Sherlock Holmes and the King's Evil: And Other New Tales Featuring the World's Greatest Detective

by Donald Thomas

  “At the back?”

  “Yes, Mr Holmes. We live at Deakin’s Rents in Exchange Buildings, in what they call a cul-de-sac off Cutler Street that runs off Houndsditch. It’s no use pretending it’s a palace, one room up and down at the front and the same at the back. At the back we look straight out on the opposite backs of the fancy-goods makers and tailors in Houndsditch. Their windows ain’t ten feet from ours. In between us, each of our tenements has a yard with a privy and a bit of paved space about ten foot square, for a washing line.”

  “Yes,” said Holmes quietly, as Mrs Hedges outlined the domestic arrangements of her poverty, “I understand. Please continue.”

  “Well, sir,” she leant forward now, anxious that he should miss no word, “In consequence, the back upstairs window of each tenement overlooks the yard next to it as well as its own. When you see other people in their yard, it’s about the only time you do see them, now that so many are foreigners. Russians and Germans, I should think.”

  “Those in the tenement adjoining yours are Russian or German?”

  “About a month ago,” said Mrs Hedges, “some new people moved in there, German or Russian, as I say. Them being at the very end of the row, only us overlooks their yard.”

  “I understand.”

  “Not a family. About eight or ten of them just come and go. I never know who’s stopping there. There’s one plays music in the house—and in a club they go to, in Jubilee Street.”

  “Have they bothered you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Not at first, sir. I’m at work all day, so’s my man Harry. I don’t do close work any more, but I help with packing. He works down Millwall docks. The long and the short of it is—Louisa has to be indoors on her own just now.”

  “And they have bothered her?”

  “About three weeks ago a man—Russian, perhaps—came round one morning. He offered my girl a threepenny bit if she’d run an errand for him. She was to go down to the bird-shop in the Commercial Road and buy a canary for him. It had to be pure yellow with no brown on it. If they hadn’t got such, they was to tell her where she might get one and she was to go there instead. They hadn’t got a pure yellow in Commercial Road, as it happened, but she found one in St Mary Axe.”

  Up to this point Holmes had treated her visit good-naturedly. At the account of the yellow canary, he was alert and attentive. He drew out his small black notebook and began to make jottings.

  “And how long was she away upon this errand?”

  “I should think perhaps an hour and a half,” said Mrs Hedges, “perhaps a little longer even. Next day, the man it turned out was called something like Mr Lenkoff came round again. He asked Louisa if she wouldn’t mind going and getting a cage and some seed for his little bird, from the same shop in Commercial Road. So she did. Later that week he asked her to go again for some seed and to get him a twist or two of tobacco. Promised her threepence for herself again. Not wishing to disoblige, she went.”

  Mrs Hedges paused and Holmes looked at her as keenly as if she was revealing a plan to rob the Bank of England.

  “Pray continue, madam. Take your time. Omit no detail. This is most, most interesting.”

  His keenness seemed to disconcert her a little and I caught a glance of alarm.

  “Two things happened, sir. On the evening of the day when the bird was bought in the morning, the lady on the other side of us found a yellow canary in her yard, like it was lost or someone had let it out. She took it in and cared for it. But still the next day, and the next, Mr Lenkoff sent my little girl for bird-seed. My friend kept the little bird because she thought they put it out unkindly. Deliberately.”

  “Perhaps it was not the same bird?”

  Mrs Hedges almost guffawed at the absurdity. “There ain’t that many yellow canaries round Deakin’s Rents! Anyhow, Louisa swore the one she bought had a white and blue ring on his leg—sort of pedigree—and so had this one. Why should they want bird-seed and a cage for a canary they hadn’t got any more?”

  I intervened at this.

  “You cannot be certain that it had not escaped of its own accord.”

  Mrs Hedges sat back and folded her arms.

  “That’s true, sir. But why go on buying the seed? See here. They could buy birds or not, for all I cared. Even if they let them go free, that was their business. I got plenty to worry me apart from that. But I swear they were up to something else. What if this was some plan to steal my Louisa?”

  “Louisa was too useful to them as she was,” said Holmes softly, “That was three or four weeks ago and they have not harmed her, you say. What happened next?”

  “I arranged for Louisa to stay all day with my sister-in-law in Altmark Square or at home while I was out. That was the finish of running errands for them. But then I came home last Friday and the back drainpipe next to our little yard had gone.”

  There was a slight flush in Holmes’s customary pallor and a pulse beat visibly in his cheek.

  “Be very careful, Mrs Hedges, I beg you. Let me have this from you in precise detail.”

  Her bounce had gone now and I thought she looked a little frightened.

  “Well, sir, there’s a water pipe goes down from each tenement at the back, from the rainwater gutter on the roof to the drain in the yard. Halfway down, it goes into an iron box with water from both tenements. Then it goes in a single pipe to a drain in their yard, just the other side of our party wall. That pipe had been there in the morning and it was gone by that evening—though it was dark then and we didn’t see until next day. By that time it was raining. Both yards was collecting water, and it was rising round our back-door step.”

  “Did you ask Mr Lenkoff what had happened?”

  “My Harry did. Mr Lenkoff said it was all right. The pipe was leaking and the London council had taken it away. When I asked the council’s man, he said they hadn’t taken anything away. What’s more, the lady on the other side of us said she’d heard a noise most of that Friday, as if someone was using a hacksaw on iron. That drainpipe would have been too long for them to take indoors without cutting it up. My Harry happened to look down into their yard next evening and saw one of them carrying something from the privy to the house. It was round and heavy. He swears that it was a two-foot length of the pipe. I don’t know what their game is, Mr Holmes, stealing for scrap I daresay. And I’d take an oath they were trying out my Louisa with that errand lark. We should have come home one evening and found her gone—sold in Russia or somewhere.”

  Quite unpredictably, after her earlier self-assurance, Mrs Hedges began to weep. I understood now why our young curate had been discreet in passing her on to us. Sherlock Holmes stood up and put his hand on her shoulder, glancing at the notes he had taken and clipping the pencil back in his breast-pocket. He was not much experienced in comforting the distressed but he did his best.

  “I beg you not to upset yourself, Mrs Hedges. I believe you may put child-stealing absolutely from your mind. You say that your upper window is the only one with a view of the little yard at the rear of this adjoining house?”

  “It is, sir.”

  “And you and most of the other people living around you would be out at work during the day?”

  “Just about every one, Mr Holmes.”

  “It is as I supposed. The object of the errands was that your little girl should be away from the scene for as long as possible. I doubt if they meant her any harm otherwise. The less she saw, the less she threatened them. However, you are quite right to take every precaution for her safety.”

  “And the drainpipe, Mr Holmes?”

  My friend paused. “That, I think, is a matter for the police. If you will leave it to me, it shall have immediate attention. I fancy that my friend Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard may find the missing drainpipe to be of considerable interest. Concern yourself only with the safety of your little girl. I do not believe she is in any danger. However, for your own peace of mind, it will be better not to leav
e the child in the house on her own.”

  2

  “Considerable interest!” Mrs Hedges was off the premises now and I was able to vent my scepticism. “Inspector Lestrade will find a stolen drainpipe to be of considerable interest? He will find it to be no such thing! It is a matter for the local constable and the council!”

  After seeing Mrs Hedges to the door, Holmes was now lounging on the sofa, a pipe-rack within reach, balancing on the edge of his hand a stout bulbous-headed walking-stick, as though this was an aid to thought. The December sky had darkened again, so dramatically that it had been necessary to light the gas. Without taking his eyes off the balanced stick, Holmes said,

  “Unless I am greatly mistaken, Watson, we may stand on the verge of a considerable criminal conspiracy. It may well be a story that parents will tell their children for many years to come.”

  “A yellow canary and a stolen drainpipe?”

  “A drainpipe stolen and sawn into two-foot lengths. Now why should that be?”

  “They could not carry it to a scrap-metal dealer in any other form. What more common crime is there than for thieves to rent premises, strip them of all that can be sold and move on? These scamps will have flown the coop by now.”

  “I daresay. However, it occurs to me that heavy iron drain-pipes have another purpose, especially when those who steal them are criminal Anarchists. Read a little political history of the past century, my dear fellow. The assassination of Tsar Alexander II and the attempted assassination of Napoleon III. You may then concede that a two-foot length of cast-iron drainpipe packed with explosive and blocked at either end will make one of the most efficient bombs that the criminal world has yet devised.”

  3

  It was two days later when Inspector Lestrade paid us an evening visit in response to the story of Mrs Hedges, which Holmes had forwarded to him. The Scotland Yard man with his “bulldog features,” as Holmes called them, was sitting before the fire with us, a glass in his hand. He was in philosophical mood.

  “I must acknowledge you were right, Mr Holmes, when you said the birds—except for the canary—would have flown by the time our inquiry was made. So they had. Nor do I think they will be back, which is the best news for Mrs Hedges and her little girl. These scoundrels have been a little in front of us all.”

  “A little in front of you, to be precise,” Holmes said coolly.

  Lestrade shot him a glance, shook his head, and lit the cigar which had been offered him.

  “We could make very little of them. They appear to have been Russian, rather than German, but then so is half the population of that area. They call themselves Anarchists but, to tell the truth, their real enemies are the brutes who persecuted and ill-used them back in Russia. A few of them may be criminals born. The rest have no cause for a quarrel with us.”

  “Precisely,” said Holmes, “and the born criminals are those who now seem to have slipped through your fingers.”

  This bickering ran on for a moment or two, then the whisky took its effect. Before the evening was over, my two companions had settled back into a discussion of the late Dr Crippen, hanged three weeks earlier for the poisoning of his wife. Lestrade had played a part in tracking him down. Holmes rode his latest hobby-horse, insisting that Crippen was unjustly executed—indeed, wrongly convicted. He had never intended to kill Belle Elmore with hyoscine, merely to render her unconscious while his young mistress Ethel Le Neve was in their house. Rather than put Miss Le Neve in jeopardy by calling her to the witness-box, he had saved her and taken a terrible penalty upon himself.

  It was well past nine o’clock and we were deeply immersed in this debate before a well-laid fire. Holmes had just reached for the poker, when there came an extraordinary hammering at the front door of 221 B Baker Street, accompanied by repeated ringing of the door-bell. My friend was out of his chair and down the stairs before our landlady, Mrs Hudson, could reach the hall. He had guessed, correctly, that this was no caller of hers. We heard voices and then the tread of two men on the stairs. Holmes entered, followed by a uniformed constable.

  “A visitor for you, Lestrade.”

  “Mr Lestrade, sir? 245D Constable Loosemore, Paddington Green. An urgent message, sir, relayed from Commissioner Spencer, Scotland Yard. A suspected major safe-robbery is in progress in the City of London.”

  “Where?” asked Holmes sharply.

  Loosemore handed a police telegraph form to Lestrade.

  “Exchange Buildings, sir, back of Houndsditch. They think it must be a safe-breaking. Constable Piper, the beat officer, put through a call to Bishopsgate police-station after complaints from local residents. Bishopsgate called Scotland Yard. Officers are on their way from Bishopsgate but the commissioner understands Mr Lestrade has a current inquiry in Houndsditch. If you could be found, sir, he would be obliged if you would attend to co-ordinate the investigation at Houndsditch itself.”

  Lestrade did not look as if he welcomed this diversion from a warm fireside and a glass of hot toddy on a cold December night. Holmes, however, was already half-way into an Inverness cape.

  “There’s only a police van available,” Loosemore explained, “but that’s at the door. The driver says he can have you at Houndsditch in twenty-five minutes.”

  “Come on, Lestrade!” said Holmes cheerfully, “Watson and I have a stake in this inquiry as well. We must go, whether you do or not. Much better make up your mind to it, old fellow.”

  The three of us were presently following Constable Loosemore down the stairs to the street. Holmes, just behind me, said sotto voce,

  “It will be no bad thing, Watson, if you have remembered to pack your service revolver in your overcoat pocket.”

  “I have,” I said aloud, “I have no intention of venturing into the alleys of Houndsditch at this time of night without its protection.”

  The police motor-van was no more than a “Black Maria” commonly used for transporting prisoners from the cells to the criminal court, two benches facing one another down its length. There was little view of the city outside, as the motor clattered down the Euston Road and City Road, until it stopped abruptly in Houndsditch. We scrambled out at the back into a dark and cavernous thoroughfare. Most of its tall buildings housed jewellers and fancy-goods merchants on the ground floor with warehouses above. Yet if Houndsditch seemed menacing in the darkness, the cul-de-sacs which ran off it were far less welcoming.

  The only blaze of light was down Cutler Street, where a gin palace called the Cutlers’ Arms was doing a busy trade.

  In Houndsditch itself there were three lanterns showing, from officers who had already arrived. The man who approached us was Constable Piper. He saluted Lestrade.

  “Mr Lestrade, sir? We had a report just after nine o’clock from Mr Weil, owner of the fancy store at number 120, just over the road there. He and his sister live above the shop. There’s noises from somewhere at the back of building, sir. Drilling and sawing, and someone using a crowbar on brick. I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary when I walked round there, but after I came away the noise started again.”

  “How many men have you got?” Lestrade demanded.

  “I left Constable Woodhams and Choat to watch the front here and went straight to Bishopsgate. Sergeant Bentley and a constable came back with me. Martin and Strong from the plain-clothes patrol are on their way. There’s seven of us all told.”

  “Enough to deal with common robbery, in all conscience,” said Lestrade irritably. He shivered in the cold wind of the December night. If the dark street was eerie, that was precisely because there was at present nothing to be seen or heard of the suspects. Yet they must still be somewhere close at hand.

  Sherlock Holmes walked across to the window of Harris the Jeweller, next to Mr Weil’s premises. At the rear of the shop stood a large and efficient-looking safe with an electric light shining above it night and day. Anyone who tried to attack the lock must do so in full view of the street. Holmes turned back, hands thrust deep into
his overcoat pockets for warmth. However much hammering and drilling there may have been earlier, there was no sound of it now. I said as much.

  “No sir,” said Constable Piper, “The noise stops the minute anyone goes near Mr Weil’s counting house. It’s the safe next door they’re after, I’ll be bound.”

  Lestrade looked about him.

  “We’ll take a good look at the back alley-way. Sergeant Bentley and you men, come with me.”

  Our bulldog set off with Sergeant Bentley and five constables following, leaving Piper to watch the front. Holmes and I followed at a little distance, denying Lestrade the opportunity to tell us to keep back. The Cutlers’ Arms was immediately ahead, down the side street, and its glaring gas-lamps blinded us to all else. Having reached it, Lestrade turned right into Exchange Alley, whose tenements ran along the back of the Houndsditch shops and warehouses. It was very probable that safe-breakers would make their attempt from the rear of one of these cramped dwelling houses.

  In this cul-de-sac of Exchange Buildings, several of the dingy tenements were decrepit in the extreme, lightless and apparently deserted. My abiding memory is of a damp cold in the air and a chill street-wind between tall shabby buildings. At the far end, the alley was blocked off by a tall packing-case warehouse. We reached its wooden doors without hearing any sound of drilling or sawing. There was only the same cold and eerie stillness. Then, as we faced the doors of the packing warehouse, there was a shout from somewhere on our right and a little behind us. I guessed it came from one of our men who had got through the ground floor of a deserted tenement into a yard at the back, sharing a wall with the rear of the Houndsditch shops. The cry came again.

  “They were almost through! There’s only the inner wooden lining of the jeweller’s wall left!”

  Holmes and I turned round. It was so dark that one could not readily identify anyone. There were figures moving quickly, but visible only as silhouettes against the harsh gaslight of the Cutlers’ Arms at the far corner. In quick succession there was a flash here and there, a crack and a snap. I felt a sudden blow that sent me sprawling on the cobbles. It was not a bullet but a mighty shove from Sherlock Holmes.