‘Well, both of you appear to be very pleased with yourselves, I must say.’ Holmes smiled.
‘Mr Holmes, it is hardly surprising when you consider that thanks to your generosity, I am about to receive a most resounding slap on the back from my superiors. After all, they have been somewhat plagued by Mr Dodd and his associates and soundly rebuked for allowing you and me such a free hand in dealing with this case,’ Lestrade explained with pride.
‘While it is true that you will be congratulated for having unmasked and apprehended a gold-smuggler and a fraudster, I am sure you will admit that Declan McCrory is hardly as noteworthy as Moriarty or Jack the Ripper,’ Holmes reminded him.
‘Although, on the other hand, Holmes, he might yet prove to be the man responsible for the death of Carl Mandel,’ I added on Lestrade’s behalf.
Holmes shook his head emphatically.
‘No, Watson, the perpetrator of that crime is a far more worthy and dangerous individual and we shall have to spread our nets a good deal further if we are to catch him,’ Holmes concluded with a flourish.
‘It might be as well if you acquaint the inspector with your précis of the letters of Sir Michael Collier throughout the remainder of our journey,’ Holmes suggested as he closed his eyes. I immediately took out my notebook.
By the time we had eventually turned the corner into Pepys Street, I had completed my task. As I returned my notebook to its pocket my mind went back to our first visit to this address. I immediately looked towards the very spot on which I had noticed the mysterious tall man in the cape. On this occasion, however, the street was empty.
To my surprise, not one of us displayed signs of wishing to vacate our cab with any urgency as we pulled up outside our destination. I was still lost among my reminiscent thoughts. Lestrade was just sitting there with the agony of confusion etched into his intricately furrowed brow. Meanwhile, Holmes’s eyes were still tightly shut as he remained in his state of deep concentration. It was almost as if the secrets of the Matilda Briggs and her erstwhile cabin boy were still locked somewhere within the pages of Sir Michael Collier’s remarkable of letters.
Therefore, it fell to a red-faced young constable, in a state of considerable agitation, to galvanize us into action. He raced to the kerb and began to rap frantically on the door to our cab.
‘Thank heavens you have come, Inspector!’ the constable breathlessly exclaimed. ‘That awful American gentleman upstairs is kicking up a merry mayhem and he just won’t be quiet!’ The constable sidestepped smartly out of the way as Lestrade bullishly rushed to open the door.
‘Is he now? Well, we shall soon see about that!’ Lestrade snapped sharply as he barged his way towards the entrance to the building, nearly bumping into the unfortunate constable in his rush.
I was on the point of following after Lestrade when I felt a gentle restraining hand upon my arm.
‘We shall give the good inspector his brief moment in the sun,’ Holmes quietly suggested with a smile.
We did not need to be inside the office of the shipping magnate to experience the full wrath of the big man. His great booming voice echoed throughout the corridors and the stairwells of the entire building! As we approached the door to his room, the volume of McCrory’s voice was displaying no signs of abating.
‘What in heaven’s name is going on here, Inspector?! Am I to be held a prisoner within the confines of my own office? This is a scandal sir, an absolute scandal!’ By now McCrory had drawn himself up to his full height and he was towering over the inspector, who was visibly wilting beneath the heat of McCrory’s irate barrage.
‘I shall send for the American consul at once!’ McCrory continued. ‘You do not appear to realize exactly who you are dealing with, sir! You have not heard the last of this, I promise you!’
‘Oh, I think that we have heard more than enough … from you.’
Unnoticed and unannounced Holmes had glided calmly past the bemused form of Inspector Lestrade and now stood eyeball to eyeball with the blustering American. Holmes then stabbed him in the chest with the stem of his pipe and indicated that he wanted McCrory to take to his chair.
‘Well I never, how dare you sir!’ McCrory’s attempts at intimidating Holmes were obviously futile and his faltering voice all but tailed away to a hoarse whisper.
The manner in which Holmes’s perception of the matter manifested itself in his face was so overpowering that the colour drained away from McCrory immediately. He sank down into his enormous chair, shrinking visibly as he did so.
On this occasion it was Holmes who sat commandingly on the corner of the desk, smiling malevolently down upon its owner as he lit a cigarette. Holmes offered one to his reluctant captive, whose fingers were noticeably shaking as he accepted it. Now still and totally silent, the fallen tycoon could barely lift his eyes to meet those of Sherlock Holmes.
‘Oh yes, Mr Declan McCrory, we know it all!’ Holmes confirmed with a solemn nod of his head.
In his turn, McCrory shook his head dejectedly; he could barely place his cigarette between his lips, so distraught was he.
‘I trust that you realize that as a result of your intensive meddling, I am now to face ruin and worse still, humiliation back home. However, I cannot for the life of me understand how you came to finding me out. I was so convinced that there had been nothing that I had left uncovered or left to chance.’
If McCrory was looking to Holmes for a sign of sympathy or understanding, he was to be sorely disappointed.
‘The object does not exist that can be concealed by one man, but that cannot be revealed by another,’ Holmes replied enigmatically. ‘Take the captain’s log, for example, which you had so meticulously destroyed or, perhaps, had thrown overboard. Its very absence was more damning and raised more suspicion than anything that it might have contained!’
‘Mr Holmes, you must understand from the outset that whatever else you might think of me, I am no killer. The deaths of Carl Mandel and the other members of the crew were neither a direct nor an indirect result of any of my other indiscretions—’
‘Other members of the crew? Indiscretions? What is going on here, MrHolmes? This is beginning to sound like a veritable blood bath!’ Lestrade shrieked in his frustration. His slap on the back was, after all, rapidly becoming a double-edged sword! I attempted to calm him down with a cigarette and a discreet assurance that Holmes would soon make the thing clear to him. In this I enjoyed only partial success, although it did allow Holmes to continue with his questioning of McCrory.
‘I am well aware of that, Mr McCrory, for I have discovered enough evidence on board the ship to suggest the presence of someone who was not a member of the crew. Did Captain Handley or any of his men suggest anything to you that might aid me in identifying this stowaway?’ Holmes asked unexpectedly.
‘See here, Mr Holmes, my game is surely up, so I will certainly not compound my crimes by concealing anything from you that might aid you in apprehending the man who killed the members of my crew. The truth is, however, that I can add very little to what you might already know. Everything happened so quickly, you understand.
‘For some inexplicable reason the presence of a stowaway was not discovered until they had begun to unload the gold at St Katherine Dock. By then, of course, it was impossible to conceal their true intentions from him and an attempt was made to apprehend him. He proved to be a most able and dangerous fighter and in the ensuing struggle he made good his escape. Captain Handley and his men delivered the gold to me as originally planned, and I have not seen them since.
‘I can warn you now that to ask of me which berth I have since allocated to them, will prove to be a waste of time. The crime is surely mine alone and the crew were simply following my orders. Now, Inspector, deal with me as you will. I can assure you that any punishment that I might receive from your courts will count as nothing compared with what I would have received at home from my own people.’
With that, Lestrade moved forward to take McCrory in
to custody.
Unexpectedly Holmes raised his hand to call a momentary halt to proceedings.
‘One moment, Inspector, and with your kind permission, of course,’ Holmes purred in his most charming manner. ‘I have provided you with enough evidence to try this man several times over, so I am certain that another minute or two, either way, should make little difference to you. There is just one last question that I should like to ask of Mr McCrory.’
‘Under the circumstances I am hardly likely to refuse you that,’ Lestrade agreed, although without entirely releasing his grip on McCrory’s arm.
‘There is one aspect of this business that still eludes my full understanding. I have discovered your reasons for undertaking this venture, the diversion to Sumatra, using pepper to camouflage the gold, and your choice of dock, given its location and the running of the tides. What I can not comprehend, however, are your reasons for maintaining a regular correspondence with a man like Mandel over so many years. Of course, his connections in Sumatra have subsequently proved to be invaluable to you, but you were not to realize that until only recently. Surely your bad days in New York were best left behind you, given your new set of circumstances?’
McCrory thought long and hard before making his reply.
‘Sure, those days were well left behind me and they would have remained so save for one thing. Gentlemen, I must advise you all that my reasons have no bearing on the matter in hand and I would swear you all to an oath of silence upon this matter alone.’
Following a gesture from Lestrade, the two constables withdrew to the corridor outside and Lestrade and I nodded our agreement to maintaining our silence.
‘I will only agree for as long as it is understood that my case should be in no way jeopardized because I have not used this information as evidence,’ Lestrade added as a cautionary note.
‘Very well then; the truth of the matter is that I never had any intention of maintaining an acquaintance with Mandel from the very outset. As soon as the office in London was established I realized that my friendship with a man as dangerous as Carl Mandel could prove to be a hindrance to my success over here and I did everything that was within my powers to dissociate myself from him and his way of life. However he would not be put off.
‘Even once he had fled from the States he managed to maintain contact with me. Whether it were from the China Seas or even Sumatra itself, each month a new letter would surely be there on my office desk. I will not dwell for too long upon the subject matter of these letters, for reasons that will soon become obvious to you all.’ McCrory paused for as long as it took for him to request another cigarette, with which I duly supplied him.
‘To be blunt then, gentlemen, as a direct consequence of yet another one of my wild, hedonistic nights, in the company of Mandel and his associates, I seriously compromised a young chorus girl who went by the name of Marlene. It shames me to admit it, but I never even thought to enquire as to her surname. The issue from this violation of mine was a beautiful baby girl, whom I have never been allowed to see but whom I have been supporting from that day to this.
‘Mandel rebuked and ridiculed me for taking this stance, because he and his like would simply have abandoned both Marlene and her infant girl to their fate. However, because I was a ‘rich boy’ and not from the Lower East Side, I had a different set of values from the others and I was, therefore, fair game. However, Mandel’s plans for me did not end with a dose of mere chiding. He decided that if I could afford to maintain my unfortunate offspring, I could equally well afford the price of Mandel’s silence.
‘The full horror of his new proposal was now obvious to me. The effects of my family discovering the results of my appalling behaviour would lead to my ultimate destruction and Mandel knew that, all too well! So I had no choice but to hand over a princely sum, into his vile and filthy hands every month for the rest of my life. The contents of Mandel’s letters were the same each time.
How is your dear father, rich boy?
‘The following day a cheque would be on its way to Aceh, or wherever he happened to be at the time, and before long the company’s funds were becoming seriously depleted. The gold scheme was Mandel’s way of securing the fruits of his blackmail in one fell swoop and my way of throwing off his stranglehold on me once and for all. I trust that this statement of mine will serve adequately to answer your question, Mr Holmes?’
‘More than adequately, Mr McCrory. Thank you. However, if you are seeking either sympathy or admonishment, I can assure you that you will not find it in this room. Perhaps one day people like you will realize that this world and its inhabitants are much more than merely your playthings. You may have the prisoner removed now, Inspector Lestrade!’ Holmes dramatically pronounced.
The two constables returned to do Lestrade’s bidding and before long the three of us were in the cab once more on our return trip to Baker Street.
‘Now to the real matter at hand, by which I mean, of course, the slaying of Carl Mandel.’ Holmes rubbed his hands together with unseemly relish as he made this suggestion.
‘In the absence of any available witnesses it would seem to be improbable that we can even identify this stowaway, much less apprehend him.’ Lestrade shook his head disconsolately.
‘Oh, Inspector, do not underestimate your powers to the extent that you would limit yourself to solving but one crime in a single day!’ Then Holmes observed Lestrade’s face drop as his true indebtedness to Holmes fully dawned upon him. ‘You must not take my poor, mischievous, attempts at humour too cruelly, Inspector, as Watson here will most willingly attest. Now, to business.’
Our rate of progress, so far, had seemed to indicate that our return journey was to be no less dawdling than the outer one had been. Undaunted by this delay, Holmes sank back comfortably into his seat and lit a cigarette. He appeared to be positively luxuriating in the dark air of mystery that still surrounded this bizarre case.
Holmes then leant forward and balanced his elbows upon his bony knees. When he next spoke it was through a cloud of exhaled cigarette smoke.
‘It really has been too bad of me to have withheld the nature of the third discovery that I made on board the Matilda Briggs, for this length of time,’ he apologized.
The inscrutable side to Holmes’s nature was never more evident than when he was on the cusp of success in a case. It had come as no surprise to me that he had taken this long to divulge the nature of a crucial piece of evidence to Lestrade, and I could only assume that he had done so now in order that he should create the maximum amount of dramatic effect with the revelation.
This attitude of his excluded any positive contribution that I might have been able to make had I been in full possession of the facts. On too many occasions I was made to feel redundant, save for my note-making and at times I had struggled to restrain the irritation and frustrations that Holmes created with his lack of regard.
More often than not, however, he would suddenly express to me the value that he attached to my help and support, and my anger would soon dissipate. This occasion would prove to be no exception and, of course, I bit my tongue.
‘Oh, Watson, you must not feel aggrieved at my apparent oversight, for it does not reflect in any way upon my opinion of your abilities or worth. Rather it is, perhaps, a reflection of my own insecurities and the possibility that I might be proved wrong in my hypothesis until such time as I have explored each and every element of a problem.’
Lestrade cleared his throat to remind us of his presence.
‘If you would not mind, I would like to hear of this crucial third element before we arrive at Baker Street.’ Lestrade invested these last words with a most barbed and sarcastic edge.
‘Oh, Inspector, we have far more to reflect upon than that, I can assure you. For example, there is that extraordinary-sounding caged animal that Collier observed within the compound of the Ghadar movement. Watson, you remember Collier’s description of the creature, do you not?’ This time there was no sound
of exasperation to be heard coming from the direction of Lestrade, despite the bizarre nature of Holmes’s question to me. Evidently and at long last, Lestrade was beginning to learn from Holmes’s suggestion that he should try to expand his mind and his imagination.
I thought long and hard before I tendered a reply. I must confess that, at the time, I had attached very little importance to the beast in the cage, although I did recall that Collier’s description had painted it as grotesque and demonic in appearance and repulsive and violent by nature. Apparently Tilat had based much of his silat fighting form upon the animal’s movements and Collier had actually been attacked, albeit through the bars of its cage, by one of the rat monkey’s peculiar movements.
Holmes appeared to have been delighted with the detail and accuracy of my recollection; he then made another suggestion:
‘Perhaps you might now be able to forge a link between Mandel’s dying words and Collier’s description of the rat monkey?’
‘Death himself has surely come for us all.’
I repeated these fateful words with a hesitant hushed reverence, while at the same time attempting to comprehend Holmes’s implications.
‘The most singular aspect of Mandel’s dying words was undoubtedly his use of the word “himself” instead of itself as one would have expected. This certainly seems to imply that Mandel’s assailant resembled, in some way, the very embodiment of death itself …’ I paused for a moment and shook my head, as if I had expected that motion to shake up and sharpen my faculties for reasoning.
‘Perhaps it would help you if I now tell you of the third and final link that I discovered on board the ship. In front of the body of Carlo Mandel and below deck, amongst the remains of the black pepper, I was able to make out the traces of two extraordinarily large footprints that had clearly been impressed by straw sandals, of the type that are commonly worn in Indonesia.’ Holmes paused momentarily to see if comprehension had yet dawned upon me, or Lestrade. He soon continued once he had realized that that was not to be so, just yet.
Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra Page 15
