Thirty-Nine Steps from Baker Street

by J. R. Trtek

  “Well,” he said with a contented voice, “we have gained success far sooner than I had expected. Seven crates in all. With that early triumph, however, comes realisation that the danger looms even closer than I had anticipated.”

  “The German attack is imminent, you mean?” I asked.

  “I fear so, Watson. I think our enemy would not have set out the crated search lights, should that be what lies within those boxes, if they did not have plans to break them out and deploy them very soon.” Holmes turned to Bullivant. “There has still been no response from Dieter Baumann to the last item placed in the Times by Inspector Magillivray?”

  “None, I am afraid,” said the spymaster.

  “Still, you must contact Scotland Yard and have several teams of their men assembled.”

  “Of course,” replied Sir Walter, who immediately stepped to the phone. “With Magillivray in command? Should I inform the Yard of our purpose?”

  “No,” replied Holmes. “Have you someone besides Magillivray who might take charge of these contingents?”

  Bullivant shrugged. “I suppose either Inspectors Hartley or Carter would do. Both were with us at the Ruff when we apprehended Moncrief.”

  “Yes,” said Holmes. “They will be excellent choices.”

  “And what of Magillivray?” asked Sir Walter.

  “I have other plans for him,” the detective replied. “But let us not worry about those details at present.”

  Holmes then gave instructions as to the number and size of each contingent that Inspectors Hartley and Carter were to organise. “Direct them to have their teams at the ready by tomorrow afternoon at Scotland Yard. We will inform them of the purpose and instruct them concerning procedure only just prior to employing them.”

  “So the big show is about to happen?” asked James.

  “We may safely place a wager on that, I believe,” replied Holmes.

  “And when do you play your hand, sir?” enquired Arbuthnot.

  “When Von Bork is about to lay down what he thinks is a winning combination,” declared the detective. “Only to find that we have trumped him and his little cabal.”

  “And have you any notion what date that will be?” I asked.

  “No. I believe only that it will be during the next German raid from the air, and that will require a full moon with good weather,” murmured Holmes.

  “The full moon is less than a week away,” said Bullivant. “We, as well as the Germans, must wait upon the weather, however.”

  The next many hours were filled with feverish activity by several people, activities I either observed at second hand or learned of only by chance, for I was not among the host of busy participants. From the swift comings and goings of Frank Farrar and Shinwell Johnson, I gleaned that they had been in communication with Tatty Evans aboard the Belisama, and from Jack James, who more than once whisked Holmes off to consult with Inspectors Hartley and Carter, I discovered that hordes of Scotland Yard constables were being readied to seize the presumed German search lights—and stores of hidden incendiaries—scattered about the City, though the police did not yet know that would be the goal of their imminent raids. Martha let slip that Holmes had received a telephone message from Sandy Arbuthnot.

  More than once I offered myself to Holmes as another member of this coterie of helpers, only to be gently rebuffed.

  “I do not wish to interfere with your preparation for new duties at the hospital in Millbank,” he declared. “That assignment is approaching, is it not?”

  “But you have kept me here all these months to provide support, or so you have claimed,” I argued one morning after breakfast in Queen Anne Street. “Now that you have need of as many trusted men as you can find, you turn me away.”

  “And need I remind you, old fellow, that you have complained mightily about being denied an opportunity to exercise your medical skills during this war?” countered Holmes. “Now that I free you of any obligation to me, you complain.”

  “Will you at least inform me of developments these past few hours?” I implored. “Have Roylance and Jenkins observed the crates being opened? Has another note been received from Dietrich Baumann? And what of—”

  Holmes raised a hand as, with the other, he lifted a piece of toast to his mouth.

  “You cannot deny you have kept me at arm’s length during the past week,” I insisted. “The matter of Von Bork and the third head of Cerberus is about to reach its grand climax, is it not? Am I not to be allowed in on the kill, Holmes?”

  My friend gave a pained expression and put down the toast. He rose from the table and turned toward the mantel to approach its collection of mementos, accumulated over a life’s work in the field of detection: a bust of Napoleon, an empty bottle of prussic acid, and a farthing painted green, among others.

  “Holmes?” I said, rising also. “Have I somehow offended?”

  “You have not,” said he quietly after a moment, his back still facing me as he took the farthing in hand. “It was, rather, the last phrase you spoke: in on the kill. That was what Mrs. Hudson said when she offered to assist me in…that final matter all those years ago.”

  I said nothing, merely watched as my friend grasped the edge of the mantel to look into the glowing fire. Listlessly, he put down the farthing and reached for the poker to stir the coals before turning round.

  “I do have some matters to attend to with Mr. Macandrew, and there are messages to leave at Office 54,” he said, briskly walking past and toward the sitting room door. “You may inform Martha that I shall return in time for dinner.”

  “Of course.”

  Holmes did not re-enter the sitting room to bid me farewell after changing clothes. I heard the house door open and close, and then I gave my time to a small set of medical corps documents in order turn to my mind from the offense I had accidentally given. Toward midday, a telegram arrived.

  “Is something wrong, sir?” asked Martha as she observed me reading the message.

  “I do not know how to answer this,” I replied. “It is a summons of sorts from the RAMC. Apparently, plans to assign me to Queen Alexandra’s Hospital have not been changed, but for some unstated reason, I am to report to Crookham Camp at Aldershot immediately—today, in fact. There is no reason given, but these orders are without doubt from my superiors, and their urgency is underscored by the wording of the message.”

  “Should I assist you in preparing, Colonel?” asked our housekeeper. “Or make arrangements for a compartment on a train?”

  I thought for a moment.

  “Why, yes, I suppose,” I stammered.

  “Which is it, sir? Or is it both?”

  “You may see what trains are available. There is a Bradshaw somewhere over there, upon those shelves,” I told her, pointing past the heaps of books, papers, and charts that remained strewn across the sitting room carpet. “I shall take responsibility for packing my bags.”

  Within two hours, I was ready for the trip to Aldershot, and passage had been arranged on a train leaving Marylebone Station later that afternoon. My only concern was that I might not have the opportunity to bid Holmes a proper farewell, especially after my unintentional faux pas of the morning. Not wishing to leave, even for a day, without communicating fully and honestly to my friend, I sat down at my writing desk to compose a brief letter, to be left upon the mantel.

  I sat there, in the chair on which I had chronicled so many of Holmes’s past exploits, and toyed with the letter opener given me months earlier by Moxon Ivery—or the Graf Von Schwabing. Uncertain of what to write, I allowed my mind to reminisce, reliving the initial days of lodging with the world’s first consulting detective, my fortuitous courtship of Mary Morstan, Holmes’s introduction of his brother Mycroft, the earnest pluck of the Baker Street Irregulars, and more. Inevitably, my reverie was drawn at last to the terrible pain of more than twenty years before, when I thought my friend to be dead at the hands of Professor Moriarty.

  As I recalled our desperate tri
p across the Continent to elude Holmes’s archenemy, I imagined in my mind’s eye the arrival at Reichenbach Falls, where I had received the forged summons that had separated me from my friend, causing him to face Moriarty alone.269

  The epiphany shot through me in an instant, and I put down the letter opener, suddenly enlightened.

  “Martha!” I called loudly, not bothering to ring for her.

  A moment later, our housekeeper poked her head past the open sitting room door.

  “Colonel?”

  “I will not be leaving for Aldershot after all,” I told her. “However, when Mr. Holmes rings up this house, as I am certain he will, tell him otherwise.”

  “You wish me to lie to him, sir?”

  “Yes,” I said, looking her squarely in the eye. “If you value his safety at all, you shall lie for me.”

  “As you wish, sir,” she said, with a puzzled yet trusting expression.

  Only moments later, the telephone did ring, and Martha poked her head into the sitting room.

  “Was it Mr. Holmes?” I asked.

  “Yes,” replied the housekeeper, “but it is Mr. Mycroft Holmes. He wishes to speak with you.”

  “I am glad to catch you at home, Colonel,” said my friend’s sibling after I had spoken into the telephone. “Your housekeeper indicated my brother is not in.”

  “That is correct,” I replied.

  “Colonel, I do not know if you are aware of my concerns about him. There are—”

  “Mr. Holmes—M,” I blurted. “M, is there any way in which you are able to confirm orders I may have recently received from the medical corps?”

  “From the RAMC?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a pause.

  “Well, that is possible, of course,” came the eventual answer. “I could have a clerk look into it.”

  “I mean at this moment.”

  Again there was a pause, a longer one.

  “Well, in extremis, I could personally verify such an order within, say, a quarter hour.”

  I voiced my appreciation and then related to Mycroft Holmes the details of the telegram ordering me to Aldershot that very day. We rang off, and several minutes later, the telephone sounded again. I answered promptly.

  “The RAMC have no knowledge of such an order, Colonel. As far as they are aware, you are assigned to Queen Alexandra’s Hospital and are to report there on Monday next, with no further obligation until then.”

  “I see. The telegram, then, is false.”

  Once more, there was silence for many seconds, and then I heard Mycroft Holmes saying, “I suppose we both know the source of the spurious command.”

  “You mean Holmes. Your brother, that is.”

  “Yes,” replied Mycroft. “I suppose that was his method of getting you out of the line of fire during this evening’s festivities.”

  “Festivities? This evening?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Do you not know? Our man across the waters in Belgium has confirmed that the geese will be taking flight tonight. And our RFC friends have photographic proof that the presents in the City have been unwrapped. The other shoe will drop tonight,” he declared, continuing to speak in homely metaphor.

  “And all is in readiness?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Mycroft Holmes replied. “The Yard’s men are stationed and ready to act, having at last been informed of the purpose. And I believe that Sherlock has had Master Evans anchor his vessel at an appropriate point in the river near where the Nemesis is docked, with Inspector Magillivray and Sergeant Scaife tending three police launches on shore near that location, along with Farrar, Johnson, Arbuthnot, and James, all of whom are to join them later.”

  “And where is your brother in all this?” I asked. “What are his intentions for this night?”

  “In truth, Colonel, I was about to ask you those same two questions, for that is why I rang you up in the first place. I know nothing of his plans for himself, nothing other than what he has instructed others to do. We spoke earlier today, at which time I conveyed him our news that the German bombers would arrive tonight, and that the search lights have been uncovered. I saw him make some arrangements with Magillivray by means of my telephone, and then he left, after saying he would inform you. I assumed he was headed for Queen Anne Street, but obviously I was incorrect.”

  “Has any further communication been received from Dieter Baumann?” I asked.

  Again there was a brief silence. Then Mycroft Holmes responded.

  “I cannot say,” he said. “Magillivray has been the person receiving them, and he had been instructed to pass them on directly to my brother. Certainly, he has not notified either myself or Sir Walter Bullivant of a new message, though neither of us thought to ask, expecting Magillivray to inform us of his own accord.

  “You know, Colonel,” Mycroft said abruptly, “I believe my brother has managed to remove several matters beyond my immediate knowledge and control.”

  Again there was silence for many seconds. Then Mycroft Holmes spoke in an earnest, heartfelt tone I had never heard from him.

  “I do implore you watch after him—if such a thing is even possible,” he said, “though I wish you to not tell him of this plea.”

  “Of course.”

  “It is not an easy thing to read his intentions, but I do believe he may be up to something—something perhaps reckless and rash.”

  “I shall stand guard,” I pledge. “Though that depends on me seeing him before the day and night are over.”

  Our conversation continued for perhaps another minute, and then we rang off. A half hour later, I heard the telephone sound again.

  It was Sherlock Holmes this time, and Martha followed my previous instructions to the letter, misinforming my friend that I had already left for Aldershot. Barely a quarter hour after that, the house door opened, and from the sitting room, I heard Holmes ask our housekeeper about the details of my departure.

  “It is a relief to have him safe,” Holmes’s voice declared as he and the woman approached along the corridor. “Now, Martha, it is also important that you remove yourself as well from harm’s way. Though he is not yet aware of such plans, I shall be sending you to Mycroft for the night, for I am expecting—”

  As he strode through the sitting room doorway, the detective paused in the middle of his statement to calmly study me, sitting in my military uniform, framed by two pieces of luggage.

  Holmes approached the breakfast table, his movements stiff yet measured.

  “Good afternoon, Watson, though I must admit surprise at finding you here,” he said calmly. “Martha had given me to believe—”

  “What I wished you to believe.”

  My friend silently acknowledged the truth of what I had uttered and strode to the mantel, where he found his cherrywood pipe. He turned as our housekeeper stood at the doorway.

  “You may go,” he told Martha genially. “Please close the door, if you will. And do pack some things for your stay with my brother.”

  With a contrite expression, our housekeeper stepped out and pulled shut the door.

  “It was a most inconsiderate of you to scheme to have me leave London on false pretences,” I said at once. “And even more loathsome to borrow the tactic of Professor Moriarty.”

  “I felt I had no other choice, old fellow,” Holmes wistfully declared.

  As he began filling his pipe with shag, my friend looked back at me from the mantel with a contemplative eye. “You know, Watson, had I not expected Moriarty to arrange for that note back at the Reichenbach Falls, I was prepared to perform the same ruse myself.”

  “What?”

  Holmes continued to stuff the bowl of his pipe.

  “I had seen Moriarty’s henchman, Colonel Moran, skulking about the village that very morning—he was always a clumsy fellow: all bluster, though of a most dangerous variety.

  “Given Moriarty’s desperation and his nature, I had no doubt the professor intended to confront me alone in some isolated
place, and so I chose the Reichenbach as prime objective of our hike that day. Having seen Moran, I surmised his superior was near, and the falls seemed an appropriate place for the final meeting with my nemesis.

  “I had no intention that you share my possible fate, Watson, and so I thought to take a piece of hotel stationery on which to write a summons of some kind, which would be delivered to you shortly before we reached the falls. However, from across the lobby, I saw a young man pilfer a sheet himself from the desk. When, after stalking the fellow discreetly, I observed him meet Moran outside and give the paper to him, it occurred to me that Moriarty entertained the same plan, though inspired by a somewhat different motivation.”

  “I see. And the lad was the same one who delivered that false note about the dying woman?”

  “He was.” Holmes smiled. “I confess I found myself rather amused at having Moriarty do my deceptive work for me.”

  “Well,” I said, “it allowed you to practise an even greater deception upon me for three subsequent years, and so I hope you felt no great disappointment.”

  “It was a far more vicious lie, I grant,” Holmes admitted. After a moment of silence, he asked quietly, “You have still not forgiven me that lapse, have you?”

  I thought for a moment and then, watching him light his pipe, replied.

  “Since I take it that these may be the last moments on Earth for both of us, I suppose I should, at last, grant you pardon. Yes, I forgive you. I hope you will do the same for my unconscious allusion to Mrs. Hudson.”

  Holmes looked up, a tortured look on his face, as he tossed the spent match onto the grate.

  “I do, though God knows I deserve every lashing I receive for that fatal error.”

  “And so the attack will come tonight?” I asked, ignoring my friend’s comment.

  “Yes, without a doubt,” he said wistfully. “All evidence, including the latest report from Bullivant’s Belgian spy, points to a German air raid this evening.” He reached into a jacket pocket and withdrew a paper, which he tossed onto the table. “This makes it a certainty, I believe. Dietrich Baumann wishes to meet with me tonight as well.”