Indoors, the antique décor was a fitting statement for the aged patrons of money and name. Lestrade ignored the walls of art in favour of the front desk, where he announced us by name and reminded the clerk that Signor Persano was expecting him. He paced up and down in the lobby as Holmes smoked and I examined several of the hotel’s fine marbles, but as the minutes grew long even Holmes began to share Lestrade’s impatience.
“I don’t care how rude I look, I’m going to ask again.” Lestrade muttered. “I could be back at real work instead of whittling here.”
“Ah, here comes the page.” I said quickly. “But look!”
The boy was running across the carpet to urgently whisper in the ear of the clerk and his concierges, which in the miraculous ways of all hotels, spontaneously generate at the first show of trouble. Lestrade was at the desk in a trice and we were close at his heels.
“I beg your inconvenience, gentlemen,” the clerk stammered. “Signor Persano was expecting you, yes, but he is not answering our attempts to calls. The page looked through the keyhole and he appears to be sitting at his desk, but he is not moving and he does not seem to hear.”
“Here, now.” Lestrade barked. “Take us there at once! Who among you carries the authority for the hotel?”
An olive-skinned man with improbably black hair against his advanced years stepped up. “I am Vezzani, Master Butler.” He announced with trembling dignity. “It is my discretion to decide if the police may be called.”
“That is good to know! The police are already here. Is there a way of opening Mr. Persano’s door without damaging hotel property?”
So addressed, the old man blanched and produced a ring of keys. “Allow me.” He led us up the lift and to the first guest-door across from it upon the third floor. Painfully he knelt, his fleshless knee upon the carpet and fumbled arthritically at the ornate lock. “Your pardon, gentlemen,” he begged at last. “But I am old and cannot see the proper key. I shall use the skeleton.” In a moment, the heavy door creaked open and sunlight blinded our faces.
My desert-scalded eyes were slow to see around the glare, but Lestrade and Holmes called to me and I moved forward. They were clustered around the duelist and trying to rouse him without success.
“Good Lord!” I heard Lestrade shout.
“Do not touch that, Lestrade! If you value your life, do not touch it! Draw the blinds so Watson may see!”
The burning brightness eased and I blinked until I could see. Persano had contrived some illusion of his home’s hot lands. The lamps were unclouded glass and the curtains light blue. Plants twined back and forth from pots and even up the walls. Flowers posed in various stages of bloom, and large glass tanks held argentine fish and terrariums stocked with still more plants.
Persano had not moved. Before him on the table was a scatter of loose papers in Italian, English, Spanish, and French. He had been working on his daily assignments with his pipe. That pipe now lay in a scatter of tobacco on the carpet at his slippers, and a stained pipe-cleaner, a pouch of rum-soaked leaf, and a silver-chased pipe case was against a half-open gigantic Baroque silver matchbox.
This was my first chance to see the impersonator. He was taller than Holmes, and lean within his dressing-gown. His dark red hair was oiled and neatly combed back from his large, domed forehead, and traces of kohl flecked his eyelashes. Despite the cosmetics, he did not hide his masculinity, a confusing contrast to his feminine clothing. Holmes had not exaggerated his effect upon the public.
He did not see us. His large, round, black eyes were wide open, fixed unblinkingly upon his table. This close, I could see his fine-boned face drawn like taut rice-paper about his skull. Both hands were at rest upon his blotting-paper, finely manicured and the nails trimmed to a quarter-inch in length.
He did not react to my attempts to jar his mind back to his surroundings. I applied the smelling salts, shook him, examined his ears for blockage and his skull for signs of a blow. A deep cut ran across the palm of his right hand, so I thrust a needle into his left index finger. It might have been a sandbag for all the reaction I received.
“This man is cataleptic. Is there a physician of the hotel?”
“I will bring him!” Vezzani tottered out.
Lestrade had found a mechanical crayon and was tapping the matchbox shut at arm’s-length. Even as I opened my mouth to ask why, I saw something quiver within its shadow, something dark and soft, and it gleamed wet in the dull light, as would light striking a clot of congealing blood. A chill of utter revulsion swept me.
“What is that, Holmes?”
“A pleasant little fellow, whose acquaintance I should still make. Lestrade, do be careful.”
“I’ve handled my share of vermin, Holmes.” Lestrade snapped. “If I don’t know what it is, you can bet I won’t touch it!” He kept his gloves on as he used the crayon and a ruler to pincher up the box and drop it into a bag held open by Holmes. “I don’t want this thing anywhere near my men! They don’t have training for this!”
Lestrade’s uniformed police returned with Vezzani and the hotel doctor, the Pisan Fiora. Together we re-examined the patient as Vezzani hovered and wrung his hands, and a new discovery was made: Persano’s reflexes responded to the needle test on his left hand.
“He has lost all dexterous sensation. How could it be from this cut? I treated it myself after the fight yesterday!” Fiora held up the afflicted hand. “It was but a gash from the broken crystal. Oh, but what is that?” He pointed to a dry excrescence upon the tips. Unless the angle of the light was exact one could barely see it. “Why, it appears... the slime of a slug?”
“It goes across the cut.” I agreed. “Now that I see, the slime wraps around the fingers as though he had picked it up.”
“There are slugs in the tanks.” Lestrade frowned. “Perhaps he was using the slime to heal the wound.” From his troubled expression I could tell he worried that an educated man would fall to folk-cures.
“Persano always keeps slugs for healing. There is truth to the old remedy,” Fiora assured him, and suddenly gasped. “My fingers!” He held up his trembling hand. “I merely touched the slug-tracks but they are tingling, and now numb!”
* * *
The day was exhaustive. I took scrapings off Persano’s hand for analysis. Fiora regained some sensation in his hand after many hours and a thorough alcohol wash. The duelist was not so fortunate. He had begun to drool and whimper, but was still not responsive when we bundled him up for the hospital.
While I focussed on my patients, Holmes and Lestrade buzzed like bees within a hive, and vanished to parts unknown only to re-emerge again. Before long, Jones showed up with two constables of his own. His head was bandaged and his demeanor irritable. I was busy with calls to suitable hospitals, so I only noted the timbre of Jones’s voice, rising and falling with his agitation, and his enormous hands opening and closing like a crab’s pincers wanting prey. With Fiora’s help it still took us half the day to find that rarity among British Medicine, a specialist in neurology. Dr. Emil Hogan of Harley Street assured us he had the facility to see the patient, as well as analyse the scrapings and the specimen. Fiora was by now excited by the change from his usual examinations for the guests and personally volunteered to supervise the delivery with Lestrade’s men. When they left, the hotel felt quite larger and quieter. It was with relief Holmes returned from mysterious business in the hall and announced we could do no more for the moment and may as well go home for supper. I was quick to agree, for my friend had not touched the hotel’s offer of excellent food and coffee.
* * *
Mrs. Hudson is familiar with her lodgers. We came home to a princely cold supper. Sadly, I could not look at her summer pudding without recalling that red thing in the matchbox and shivering.
“There are so many questions to this case, Holmes. It is a muddle.”
/> “A ball of different threads is always messy. I assure you this fact is still scientifically proven, for I had the pleasure of interviewing each and every member of the dons.”
“That cannot have been pleasant.”
“Ah, better than pleasant! It was useful. Lestrade is generally correct about those old gentlemen - confirmed solitary retirees, elegant of manner, and sophisticated of taste. They all regret ‘their’ femminiello’s sudden affliction, and that made interrogations awkward.”
“You said ‘generally correct’, Holmes. Were there exceptions?”
“Oh, one or two. But I cannot separate the ash from the cinder just yet. At least Jones left in a better mood! He believes he has a thread for his missing banker. What a game, Watson! The angler must occasionally discard his pole for the trawler’s net and use what he catches, be it coarse fish or fine.”
“I suppose Lestrade need not fear a duel now.”
Holmes snorted. “Speaking of fish, Lestrade happily plays Il pesce d’Aprile when it allows him to perform his duties unhindered. No, he is not at all comforted. I share his unease. You were too dedicated to your patient to notice, Watson, but one of Persano’s prize dueling pistols is missing from its case, and my expertise in the language of the writing-desk assures me that documents are missing. Even Lestrade and Jones - two more unimaginative brains in the same room will never again be seen! - could tell the Signore had been writing for some time on paper that no longer exists.”
“I wish I had noticed, Holmes! My thoughts are suspended until I see the results from Dr. Hogan. He must determine if the thing’s toxin led to Persano’s state, as well as how it reached his possession. Could it be a pet from his tanks, only to be poisoned by carelessness?”
“You did not hear Jones presume that very thing. Lestrade was quick to correct him. Neither you nor Jones were as close to that thing, but we could smell it. There was a heavy brine to the fetor, and those were freshwater tanks against the wall.” Holmes shuddered. “Bah! It is too snakish for me. Lestrade is going to Harley Street on the morrow and perhaps deliver us some light on this murk. But for now I suggest we do service to Mrs. Hudson’s platter.”
* * *
In the swift ways of London, the weather changed. Thunderdrums woke me from a heavy sleep and I came down for breakfast to find a drenched Lestrade before the grate as a squall hammered sheets of water against the glass.
Holmes was still in his dressing-gown with his pipe pinched between his teeth. His eyes shone with the brightness of a child before a party, and he chattered as he poured the little detective a cup of coffee and tried to dress all at the same time. I hastened to take the coffee-pot for him.
“Oh, cheers!” Lestrade breathed. He was not only soaking, but had the unmistakable stench of a man hapless enough to travel over the Crossrail by Paddington on a wet day. “I apologise for the smell, Doctor.” His free hand pressed to his torso with a wince.
I asked him what happened.
“We were taking the Signore to Barts. Your mates got them to keep him as a teaching subject, and he’ll be treated better there than anywhere else.” Lestrade’s admiration for my colleagues made me smile. “Our cob slid on the wood pavement and down we went. Got my ribs roasted good, but that was all. If anything would shake a man back to his senses, it’d be his cab sliding into a lamp-post! But no, he just sat and cried to himself. Dr. Hogan thought that was valuable information, so I suppose something good came out of it.” He nodded to a waterproof envelope on the table. “That’s yours. They did you up a tight report.”
“You are fortunate the other delivery is also unharmed.”
I looked up and recoiled backwards.
Holmes was dressed and holding a wet-specimen pint jar. It was a house for a terrible thing, squat-coiled and red as old blood, with a sheen of Australian opal and fatty segments lined with short, black bristles. It gaped a fanged mouth, and its head was crowned with fleshy tentacles.
“I am glad it is no larger!”
“Hah! Quite! Dr. Hogan swears it a marine leech related to the venomous fireworm of Pallas’ discourse in 1766. At the very least, it is a remarkable worm unknown to science. I suspect its natural environment is secretive, for it is designed to lunge. No harmless feeder of algae with this equipment!”
“There is nothing harmless about that thing! He writes it was fiendishly difficult to examine, even if it was already dead. A simple chemical test confirmed a touch will numb the nerve, perhaps permanently. Fiora will eventually recover full sensation, they believe, for his contact to the creature was secondary and belated. Both feel Persano’s catatonic state is a reaction of the brain upon exposure to the toxin.”
“However, Mr. Holmes, how he and that... thing... met-” Lestrade jabbed his fingers at the jar. “This looks very bad, and not just for me.”
“Of course you would be concerned with your reputation, Lestrade.”
“I was already worried before this! But I can’t prove Signor Persano was the only target! What if there are others?”
Before Holmes could answer, the bell rang. Soon a panting constable was climbing up the stairs to tell us that Jones had found Crosby the Banker, dead, and in a most peculiar condition on Caledonian Street. He believed it concerned our own case with Persano.
* * *
The rain and thunder made misery of the trip, but it slackened by the time we reached the edge of the markets. Against the stolid Bruce Buildings were several police and the ever-present collection of those curious enough to brave sour weather in the hope of gossip. In the middle of it all we could see Jones, more gigantic than ever in the open, and bellowing back the crowd with considerably more success than poor Canute.
“I hoped you’d be with Holmes,” he wheezed at Lestrade. “I suppose this means we’ll both be writing different versions of the same report?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” Lestrade grumbled.
“Best keep your gloves on, gennulmen,” Jones warned and led us down a tiny side-street, once a small alley but now a running brook. At the bottom of it rested a deep-set door over a perch of stone and a drenched constable guarding both sides of it.
“Normally we keep to our own territories, but in this case...” Jones shook his head. “Lestrade, I wasn’t joking. I’m glad you’re here.”
The building was the dark and cheerless architecture of those too poor to pay for proper heat and light outside of their wage days. It was quite cold, and the start of webs silvered the rickety rails up crooked flights of stairs smelling of dust and mildew. At long last we reached the top, where an inspector stood at attention, for a body stretched in the room he guarded. A single clenched fist peeped out from the edge of the sheet draped over the form.
Lestrade knelt and gently lifted the sheet. He whistled in surprise. “Signor Vezzani! What’s he doing all the way over here? Doctor, isn’t this the sign of a heart attack?” He pointed to the old man’s face, which was quite black with congestion and still twisted in an expression of pain.
“Of course a more thorough examination is recommended, but this has all the marks of cardiac arrest.”
“Oh, this sad show has only just started. Come, meet Mr. J.W. Crosby, absconder of funds and suddenly no longer missing.” Jones nodded at the small room behind, where a bed and wardrobe rested against a cheap desk. In the middle of this room a second corpse sprawled on a cheap drugget, a few feet from an elaborate single-shot pistol. A pool of blood had spread and dried on the carpet. “Doctor, I’d be grateful if you could confirm my suspicion on his cause of death. It looks like a lung shot.”
I could oblige. The bullet had angled, disintegrating the pulmonary vessels before lodging into the spine. Crosby was paralysed where he fell, unable to move or call for help as his lungs slowly filled up with blood, drowning him. Despite my campaigner’s experience, I was horrified a
t the man’s death.
“I can’t imagine a worse way to die,” said Jones. “The shot must have sounded like just another one of those blasted thunderclaps. Why, hallo, Mr. Holmes. Whatever is the matter?”
For my friend was wandering back and forth across the small rooms with a black scowl upon his brow and a fistful of papers tight in his clutch.
“It should be here...” we heard him mutter. “Confound it! And so close!”
I saw all of the policemen were staring at me in hopes of some illumination, but I had none to give.
“We’ve already found the missing money,” Jones said importantly. “Hidden under the floor, neat as you please.”
“Notes? Bah.” Holmes slapped the papers on a small end-table. “His other rooms. This is a bolt-hole, a hideaway! Where is his proper address?”
“I can take you, Mr. Holmes,” Jones protested. “But there’s nothing important there. We’ve searched everything, down to the smallest nib on the quill pen!”
“Nevertheless, I may find some answers you have missed - for I have questions you have not asked.”
“Jones,” Lestrade said quietly. “I would never take a case from you, and we have both learnt the value of listening to Mr. Holmes. I can stay here with your man-” He nodded to the other inspector. “-and you can take him to Crosby’s other lodgings.”
Jones thought hard, and nodded. “As you say, Lestrade.”
There was no room in the cab, so I stayed behind with Lestrade and made a thorough examination of the dead men. It was in the perusal that we discovered the papers Holmes had discarded. It was a confession from Persano, admitting he had provoked a fight with Lestrade to gain a private audience. There was a spy at the hotel, acting against the interests of England and Italy, and his name was J. W. Crosby.
The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part IX Page 41
