“Our fathers did not know what had become of the treasure precisely,” Khan said. “So they made an arrangement with Dr Watson – another Sign of the Four, if you will – that if they saw him safely back to Kandahar he must on his return to England seek out the treasure, somehow take it back and share it with them.”
“But if their fathers had been betrayed by not one but three Englishmen, why would they trust another?”
“Those others had been a scoundrel and two officers fit only for duty as gaolers in the farthest flung prison of the Empire. This was a doctor and a commissioned officer in the British Army. Impeccable credentials.”
Holmes paced for a moment or two.
“You’re saying that Dr Watson knew of this treasure and of Sholto and Morstan long before Miss Morstan came calling.” He paused. “And you have proof of this?”
Sepoy Akbar produced a carefully folded piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Sherlock Holmes.
Holmes smiled.
“This is familiar. Reasonable quality paper of Indian manufacture. The diagram upon it is a plan of part of a large building -- here are halls and passages. At one point is a small cross done in red ink. In the left-hand corner are four crosses in a line with their arms touching. Beside it is written, in very rough and coarse characters, 'The sign of the four’, then four illegible signatures follow. I confess that I do not see how this bears upon the matter of Dr Watson.”
“It is all we have,” Akbar said.
Sherlock Holmes handed the paper back and walked over to the well. He drew himself a cup of water and drank it down. He proffered the cup to the others. Each shook his head. He dropped it with a rattle of its chain and a dull clunk against the well wall.
“Perhaps he knew of Miss Morstan too,” he said, more to himself than the three soldiers. “Perhaps it wasn’t such a coup de foudre after all…”
“We know nothing of that,” Sepoy Khan said. “All we know is that he was never in contact with our fathers again.”
Holmes looked up and watched some bird of prey hanging motionless in the air. It dropped like lead on a small creature and carried it away in its cruel talons. Sherlock Holmes looked back at the three men.
“What is it you want?”
All three men spoke together.
“Justice!”
Chapter Twenty One
Jules and Sherlock
Sherlock Holmes telephoned Poiret at the Metropole from the wooden box call office at Brighton railway station. Behind him the snuffle of the steam engines and the grinding of iron wheels on iron rails.
“You are lucky you find me in, monsieur,” Poiret said. “I was just about to leave for London.”
“I will come with you, if I may. I have some news for you.”
“And I for you. George Adlam was attacked last night. He fought his assailant off but the man got away.”
“An Indian?”
“A white man. Adlam did not know him. The man left his stick behind.”
“Bring it with you.”
“There are no fingerprints on it – the man wore gloves.”
“Nevertheless.”
“Adlam gave a good description of the man.”
“Even so. I will meet you at the London platform.”
“At what time?”
“I am here already.”
Poiret bustled onto the platform, doffing his hat whilst he juggled two sticks. Sherlock Holmes, who had arrived with neither stick nor hat, took the unfamiliar stick from him.
They found a compartment to themselves. Sherlock Holmes told Poiret what the three Indian soldiers had confided to him about Dr Watson.
Poiret ran his fingers over his mustachios, bringing them to a point again and again.
“This sheds new light on the case.”
“Quite so,” Sherlock Holmes murmured. He had been examining the cane with great care. “I don’t know where the stick was manufactured but I am certain it was not here. That opulent knob is too florid for an Englishman. French?”
“We carry off opulence with ease, it is true, but no, this I think is not French. It is, in fact, too heavy-handed for my countrymen.”
They lay the cane down on the empty seat opposite.
“Do you believe that Dr Watson was behind the attack on George Adlam?” Sherlock Holmes said.
“I was not aware that Dr Watson knew anything about George Adlam - although we did bring him to his attention.”
“Having been alerted – and perhaps wondering if in fact Adlam had been responsible for the attempted strangulation…”
Sherlock Holmes looked out of the window as the train rattled onto the magnificent viaduct beside Nathaniel Woodard’s Ardingly College. He looked across at the tall neo-Gothic chapel, lost in thought.
At Victoria the two men descended into the District Line and took a train along to the Embankment. They cut up through the back streets and into the bottom end of Covent Garden at Drury Lane. Poiret tap-tapped his walking stick on the pavement as he hurried along with short steps to keep up with the Great Detective’s lanky stride. Sherlock Holmes clamped the cane between elbow and ribs like an army swagger stick.
They walked along Endell Street. They passed the stained-glass works of Lavers and Bayard, its Gothic windows suitably ecclesiastical. They crossed Short’s Garden and walked along the massive front of St Giles workhouse. Usually there would be loiterers outside here but now the workhouse infirmary was another hospital for the war-wounded, this one run entirely by women. Some soldiers, bandaged and un-bandaged, were standing beneath the gas orbs outside the Cross Keys pub back along the street.
The soldiers had paid the odd couple little heed. They were busy finishing their pints so they could get in one more before last orders were called at a quarter to three.
Sherlock Holmes led the way across the road in front of the Swiss Church.
“You attend here, Poiret?”
Poiret seemed not to hear, his attention drawn by something back across the street. Sherlock Holmes glanced across to the other pavement and at two stocky men, walking together, faces hidden by the brims of their hats as they bent their heads, deep in conversation.
“Poiret?”
The French detective attended the English one.
“Forgive me. It is Swiss not French. Would you, an Englishman, attend a Welsh chapel?”
They reached the National English School at the junction with High Holborn. As Holmes turned the corner, Poiret once more glanced back. The two thick-set men, still deep in conversation, stopped at the public drinking fountain set in the wall of the workhouse, and turned their backs on the Frenchman as they took turns to stoop and drink.
“Poiret, do come along,” Sherlock Holmes called. He was standing on the edge of the pavement, looking to right and left down the broad but quiet thoroughfare. A tram was trundling from Holborn some two hundred yards away. “No time to dawdle.”
Reluctantly, Poiret turned and caught up with him.
“Mr Holmes, you should be aware -”
“Oh, I’m aware,” he said, taking Poiret’s arm and hurrying him across the dusty road towards the British Museum underground station. He stopped on the pavement in front of its entrance. “Had the war not intervened this would be closed by now. With the new Holborn station better connected there is no need for it.”
“Fascinating,” Poiret said. “Mr Holmes -–“
As Sherlock Holmes led him along the pavement towards New Oxford Street he broke into fluent French to say to Poiret:
“I know, monsieur, that we have been followed for quite some distance by those two gentlemen so engrossed in conversation. Of course, I have had only the opportunity to glance at them for moments so I can deduce little about them except that the taller of the two is left-handed –“
“The revolver in his left jacket pocket indicates that,” Poiret said, also in French.
“Ah, you noticed the bulge.”
“And the knife secured at the small of
the other gentleman’s back when he bent to refresh himself at the water fountain.”
“Did you also notice a further four toughs loitering in the foyer of the underground station beside the ticket office?”
“There you have me, maître. I was watching the reflected approach of the other two men in the tobacconist’s shop window.”
“They were coming quickly, weren’t they?” the Great Detective said, gripping Poiret’s arms more tightly and increasing his stride. He switched back to English. “As the whole pack of them is now. My friend, I have a suggestion.”
Poiret raised his voice as the tram trundled by, its wheels squealing on the iron rails.
“What is this suggestion?”
Holmes barked a laugh.
“Run!”
Chapter Twenty Two
Raining Umbrellas
They had not very far to run. They turned onto New Oxford Street and within ten yards had cannoned through the double doors of James Smith’s umbrella shop.
Although “umbrellas” was written in giant letters across the façade of the shop, the crowded interior showed that it sold much more. There were umbrellas to be sure: on shelves, in cabinets and on racks. But on hooks and bundled in sheaves and hanging even from the ceiling were walking sticks of every size and style and type of wood. Over here were piles of shooting sticks, next to open stand after open stand of canes, varnished and unvarnished. Over there Malacca canes of the finest quality under lock and key in long glass cabinets.
All this Holmes and Poiret saw as they burst upon a dozen or so army officers gathered in front of three long mirrors. As the soldiers and the elderly shop assistant who was serving them looked askance, the two detectives doffed their hats.
“Pardon,” the Frenchman said, gulping for air.
“Do forgive our eagerness to get out of the rain,” the English detective said, reaching behind him to slip the bolts on the shop’s doors.
Poiret glanced at him as the group of soldiers looked out of the shop at the sunny street beyond. They saw half a dozen men rush by. Poiret looked around. He caught sight of another shop assistant, standing beside one of the cabinets of Malacca canes.
He hurried over, beaming. The man looked up and beyond him to Sherlock Holmes, standing in the centre of the shop looking up at the umbrellas hanging from the ceiling.
“Mr Holmes! What an absolute delight to see you, sir!”
Poiret’s own smile left his face as Holmes walked up beside him.
“I have an account here,” Holmes leaned down to murmur, then: “Butler, dear fellow, how have you been?”
Poiret coughed more loudly.
“Yes, Monsieur Butler,” he said. “How have you been?”
Butler looked at Poiret and surprise returned to his face.
“Well, I never! If it isn’t Old Pawray.”
As Butler looked from one to the other of the detectives, Poiret tilted his head to Sherlock Holmes and whispered:
“Moi aussi.”
“But what are two such fine detectives doing in our establishment – I hope we’re not in trouble!”
Butler laughed, perhaps more heartily than was necessary. Holmes and Poiret both glanced back at the door. The men chasing them had not returned.
“How has the war treated your staff, Butler?”
The salesman’s look became more solemn. He brushed his hands down the front of his long black apron.
“We are fortunate to be set a little aside, Mr Holmes. As you know, this is a family business and all our staff have been with us boy and man. We are all too old to go to war.” He stood straighter. “Not that we wouldn’t if we could.”
“I’m sure of it,” Sherlock Holmes said. “And business? Has it dwindled?”
“On the contrary. Though our umbrella sales may have lessened, as you can see –“ he indicated the group of soldiers, “we are selling many thousands of swagger sticks for our brave officers on the Western Front.”
Holmes nodded. He took the stick from under his arm and held it out, balanced in the palm of his hand.
“We need information about this stick,” he said.
Butler looked at the stick, wiping his hands on his apron again.
“But you two gentlemen - your profession…you need information from me?”
“I know I have occasionally been able to deduce the life history of a client from his walking stick but this – this is different.”
Butler took it from his open hand and ran it through his fingers, peering along its length.
“Of course, I know some things,” said Sherlock Holmes. “Its owner is five feet eleven inches tall and well built, he wears a black homburg and lightweight summer suit and a goatee beard. But other than that I can deduce nothing.”
Butler’s mouth dropped open as he looked from the stick to Sherlock Holmes and back again. He glanced an appeal at Poiret but the Frenchman was studying the cabinet of Malacca canes with great intent.
“Mr Holmes, Mr Holmes,” Butler said. “Knowing your methods a little through those masterful accounts written by Dr Watson –“ the Great Detective sighed “– I can see you deduced the height from the length of the stick and its owner’s build from the wear on the tip as it had to bear his weight – but how in the Good Lord’s name did you deduce the rest?”
Poiret shifted his look from the cabinet to Butler’s astonished face.
“These canes are very fine. Half-bark, teardrop ridge – but I particularly like the stepped, with those carved ivory heads.”
“Monsewer Powray?” Butler pleaded. Poiret gave out a loud sigh.
“He has been furnished a description of the owner, Monsieur Butler,” he said. “He has been furnished a description.”
Butler’s surprise turned momentarily to annoyance then, as Sherlock Holmes began to laugh, he laughed too. Poiret gave the merest hiccup of amusement then said:
“We need to know its maker and country of origin. We think it is not one of yours.”
“No, indeed, monsewer, but nor am I the man to ask. McBride will have your answers if anyone has.”
“McBride is still here?” Holmes said.
“It’s too long since your last visit, Mr Holmes. Of course he’s here. And why has it taken so long to visit, sir?” He pointed at the ceiling. “We have new Fox frames in. Does it never rain on the South Downs?”
Sherlock Holmes looked up again at some two hundred tightly wrapped, tightly packed black silk umbrellas hanging by their curved handles from a rack contraption just below the high ceiling, their long metal ferrules pointing down like spears.
“In fact, the weather on the Downs is such that even your latest umbrella would be useless. The wind from France is fierce – I speak not of the war now. The rain lashes you on the horizontal, not from above. If I were foolish enough to put up one of your gamps I’d be blown from Ditchling Beacon back to Baker Street.”
“And very welcome you’d be, sir,” Butler said.
Sherlock Holmes looked at Poiret.
“Sorry, Poiret, you probably don’t know much about brollies. Samuel Fox invented the steel-ribbed umbrella in 1852.”
There was something supercilious in Poiret’s smile.
“The Encyclopedie Methodique mentions metal ribs in France at the end of the eighteenth century, fifty years before Monsieur Fox. I will lend you my copy, now that I discover you are fluent in French.”
Sherlock Holmes winked at Butler.
“You’re sure you’re not thinking of parasols?”
There was a rattling at the shop door. Butler looked over. Sherlock Holmes looked around him.
“Where are your sword-sticks, Mr Butler?”
As Butler saw the other shop assistant hurry towards the door he turned his attention back to the two detectives. He pointed at a couple of storage boxes behind Sherlock Holmes. He turned to Poiret.
“I first met Mr Holmes decades ago, monsewer, when he brought a sword-stick in for repair. He claimed the blade had snapped
whilst involved in a fight with ruffians. It transpired he had been attempting to ascertain what strength would be needed to transfix a body to an oak tree with a swordstick.”
“It was early in my career,” Sherlock Holmes said, “and I was less familiar than I realised with the anatomy of the frozen pig on which I was carrying out my tests in an ice house.” He shrugged. “I hit a bone.”
The shop assistant unbolted the double doors and was pushed aside as the pursuers of the detectives flooded into the shop.
“Ere now, gentlemen,” the shop assistant called as he fell back.
Sherlock Holmes plucked a stick from the sheaf Butler had indicated. Poiret leaned past him and pulled one out of the next sheaf.
“You fence, Poiret?” Sherlock Holmes said, his eyes fixed on the six men and their various weapons.
“I am French, monsieur,” Poiret said calmly. “We invented the art.”
“But with a sword-stick?” Holmes said, pressing the latch at the top of his stick and flipping away the scabbard as it slid down the length of sharpened steel.
“Bien sur,” Poirot said, jiggling his stick and shaking it to release the scabbard.
“Monsewer,” Butler shouted. He had picked up a large ceremonial mace that he held at arms across his chest.
Sherlock Holmes stepped forward, en garde, as the men crowded towards him. They were armed with knives and clubs. The Great Detective observed that the busy contents of the shop meant that they were crammed together in the aisles between goods.
He looked up at the umbrellas on the rack above their heads then at the taut rope that connected a pulley at one end of the rack with a cleat in the wall.
Holmes glanced to his side where Poiret was still fiddling with his stick.
The Belgian and The Beekeeper Page 10
