The Best American Mystery Stories 1998

by Otto Penzler

  “But the knife?” I asked. “What about the knife?”

  ‘You don’t know restaurants,” she said. “Restaurants are full of knives. I rinsed off the boning knife in the sink and threw it in the dishwasher. As far as I was thinking at all, I figured the staff would unload it the next morning and put it back in the rack as usual.” “Of course,” I said. I realized that my bi:ave and decisive mother was untouched by fantasy. While I had been tormented for years by fears of discovery and loss and guilt, failure had never crossed her mind. She was a woman without imagination. “But didn’t he have a wallet? Didn’t he used to carry something for the money?”

  Mother opened her pocketbook and pulled out a battered green leather zippered purse that I’d seen a thousand times without recognition. “No matter where you discard things, they’re apt to be found,” she said calmly.

  I was dazzled by the simplicity of her strategy, which had required only nerve and silence. Until now. I could not decide whether her guilty secret had finally and irresistibly resurfaced — as guilty secrets are supposed to do — or whether she felt a satisfaction that demanded recognition. I realized uneasily that the parish gentlemen who admired and feared my mother were right. Life had made her desperate, and then it had made her remarkable. Mr. Conklin had been hit by a force quite out of his reckoning.

  The Adventure of the Giant Rat of Sumatra

  from Mary Higgins Clark Mystery Magazine

  We were seated over breakfast, my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes deeply engrossed in his morning paper, when I heard him mutter something. “I beg your pardon, Holmes?” I asked.

  “Sumatra,” he repeated, all but to himself. “My God, even for Moriarty this is appalling!”

  “Holmes,” I exclaimed, “what is it?”

  He put down the paper and looked in my direction, but he appeared not to see me. That in itself was so singular that I was immediately on my guard. When Sherlock Holmes looked, he saw — it was one of his dicta. But on that cold December morning in 1888, he stared as if through me out to the drizzly fog that enshrouded London.

  I tried again to speak to him, but he waved me off impatiently. “Watson, please, don’t interrupt me. It may already be too late.”

  Accustomed as I was to his outbursts, his tone still smarted. I started to remonstrate, but he had already risen and gone to the corner by the coal scuttle in our rooms at 221B Baker Street. There he kept his stack of past editions of London’s newspapers. As I watched in growing concern, he attacked the pile, throwing whole sections out behind him when they didn’t contain that for which he was searching.

  Then, with an armload of papers, he half fell into his chair, grabbing his pipe on the way down. For the next quarter hour he sat engulfed in tobacco smoke, muttering or cursing one moment, and the next falling into a quiet and desperate depression. After watching him for a time, I ventured another syllable.

  “Holmes?”

  He flung some of the papers at me. “Read it for yourself, Watson. It may be the end of us all.”

  I picked the papers from the floor and began perusing them. Some were up to two years old, and I must confess I saw nothing in them but yesterday’s news. Nevertheless, I slogged through the sections, pausing from time to time at a familiar name or at the mention of a case in which Holmes and I had been involved. While I read, Holmes evidently finished his work and rang for Mrs. Hudson. When our landlady appeared, he sent her to fetch Billy the page, saying it was a matter of the utmost urgency.

  Quickly, he scratched a note on a pad and then, filling another pipe, turned to me as he lit it. “Well, Watson, I must say that as a doctor you are calm enough about it.”

  I must have looked at him blankly.

  “The plague, Watson! The plague! Can it be you don’t see it?” Before I could respond, he had rushed to the table and snatched several of the papers away from me. “Look here!” he exclaimed. “And here! And here! You see nothing? Nothing?” He was grabbing and pulling the sections every which way. I had never seen him so agitated. ,

  “Holmes! There’s no need to be rude.”

  That brought him up short. He visibly summoned that control upon which he prides himself, straightening himself to his full height, taking a deep breath. “My dear man, please forgive me.” “It’s nothing, Holmes, it’s forgotten. But what is it? Please tell me.”

  Looking at the door, he came to some decision. “Well, I guess there is time before Billy comes.” And he sat down, pulling that day’s Times in front of him.

  “Here, Watson, on page five — the article on our old friend Colonel Sebastian Moran.”

  I had read it, of course. The travels of the famous hunter were always of interest to me, both because they were often fascinating in themselves, but also and not least because of his position as Professor Moriarty’s chief lieutenant. The article was an account of a Boer pirate attack on Moran’s ship as it had been rounding the Horn on its return from Sumatra, loaded with hunting trophies. Moran and his crew had fought off the belligerents, hauled the injured ship back to Johannesburg and delivered it and its dead crew to the British authorities. A particular point of interest was that they had neither docked nor resupplied at port and had allowed no one to board their vessel.

  “It seems like a typical Moran adventure,” I said upon rereading it.

  “By itself, you may be right, Watson. But what of this?”

  He placed before me the oldest of the newspapers and pointed to a piece on the outbreak of bubonic plague that had occurred two years before on Siberut, a tiny island off the west coast of Sumatra.

  “And these ...”

  The other articles related to a Dr. Culverton-Smith, who had announced and then retracted the news that he had developed and hoped shortly to perfect a serum that would prevent and cure bubonic plague.

  I had just finished the last of these when there was a sharp rap at our door, followed immediately by the entrance into our quarters of Billy. One of the street urchins who frequented the alleys hereabouts, Billy had more than once proved a useful ally to my friend and me.

  Holmes wasted no time on greeting him but handed him the note he’d scribbled earlier. “Ah, Billy, here. Deliver this at once to the address listed, and wait there for a reply.”

  Without a word, the boy was off, and I was again left alone with Holmes, pondering the obscure links in this bizarre chain. “What is this about, Holmes? What was that note?”

  Now that he had taken some action, he reverted to that languid pose I knew so well. His eyes had become so black they appeared nearly hooded. But this time there was none of the sparkle in them that always appeared after the “view halloo” had been sounded, when the game was afoot. This time it was no game.

  “The note was to Dr. Culver ton-Smith, Watson — one of the most evil and brilliant men to ever grace your profession.” He took a long pull at his pipe. “I wondered how long it would be before Professor Moriarty and he made each other’s acquaintance.” Then he sighed with an ineffable sadness. “I only wish I had acted to

  prevent it. I only hope now I’m not too late.” He sighed again, wearily. .

  “What did the note say?”

  He waved his pipe. “Oh, it was prosaic enough. It said, ‘England will pay you more than Moriarty.’”

  “For what?”

  “For the serum, of course. The cure for bubonic plague.”

  “My God, Holmes, could it be ... ?”

  “I don’t know yet. I won’t know for sure until Billy comes back. Halloa? That would be him now.”

  He jumped up and ran to the door, opening it before the panting boy could even knock. Breathlessly, Billy handed a missive to Holmes, who ripped open the engraved envelope. As he read, his shoulders sagged.

  Absently, he forced some coins on Billy and rather unceremoniously shooed him out. I thought he was a little too brusque with the boy and told him so.

  “Watson, it’s as I suspected. Moriarty, Moran and Culverton-Smith are in it together, a
nd no one must know. There would be panic.”

  “What does the reply say?”

  Holmes smiled but with no humor. ‘“My dear Mr. Holmes,”’ he read, “‘Your offer is interesting. Unfortunately, what England can pay me is rather off the point, since within a year, my associates and I will England.’”

  “Holmes!” I exclaimed.

  “Exactly. Moriarty plans to inoculate himself and his henchmen against the plague, then introduce the disease into England.”

  “How would he do that?”

  “Probably through an animal that Moran has captured and smuggled onto his ship.”

  The pieces were beginning to fit, though my own enlightenment had none of the epiphanic quality of Holmes’s. “But if they merely patented the serum,” I argued, “they would be millionaires many times over.”

  Again that frigid grin. “Power, Watson. Power is more seductive than money, and for Moriarty it is everything. His mind envisions an England desolate and depopulated but one where he is absolute ruler, a medieval king. The population not under his power — including you and me, my friend — would die in swollen, boil-infested agony.”

  “You shock me!”

  “Depend on it, Watson. I know my man.”

  “What can we do?”

  The grin softened to a smile. “Good old Watson,” he said. “Where there is danger, you have no fear. Where courage is needed, you have no peer. It would be a good epitaph.”

  The warmth I felt at the compliment quickly chilled at the vision of my own tomb. “Still,” I said, “what can be done?”

  Within moments, I had my answer. I had been reading again, trying to piece together the disparate elements of this diabolical plot, when Holmes tapped my shoulder. I must have been deeply engrossed in my researches not to have noticed Holmes leave the room. But now he was back, dressed and bundled for an excursion.

  “Get your coat, Watson. I think we should pay a visit to the Diogenes Club.” .

  The Diogenes was perhaps the strangest club in a city of strange clubs. Its members were the most private men in the City, and the charter and by-laws of the club colluded to keep them that way, since no one was allowed to speak within the club’s walls, the sole exception being in the Visitor’s Room. But even there, only whispering was permitted.

  After a bitterly cold ride in a hansom, we found ourselves before the forbidding double doors of the building. Inside, Holmes passed his card to the doorman and we were ushered into the Visitor’s Room to await the arrival of Holmes’s brother, Mycroft.

  Mycroft’s dour face and huge bulk surprised me anew, though I had met him once before during our adventure with the Greek interpreter. That episode had not ended happily, and I found myself praying that his intercession here would produce more positive results. He took me in at a glance, somehow included a welcoming nod and turned to his brother, twelve years younger than himself. According to Holmes, Mycroft was the smartest and most powerful man in England. I reflected that his position, however it was defined, might be one that Moriarty would covet. But there was no more time for reflection.

  “Sherlock,” he whispered with affection, “what brings you to these hermit’s haunts?”

  In a few words Holmes outlined the situation. Hearing him retell it in his logical and orderly fashion, I was horrified again by the boldness and grandeur of Moriarty’s twisted vision.

  Could he actually pull it off? As I watched and listened to Mycroft and his brother formulate their own plan, I had no doubts at all that if Moriarty could be stopped, only one man living could do it, and that man was my friend Sherlock Holmes.

  Eight days later, Holmes and I paced the deck of the HMS Birmingham, the twenty-eight-gun flagship of the Atlantic fleet. Earlier in the day we had passed the Canaries and now were beating farther south in African waters. Holmes had estimated that we would meet up with Colonel Moran’s ship somewhere near the latitude of Dakar, off the coast of French West Africa, and that would be another day or two’s hard sail.

  The air was balmy, a far cry from the London winter. Some of the sailors had thought to bring a Christmas tree along — had tied it to the forward mast, decked it in red and green trimming and even placed a few wrapped boxes under it for the effect. I couldn’t help but admire the spirit of these men, facing Her Majesty’s sometimes terrible tasks with dignity, honor and even humor. This was an England worth fighting, even dying, for! -

  Of course, we were not alone. Twenty-six ships of the line were arrayed in a crescent pattern out to the sides and behind us. Mycroft had persuaded an outraged prime minister to assign the convoy to try to blockade the oncoming vessel. It was the largest armada to be assembled since the Fran co-Prussian War, and I hope it will be a long, long time before such a force is needed again.

  To get the kind of commitment needed for an expedition of this magnitude, Holmes had had to go to the limits of his imagination and persuasiveness, convincing Scotland Yard that Dr. Culver-ton-Smith must be arrested and questioned. Though none of the serum had been found in his possession — what a boon to mankind that would have been! — his personal notes and laboratories provided enough evidence, and the potential danger was serious enough, that the reluctant PM had finally assigned the fleet. But he had made it clear that if Holmes were wrong, both his career and that of his brother would be finished. Even criminal charges against them would not be out of the question!

  But these concerns were the last things on Holmes’s mind as we restlessly paced the deck, checking and rechecking the horizon for any sign of the hostile ship.

  “It is too easy,” he said. “Even now, as we stalk the prey, I am filled with misgivings. ”

  “Whatever for, Holmes? Surely Colonel Moran is no match for Her Majesty’s Navy?”

  “Moran, though formidable, is not the opponent I fear. No, Watson, I speak of Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime. His net is worldwide, his contacts rival those of any government. Just when you think you have set your trap is when you must be on your closest guard.”

  “But...”

  “Mark my words! It has happened before. His brain is like a spider’s web — spirals within spirals. Moriarty lives to spin that web, and he feels the slightest tremor at its periphery. You may rest assured he knows we are on the seas, and that he is somehow ...” Holmes paused, taking in a lungful of tobacco smoke and letting it out slowly. “Somehow, he is stalking us.”

  “Come now, Holmes — stalking the Royal Navy?”

  ‘You may laugh, Watson, but it is difficult to overestimate Mori-arty’s determination.”

  One of the crewmen appeared with a couple of cups of tea spiked with a tot of rum, saying that the bridge thought we might appreciate a little refreshment. We thanked him and continued pacing. The tin cups were hot to the touch, so we rested them against a coil of rope.

  I looked out again at the calm sea, thinking that the tension of our voyage had affected Holmes’s judgment. His respect for his arch rival seemed exaggerated, bordering on the ludicrous. It occurred to me that, expecting a long ocean voyage with little outside stimulation, he might have brought along some of his cocaine, which he occasionally injects when his overactive mind needs surcease from boredom. The drug could have produced such paranoia. Lost in these thoughts, I absently took the cup of tea into my hand, blew on it and sipped.

  “Spit it out, Watson! Spit it out!” Holmes was slapping me on the back, having dashed the cup to the deck. “Poison!” he said. “The tea has been poisoned! Are you all right?”

  Shaking, my mouth already feeling a kind of dry numbness though I had obeyed Holmes’s command instantly, I turned to my friend. “Where is that mate?” I mumbled.

  But the deck was filled with uniformed men, all indistinguishable from a distance. My legs seemed to be getting weaker, and it was becoming harder to focus, to recognize any of the men. Even Holmes appeared wavy and indistinct, as though I were looking at him from under water. Then all went dark.

  I could feel strong fingers dig
ging into my shoulder, pressing against the Jezail bullet that had lodged there when I had been wounded in Afghanistan. I opened my eyes, and an unfamiliar room swam before me.

  There was a hoarse whisper. “Watson?” The fingers gripped harder. “Watson? Can you hear me?”

  I tried to bring the towering figure into focus in the darkened room. “Holmes? Where am I?”

  “You’re alive. That’s what’s important. You very nearly weren’t.” It began to come back to me — the mate, the tea, my last memories before losing consciousness. What a fool I had been to doubt Holmes! Once again he’d been right. Moriarty’s agents, it appeared, were with us even aboard this ship.,

  “Where are we now?” I asked. “What day is it?” The questions kept coming. “Why us, Holmes? Why poison us? Does he think we can make a difference, when the entire Navy is out to get him?” Holmes chuckled. “I rather fancy he thinks just that. Flattering, eh?”

  Groggily I sat up. “I wish I could take some pleasure in it. Just now I’m too confused.”

  “Come, can you get up?”

  Holmes took me by the arm and walked me about the small cabin. Outside, it appeared to be closing on dusk. After a few turns from wall to wall, I regained my sea legs and my mind cleared. “What did I take? What was it?”

  “One of the cyanamids, I presume. You were extremely lucky, Watson. Even trace amounts can kill. Vou mustn’t have swallowed any at all.”

  The reason for that did not for a moment escape me. Once again Sherlock Holmes had saved my life.

  “As to how long you’ve been under, thirty hours is a reasonable estimate. And as you can see, night descends.” He reached into his pockets and pulled forth most of a loaf of bread, some dried meat and an orange. “You must be hungry, and you’ll need all your strength. I packed this food myself as a precaution against just this sort of thing.”

  Twenty minutes later we were again on the deck. I had naturally brought my revolver along, and now I gratefully felt its cold weight in my pocket. Shadow figures scattered here and there, swabbing, stowing, making the vessel shipshape for the night. Even armed, I was not without trepidation, knowing that one of these men had tried to kill us only the day before. It could easily happen again.