the trail and overdoing it. The monocle was left for two reasons: the theory of wealth and to help to convey the impression that a man had been in the room. It is a constant practice of mine not to let the probably altogether override the merely possible in formulating my theories. When I investigated that stiletto there were three points which struck me—firstly the blade was not poisoned at all. Secondly, without poison the weapon was too light to be useful, and thirdly, the cord had been purposely twisted round the hand. It was not an accidental tangle. See how admirably it all fits in the bird theory—light that it may be carried through the air, tied together to enable the three articles to be carried in the beak. When further the newspapers stated that at each of the other robberies, a small light object was always left behind by the thing. I knew I was on firm ground. It was the method of the bird’s training, he flew away with one article, and returned with another.
“But how do you account for a man such as the owner of the bird having any knowledge of the Maltese Cross?”
“Watson, you are as unimaginative as Lestrade. This is a world of strange chances. A man may be a member of an English cricket team one year and a vagabond in less than another twelve months. You remember the affair of the Sikasi Sisters? Besides, I have little faith in secrets which are shared by eleven men each year.”
We left the cab near the Cricket Ground, and Holmes wandered on down amongst the strange population of outcast men and women that live in the bushes at the back of the Show Grounds. In about an hour, Holmes returned.
“I have found where my man lives. A strange, evil-looking company, Watson, are these inhabitants of Tin and Bagville. Secretive men, not given to babbling to strangers. They tell me, however, that ‘There’s a bloke in the last humpy what’s—fond of—jewellery.” He has gone to town, but will return in the morning, loaded with many bottles and will make merry for several days. We will call on him in the morning, threaten him with the police and get the name of the receiver to whom for a few pounds he has sold the goods, call on that gentleman, threaten police again, and restore Mr. Warner his jewels. Tonight, we visit the opera.”
At about nine the next morning a servant informed us that there was a “cadger” down below that wanted to see Mr. Holmes very particular, but she herself was of the opinion it would be wiser not to see him. Holmes had no such prejudices. “Show him up,” he said.
A dirty individual in greasy moleskins entered the room holding out a letter. “For you, Holmes,” I said.
This was the note—
Dear Mr. Holmes,
This is the man that stole the Cross. How he did it or how you discovered it was he, I do not know, but between a clever thief and a cleverer detective, I, by the simple process of following you when you visited his camp, reaped the benefit of your combined brains. I am willing to bet £2,000 to a gooseberry you won’t find me. I was formerly known to you as “Slim Jim,” the best pupil of the late Professor Moriarty, but for the present I remain.—Yours truly,
Harvey Ashcroft
The man who brought the note interposed an ingratiating whine.
“The bloke that give that letter says you’d shout for a cove. Says you’d be glad to hear from an old pal.”
“That’ll do,” said Holmes, “drop that lingo. You are an educated man, and can talk correct English if yo
u like. Bye the bye, you have a bird in your hut that I’ve taken a liking to. If you don’t bring him to me I’ll whisper a tale to the police that will send you where work is hard and drinks are few.”
Among the few relics of our Australian tour there hangs in Holmes’ lodging a Bower Bird, the only pet I ever knew my eccentric friend to keep.
The Adventure of the Dorrington Ruby Seal
John Kendrick Bangs
If there is a presiding spirit over the 223B Casebook, it would be John Kendrick Bangs (1862-1922). Over his long career as editor, writer, and lecturer, he repeatedly returned to Holmes, always with a touch of light humor that made him a popular favorite in America.
This time, we meet Raffles Holmes, the son of Sherlock and grandson of Raffles. Like his father, his stories are related by a Watson, in this case a writer known only as Jenkins. Bangs wrote eight stories about Raffles Holmes’ exploits, which were collected in R. Holmes & Co. In this excerpt, Jenkins first encounters Raffles when he wakes in the middle of the night to find the burglar seated before his fireplace, paging through his book contracts. After revealing his illustrious ancestry, Raffles tells how he came to be.
