by Anthony Read
Mary was brushing Queenie’s hair and showing her how she would change the style for the stage, when Sparrow burst in. None of the others were back yet, and the two girls were startled by his sudden appearance.
“Oooh, Sparrow!” Queenie cried. “You give us a fright comin’ in like that. What you do that for?”
“I found somethin’…” he gasped, out of breath, “I found somethin’ out. Listen…”
But before Sparrow could go on, he heard a noise behind him. Queenie shrieked and pointed. Turning round, he saw a man standing in the doorway. The bearded man with the limp.
“It’s the murderer!” Sparrow yelled.
“Mary!” the man shouted.
Mary screamed, went white, and fainted.
The Lost Locket
Wiggins and the rest of the search party arrived back at HQ to find the bearded man bending over Mary, who was now lying on a bed, just coming round from her faint.
“It’s him!” Wiggins shouted. “Quick, Beav – run and get a copper! It’s the murderer!”
“No, no!” Mary called, trying to sit up. “He’s not a murderer. He’s my daddy.”
She flung her arms around the man and hugged and kissed him, and he hugged and kissed her back, and they both wept tears of happiness. The Boys were dumbfounded. Their mouths fell open as they tried to take in this amazing news.
“But … but…” Beaver babbled. “You can’t be. You’re dead…”
“Do I look dead?” the man said, over Mary’s shoulder. “My name is Jack Elliot, and this is my little girl.”
“What are you doing here?” Wiggins asked. “How did you find this place?”
“I found out Mary had disappeared from the theatre, and I had an idea you lot might have something to do with it,” he replied. “So I followed this young man.” He nodded at Sparrow. “He was in such a hurry he never looked behind him – unlike you and your friend when I tried to follow you.”
“Sparrow!” Wiggins rebuked him. “How many times have I told you…”
“He nearly lost me more than once, mind. I had the dickens of a job keeping up with him.” He patted his lame leg. “I don’t move so fast since my accident.”
“Oh, Daddy,” Mary said. “They told us you’d been killed.”
“I very nearly was,” her father replied, stroking her head lovingly. “But when I thought I’d never see you and your ma again, I just hung on and hung on and refused to die. And now here I am at last. Too late for your poor dear ma, I know, but I thank God you’re safe and sound.”
“But what took you so long?” Wiggins asked.
“Yeah – why did you let her think you was dead?” Beaver joined in accusingly.
“I didn’t have any choice,” Mr Elliot answered. “I was too ill. And anyway I was hundreds of miles away from them – thousands of miles even – out in the wilderness of the Yukon.”
“What happened?”
“My partner and I were digging a mine, searching for gold. A rival prospector tried to get rid of us so he could grab our claim. He blew up our mine with us inside it. When our friends dug us out, my partner was dead and I was in a bad way. Nobody expected me to live through the night. I guess that’s how word got back to New York that I’d died. I was unconscious for days, and when I finally did come round, I didn’t know who I was or where I was. My brain was hurt as bad as my legs. It took months before I could move or think straight. As soon as I could, I sent messages to Mary and her ma, telling them what had happened. But none of them ever arrived. Somebody in New York made sure they never saw them.”
“Marvin!” exclaimed Mary.
“Very likely,” her father said. “That man was a scoundrel through and through.”
“Is that why you killed him?” Wiggins asked.
“I didn’t kill him.”
“We saw you, bending over his body.”
“He was dead when I found him. Somebody had got there first.”
“Why’d you run off, then?” asked Beaver.
“Because I knew nobody would believe I hadn’t done it.”
“That’s true,” said Wiggins. “’Specially if they knowed you’d trailed him all the way from New York, right?”
“Right. You’re not stupid, are you? In fact, I’d say you were a pretty smart lad.”
“Comes of working for Mr Sherlock Holmes,” Wiggins said with a grin. “I learnt a lot from him.”
“Sherlock Holmes? You work for Mr Holmes, you say?”
“We’re the Baker Street Boys, Mr Holmes’s Irregulars as he sometimes calls us.”
“Well, I never. Will you take me to him?”
“Sorry,” said Wiggins, shaking his head. “Can’t. He’s away on a case. You’ll have to make do with his assistants. That’s us.”
“I see. Well, I suppose I could do worse.”
“Right then, you’d better sit down and tell us the rest of it.”
Wiggins gestured to his special chair. Mr Elliot looked at the rickety piece of furniture dubiously, then lowered himself gently into it, half afraid that it would break under his weight. Fortunately it didn’t, even when Mary sat on his lap.
“Like I said,” he told the Boys, “it took months and months before I was well enough to make the journey back East. And when I got to New York I discovered my lovely wife had married Marvin, and then taken sick and died.”
“But why had she married him?” Queenie asked.
“She needed someone to look after her and Mary, I guess. She thought I was dead, remember.”
“We all did,” said Mary, sobbing at the memory. “And he could be real nice – when he wanted to be.”
“Anyway, by the time I got there, he’d disappeared, and taken my little girl with him. Nobody seemed to know where he was, so I hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to find him. And they discovered that he wasn’t just a phoney in the theatre, pretending to read minds and all that. He was a crook as well.”
“I knew it!” said Wiggins. “What did he do?”
“He was a member of a gang of criminals who carried out a whole lot of big robberies. But he double-crossed the others, and took the loot for himself. When they went after him, he hid the stuff and vamoosed across the Atlantic. The Pinkerton men thought he’d been helped by a mysterious British mastermind.”
“Moriarty!” the Boys shouted, all together.
“Who’s Moriarty?” Mr Elliot asked.
“The Napoleon of crime, according to Mr Holmes,” Wiggins replied. “He says he’s the most dangerous man in London.”
“You’ve had dealings with him?”
“We have crossed swords with him,” Wiggins said, trying to sound nonchalant.
“And we won!” Shiner cried.
“I seen ’im with Marvin the other night,” said Sparrow. “I bet they was up to no good.”
“I’ll wager you’re right,” said Mr Elliot.
“What was Marvin’s racket in the States?” Wiggins asked.
“He got into rich people’s houses to give private performances and fake séances, claiming to make contact with their dead relatives. Once he was there, he’d look around and see where all the most valuable things were, then go back afterwards and steal them. Or send somebody else to do it.”
“Oh, no!” Mary let out an agonized cry. “That’s what we were doing here – holding séances in rich people’s houses!”
“And stealing their stuff?” Gertie asked. “That’s a terrible thing to do.”
There was silence as the Boys all looked at Mary with mixed feelings. She burst into tears.
“I didn’t know about the stealing,” she sobbed. “I swear I didn’t.”
“Of course you didn’t,” her father said, holding her tight.
“I believe you,” said Sparrow, almost too brightly.
But some of the other Boys were not so sure.
“You must have knowed,” Shiner accused her. “’Ow could you not have knowed what he was up to?”
“Hang
on! Hang on!” Sparrow shouted. “Think about it. It’s obvious!”
“What is?” Wiggins asked.
The others waited expectantly while Sparrow made the most of the moment.
“Hypnotism!” he declared, after a dramatic pause. “Marvin hypnotized Mary – and her ma afore her – to make ’em do what he wanted and then forget all about it so they couldn’t never split on him.”
Shiner and Gertie pooh-poohed the idea, but when Sparrow reminded everyone how Mary had not remembered talking to him that time, and how he had watched Marvin put Rosie into a trance, they all began to take him seriously.
“Yeah,” said Wiggins, “but how can we find out? How does it work?”
Sparrow described how Marvin had told Rosie that after he had hypnotized her once, he could put her under again just by saying the magic words and clicking his fingers.
“What are the magic words?” Wiggins asked. “P’raps if we could put Mary under, she might be able to remember things.”
Sparrow shook his head. He couldn’t recall what Marvin had said.
“Abracadabra?” Beaver suggested helpfully. “I seen a conjuror say that once.”
“No,” Sparrow replied. “Nothin’ like that.”
He racked his brain. “I keep thinkin’ about ice cream…’
“You would,” Shiner scoffed. “Always thinkin’ of your belly!”
“Listen to who’s talkin’!” Sparrow retorted.
“‘Stop me and buy one?’” Gertie suggested.
“No. It was sort of foreign-soundin’. And two words.”
“Hokey-pokey?” asked Queenie, echoing the cry of the Italian ice-cream sellers on the streets of London.
“Yeah, somethin’ like that,” said Sparrow. And then his face cleared.
“Hocus-pocus!” he yelled. “That’s what it was! Hocus-pocus!”
They all looked expectantly at Mary. But nothing happened. Wiggins repeated the words to her, but still they had no effect. Then Sparrow remembered.
“You gotta click your fingers as well,” he said.
Wiggins said the magic words again, and tried to click his fingers. But he couldn’t get them to make a sound, and Mary shook her head sadly.
“Nothing,” she said. “I don’t feel any different.”
Wiggins turned to Mr Elliot.
“Can you click your fingers?” he asked.
“I think so,” Mr Elliot answered, and did so.
“Right,” said Wiggins. “After I say the words… Hocus-pocus!”
Mr Elliot clicked his fingers again, more loudly. Immediately, Mary jerked her head and stared straight in front of her. She was in a trance. The Boys gazed at her – and Wiggins – in amazement. Sparrow beamed with pride.
“Well, I never,” said Mr Elliot. He passed his hand up and down in front of his daughter’s face. She did not blink or show any sign that she could see it.
“What do we do now?” asked Wiggins.
“Ask her things,” said Queenie. “Go on – ask her about Marvin.”
Wiggins cleared his throat nervously.
“Can you hear me, Mary?” he said.
“I hear you and will obey,” she replied in a strange, flat voice.
“Crikey,” said Wiggins. “Er, Mary, do you remember what Marvin told you to do when you went into people’s houses?”
“Yes. Marvin said he would tell me what to say when we got there. He told me that when I woke up I would forget where we had been and what I had said. He told me these were secret and I was to keep all his secrets and not tell nobody.”
“Brilliant,” said Beaver. “Just like Sparrow said!”
“Is that all he told you?” Wiggins continued.
“He told me I must keep my ma’s gold locket safe. I must keep it with me always.”
“The locket!” Sparrow exclaimed, suddenly remembering what had happened in the dressing room. “The locket – that’s what it’s all about!”
“Sssshhh!” Queenie hissed at him. Don’t disturb her. It might be dangerous.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Shh! Later!”
“I think that’s enough for the moment,” said Mr Elliot, worried that his daughter might be harmed. “She’s proved the point. Now bring her back.”
“Right,” said Wiggins, a bit disappointed as he was just getting into it. “OK, Mary. You can wake up now.”
Mary did not move, or show any sign of emerging from her trance.
“Wake up, Mary,” he repeated. “Time to wake up.”
Still she stared straight ahead of her. Wiggins squeezed her hand, then patted her gently on the cheek, but she didn’t move a muscle. He started to panic slightly. What if he couldn’t bring her round? What if she were stuck like this for ever?
“Oh, Lor,” he muttered. “Now what do I do?”
Sparrow thought frantically, trying for all he was worth to recall what Marvin had done. He realized that he had seen Marvin put Rosie into a trance but could not remember how he had brought her out of it. Then he recalled the performance on-stage. Although the trance had been fake, Marvin might have done the same as he would with the real thing. But what exactly had he done? Sparrow closed his eyes and pictured the act. Suddenly, he saw it.
“You have to count her down,” he said.
“What d’you mean?” Wiggins asked.
“You have to say you’re gonna count down from five to nothin’ and when you get to one she’ll be awake.”
Wiggins looked into Mary’s eyes again.
“Mary,” he said, “I am going to count down from five to nothing…”
“And when you get to one…” Sparrow prompted impatiently.
“And when I get to one, you will be awake.”
He counted, loudly and slowly. When he finished, there was a moment’s silence as everyone held their breath. Then Mary blinked her eyes and looked around.
“Why are you all staring at me?” she asked. “Did it work?”
“It worked,” her father told her, and embraced her.
“Marvin did make you forget everythin’,” Queenie told her, “just like Sparrow said.”
“You never knowed what you was doin’,” Beaver added. “So nobody can blame you.”
Mary turned to Sparrow, with tears of joy in her eyes.
“Thank you, Sparrow,” she said. “You’re my hero.”
And she kissed him, making him turn bright crimson.
“We ain’t finished yet,” he said. “We still gotta find Rosie.”
“That’s right,” Queenie said. “We still got no idea where she is.”
“And we gotta find out about that an’ all,” said Sparrow, pointing to the locket hanging round Mary’s neck. “It might give us a clue.”
“Why should it do that?” Wiggins asked.
Sparrow proceeded to tell the others about the American woman he had heard in Marvin’s dressing room, and how she had been searching for the locket.
“She never gave no locket to Marvin,” he said when he’d finished. “I’d have seen. I reckon it was this one she was after.”
“You could be right,” said Wiggins. “But why would anybody go to that sort of trouble to get it? Let’s have a look at it, Mary.”
Mary slipped the chain over her head and handed the locket to him. The others clustered around as he examined it.
“It’s very pretty and all that,” he said, “but it ain’t exac’ly that precious, is it? Not like if it was covered in diamonds and stuff… D’you know anything about it, Mr Elliot?”
He handed the locket to Mary’s father, who opened it and looked at the picture inside, then shook his head.
“I’ve never seen it before,” he said. “And I’ve no idea who this lady might be.”
“You mean it ain’t Mary’s granny?”
“No. Whoever she is, she is most certainly not Mary’s grandmamma.”
Wiggins took the locket back, scratched his head, and stared intently at the little portrait as thoug
h willing it to speak. If Mr Elliot had not been there, he would have sat down in his chair, put on his deerstalker hat and clamped his pipe between his teeth while he pondered on the problem. Instead, he could only pace to and fro along the cellar floor, holding the locket in his hand while the others watched and waited. Suddenly his face lit up. He hurried to the table and laid the locket down on it. Taking out his penknife, he carefully poked the point behind the picture and levered it out.
“Aha!” he said in his best Sherlock Holmes manner. “What have we here?”
Tucked in the back of the locket behind the picture was a small piece of paper, neatly folded to fit into the small space. Like a magician performing a special trick, Wiggins lifted it out, opened it and placed it on the table.
“What is it?” asked Beaver.
Wiggins frowned. He really didn’t know what the paper was. But Mr Elliot did. Reaching over to pick it up and look at it more closely, he said, “It’s a ticket for a safety deposit or a left-luggage office.”
Most of the Boys looked disappointed.
“Ooh,” Shiner groaned. “I thought it might be somethin’ important.”
“It is,” said Wiggins, his eyes shining with excitement. “Now we know where Marvin stashed the loot from the robberies. This is what the murderers was after. This is what they killed Marvin for. And this is why they snatched Rosie.”
Beaver looked puzzled,
“Why’s that?” he asked.
“Don’t you see?” said Wiggins. “They thought she was Mary.”
Mary put her hands to her face in shock.
“…and that she’d have the locket round her neck!” she cried.
“Oh, no!” Queenie gasped. “What they gonna do to her now they know she ain’t?”
A Special Performance
The excitement the Boys had felt when they solved the mystery of Mary’s locket soon gave way to deep gloom. It was obvious that Rosie really was in the hands of a ruthless gang. They had no clues as to where she was being held – and no one could forget that the criminals had already killed Marvin.
“It’s time to call in the police,” Mr Elliot said. “I must give myself up.”
“But they’ll chuck you in jail,” Wiggins protested. “They think you’re the murderer.”
