Thirty-Nine Steps from Baker Street

by J. R. Trtek

  “As you wish,” sighed the detective, who glanced in my direction. “It is all supposition, Watson, but I agree with my brother that it will pay to be sceptical of this development.”

  The following day, I took a brisk morning walk round my neighbourhood before Holmes and I were to ply the river in the company of Tatty Evans. Having made a broad circuit on foot, I approached my house and saw a vacant taxicab now resting outside by the kerb. Intrigued, I quickly stepped inside, where I found Holmes sitting in his armchair, dressed to go out, and beside him Jack James, who now sported civilian clothes.

  “Ah,” I said, stepping to the hearth, the still untouched bottle of Tokay resting on the floor near my feet. “That was unnaturally swift. I assume that the taxicab outside is yours now?” I asked young James.

  “Well, it has been loaned to me,” said the American. “I think you’ll find, however, that I am far more practised with both brake and clutch than I was four years ago.” He smiled. “I have to say that the automobiles are a mite more advanced as well.”

  “Our unholy trio has been reunited sooner than I thought possible,” I declared.

  “When Mycroft wishes to act quickly, he can find ways to do so,” said Holmes. “In this instance, with John Blenkiron’s assistance, our wishes were accomplished almost instantaneously. Private James has been seconded to our enterprise for at least a month.”

  “That is good news,” I said. “It is time to leave in order to board the Belisama?”

  “Yes,” Holmes added. “I’ve told Jack that we are going to observe the new mooring place of the Nemesis.”

  “And you have new boots, I see,” I remarked.

  “Ah, yes,” my friend replied. “They arrived last evening, a gift from my brother, whose sudden displays of concern are touching. Are you ready to depart, Watson?” he said, reaching for his hat, which I noticed to also be a recent acquisition.

  “That homburg is new as well,” I observed.

  “It was time to renew my wardrobe,” Holmes answered with a smile.

  “A bit of river air may not be the most healthful prescription for any of us,” I said as I turned to go to my room. “However, I am happy to comply. Allow me a few minutes to change dress.”

  Somewhat more than an hour later, we three had set sail from the St. Katharine Docks with Tatty Evans and Old George aboard the Belisama. The craft turned eastward, rounding the river’s bend and heading for that point where the Nemesis had last been seen at anchor.

  “As when I found her earlier mooring, I was sore tempted to land then and there,” Master Evans confessed to us as he handed the boat’s helm over to Old George. “I’ve a store of pent up feelings needing to be unleashed upon that uncouth crew. But I remembered you prescribing caution, Mr. Holmes.” The stout man smiled heartily. “And I could not forget that you be the one who pays for all this.”

  Holmes kindly nodded acknowledgement. “And you have seen no activity about the launch?” he asked as we passed dilapidated watermen’s stairs leading down to the river’s shore.

  “None, sir,” replied Evans, his breath visible in the chilly breeze. “I’ve seen only the launch herself, with none of the infernal crew attending her, as near as I could observe.”

  “The Ratcliffe Highway is just to the north,” said Holmes, pointing beyond the waterfront stairs. “That leads off to Limehouse itself,” he said softly to James and me as we all wrapped ourselves more tightly in our coats. “Wherever the crew lodges, it must be near this place, I should think.”

  “Take her farther out from shore,” Tatty Evans called to Old George, who swung our vessel to starboard. “There,” the master of the Belisama declared, pointing toward the near bank. “As those trees slide away from our line of sight, you can see her anchoring spot. Need you a glass, Mr. Holmes?”

  “I am already so equipped,” replied the detective, withdrawing a small telescope from his pocket. Steadying himself as he gazed through its lens, my friend nodded. “So that is how she appears—the craft seems rather well looked after.”

  “Aye,” agreed Tatty Evans. “For a rude, disrespectful crew, they take reasonable care of their vessel.”

  “Or are forced to,” suggested Holmes. “Here, Watson,” he said, handing me the telescope. “Take a look, if you wish.”

  I spent several seconds watching the Nemesis, moored at the edge of a relatively wild patch of ground, and then gave the instrument to Jack James. As we passed the anchored vessel at a distance of perhaps three cable lengths, Holmes declared he had seen enough of the previously elusive vessel.256

  “Continued cooling of our limbs is too heavy a price for waiting to see if any of the crew come into view,” the detective remarked. “My principal desire was to learn where she ties up and observe her directly. We have accomplished that now.”

  Tatty Evans ordered Old George to come about and sail back to our point of origin. As we glided toward the Belisama’s own anchorage, Holmes stood pensively, staring at the passing shore. Jack James strode over to Old George’s side to speak with the mate about steering the craft, while Tatty Evans excused himself to go below.

  Now alone with my friend, I interrupted his reverie by asking, “Are you thinking of the next full moon, when the German aeroplanes may come again? 257 And we have not yet determined the purpose of the London Transport League.”

  Holmes turned toward me with a sad smile.

  “Rather, old fellow, I was thinking of the cold, and how delightful it would be to have a warm Baker Street meal waiting for us.”

  I stood beside my friend for some time, the low conversation between the two young men abaft us the only counterpoint to the momentary silence we shared.

  “Do you never cease to lay blame upon yourself?” I asked at length.

  Tatty Evans’s footsteps were heard as he regained the deck, and Holmes gave me a brief, mournful glance before looking back in the direction where lay the Nemesis, now far astern and out of view.

  “And now that the well-named craft is found again, sir,” asked Evans as he approached, “what am I to do? My vessel, after all, is still under your hire for another six days.”

  Holmes looked back along the river for a moment and then turned toward the barge’s master. Genially, he replied, “I will present you with another cheque after we arrive at the St. Katharine Docks. Your instructions will be to keep watch on the launch for an indefinite period. I shall also have some additional directives for you as well.”

  “As you wish, Mr. Holmes. You do promise eventual retribution, however?”

  “It is guaranteed,” the detective quietly asserted.

  Tatty Evans nodded and then strode over to Old George’s side, taking the helm from the younger man, who joined Jack James in admiring the riverine panorama and describing it to the American.

  “I do hope that Richard Hannay brings down Von Schwabing,” Holmes said abruptly as he too stared at the river’s edge.

  “Pardon, Holmes? Who do you mean? Not Von Bork, surely?”

  “No,” said he, leaning upon the gunwale.258 “I mean the Graf von Schwabing: the man we know as Moxon Ivery.”

  “What? You have learned his true name?”

  “I have deduced his likely true identity.”

  “By what means?”

  Holmes turned round and pulled his clay pipe from a coat pocket. He toyed with it but made no attempt to fill the bowl. Instead, he said, “You may have noticed me frequently perusing my set of old commonplace books in past weeks.”

  “Of course,” I said. “The activity has been difficult to ignore. I believe your Almanach de Gotha has made more than one appearance as well.”

  “You see, Watson,” he said, studying the pipe, “Ivery’s sophistication and erudite nature were all too obvious in Biggleswick. He was supposed to be a don, of course, but though genius may spring from any class, the man had a presence that struck me as decidedly aristocratic.

  “Yet he was portraying another man, and an Englishman at th
at. A German nobleman would never willingly stoop to play such a role, even in the cause of spying for his own country.”

  “But Von Bork was a spy,” I argued.

  “Von Bork remained Von Bork in 1914,” Holmes maintained. “He did not assume another identity and suffer the indignity of getting his hands soiled as an actor for the purpose of espionage.”

  “He does so now,” I asserted, now determined to refute my friend’s claims. “Has Von Bork not disguised himself as a Mr. Borge to lie in hiding there?” I asked, gesturing toward shore.

  Holmes smiled. “Yes, but you support my argument,” he asserted. “Von Bork now prowls the streets and alleys as you say, Watson, but only after suffering the dishonour of being apprehended by me, the indignity of returning home in failure. Coming back to Britain in disguise was his only hope for redeeming his name.”

  The detective smiled once more, cocked his head, and raised a brow as he looked at me.

  “And you believe that Moxon Ivery is a German of noble birth whose reputation was similarly tarnished in the past, causing him to accept the menial status of undercover agent?” I said.

  “I have held to that view ever since we discovered that Ivery was our German spy in Biggleswick,” declared Sherlock Holmes. “And, believing he would never have accepted such a role except for the reasons just cited, I have been glancing back through all my commonplace books and checking their contents against the Almanach in hopes of finding a likely candidate.”

  “And the minutiae you have gathered in those volumes proved useful, as they so often did back in Baker Street.”

  “Yes, Watson. What some might consider minutiae is, to the world’s first consulting detective, the staff of life. And I daresay that my many volumes of saved cuttings constitute a Rosetta Stone of enlightenment concerning the peccadillos of more than one imperial dynasty—both in our hemisphere and the other.

  “It was in those pages that I refreshed my memory concerning one Graf von Schwabing. He was a court favourite in his early years but became unfairly caught in a rather nasty scandal, and his stock with the aristocratic inner circle plummeted accordingly. He vanished from news accounts, and so far as anything was known of him by the general public, he was seen as a rather lazy and dissolute sort.

  “However, as we both know, that was but a pose, for I suppose a man who swims for his life in the Channel at night, impersonates a don while maintaining several other identities, and then manages to get himself flown to France during wartime aboard an enemy aircraft is anything but lazy.”

  “Have you conveyed your discovery to Bullivant?” I asked.

  Holmes shrugged and returned his pipe to a coat pocket.

  “It is only a strong supposition at present, and I have shared it with no one but you,” he said. “However, I will soon relate it to Sir Walter and Mycroft, who will no doubt pass the suggestion on to John Blenkiron. But the St. Katharine Docks now present themselves,” announced the detective as the Belisama’s mooring place appeared round the river bend.

  Smiling, Holmes walked to the opposite side of the barge to join Jack James and Old George. Tatty Evans nodded to me from the helm, and I returned his gesture. After staring briefly at Holmes in conversation with the two younger men, I turned back to watch the docks slowly approach.

  Two nights later, I joined Vespera Cochrane for dinner at her friend’s house in Kensington. Though I was grateful for our meeting after a separation of many days, I found myself disconcerted when it was revealed that the meal would be followed by a séance.

  “You do not care for spiritualism?” Miss Cochrane asked later, when we found ourselves momentarily alone. “If anything, James, I have found you to be a most spiritual man.”

  “I believe I have asked you to not call me by that name,” I noted gently.

  “Ah,” she said, genuinely contrite. “I did forget. Please do accept my apologies. I did not mean—”

  “It does not signify,” I said, discreetly taking her hand.

  “But do you mean to say that you do not accept the concept of a spirit world?”

  “I do not claim that,” I answered. “Certainly, I do not deny its possibility, but I confess that, at the same time, I have failed to observe any evidence in support of its existence.”

  “Were you not moved by the Mons archer or—?”259

  “I was not there,” I said quietly. “And have you physical proof?”

  Vespera Cochrane tipped her head. “I have only my heart. And I know you have a corresponding organ, John.”

  “I have an acquaintance who has been a spiritualist for years,” I told her. “He has dragged me to more than one séance, much to my displeasure. Indeed, I had vowed to never attend another.”260

  “Does that mean you will leave prematurely tonight, John?”

  I looked at her as she continued to hold my hand, clenching it more tightly, and I strengthened my own grip in return before letting go.

  “I will stay,” I avowed. “For you. I did not know that you were a follower of these activities. Rest assured that I will respect that.”

  “In truth, I am not a follower,” she told me. “But I possess a curiosity about them. Will you not indulge me?”

  “When have I not?” I asked with a wry smile.

  Our host then approached and invited Miss Cochrane and me to join her and the other guests in the next room, which was lit by a single candle sitting in the middle of a large round table. A young woman sat there: a thin, big-eyed cadaverous beauty introduced to us merely as Sister Lilian. She arranged us round the table, placing me between Miss Cochrane’s friend and a prominent newspaper publisher.

  For the better part of an hour, I participated in the charade, holding hands with my fellow participants, all the time recalling the taste of prewar roast beef or taking clinical note of how my eyes were adjusting to the darkness as many of my companions experienced the rapture of communicating with phantoms.

  At the conclusion of the night’s escapade into ectoplasm, I bade farewell to Miss Cochrane, who would be staying the night in the house, and obtained a taxicab to take me back to Queen Anne Street, where I arrived just before Martha retired for the night.

  “Is Mr. Holmes still about?” I asked as I put coat and hat in the wardrobe.

  “When is he not, sir?” our housekeeper replied as she shuffled down the hallway. “When is he not?” Pausing, she turned round and added, “He has not eaten this evening. Might you, Colonel, encourage him to—?”

  “Consume something? Yes, I shall.”

  Entering the sitting room, I found Holmes perched beneath a miasma of blue smoke, a lingering remnant from many pipes now extinguished. He held a knife before his eyes and stared at the blade, which appeared stained. Though he no doubt was aware of my presence, his gaze did not leave the tarnished metal edge.

  “Is that one of the pair found at the warehouse near the gasworks?” I asked.

  “It is,” said Holmes, putting the knife upon the table before him.

  “And you still contemplate the tar upon it and its brothers?”

  Holmes sighed.

  “I take that as an affirmative response,” I said, picking my way through the maze of newspapers, books, charts, and other assorted ephemera that lay cluttered in piles upon the floor. At length, having snatched both my own pipe and Arcadia mix along the route, I leaned back into the relative safety of the basket chair.

  “I rotate the pieces this way and that—speaking metaphorically, of course,” said Holmes. “Yet, no matter how I try, I fail to solve the jigsaw puzzle without one contradiction or another.”

  He ran fingers over his mouth and chin.

  “Perhaps you should sleep upon it,” I suggested while dipping into my Arcadia. Staring at the thinning veil of haze that still hung just below the ceiling, I added, “After all, some enigmas may turn out to be three pillow problems rather than three pipe ones.”

  Holmes gave a wan smile.

  “I have not the time, Watson
,” he said, his voice suggesting no small hint of exasperation. “Von Bork must strike soon for his country, before the war is lost to Berlin and its allies. Mycroft is certain there will be a huge German offensive in the spring. A full moon impends. No doubt, whatever terror is planned for our island—more poison gas or some other vile act—it will be delivered within the next few weeks, if not days. I must somehow fix upon the substance and the method.”

  “Sleep can be a worthy method for grasping at substance,” I again suggested as I lit my pipe. “And are you…not…the most methodical of men, as well as the most patient?”

  Holmes hung his head. “Perhaps at some time past I was,” he replied. “Tonight, however, I find my patience wearing thin, and method is nowhere to be found.”

  “Retire for the night,” I urged again while reaching for a volume of sea stories. From the corner of my eye, I saw my friend rise from his chair. “Perhaps you should take some food before doing so.”

  “No,” murmured Holmes, carefully picking his way across a carpet strewn with the detritus of his researches. “I shall take your advice to heart and declare my day to be at an end—it is straight to bed for me.”

  “Should I have Martha awaken you for breakfast, or do you wish to substitute starvation for insomnia?”

  “Have her knock upon my door, and I will decide the matter then and there. Perhaps I shall embrace both. Oh, and tend to the coals when you finally retire, old fellow,” Holmes requested as he approached the sitting room door.

  I looked up from my book and surveyed the expanse of scattered books, papers, and maps that lay between myself and the hearth.

  “I will do my best,” I sighed. “Though you have, after all, made it almost impossible for me to reach the fire through this field of obstacles.”

  I returned to my reading, but only for a moment, for I quickly sensed that Holmes had not yet made his exit from the sitting room. I turned and saw that he was, instead, standing in the open doorway, his once fatigued expression now replaced with one of sparkling excitement.

  “That is it, Watson!” said he.