The Sherlock Holmes Megapack: 25 Modern Tales by Masters: 25 Modern Tales by Masters

by Michael Kurland

  “That is not surprising, sir. The Duke is known, if I may make a small play on words, for his reclusiveness.”

  He paused to sip once more at his, or perhaps I should say, my, wine. “Regarding the golden bird as an omen and token of majesty, and sensing the imminent defeat of the Carlist cause, Senor Cabrera had sent the bird to Lagny rather than have it fall into the hands of his niece’s followers.”

  “And you wish me to assist you in retrieving the bird from the chateau of the Duc de Lagny?” I asked.

  “That is my mission.”

  “You are in the employ of Her Majesty Isabella?”

  “I am in the employ of one whose identity I am not at liberty to disclose.” He rose to his feet. “If you will assist me—for my knowledge of the French countryside and culture is limited—you will receive, shall I say, sir, a reward of royal proportions.”

  “You wish me to accompany you to the chateau of the Duke,” I inquired, “there to obtain from his custody the fabled bird. What causes you to believe that he will relinquish it?”

  “You have my assurance, monsieur, the Duke will be eager to part with that which he safeguards upon receiving proof of the identity of my employers.”

  “You have such proof with you?” I demanded.

  “I have, sir,” he insisted. “Upon this fact I give you my solemn assurance.”

  Unable to deny an interest in obtaining a share of the lucre to which he referred, and perhaps attracted to an extent by the lure of the romantic story he had spun, I agreed, at the least, to accompany him to Lagny. I have told you already that the hour of my guest’s arrival was an unconventionally late one, and his disquisitive manner of speech had caused the hours to pass before our bargain, such as it might be, was struck.

  At length I excused myself and proceeded to the front parlour of my apartment. The act of drawing back the draperies confirmed that which I had already suspected, namely, that dawn had broken and a new day was upon us. Feeling impelled to violate my custom and venture forth from my lodgings in the light of day, I urged my visitor to the stoop, drew shut the door behind us, and locked it.

  We set out on foot to the apothecary shop of M. Konstantinides. Here my guest purchased a preparation and induced it into his own system.

  I was by no means unfamiliar with the effects of various stimulants and depressants upon the human organism, but even so I will own that I was startled at the strength and portion taken by this nearly skeletal Englishman. At once his air of distress left him and his visage assumed an altogether more friendly and optimistic appearance than had previously been the case. He paid M. Konstantinides his fee, adding a generous overage thereto, and then, turning to me, suggested that we set out for Lagny.

  Our journey was not a difficult one. We hired a hackney carriage and negotiated a fare all the way to the village of Lagny, the sum being paid from my guest’s purse, and proceeded eastward from the capital. It was necessary to pause but once at an inn, where we procured a loaf, a cheese, and bottle, my English guest and I dining in democratic fashion with the hackman.

  * * * *

  The sun drew low in the sky behind us as we approached Lagny. I was able, by drawing upon my memory of earlier days, to direct the hackman past the village to the chateau of the Duke. It was a tall and rambling structure of ancient Gothic construction; as we neared the chateau the sun’s guttering rays painted its walls as if with a palette of flame. We debouched from the carriage and instructed the hackman to return to the village and to return for us in the morning.

  He asked in his rude yet charmingly colourful way, “And who’s to pay for me sups and me snooze, ye two toffs?”

  “We shall indeed,” my English guest responded, dropping a handful of coins onto the coach box, upon which the hackman whipped up and departed.

  The Chateau de Lagny, if I may so describe it, radiated an air of age and decadence. As my guest and I stood gazing at its facade he turned to me and asked a peculiar question. “What do you hear, my dear Dupin?”

  Perhaps I ought to have taken offense at this unwonted familiarity, but instead I chose to deal with his query. I cocked an ear, gave list carefully to whatever sounds there might be emanating from the chateau, then made my reply. “I hear nothing.”

  “Precisely!” the Englishman exclaimed.

  “And what, sir, is the object of this schoolmasterly exchange?” I inquired.

  “Sir,” he smiled, “would one not expect to hear the bustle of life in such a setting as this? The neigh of horses from the stables, the cry of servants and workers, mayhap the sound of revellers? None of this, I repeat, none of it do we hear. Only a silence, M. Dupin, only an eerie, deathlike silence.”

  For once I was forced to concede that my visitor had scored a point upon me. I acknowledged as much, to which he perhaps grudgingly conceded that I was yet the master and he the eager pupil. He refrained from commenting upon the looming day when the pupil might outstrip the master in achievement, nor was I prepared to do so.

  Arm-in-arm we approached the main entryway of the chateau. We carried, of course, walking sticks, and I permitted my companion to raise his and strike heavily upon the great wooden door. To my astonishment no servant appeared to grant us entry. Instead, the door swung slowly open and the two of us set foot upon the flagging on the chateau’s foyer.

  At first nothing appeared out of the way, but in moments our nostrils were assailed by the unmistakable odour of decomposition. Exchanging glances but not a word, we drew kerchiefs from our respective pockets and knotted them over our nostrils and mouths. I turned toward my companion and observed him, hatted and masked like a highwayman. Full well I knew that my own appearance was as sinister as his.

  The first cadaver we encountered was that of a liveried footman. First instructing my guest to maintain careful watch lest violence appear from within the chateau, I knelt over the still form. Had the stench not been evidence enough of death, the condition of the footman’s body would have fully convinced the veriest of laymen. He had been struck down from behind. He lay upon his face, the back of his head crushed, the pooled gore already beginning to crawl with insects.

  Turning aside to draw a breath of clear air, or at any rate of air more clear than that surrounding the cadaver, I examined the clothing of the deceased in search of a clue as to the motive for his murder, but discovered nothing.

  Proceeding through the house my associate and I found, in turn, the remains of maids, cooks, laundresses, and an elderly male servant whom we took to be the majordomo of the establishment. But what had happened, and where was the master of the chateau?

  Him we found in the stables behind the chateau. Surrounded by dead stablemen lay M. le Duc. The hearty nobleman whose company I had enjoyed more than once had been treated disgustingly. It was obvious from the condition of the remains that the Duke had been tortured. His hands were bound behind his back and his face showed the discolourations caused by the application of a heated implement.

  Surely the intention had been to force from him the location of the fabled golden bird. Marks upon his torso were enough to sicken the viewer, while the final, fatal attack had come in the form of a sharpened blade drawn across his belly, exposing his vital organs and inducing the ultimate exsanguination.

  Her Grace the Duchess had been treated in similar fashion. I will not describe the indignities which had been visited upon her. One prayed only that her more delicate frame had reached its limits and that she had been granted the mercy of a death more rapid and less agonizing than that of her husband.

  Horses and dogs, like the human inhabitants of the estate, lay at random, slaughtered every one.

  “Is this the work of Señor Cabrera and his men?” I asked.

  “More likely of the servants of Isabella,” my guest replied. “The deaths of these unfortunate persons and their beasts are to be regretted, but of immediate concern is the whereabouts of the bird.” He stood over first one cadaver, then another, studying them as would a student
of medicine the dissected remains of a beast.

  “It appears unlikely that the secret was divulged,” he suggested at length. “Obviously the Duke was tortured and dispatched first, for such a nobleman as he would not have permitted his lady to be treated as we see her to have been. Nor, I would infer, did the Duchess know the whereabouts of the bird, for once her husband was deceased, she would have had no reason to protect the secret. On the contrary, having presumably seen her attackers, she would have sought to survive in order to exact revenge for the murder of her husband.”

  His callous attitude toward the carnage we had only just beheld was appalling, but then the English are known to a cold-blooded race, and it may be that this Englishman felt a degree of sympathy and outrage that he did not show. Very well, then. When the hackman returned for us on the morrow, I would inform the mayor of the village of Lagny of our terrible discovery. The brutal criminals responsible would be sought and, one hoped, brought to face their fate beneath the guillotine in due course. But my guest was right, at least to the extent that our own presence at the Chateau de Lagny had been brought about by the report of the presence of the bird.

  We would seek it, and if it was here, I knew that we would find it.

  “Let us proceed to locate the golden bird,” I announced to my guest. “So splendid an object should be conspicuous to the eye of anyone save a blind man.”

  “Perhaps not,” the Englishman demurred. “I will confess, my dear Dupin, that I have withheld from you one item in the history and description of the bird.”

  I demanded that he enlighten me at once, and in what for him passed for a direct response, he complied. “You have doubtlessly noticed that in my descriptions of the bird I have referred to it both as golden and as black.”

  “I have done so, sir. You may in fact recall my bringing this discrepancy to your attention, and your pledge to reconcile the conflicting descriptions. If you please, this would seem an excellent time to do so.”

  “Very well, then. The bird as originally created by the captive Turkish craftsmen, of solid gold virtually encrusted with precious stones, was considered too attractive a target. At some point in its history—I confess to ignorance of the exact date—it was coated in a black substance, a thick, tarry pigment, so that it now resembles nothing more than a sculpture of ebony in the form of a standing hawk.”

  “What leads you to believe that the bird is still in the chateau? Even if the Duke and Duchess died without revealing the secret of its hiding place to their enemies, those villains might still have searched the chateau until they found the bird. But look about you, sir, and you will see that we are surrounded by a scene not merely of carnage, but of despoliation. It is obvious that the chateau has been ransacked. You did not yourself know of the bird’s hiding place? Your employers did not inform you?”

  “My employers did not themselves know the hiding place. It was the Duke himself who chose that, after the messengers had left.”

  “Then for all we know, the bird has flown.”

  “No, sir.” The Englishman shook his head. “By the condition of the bodies, even in winter, this horror occurred at least four days ago, before I left London. I would have received word had the villains succeeded. They have committed these horrendous crimes in vain. You may rest assured that the bird is still here. But where?”

  “Let us consider,” I suggested. “The interior of the chateau and even, to the extent that we have searched, of the outbuildings, have been torn apart. Furniture is demolished, pictures and tapestries torn from walls. The Duke’s library has been despoiled, his priceless collection of ancient manuscripts and rare volumes reduced to worthless rubble. Even a suit of ancient armour has been thrown from its stand so that it lies in pieces upon the flagging. The invaders of the chateau may be monsters, but they are not unintelligent nor yet are they lacking in thoroughness.”

  I paused, awaiting further comment by the Englishman, but none was forthcoming. I observed him closely and perceived that he was perspiring freely and that he alternately clenched and loosened his fists almost as one suffering a fit.

  “If the bird is still on the estate,” I resumed, “yet it is not within the chateau or its outbuildings, logic dictates its location to us. Consider this, young man. We have eliminated the partial contents of our list of possibilities. Having done so, we are drawn irresistibly to the conclusion that the remaining possibilities must contain the solution to our puzzle. Do you follow the thread of ratiocination which I have laid before you?”

  He seemed to relax, as if the fit had passed. He drew a cloth from a pocket of his costume and wiped the perspiration from his brow. He acknowledged the irrefutable nature of my argument.

  “But,” he continued, “I fail to see the next step in your procedure.”

  “You disappoint me,” I uttered. “Very well. If you will please follow me.” I retreated to the main entry hall of the chateau, and thence to the terrace outside. I proceeded still farther, my boots leaving a trail behind me in the heavy dew that had accumulated upon the lush lawn surrounding the chateau. The moon had attained fullness, and the sky above Lagny was even more impressive than that above the metropolis had been.

  “Look upon the chateau,” I instructed my pupil, for I had so come to regard the Englishman.

  He stood beside me and gazed at the structure, its stone pediments rendered in pale chiaroscuro by the light streaming from the heavens. “What see you?” I asked him.

  “Why, the Chateau de Lagny,” he replied at once.

  “Indeed. What else do you see?”

  The young Englishman pursed his lips with the appearance of impatience. “Only that, sir. The stable and other outbuildings are concealed by the bulk of the chateau.”

  “Indeed,” I nodded. I spoke no more, awaiting further comment by the other. There ensued a lengthy silence.

  Finally, in a tone of impatience, my student spoke once more. “The lawn before the chateau. The woods which surround us. The moon, the stars. A tiny cloud in the southwest.”

  I nodded. “Very good. More.”

  “For the love of God, Dupin, what more is there to see?”

  “Only that which is vital to our mission,” I replied.

  As I watched, the Englishman raised his eyes once more, then froze. “I see a row of birds perched upon the parapet of the chateau.”

  “My good fellow!” I exclaimed, “it appears now possible that you may have the makings of a detective. Further, I urge you, do not satisfy yourself with merely seeing, but observe, observe, observe, and report!”

  He stood silent and motionless for some time, then took an action which won my admiration. Although we stood ankle-deep in the dew-soaked grass before the chateau, there was nearby a driveway used by carriages approaching and departing the estate. Our own cabman had followed this path, and it was my expectation that he would utilize it once more upon his return for us in the morning.

  The Englishman strode to the driveway, bent, and lifted a handful of gravel. He threw back his cape so as to free his arm and flung the gravel at the birds perched upon the parapet. I was impressed by the strength and accuracy of his arm.

  With an angry outcry several of the birds flew from their perch. They were silhouetted against the night sky, their form limned in a drab black against the glittering stars and clear darkness of the heavens. One of them passed across the face of the full, brilliant moon, its widespread wings and the shining disk behind it creating the illusion that the bird was as large as the legendary Pegasus.

  My student and I remained motionless, observing the behaviour of the aerial creatures. They were more annoyed than frightened by the clattering pebbles, or so I inferred, for it took mere moments for the plurality of the creatures to return to their former places, midst an audible flapping of feathery wings and grumbling calls.

  The Englishman bent and lifted another handful of gravel, drew back his arm and flung the stones at the birds. Once more his action evoked an angry response,
most of the birds crying out in annoyance and flapping away from their perch. By now the solution to the mystery of the missing hawk was apparent.

  “Good work,” I congratulated my student. “It is clear that you have grasped the difference between observing and merely seeing, and have observed that which is necessary to locate your prey.”

  A small indication of pleasure made itself visible upon his face, the momentary upward twitching of the corners of his mouth by a few millimeters. Without uttering a word he seated himself upon the grass and proceeded to remove his boots and stockings. I watched in equal silence as he strode to the outer wall of the chateau.

  It has been my expectation that he would return to the interior of the structure and seek access to the roof by means of interior staircases. Instead, to my amazement, after studying the wall with its closely fitted stones and creeping ivy, he proceeded to climb the exterior of the chateau, using his powerful fingers and almost orangutan-like toes to assure his grasp. As he advanced his cape flapped about his form like two huge wings.

  As he approached the parapet he called out to the winged creatures perched there, making a peculiar sound unlike any I had previously heard. Without preliminary, the avians watching his advance extended their wings and rose from the chateau, disappearing into the blackness that surrounded them. All save one. A single bird remained stationary, silhouetted against the starry domain.

  The strange, almost inhuman, being into which my erstwhile visitor had transformed himself, perched now beside the sole remaining avian, so high above the earth that a single slip, I could see, would plunge him to a certain doom. Yet no sound reached me from this strange personage, nor any indication of fear.

  He lifted the unmoving bird from its place and in a moment it disappeared beneath his cloak. I could only infer that he had come prepared with an extra section of leather belting or rope, concealed until now by his outer garments.

  Then as I stood aghast, he lowered himself to lie flat upon the parapet, then reached over its edge to gain a handhold on the stone wall, then slid from his safe perch and proceeded to climb down the wall of the chateau, headfirst, the bird secured beneath his clothing. His appearance, for all the world, was that of a gigantic bat.