by John Hall
As we made our way through to the Long Bar, I was struck once again by the lightness and comfort of the place, by the contrast with the noisy and bustling streets outside, and perhaps more particularly by the very marked contrast to the dark cell in which the unfortunate Charles Gerard was now residing.
I shook myself, if only metaphorically. It was only the afternoon, but I had the sensation of having endured a long day, and a confusing one – but then please remember, if you will, that Holmes and I had only set foot on dry land earlier that day following our lengthy sea voyage. Then the hustle and bustle of the packed streets, to say nothing of our investigation. We had indeed been plunged headlong into a strange and sinister business. Yes, it had been a long and busy day for us. And I, for one, was ready for a drink, and a little quiet meditation. Not, I reflected, that I was likely to get much time for peaceful and gentle meditation where Holmes was concerned. I looked at my old friend as I thought this, and was amused to see the expression on his face, for all the world like an old hunting dog that scents the quarry and is eager for the chase.
The Long Bar was dark, cool, and surprisingly busy for the time of day, as it seemed to me. Planters, merchants, the whole of Singapore’s busy community seemed to have dropped in for a quick drink. Superintendent Ingham paused just inside the door, and glanced over at the far side of the room. “Ahah!” he muttered.
“Mr Ellis?” asked Holmes. “Yes, just as I suspected.”
I followed Ingham’s gaze, and saw a short, stout man seated on his own at a small table in a far corner. His white suit was none too clean, his narrow tie was positively sordid, and his Panama hat had seen better days. The Superintendent was right, I thought, Mr Harry Ellis could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be described as out of the top drawer.
Ingham led the way over to the little table. At his approach, Ellis glanced up, and at the sight of the policeman his face fell, or I was much mistaken. But he recovered quickly, smiled broadly, and greeted Ingham cheerily. “Superintendent, how pleasant to see you.”
“Is it, indeed?”
“Oh, indeed it is.” Ellis looked quickly at Holmes and me, and gave a quick little smile. “Gentlemen, nice to see you.”
“Harry, I haven’t introduced you,” said Ingham, a slow smile developing on his face. “Gentlemen, meet Mr Harry Ellis, a well-known character in these parts. Harry, this is Mr Sherlock Holmes, the famous London detective, and this other gentleman is Doctor John Watson, the writer.”
For a moment Ellis stared at Holmes, and then he half-rose, and bobbed a little bow. “Mr Holmes, this is an honour, and Doctor Watson, too.” He glanced at Ingham. “You know, for a moment I thought the Superintendent here was pulling my leg, playing a little joke on poor Harry Ellis.”
“No joke, Mr Ellis,” said Holmes suavely. “On the contrary, Doctor Watson and I are here on a very serious matter.”
“Oh? Well, Mr Holmes, I’m sure you have your own methods, and will get along very well without my help,” said Ellis, a puzzled frown on his brow. “And, if I may be so bold as to speak plainly, I have a little matter of my own in hand just at present.” He took out a battered silver watch, and glanced at it. “In fact, if you would have the very great kindness to excuse me, gentlemen, I’m expecting a client any moment now. Of course, Mr Holmes, should you later find that you need my assistance in any way, then …”
“Cut it out, Harry,” said the Superintendent, sitting down heavily at the little table.
“Superintendent?” Ellis still wore the puzzled look.
Holmes interjected, “You evidently mistake my meaning, Mr Ellis. The fact is, we are looking into the murder of Mrs Charles Gerard.”
“What?” It came out almost as a shout, and people at neighbouring tables glanced round, shrugged, and laughed, as folk will under such circumstances. Ellis lowered his voice, and asked, “Do you really mean to tell me that Mrs Gerard has been murdered, Mr Holmes? Superintendent?”
Holmes and Ingham nodded in unison. Ingham said, “It’s true, I’m afraid, Harry.”
Holmes asked, “Are we correct in thinking that Mrs Gerard was the client you are … or were, rather … here to meet?”
Ellis nodded unhappily.
“And she was to pay you fifty pounds?” There was a good deal of scepticism in Ingham’s voice.
Ellis looked hurt. “Professional fees, Superintendent!” He looked at Holmes. “I’m sure you’d have charged a good deal more, sir … not that you wouldn’t have earned it.”
“Fifty pounds is a handsome fee,” mused Holmes.
“I did a handsome bit of work, sir,” said Ellis. He took a little leather notebook from his pocket, and waved it in the air. “All itemized, ready for Mrs Gerard’s approval. And I paid out a great deal from my own pocket, money which it doesn’t look as if I’ll get back now,” he added somewhat ungrammatically.
“Oh? Well, Mr Ellis, since your original client is regrettably not in any position to pay your fees, perhaps we should join forces to some extent? I cannot promise anything in the way of full payment, but I am certain that my client will not prove ungenerous, should you be able to help us in any way.”
Ellis’ face cleared at this. “It’s kind of you to say so, Mr Holmes.”
“A drink?” suggested Holmes, waving to summon a waiter.
Ellis waited until a full glass was set before him to replace the empty one already there. He lifted it to his lips, then thought better of it and set the drink down un-tasted. “Later, perhaps,” he muttered to nobody in particular. Then he looked at Holmes and smiled. “Well, sir, I’ll begin at the beginning, if you please, and you can just ask any questions that come to you.”
“Very well.”
“Well, then, the first I ever heard of Mrs Gerard was last year. I received a long letter, posted in London, from her, in which she said that she’d got my name and address from an acquaintance, a former client … her name is neither here nor there. Anyway, I was to do a certain job of work for her, Mrs Gerard, in the discreet enquiry line. I was to invoice her for expenses, and she would not quibble at any reasonable amount either. She enclosed a banker’s draft for a little something on account, which was all very good of her, and gave me all the relevant details, or at any rate such as she had, to act as my starting point. Well, Mr Holmes, I ask you, would you have turned down a job on those terms? I hardly think so, sir, and no more did I.”
Holmes nodded. “And you made the enquiries which Mrs Gerard had requested?”
“I did, sir. I sent a note agreeing to her terms, and said that I would send such information that I managed to acquire. Now, Mrs Gerard wrote back almost by return, allowing for the distance, that is, and told me that I shouldn’t bother to do that, but that she herself would be in Singapore by the time that I had finished my work, and would collect the information in person. All I had to do was work away, and send her a note when I had uncovered anything.”
“And you did, and Mrs Gerard came here?”
Ellis nodded. “I sent word when I was finished, or as good as, and then I got a note from her on Wednesday, to say she and her husband had just landed, and she could meet me at any time that was convenient to me. I was to let her know at such-and-such an address, but … and this was underlined to reinforce it … I was to be careful that she alone received the note making the appointment.”
“And again, you complied?”
“Mrs Gerard was paying the piper, sir, and so as far as I was concerned she could call the tune. I sent a lad round with my note on the Thursday morning, and told him to be especially careful that nobody saw him enter or leave the hotel. The lodgings, I should say,” he added with a touch of disdain in his voice.
“H’mm.” Holmes stared into space for a moment. “The Gerards arrived here on Monday,” he said at last. “We may perhaps give them that one day to recover their land-legs, as it were, after the lengthy sea voyage. But I wonder why Mrs Gerard did not let you know on the Tuesday that she was in Singapore,
Mr Ellis?”
Ellis shrugged his shoulders. “If it was to be all on the quiet, Mr Holmes, perhaps she was busy meeting her family and all the rest of it? Couldn’t get a private moment to write a little private note?”
“Well done, Mr Ellis. That is, of course, one possibility, and may very likely be the correct explanation,” said Holmes. “Though I can think of yet another …” and he broke off. Holmes is thick-skinned and very seldom actually embarrassed, but he seemed a touch discomforted.
“Mr Holmes?” asked Ellis, regarding my friend curiously. “Well, then, to be plain, I was wondering if perhaps Mrs Gerard had second thoughts? Tell me, Mr Ellis, would you have known that the Gerards were in Singapore had Mrs Gerard not told you so?”
Ellis’ face fell. “No, sir, I would not have known. Why, do you mean that Mrs Gerard may not have contacted me at all? That I may not have been paid? Not,” he added with more than a touch of despondency in his tone, “not that I have any real prospects of payment anyway, beyond your promise to do what you can, Mr Holmes.”
Holmes waved the financial point aside. “Yes, I half suspect that Mrs Gerard had second thoughts, that she was not certain that she wanted to know whatever it was you had found out, Mr Ellis.”
Now, I flatter myself that I am the most long-suffering of men on this earth, but I had been fretting impatiently for some considerable time by now, and at this last gratuitous display of ambiguousness, I fear that I emitted a snort indicative of impatience and exasperation alike.
Holmes regarded me as he might regard a specimen under his magnifying glass. “Watson? Are you ready for your dinner, old chap? Or are you just feeling the heat?”
“Dinner be damned, and heat be damned, Holmes!” I burst out – understandably, you will agree. And I would have said more, much more.
But before I could elaborate, Mr Ellis stood up. “If you’ll excuse me one moment, gentlemen?” And he wandered off to the cloakroom, leaving me seething with a sort of impotent fury.
I rounded on Holmes. “Really …”
He waved me to silence. “All in good time, Watson. In fact, you can ask Mr Ellis yourself, when he has washed his hands.” He sat in silence for a moment, then, “So, Mrs Gerard was planning to come here to Singapore to hear from Mr Ellis in person, was she? That rather suggests that the business about talking her husband into coming here to find work was a ruse, or at any rate that it was not the whole truth.”
“And then she had second thoughts?” added Ingham. “Found she didn’t want to know after all?” He regarded Holmes curiously, and then transferred his gaze to me. “And you, Doctor Watson? What is it that bothers you?”
At that point, Ellis returned to the table and resumed his seat. Evidently he had heard Ingham’s remark to me, for he said, “Yes, Doctor, you were about to say something, I fancy?”
I took a deep breath before starting. “Mr Ellis, we have heard the details of how you came to work for Mrs Gerard, and how she communicated with you and you with her. We have, as it were, the entire mechanism, the clockwork, laid out for our admiration. But what we lack is the mainspring. In a word, Mr Ellis, will you not at once tell us what it was that Mrs Gerard hired you to investigate? What did she want to know, sir?”
“Oh,” said Ellis, “did I not say? Well, Doctor Watson, that is easy enough told, sir. Mrs Gerard wanted me to spare no expense to look into the ancestry, background, and business dealings of her brother-in-law, Mr Derek Masterton. Reading between the lines … as you get to do in our line of work, Mr Holmes, you’ll agree … reading between the lines, then, gents, I got the distinct impression that Mrs Gerard suspected that Mr Derek Masterton was a wrong‘un.” And with that, perhaps feeling that he had done all that could reasonably be expected of him and so had earned a drink – or again perhaps he was simply feeling thirsty – Mr Harry Ellis leaned back in his chair, a satisfied smile on his face, and took a long pull at the glass which was before him.
Chapter Seven: A Story and a Search
“And is he?” Ingham and I asked together, like some music-hall act.
“Who? Oh, Masterton, you mean?” The infuriating Ellis drained his glass, placed it on the table, and gazed at it significantly.
“Another?” And Holmes signalled to a waiter.
“Thank you, sir, I won’t say no.” Ellis glanced round the room to make sure he was not being overheard, then leaned forward and lowered his voice before going on. “That’s the thing,” he told us in a hoarse whisper. “I couldn’t find a thing wrong with Mr Derek Masterton. His business affairs, his private life, everything, all above reproach.” And he leaned back and tapped the side of his nose in what I suppose was meant to be a significant fashion.
“But?” asked Holmes quickly.
“Ah, you’re sharp, Mr Holmes, and no mistake,” said Ellis admiringly. “Yes, sir, it does all sound too good to be true, doesn’t it?” He came closer to us again and lowered his voice once more. “The odd thing is, sir, that when I looked … or tried to look, I should say … into Mr Masterton’s background, his history as it were, I came up against a brick wall. To all intents and purposes, Mr Masterton’s life began three or four years ago when he first landed here in Singapore. For all my efforts … and they were considerable efforts, too, though I say so myself … I couldn’t find any record, any trace, of him before he arrived here. Now, Mr Holmes, what do you say to that, sir?”
Holmes regarded Ellis keenly. “A false identity, then?”
“Just what I thought myself, sir.” Ellis smiled complacently. “So, I contrived to meet Mr Masterton, just for a few moments, you know, and have a word or two with him, see if I couldn’t get anything at all to work on. It seemed to me that I detected just a faint hint of an Australian accent in his voice, and so I contacted some of my friends and associates in Australia, to see if they turned anything up.”
“And?”
Ellis seemed about to speak, and then he shrugged. “Well, Mr Holmes, it took time. Time, effort, and … well, sir, not a little expense.”
“Ah, I see. Well, Mr Ellis, in that case I myself will guarantee that your fees are met.”
“Very good of you, sir.”
“So, now that is settled, tell me what you found out.”
“Nothing that would stand up in a court of law, I fear. But there was one little thing, an interesting line of thought, although it was only a hint. I’d given my Australian connections a description of Mr Masterton, of course, and, after much delay, I had a report back. Mostly to say they hadn’t unearthed anything of value, but there was an interesting sort of footnote. It seems that the description of Mr Masterton that I’d sent them tallies very closely with that of a man named Cedric Masters, who’d been a bit of a bad lad, or so it seems.”
“Ah!”
Ellis frowned. “A curious business, too, Mr Holmes, all round. This Cedric Masters was an odd sort of chap. He’d never been in any trouble, not at first. But, when young Cedric was only nine or ten years old, his father invested the family’s life savings in shares, a speculative mining scheme. Now, that’s not so uncommon, but the man who was promoting the scheme knew it was no good … in a word, sir, it was a swindle, and on a grand scale. Well, the Masters family lost everything, and so did a lot of other small investors. You can call them ‘mugs’, if you like, it’s accurate enough, I suppose, but they had believed in the rogue who swindled them. Anyway, this crooked promoter apologized, said he’d acted in good faith, stressed that it was a speculation and what have you, and the investors had no means of proving otherwise, so he couldn’t be touched, though the police had their suspicions. Anyway, he … the crook, I mean … started up another business, only this time the public didn’t subscribe to it. As you might have guessed, I suppose, having had their fingers burned once. And old Masters, Cedric’s father, he couldn’t invest if he wanted to, for the shock, the loss, had set him back, and he didn’t live for many years after things went smash. But the crook went ahead with his scheme and this time
the business didn’t go bust. Not a bit of it … instead it prospered mightily.”
“Ah!” said Holmes again, nodding his head. “The second business was a fake, I expect? A front to account for his wealth, wealth that was in reality the proceeds of the swindle? Yes, very clever.”
Ellis nodded as well. “That’s what everyone reckoned, Mr Holmes. Only there was no way of proving it, any more than there had been any way to prove the original swindle. So this crook … and he was a crook, no doubt of that … invested his ill-gotten gains in legitimate businesses, and prospered yet more.”
“Until this Masters decided to claim that which was his? Or his family’s, I should say?”
Ellis smiled. “Got it in one, Mr Holmes.” He nodded. “Yes, the father died, in pretty reduced and tragic circumstances, as I say, when Cedric was fifteen or sixteen. Then some years later still, five or six years ago in fact, the crook’s office was robbed, and the safe cleaned out. Fair enough, but the trouble was that the swindler was in there. Nobody knows just what happened, but he took a bullet and died at once.”
Holmes whistled.
Ellis nodded again. “A bad business all round, sir. You’ll likely say he got what he deserved, the crook, I mean, and I wouldn’t argue with that. But then, the law’s the law. Anyway, there were a couple of witnesses, Cedric was suspected, and the police got after him … or, I should say, after the robbers, for nothing was ever proved one way or another about Masters … but they, the police, that is, simply lost them, the fugitives. Then one of the suspects … not this Masters, but another chap … did turn up, and was arrested. Another young chap, and one whose own family had lost money in the old swindle, and that sort of confirmed it. But he refused to name his accomplices, if any, and the stolen money was not found on him. Well, the police had a couple of witnesses who identified him so the chap was found guilty, and went to the gallows.
“Masters … and this is my real point … Masters, who was suspected on account of a description given by these same witnesses, simply vanished. Couldn’t be found anywhere. At the time, the Australian police suspected that their man, the one they’d arrested, had somehow made away with Masters, though nothing could be proved there. Then one or two of those who’d lost money in the swindle got mysterious letters … or packages, I should say, for there was no sort of explanation in them. Just money, notes to the amount that they’d lost, or a little bit more.”
