‘I did not think it necessary.’
‘A pity. Well, we have our sticks.’ He placed his hand upon my arm. ‘Do not be alarmed, old fellow; I expect no trouble of the physical sort. But one cannot be too careful after what we have heard concerning this man Hyde.’ So saying, he led the way to the low wooden door of the squat, two-storey dwelling and rapped upon the panel.
The door was opened by an old woman wearing a severe black dress with a collar of white lace, in the center of which reposed a plain ivory brooch which she twisted between the fingers of one hand whilst studying the two men on her stoop. Once the ensemble had been very fine, but in the intervening years the black had begun to turn purple, the white had yellowed, and the ivory had grown loose in its setting of tarnished silver. The face above the frayed collar was of a hue and texture reminiscent of that same ivory, and this together with the pure silver of her hair, might have made her a genteel figure but for the avaricious gleam in her eye and an expression which denoted pure hypocrisy. Swiftly placing her role in the household, I was suddenly grateful for a landlady like Mrs. Hudson. I would hardly have trusted such a creature as this with a key to my rooms.
‘If it’s lodgings you’re after,’ she said, looking from one to the other of us, ‘I’ve rooms upstairs in back. Rates are five quid per week in advance, and I shan’t sit still for tobacco nor dogs.’
‘My dear woman, we are not after lodgings but have come on a visit,’ said Holmes. ‘You have, I believe, a tenant by the name of Edward Hyde; it is he whom we wish to see.’
At the mention of the name, she drew back from the doorway as if Holmes had produced a snake. ‘You are friends of his?’ Nervously she twisted the brooch, straining the material to which it was pinned.
‘I fail to see what difference that makes,’ he responded.
‘He is from home. He is often thus sometimes for weeks at a stretch. I have not seen him for some days. Come back later in the week.’ She started to close the door. Holmes blocked it with his foot.
‘May we at least see his rooms?’
Outrage at his action and strange request dawned over the old woman’s features, but the expression quickly changed to one of greed as Holmes held a glittering sovereign before her face. She started to reach for it, then her hand drew back and resumed fiddling with the brooch.
‘I cannot allow you to do that,’ said she. ‘The gentleman would be very angry.’
She said it calmly enough, but fear was stamped upon her every feature. The hatred and terror which she felt for her lodger were nearly tangible. What sort of monster was this Edward Hyde?
Holmes made his voice gruff. ‘Very well, if that’s the way you prefer it. We can always get a warrant. Come along, Inspector.’ He turned away. She caught his sleeve.
‘Why didn’t you say that you were with the police?’ She flung the door wide. Holmes winked at me surreptitiously and led the way inside.
The door shut, the woman wiped her hands absentmindedly upon her apron, staring at the coin in Holmes’s hand. ‘I am a poor woman, sir,’ she ventured.
He gave her the sovereign. ‘Your silence is of course included in the price.’
She cackled mirthlessly and dropped the coin into the pocket of her apron. ‘You needn’t pay for that, sir. Hyde would kill me if he found out. He is in trouble, then?’ Her expression became eager. When Holmes did not reply, she shrugged her shoulders, seized a lamp and a ring of keys from a table beside the door, and, picking up her skirts, led us across a faded rug and up a narrow and exceedingly noisy staircase.
‘What sort of tenant is Hyde?’ asked the detective on the way up.
‘He is quiet and he pays his rent on time. That is good enough for me.’
‘Yet he does not seem to have made himself popular.’
‘No other lodgers will live beneath the same roof.’
‘Indeed! And why is that?’
‘If you had ever met him, you would not ask that question.’
Stopping at the first door in the hallway atop the stairs, she unlocked it and pushed it open. ‘There they are, sir; two rooms only. I beg you to do whatever it is you have to do quickly, and leave everything as you found it.’ She handed Holmes the lamp and descended.
‘Is it not unlawful to impersonate a police officer?’ I asked Holmes once she was out of earshot.
‘I did not say that we were police officers. If she leapt to that conclusion, who am I to contradict her?’ He turned his attention to the open doorway. ‘Come, Watson.’
Somewhat surprisingly, the two rooms occupied by Hyde, in contrast to the rest of the house, were spacious and decorated in the finest taste, with a rich carpet upon the floor of the combination bed-and sitting-room, heavy velvet curtains over the single window, an exquisite oil upon one wall, and in the bathroom a silver basin upon a marble stand. There was, in addition, a closet stocked with expensive wines, a bureau, a pedestal table, two armchairs, and a tall wardrobe beside the bed in which hung half a dozen suits of varying degrees of richness, fromcoarsest wool to the very best that New Bond Street had to offer. One hanger was empty.
‘His dress-suit, I fancy,’ said Holmes, fingering the last item. ‘I see none here, and yet he seems to own every other form of attire required of a gentleman in this over-dressed age. Wherever he is staying, I should wager that it is not far removed from society.’
‘Judging by what I’ve heard of the man, I would hardly call him a gentleman,’ said I.
‘Quite right, Watson. These days, however, gentlemanly status seems to be more a question of appearance than conduct. I sometimes think that a gorilla would pass without comment at one of our West End social functions, so long as his shirt front remains spotless and he holds his teacup in the proper fashion.’
‘He seems well off, at any rate.’
‘And why not? His benefactor is one of the wealthiest men in London. But we are not here to confirm his credit.’
Several pairs of boots reposed side by side at the bottom of the wardrobe. Holmes examined these briefly, then replaced them and closed the door. After that his search began in earnest. I stood back out of the way as he slid open the drawers of the bureau, starting with the one on top, and, carefully so as to avoid dislodging anything, groped among the contents for I knew not what. Whilst searching through the second drawer, he uttered an exclamation of satisfaction and drew out a rectangular grey object which I recognised as an account book, its cover inscribed with the name of one of our oldest and most respected banking institutions. He opened it, whistled once whilst running his finger down the column of figures which he found inside, then closed it and returned it to its former place without further comment. After going through the rest of the drawers, he turned his attention to the remainder of the room.
He overlooked nothing, not even the trash basket in the corner, the contents of which he sorted through with both hands as he knelt beside it. He felt beneath the windowsill and peeped under the bed. At length he produced his pocket lens and crawled along the edge of the carpet, peering at it through the thick glass. Finally he stood up and returned the instrument to his pocket.
‘What —’ I began to ask. Holmes placed a finger to his lips.
He turned and, with a sly expression, crossed the room upon cat’s feet to the door. There he paused dramatically with his hand upon the knob, then suddenly twisted it and yanked open the door.
The old landlady spilled into the room amidst a rustle of skirts and fell sprawling to the floor.
‘The next time you seek to listen at the keyhole,’ Holmes informed her, smiling, ‘I would suggest that you climb the staircase upon the very edge of the steps, where they are not apt to creak quite so loudly. And lift your skirts as you near the door; your approach put me in mind of closing-time at a silk merchant’s.’ He extended a hand to help her to her feet.
The woman said, ‘Well!’ got up, dusted herself off, and turned to go.
‘One moment,’ said Holmes.
Sh
e paused and glared at him, her face a mask of suspicion and indignation.
‘What can you tell us of your lodger’s movements during the hours of daylight?’
Her expression grew stubborn. Holmes sighed and handed her another coin. She polished it upon her apron and pocketed it. It clinked against the one he had given her earlier.
‘He has none,’ said she. ‘The few times that he has been here in the daytime were spent in his rooms. He seldom ventures out before dark and does not return until almost dawn.’
‘Does he work nights?’
She cackled maliciously. ‘Not unless his work calls for him to sit all night drinking and carousing in a pub. I have seen him in Stunner’s on the corner when I go there for my dollop of rum. I have this condition, you see.’ She placed a hand to her throat and coughed delicately.
‘Thank you. That is all.’
Holmes took down the lamp where he had left it atop the bureau and we quitted the room, the landlady turning to lock the door behind us. At the foot of the staircase he handed her the lamp, wished her goodnight, and together we stepped out into the crisp air of the street.
‘There is the corner and that, I believe, is Stunner’s,’ the detective observed, pointing out the neglected facade of a public-house two doors down. ‘Would you object to a bracer of whiskey-and-soda before we return to Baker Street?’
I said that I would not, and we struck off in that direction.
‘Are you not going to tell me what you learnt?’ I asked impatiently after we had gone half a dozen steps in silence.
He rubbed his hands together. ‘Just enough to make me wish for more. I know, for instance, that Hyde has no source of income aside from his famous friend’s largesse, and that he has been something less than frugal where those gains are concerned. Moreover, his taste in women runs towards the lowest classes of society and is on a par only with his preference in entertainment, both of which are considerably meaner than his over-all standard of living, which is princely. On a more physical level, he is five feet, one inch in height, is slightly pigeontoed, and smokes Cavendish tobacco. Everything else about him remains a mystery.’
This astonishing compendium of facts, gleaned from so brief an examination of Hyde’s effects, filled me with curiosity, but before I could question my companion upon how he had reached his conclusions we had stepped across the threshold into the public-house and the time had come to hold my tongue.
What struck me first about the establishment was the conviction that the owner was trying to save money on gas. So few of the fixtures were lit that, until my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, I literally had difficulty in distinguishing my hand before my face. Even then I was forced to rely upon Holmes’s unique ability to see in the dark in order to reach the bar by allowing him to lead me by the arm between the tables and chairs. It was a large, low-ceilinged room, redolent of the usual ale and sawdust, and crowded to capacity even at that early hour. The atmosphere was a confusion of voices chattering in many different tongues, some raised in jollification, others edged with anger, still others sunken into the monotonous rumble of utter boredom. Behind the bar a solid block of a man with great swinging jowls and a head of thick dark hair which seemed to grow straight up from his brows with no forehead in between broke off his conversation with an inebriate who was slumped across from him and turned to face us as we approached.
‘What’ll it be, mates?’ Despite his approximation of East End slang, it was obvious from his ponderous accent that the man was German.
‘I should like a whisky-and-soda, and my friend will have the same,’ said Holmes. When the drinks were poured: ‘I do not see my other friend around this evening, and yet I am given to understand that he frequents this establishment. Has Edward Hyde been in of late?’
A look of absolute loathing twisted the German’s heavy features into a grotesque caricature. He seized a not-too-clean rag from beneath the bar and proceeded to polish the marred top with savage movements of his huge right hand. ‘Not lately, mates,’ he growled. ‘And if you’re friends of his, I suggest that you drink up and get out. I’ll brook no trouble in my place of business.’
Holmes raised his eyebrows. ‘He has been troublesome?’
‘You see that mirror?’ Stürmer — if that was his name — jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of a cracked mirror behind the bar, over which was pasted a sign reading NO CREDIT. ‘Last time he was in there was the devil of a row, and before I could put a stop to it some bloke chucked a full mug of beer at Hyde, he ducked, and there’s the result. I threw the lot of them out and said that if I ever saw any of them in here again I’d bend my billiard-cue over their skulls.’
‘Did Hyde start it?’
‘Well, not so’s you could blame him for it. Some little French clerk with a bag on took one look at him and called him a name I wouldn’t care to repeat to my mother in Hamburg. Hyde snarled something back — I didn’t hear it, he has this whispery growl — and that’s when the trouble started. He’s bad news, that one is. I’m glad to be rid of him.’
Holmes thanked him and paid for our drinks. At his suggestion, we picked up our glasses and left the bar for a table in the corner which had just been vacated by a pair of drunken slatterns.
‘Upon the face of it,’ said Holmes after we had sat down, ‘it would be a capital mistake for Hyde to make a bid for public office. He is not famous for his popularity.’
‘I am burning with curiosity,’ said I. ‘You and I saw the same things in Hyde’s rooms a little while ago, and yet I admit that I was unable to determine even a small part of the things which you learnt about him.
He smiled and sipped at his drink. ‘Of course you were. You are a man of more than a few talents, Watson, but observation and deduction do not number among them. And yet the clues were there, if you knew what to look for.’
‘Then perhaps you will explain how you divined that Hyde has no income apart from that provided by Jekyll, and that he has not been frugal with it.’
‘I take no pride in that conclusion, for it was a surface matter, with very little deduction involved. You will remember that I found his account-book.’
‘You whistled once whilst reading it.’
‘I had every reason to react in that fashion. His balance is far from small, and the records show that he has made substantial deposits at irregular intervals. That they were substantial, and that the entries were irregular, precludes the probability of their being wages, which are seldom so large and are paid out regularly. From what the landlady told us of his movements, it is unlikely that he is gainfully employed. That the deposits were the results of investments is also unlikely, since the sums were in round figures, with no odd pounds, shillings, or pence left over. Gifts of money are usually made in round figures. Further, since all of the sums were similar, I decided that they were the gift of one person. I confess that my choice of Jekyll as the giver is pure surmise, but under the circumstances he seems the most likely candidate.’
‘And his lack of frugality?’
‘His preference in dress is costly, which I admit is hardly a sign of reckless spending; but when I go through a man’s trash basket and find that he has thrown away two perfectly good, though soiled, silk shirts rather than take the trouble of having them laundered, I am tempted to think him something of a spendthrift.’
‘Well, that seems simple enough. But what of his taste in women and entertainment, and his princely standard of living?’
‘As for women, the cast-off shirts which I mentioned were smudged with two different shades of rouge, both of which can be had in any of the shabbier women’s shops near the waterfront. I have made study of the many different types of cosmetics used by the fair sex, and toy with the idea of someday producing a monograph upon the subject. His choice of entertainment I judged mean as well after finding in the basket no fewer than nine ticket-stubs from one of more our risqué music-halls off Buck’s Row. A man who would return eight times must like w
hat he sees. Turning to his standard of living, that is evident in his casual treatment of his wardrobe — the shirts again — and in the many withdrawals which he has made from his banking-account to finance his way of life.’
‘That leaves his height, the fact that he is pigeon-toed, and the tobacco he smokes.’
He smiled. ‘Come now, Watson. Surely you saw that only a man who fits the dimensions I quoted would be comfortable in clothes the size of Hyde’s, and you could not have failed to note that the soles of his boots were worn more on the outside edges of the toes than anywhere else, indicating an inward twist.’
I flushed in my embarrassment. ‘I did not, but I should have. And his tobacco?’
‘Cavendish, or my monograph upon the distinction between the various tobaccos based upon their ashes was written in vain. The greenish-grey traces which I found upon the edge of the carpet could belong to no other. But what, in the name of the devil!’
The cause of this ejaculation was the dramatic entrance of a singular figure into the public-house: a minuscule, almost dwarfish man dressed in evening clothes, complete with shining top hat and a scarlet-lined opera cape which flowed behind him as he burst through the door and settled about his heels as he stood in the middle of the room, gripping his cane in one hand and casting savage glances into every corner. His head was large, his face lean and wolfish, marked by flaring nostrils and a pair of eyebrows which soared upwards from the bridge of his nose like bat’s-wings, to disappear into the shadows beneath the brim of his hat. Aside from those points, it was an unremarkable face, save for the fact that I hated it upon sight.
I like to think that I am a man who does not allow himself to be carried away by his emotions, and yet it shames me to admit that, just as the sorrowful countenance of G. J. Utterson had won my sympathy before he had even stated his problem, the appearance of this stranger aroused a hatred in me such as I had not felt since a bullet from a Ghazi rifle had nearly taken my life at the Battle of Mai-wand three years before. It was a primitive emotion, having no basis in reason, and because of that it was unshakeable.
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Dr Jekyll & Mr Holmes Page 4
