by David Marcum
“About three months ago, we had become so busy that we found it necessary to hire an assistant. I was involved in the selection, and we were fortunate enough to employ a man named Floyd Willis. He is tall and strong, quite handsome actually, and as willing to take orders from a woman as he is my father, which is an important aspect to our arrangement. It should come as no surprise, then, that the two of us, thrown together so frequently, should fall in love. We are to be married later in the spring.” She held out her hand, showing a modest engagement ring.
We murmured our congratulations, although Holmes’s best wishes were more perfunctory, as he obviously desired for the story to continue, the scene now having been set. However, to the girl’s surprise, he leaned in for a closer look at the ring. “May I?” he said, surprising her as he took her hand and proceeded to turn it this way and that, studying it for a moment before releasing her and leaning back in his chair. “Please go on,” he said.
She took a breath and said, “We now come to the matter which led me to seek assistance, in spite of my father’s wishes that the entire affair should be ignored. A couple of months ago, not long after the new year began, Father and I went downstairs one morning to discover a sheet of paper lying in plain sight on the countertop in the main shop. The front door was still locked, and there was no indication of how anyone could have gained entrance to our building. We were both certain that there was no sheet of paper there when we had closed up and gone upstairs the night before. Even before unlocking the shop that morning, we made sure that the building was still secure, and that no one had remained hidden inside from the night before. I insisted upon it.”
“And this note?” asked Holmes. “What did it say? Do you still have it?”
“No, Mr. Holmes. After reading it, my father burned it. But I still remember quite vividly what it said: ‘Your days are numbered, as are the grains of sand within the glass. You shall pay for your sins.’ “
“What sort of writing was it? What of the paper?”
“It was quarto sized,” she said, looking to her right, over Holmes’s head, as she seemed to visualize it. “It was yellowish, and peculiarly thick.”
“Was the writing small, or did it fill the page?”
“Oh, it filled it from top to bottom and side to side.”
“And the writing itself? Was is practiced, or crude?”
“Crude, I should say. The letters were quite square, and the ink had bled into the paper.”
“Black ink?”
“Yes, I believe that it was. I only saw it for a moment before Father dashed it into the fireplace.”
“Did your father have any explanation of the matter?”
“He gave none. I was obviously concerned, due to both the threatening nature of the words, and the fact that the note had been placed into our shop, which was securely locked.”
“And what of his reaction?” asked Holmes. “Was he concerned as well?”
“He did not seem to be. Rather, he seemed angry, although he did not lose his temper.” She glanced to the side, frowning. “He did say something along the lines of ‘So that’s his game, is it?’ or something to that effect.” She returned her gaze to Holmes. “I cannot quite recall.”
“And there have been other warning letters as well?”
“Yes, two that I know about, but I was unable to read them, as Father destroyed them as soon as he found them. I believe that he started rising earlier than usual to make sure that he entered the shop first.”
“So there could have been other letters in addition to the ones that you have seen?”
“Yes,” she said.
“How was it that you saw the other two, and yet you were unable to read them?”
“On those occasions, I heard Father rise early and make his way downstairs. I slipped down behind him and saw him retrieve the letters from the counter. They seemed to be the same type of paper, and were lying in the same place. As soon as he read them, he threw them in the fire.”
“And there was already a fire going in the shop on those mornings?”
“We have a stove there that we leave banked from the night before. The remaining coals were enough to burn the letters.”
“Why did you not go down early on your own on some mornings to get a look at one of the letters?”
“Quite honestly, Mr. Holmes, I was afraid. I did not want to encounter whoever might have found a way into the shop, in case he should be discovered in the process of leaving the notes.”
“Having only read the one letter, why do you assume that the others, both observed and inferred, were warnings?”
“Wouldn’t that be obvious?” interrupted Lestrade. “If the others that she saw were of the same type of paper, and her father was moved to burn them, then surely they were also warnings.” He glanced at Miss Porter. “Tell him the rest.”
She lowered her eyes for a moment, and then, glancing over toward the window, she said, “There has been a tension growing between my father and Floyd. That is, Mr. Willis. It began around the time that the first letter was discovered, about a month after Mr. Willis first joined us. At first, I made no connection. But a week ago, after I saw Father hurl one of the sheets into the stove before I could stop him, he paced like a caged animal until Mr. Willis came to work. Then they went into the back, shutting the door. I heard much angry whispering, as if they did not want me to understand their words, but they could not entirely contain their emotions. When they came out a quarter-hour later, my father was as white as a ghost, while Mr. Willis could not contain a gleam of triumph in his eyes. It was quite unattractive, and the first time I had ever seen such an expression on his face. His attitude was most unusual, and very different from his regular agreeable and deferential self.
“From that day on, Father has moved as if in a dream, or rather like in a waking nightmare, while Mr. Willis has behaved with a new and rather unpleasant confidence.”
“Have you asked Mr. Willis if he can shed any light on the matter?”
“No. I had hoped at first that their argument was about some other topic entirely, and I did not want to make it my business. In hindsight, I’m sure that I should have said something.”
“To your knowledge, have there been any further warnings since their conversation?”
“None that I have seen. Since then, I have made an effort to get up early in order to follow my father down, but he has not gone down early as he did before, and I have seen nothing.”
“I take it, then, that Mr. Willis does not live in the shop?”
“No.”
“But he does have a key?”
“Yes. We gave him one after he had worked there for several weeks, and we knew that he was a reliable employee. And yet, I have never known him to use it.”
“During the course of his business duties, you mean,” said Holmes. “Surely you realize that the direction of your story implies that Mr. Willis may in fact be the man who is, or was, leaving the threatening notes.”
She lowered her gaze to her intertwined fingers. “I have come to believe that this might be so,” she said softly.
“Have you asked Mr. Willis for an explanation of these events? As your fiancé, surely he would be willing to take you into his confidence.”
She did not lift her eyes. “I cannot ask him, Mr. Holmes. I am afraid that he might lie and that I would be foolish enough to believe him.”
Holmes shook his head. “Is there any indication that these two men had any previous acquaintance prior to Mr. Willis’s employment?”
“None that I know of,” said Miss Porter. “There was certainly no mention of such when Mr. Willis interviewed for the position.”
“And what of your father? Is there some secret in his past that could have come back to haunt him?”
“Again, I am not aware of
any such aspect to his past, but you must remember, Mr. Holmes, that I’ve only really known him for two years. I believe him to be a simple pawnbroker. There was certainly nothing in his letters to my mother which might indicate anything questionable, or that might explain the circumstances that I have seen.”
“Why did your mother leave him? Did she have any knowledge that you have gleaned through conversations or correspondence that might give any hint of unsavory activities in your father’s background?”
“Nothing, Mr. Holmes. Their letters were simply news about each other’s lives, and about me. And my mother was never open to discussing my father with me while she was alive.”
Holmes was silent for a moment, and then said, “Your visit to Scotland Yard this morning. What did you hope to accomplish?”
She seemed at a loss for just a moment. “To be frank, I am not certain. The situation has become increasingly intolerable, due to the tension within the shop. It was worse this morning, between my father and Mr. Willis. Finally, I resolved that I could stand it no longer, and I set out to seek help. Without telling either of them, I quietly left and walked to Scotland Yard.”
Holmes raised his eyebrows. “You walked? Surely not! That was quite a distance to traverse, from Limehouse to Whitehall.”
“Not nearly as far as you would think, Mr. Holmes,” said Miss Porter. “In truth, I wanted to use some of the time to think. I need help, but I also did not want to do something which might cause more trouble. In all honesty, I was afraid that I might inadvertently expose some secret of my father’s, or of Mr. Willis’s. But at the same time, if Mr. Willis is in fact the kind of man that is threatening my father, then I wish to know the truth before our betrothal progresses any further.”
“Quite,” said Holmes. “As I’m sure Inspector Lestrade would tell you, the situation as you have so far described it does not fall within the purview of the police. No actionable crime has been committed, and the victim of whatever persecution that is occurring, your father, has made no effort to secure any assistance, official or otherwise.”
Miss Porter opened her mouth to object. Before she could speak, Holmes continued. “However,” he said, “I do see some points of interest, and I would be happy to look further into the matter.” He stood abruptly. “May I see you into a cab? Limehouse is simply too far to return by foot.”
The girl looked confused, glancing from Holmes to Lestrade and back. Lestrade stood, more slowly, and said, “You will be in good hands with Mr. Holmes, miss. Let me see you down to that cab.” He glanced at Holmes, and then back to her. “I need to stay and discuss another matter with these gentlemen, but I will look in on you in a day or so, if that will be all right.”
“Yes, yes, that will be fine, I suppose.” She nodded good morning to Holmes and me, and then let Lestrade guide her downstairs.
As I heard the front door opening, I started to ask Holmes a question, but he simply raised a finger and stepped over to his scrapbooks, held on the shelves to the left of the fireplace. At that time, Holmes’s scrapbooks were not nearly as extensive as they would grow to be over the years. Yet, even in those days, they were formidable. They were not so much actual books as albums, filled with loose sheets and newspaper clippings, some carefully glued into their well-ordered places, while others were arranged in a cabalistic pattern that only Holmes could identify. And then there were the leaves of paper that were simply stuffed in between pages, threatening to flutter to the floor, or - heaven forbid! - into the nearby fireplace if each volume were not opened with great care.
When Holmes and I first agreed to share the Baker Street rooms in early January ‘81, I had obviously had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had moved my things around from my hotel the very evening we entered into the agreement, and Holmes had arrived the next morning from his former lodgings in Montague Street, depositing a number of boxes and portmanteaus into the center of the sitting room. For a day or two, we busied ourselves in the unpacking and arranging of our possessions. I quickly noted that Holmes had a great deal more than I, and also that he needed more space in which to lay it out. This was understandable, as I had only been back in England for a little over a month, following my return from overseas service. I did not begrudge the extra space needed for Holmes’s various possessions, except in one instance.
I had spotted early on that set of shelves to the left of the fireplace. I thought it would be just the place for the few volumes that I had acquired and wished to show off to their best advantage - some Clark Russell sea stories, a set of Dickens books that I had found very cheap in Charing Cross Road. However, before I could claim the shelves for my own, Holmes dragged over several boxes, opened the first he came to, and started loading down the shelves with his scrapbooks.
I had simply sighed and changed my plans. My health was still quite fragile in those days, and I objected to rows of any sort. It was not worth the trouble to ask him to share even a little of the shelf space. Now, many months later, I couldn’t imagine anything in that spot but the scrapbooks. Time and again, they had proved their usefulness when Holmes needed to refer to some note that he had made, or to verify an obscure fact that might make all the difference in one of his investigations.
As I watched, Holmes walked to the middle of the room, flipping from page to page and humming tunelessly to himself. Lestrade returned to the sitting room and stopped inside the door. Seeing what Holmes was doing, he laughed, bent, and slapped his knee. “There’s no getting past you, is there, Mr. Holmes?” he cried. Holmes glanced up, a twinkle in his eye.
“Is this the matter that you wished to stay behind and discuss?” he asked, raising the book.
“The very same,” replied the inspector.
I cleared my throat. “I find myself at a loss,” I said.
“It is simple, Doctor,” said Lestrade, dropping into the basket chair before the fire, so recently vacated by our new client. “The lady’s father, Lyton Porter, is one of the biggest criminals still unprosecuted.”
“Tut, tut, Lestrade,” said Holmes. “Innocent until proven guilty. You do not want to slander the man.”
“Then tell me what you think, Mr. Holmes,” said Lestrade. “Tell me what libelous statements you have in your magical book, there.”
Holmes glanced up with a smile and said, “In spite of the risk of committing myself in front of witnesses, I will tell you. I have noted here, in my very own handwriting, that Mr. Porter is, in fact, quite notable for being one of the most notorious fences currently operating in the East End.”
“Exactly,” said Lestrade. “That’s partly why I wanted to bring the girl to you, when she showed up this morning with her story.” He turned to me. “I wanted to find out what Mr. Holmes’s notes on the man said.” Twisting in his chair so that he could see Holmes, he said, “Those books have been useful once or twice in the past. Why, I remember back when you lived in Montague Street, I stopped by one night. The City and County had just been robbed, and I-”
“Water under the bridge,” said Holmes moving to his own chair and sitting. “What is your own knowledge of Mr. Lyton Porter?”
“As you said, the man is a fence. We know it, but so far we have left him to his own devices. He’s useful in his own way right now, and it’s just a matter of time until he stumbles. Perhaps this affair with the threats, ostensibly from the fiancé, is just the thing to start chipping away at him.”
“It may interest you to know,” said Holmes, “that I have recorded that Lyton’s meteoric rise to his position as king of the Limehouse fencers only began two years ago.” He paused knowingly, and Lestrade simply looked puzzled, but I thought that I dimly understood.
Finally, Lestrade said, “I fail to see the significance of that, except that the man’s daughter returned to live with him two years ago. Are you saying that he increased his criminal activity in order to obtain more income, now th
at he needed to maintain a larger household? Or did the arrival of his daughter somehow make him more careless, so that we became aware of him for the first time, when in fact he had been operating for much longer than that? And did this man Willis move in on him, and is now trying for a piece of the business?”
“I’m not saying anything yet,” replied Holmes. “It is simply a fact to be documented and considered.”
Lestrade wondered if there were any other relevant notes concerning Lyton Porter. Without comment, Holmes turned the book toward Lestrade, who leaned in for a look. I stood in order to see as well. There was one word, written in the margins in Holmes’s careful fist: Manipulated.
Lestrade glanced at me with his eyebrows raised questioningly. He turned the same glance back towards my friend, who had closed the book and was in the process of replacing it on the shelf. When Holmes offered nothing else, the inspector appeared to be disappointed, and soon thanked us and departed, promising to return soon to discuss any new developments in the case.
“So much for that,” said Holmes, dropping into his chair. “I must smoke a pipe or three to decide how to proceed in this matter.”
“You apparently saw more in our client’s story than I did,” I said.
“Not so much in her story, but rather in her appearance and her actions.”
“Her actions? She did nothing but sit on that chair and relate her story to you.”
“Ah, Watson, there were so many other cues, if only you had known how to interpret them. Alone, they might mean nothing. Together, they told me a completely different story from what her mouth was saying. That was what interested me enough to take further interest in the case.”
He reached for his pipe, intending to think in silence, but I wanted to know more. “Tell me, then. Tell me this different story that you heard from what Lestrade and I heard.”
