Mary, the Blessed Virgin’s namesake, was less naive. “Let us not forget Jezebel.”
“What do you make of it?” rapped Holmes.
“It seems clear to me,” I said. “Another accomplice has her in a sort of noose, with instructions to choke her to death if she and Osbert fail to return in the time allotted.”
Mary’s hand stole to her throat.
Carter spoke up. “I can’t agree. I’ve witnessed hangings. There’s not much gasping at the end of a rope—no room in the trachea for it—just a desperate struggle followed by insensibility, and certainly no time for prayer.”
“Suffocation, then,” said Holmes.
“I’d bet a fiver on it.”
“What monsters!” I exclaimed. “They’ve buried her alive.”
Carter shook his head. “If she’s got an hour of oxygen—on top of the time these mugs spent with us, not counting coming and going—the burial vault would be the size of this room. Criminals are lazy, by and large, or they’d work for their living. I’ve never met one who’d invest the time and labour digging a hole that size.”
Mary said, “If they came here by cab, the driver would know where he picked them up. Scotland Yard—”
“—is methodical, beyond doubt,” finished Holmes. “They might even locate the man by tomorrow morning.”
He and Carter exchanged a glance heavy with meaning. Both men nodded. They went for their hats.
“Come, Watsons,” Holmes barked. “There isn’t time to lose.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Did you not hear what I just said?”
“Watsons?” Mary lifted her brows. “I am to accompany you?”
Carter traded the cumbersome shotgun for a revolver that fit his small sinewy hand. His smile glittered. “Well, sure. We need as many weapons as we can muster.”
He indicated the parasol she was still holding.
We took the Underground. As noon approached, the streets were clogged with hansoms, growlers, dray-wagons, and pedestrians, and at such times the relative discomfort of the subterranean railway is worth twice its price in terms of speed.
The detectives’ expressions were tense. Holmes said, “We mustn’t place too much faith in Señorita Flores’s assessment. The experts themselves seldom agree on matters involving the human lung and cubic feet of air. Not everyone breathes at the same pace.”
“Or at his own, under pressure,” said Carter. “You don’t draw it mild when you’re shut up in a box.”
Mary’s hand gripped mine tightly enough to stop circulation.
The train stopped with maddening regularity, jettisoning and acquiring passengers at station after station. I felt almost like a victim of abduction myself, not knowing our destination and wondering if each name called out by the conductor was our terminus. I expected the detectives to spring to their feet every time we slowed to a halt; but they kept their seats, perched on the edges like cats poised to pounce. Observing their pale, drawn faces, I deemed it inadvisable to ask.
When at last they shot upright, Mary and I exchanged a glance. Instinctively, we knew from the announcement where we were headed.
Holmes and Carter sprinted ahead down the street. We struggled to keep them in sight, Mary on my arm. If we were mistaken, we might have been left inexorably behind, so intent were the detectives upon their race with death.
We did, as a matter of fact, misplace them at one corner, but caught up with them where we’d expected to, before the shuttered ice-cream parlour formerly owned by the late Osbert. But my heart sank when we drew within sight of the front door. The padlock placed upon it by the police was still intact.
Holmes, however, did not hesitate. He grasped the lock and rattled it fiercely, releasing a thin shower of pewter-colored dust: The hasp had been sawn through and plaster and paint applied to make it appear that it still held fast.
“They took no chances,” rapped Carter. “Any passerby might have wandered in out of curiosity and freed their hostage.”
They swung open the door and bolted inside, Mary and I close behind. The store was empty, stripped of its fixtures and furniture, and we were alone in it. But Holmes and Carter went directly to a door at the back, adjacent to the storage room entrance and built of what appeared to be double-reinforced oak, painted so thoroughly in shining white enamel that no space showed between the planks. Oddly, it had a homely familiarity I could not quite place.
Holmes ran his fingers along one edge. “A rubber gasket. It’s the cold room, where the ice cream was stored.”
I knew then what the door had struck in my memory. It resembled the hatch of an icebox. The realisation nearly stopped my heart. If cold could not escape, oxygen could not enter. The room beyond was Lady Jane Chilton’s death-cell.
It, too, was padlocked, this time securely. Holmes clawed from a pocket the small leather case he was never without, containing an assortment of picks and skeleton keys for any occasion.
Carter, less patient, seized a great chunk of hickory that had been leaning against the wall, evidently intended to prop the door open when someone was inside, and swung it with all his might, striking the lock with such force the door jumped in its gasket. Once, twice it banged against the lock. Then Carter planted his feet apart solidly, brought the piece of timber back as far over his right shoulder as he could, took a deep breath, and swung with biblical force, his muscles splitting his Norfolk wide from collar to hem. The lock shattered.
I nearly cheered; but what would we find inside, a lady or a corpse?
XXII.
We Retire the Spoon
“Watson! Quick!”
Holmes’s tone left no room for dispute, even had I wanted to offer any. As Mary and I hurried inside, he and Carter were already bent over something in a far corner of the tiny room, blocking our view of anything but the empty shelves on the walls.
I crossed the floor in a stride, parting the pair roughly, and knelt beside the woman who lay at their feet, a young, slender creature with her strawberry curls in disarray and her fashionable dress soiled for want of a change. Her eyes were closed and she appeared not to be breathing.
I was prepared for the worst—I carried no instruments or restoratives—but as I placed my hand behind her head to lift it and raised my other hand in an attempt to slap colour into her pale cheeks, she arched her back suddenly, took air into her lungs, and expelled it in a fit of bitter coughing. Immediately I lifted her into a sitting position and forced her head between her knees. She coughed and gasped for two minutes at least, then her breathing settled into a rhythm, rapid but regular. I helped her sit up in the normal fashion. Her blue eyes darted from one face to another, like a frightened bird’s.
“Calm yourself,” I said gently. “I am a doctor. You’re among friends. You’re safe from the villains who mistreated you. Can you tell me your name?” I was still unsure whether her respiratory ordeal had affected the function of her brain.
“My name is”—she hesitated, then—“Jane. Jane Chilton. My father is Sir James Chilton, of Middlesex.”
I sighed in relief, noticing only then that I’d been holding my own breath. I looked up at the others and smiled.
“Who—who are you?” asked the lady.
“Friends,” Holmes said. “There is time enough to get acquainted later. For now, I’m sure Dr. Watson will want to admit you to hospital to make certain of your health before your father comes to take you home.”
“Home!” she said, with a lovely inflection that warms my heart still.
The coda to our adventure was a happy one for Lady Jane Chilton. Six months after her complete recovery and safe return to her father’s arms, her betrothal to Lord Wadsworth, the popular and eligible heir to a fortune equal to Sir James’s, was announced. By all accounts, the handsome young peer was delighted with his choice, of whom Her Majesty had approved when she was presented at court.
At this writing, “Celeste Flores” is a bone of contention between Great B
ritain and her native Argentina. The Crown wishes to try her for complicity in the abduction of seven young women since rescued from bondage, whilst the government in Buenos Aires is eager to reunite her with her old burglary ring behind bars. During this contretemps it came out, interestingly enough, that she was born in a tiny fishing village under the distinctly earthbound name of Inez Sobraco. Holmes informed me that the surname is the Spanish for “armpit.”
Scotland Yard—prodded by the newspapers and popular outrage—pledged to apply all due pressure to eradicate the pernicious white slave trade in England, and the Home Secretary declared to do the same in all its possessions. The Foreign Secretary demanded cooperation from those countries that depended upon the goodwill of Great Britain. The Russian Czar and the King of Egypt promised their cooperation. Not to be outdone, the American President vouchsafed to put his Attorney General upon the case, making special mention of Sherlock Holmes in an address to the public.
“He’s a politician, after all,” said Holmes, when I congratulated him. “Thanks to you and Carter, I’m fodder for his re-election.”
Notwithstanding this disclaimer, the flesh pedlars are now reported to be in full rout across the globe, peaching upon their fellows in order to save their own necks from the gallows. Some of the names mentioned in connection with the foul trade locally have rocked the Empire to its foundation; but that foundation is built upon solid rock, and will survive because of its conviction to human decency.
Sherlock Holmes’s last conversation with Nick Carter, whilst awaiting the latter’s boat train to Southampton, centred, of all things, upon a spoon. Holmes thought it worthy of inclusion in his personal Black Museum of grotesque mementos, whilst Carter made an earnest case in favour of remanding it to the Pinkerton Detective Agency for its edification in persecuting the white slave trade in America. They agreed to break the impasse by appealing to my own judgement in the matter.
“I know you for a just man by your deed as well as your word,” Carter said, “and I’m confident you won’t be swayed by your friendship with Sherlock.”
Holmes, who had come to terms more than I with the American’s free use of Christian names, smiled sardonically. “Neither will he be moved by flattery. Well, Watson?” He handed me the utensil, as a bailiff would deliver an item of evidence to a magistrate.
I put the spoon in my pocket, surprising them both.
“I declare Mary Watson to be the rightful owner,” said I. “She can throw it in with the everyday silver until it becomes nothing more sinister than an instrument for dining.”
THE END
Copyright © 2014 by Loren D. Estleman.
All rights reserved.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.
Published by TYRUS BOOKS
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ISBN 10: 1-4405-7450-2
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7450-4
eISBN 10: 1-4405-7451-0
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7451-1
“The Adventure of the Two Collaborators” previously published in The Sherlock Holmes Compendium edited by Peter Haining, copyright © 2007 by Apocryphile Press, ISBN 10: 1-9339-9348-0, ISBN 13: 978-1-9339-9348-5.
“The Surgeon’s Kit” previously published in A Study in Terror by Ellery Queen, copyright © 2001 by G.K. Hall & Company, ISBN 10: 0-7838-9485-6, ISBN 13: 978-0-7838-9485-0.
“The Adventure of the Dying Ship” previously published in The Confidential Casebook of Sherlock Holmes edited by Marvin Kaye, copyright © 1998 by St. Martin’s Griffin, ISBN 10: 0-312-18071-3, ISBN 13: 978-0-312-18071-3.
“Chapter 2” previously published in The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer, copyright © 1997 by Dover Publications, ISBN 10: 0-486-29898-1, ISBN 13: 978-0-4862-9898-6.
“How Watson Learned the Trick” previously published in Sherlock Holmes: The Published Apocrypha edited by Jack Tracy, copyright © 1980 by Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 10: 0-3952-9454-1, ISBN 13: 978-0-3952-9454-3.
“Two Shabby Figures” previously published in The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King, copyright © 1994 by St. Martin’s Press, ISBN 10: 0-3124-2736-0, ISBN 13: 978-0-3124-2736-8.
“The Adventure of the Unique Hamlet” previously published in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes by Vincent Starrett, copyright © 1975 by Pinnacle Books, ISBN 10: 0-5230-0695-0, ISBN 13: 978-0-5230-0695-6.
“The Adventure of the Red Widow” previously published in The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes by Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr, copyright © 1999 by Gramercy, ISBN 10: 0-5172-0338-3, ISBN 13: 978-0-5172-0338-5.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their product are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book and F+W Media, Inc. was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed with initial capital letters.
Cover design by Sylvia McArdle.
Cover images © sdmix/123RF; old-maps.co.uk.
Interior spot art © Archim Prill/123RF.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Always Holmes
Table of Contents
The Adventure of the Two Collaborators
The Surgeon’s Kit
The Adventure of the Dying Ship
Excerpt from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu
How Watson Learned the Trick
Two Shabby Figures
The Adventure of the Unique Hamlet
The Adventure of the Red Widow
The Mysterious Case of the Urn of ASH; or, What Would Sherlock Do?
The Adventure of the Deadly Interlude
The Adventure of the Rounded Ocelot
The Adventure of the Plated Spoon
Copyright
The Adventure of the Plated Spoon and Other Tales of Sherlock Holmes Page 25
