by Hayes, Steve
Then they confiscated everything Houdini took from his pockets.
‘So now,’ the portly man said, when they had finished, ‘we have drawn your teeth. But I know you are still a dangerous man, Houdini. Your knowledge of the intricacies of locks and the locksmith’s art are legendary. And for that reason we intend to take no chances with you. At all times until you complete your task, you will be bolted safely into your—’
He stopped abruptly, for just then there was the last thing anyone expected to hear – the scream of a woman in apparent agony.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A Helping Hand
THE PORTLY MAN whirled around and faced the entrance to the passage, his pasty face going slack. ‘Was ist—?’
No one seemed to know what it was. The cry had frozen them all.
Wolf, recovering first, said, ‘I’ll go and find out.’
Holmes, though thoroughly absorbed by what he had been witnessing, had straightened up at the scream and was already retracing his steps along the narrow passage to the staircase. It was only imagination, he knew, and yet he felt sure he could hear the sound of Wolf’s footsteps right upon his own. Ignoring the warning, he hurried on, reaching the staircase and bounding up the wet steps as soundlessly as he could, two at a time.
Seconds later, he was back outside in the swirling snow. He turned, closed the trapdoor and searched around for a place to hide. Knowing that if he were caught things would go badly for Houdini and his wife, he ran through the empty shell of the church. Every step he took he seemed to encounter weeds or drifts of snow and slippery ice that threatened to trip him up.
The scream came again – this time accompanied by a darting, amber flash of movement to his right. He realized that the bloodcurdling scream had come from a prowling fox.
In the next moment Holmes did slip, falling to his knees in a spray of snow. He quickly jumped up and hurried on, knowing he could not now possibly leave the abandoned church before someone came up from the crypt to see what was happening above ground.
Even as the thought struck him, he heard the trapdoor squeak. He threw himself behind a small, snowy mountain of dirt, rubble and refuse, heedless of the possible injury his fall might cause.
He hugged the mound of earth, well aware that his very life – and that of Houdini – depended upon it and waited, straining his ears to pick up every new sound.
Moments later Wolf climbed the last few steps out of the crypt. Holmes risked a quick glance around the side of the mound and, squinting to see in the darkness, watched Wolf, hoping that hehad been in too much of a hurry to notice the telltale covering of snow on the steps. Silence followed as the young German looked around, searching for the source of the scream. His puzzled expression suggested his bemusement to Holmes: how could he and his companions have heard the cry so clearly below ground if the trapdoor had been closed?
The moon now slid behind the clouds, deepening the shadows while the falling sleet reduced visibility even further. Holmes felt this to be to his advantage, for it would hide his tracks in the snow, tracks that could lead Wolf directly to him.
Hardly daring to breathe, Holmes chanced another peek past the mound and this time pulled his head back immediately. Wolf was inspecting the ground by his feet, trying to decide whether the imprints in the snow – imprints that the sleet was already covering – could possibly be footprints.
Moments later the wind dropped slightly … and Holmes heard the young German shushing toward him through the darkness.
He stiffened. Wolf was approaching him, no doubt with revolver still in hand, trying to pick up any small sound that might betray his quarry.
The only weapon Holmes had was his cane – that, and his knowledge of baritsu. Under the circumstances, he could only hope they would be enough.
More shushing. Wolf was still approaching, coming steadily, remorselessly closer.
Hardly daring to breathe, Holmes told himself he must time his move to perfection and exploit what little element of surprise he might still possess. Even so, he knew the damage had been done. The kidnappers would know that Houdini had been followed, that, despite their orders to the contrary, he had involved someone else in this business. That they would seek to punish the indiscretion, Holmes had little doubt.
Shush … shush … shush …
Holmes tightened his grip on the cane even as the moon reappeared suddenly through a break in the clouds. Its light cast Wolf’s pale shadow across the ground, its very tip just beginning to slip into view …
The shattering of a bottle about midway along the boundary of the church grounds provided a much-needed distraction. Wolf’s shadow turned away from his previous destination, and an instant later there came another scream – the prowling fox again.
Holmes froze. His back and calves were aching, crying out for release. A few seconds passed. Then he heard Wolf moving away from him, heading back toward the crypt. Holmes sagged, softly exhaled and thanked his good fortune.
The trapdoor gave another creak and Wolf called down quietly. ‘Da war nichts. Nur ein Fuchs. Wir sollten jetzt trotzdem gehen.’
Holmes swallowed, relieved by Wolf’s injunction to his companions not to worry. It seemed that the fox which had very nearly betrayed him had now come to his rescue.
Again, Holmes glanced around the side of the mound. Wolf was helping Annalise out of the crypt. As she stepped aside and smoothed the creases from her coat, Houdini appeared behind her. Holmes’s mouth tightened when he saw that the escapologist was still barefoot and that his hands were now cuffed behind his back.
Finally, the portly man emerged from the crypt with the carbide lamp in one hand, Houdini’s sock-stuffed shoes in the other.
With Wolf’s gun pressed into his back, Houdini made his way over the snow and rubble toward a narrow gap in the rear wall that Holmes had missed during his initial search due to a dense covering of ivy. Walking erectly, Houdini gave no indication of the discomfort or humiliation he must be feeling as he and his abductors vanished into the darkness beyond the break in the wall.
Holmes waited as long as he dared, then stood up stiffly and went after them. He moved quickly, his breath misting before his hawkish face. Cautiously he pushed through the leafy gap. On the other side was a narrow alley that, after a hundred yards or so, ended at the main road.
There was no sign of Houdini or his captors. Holmes wondered where they were. The cobbled alley ran string-straight, flanked on both sides by the blank walls of more warehouses. There were no other exits that Houdini’s abductors might have taken between there and the end of the alley and, if they had elected to walk to the main road, he knew they would still be in sight.
Even as he pondered the mystery, he thought of another possibility and quickly retraced his steps until he heard the crunch of broken glass beneath his shoes. Here he stopped and examined his surroundings with great care. Finally, satisfied, he pushed on.
He halted again when he reached a shadowed area just inside the entrance where the remains of two pillars had once formed a bay. He knelt down, thrust his cane under one arm and turned his back to the wind. After several attempts he finally managed to light a phosphor match. Cupping the flame, he did his best to examine the ground by its poor, erratic light.
Even before the match failed, though, Holmes believed he had already solved one particular mystery.
Watson found himself becoming increasingly edgy as time hung heavy. At last he could stand it no longer, and was about to go in search of his friend when Holmes suddenly strode into sight and climbed back into the cab.
‘Holmes! What the devil—!’
Holmes tapped his cane against the roof and called in German, ‘The Grand, if you please.’
As the cab began its long journey back toward the heart of the city, Holmes briefly recounted the events in Blood Street. At the end Watson exclaimed, ‘Good Lord! Then if we have no idea where they’ve taken Houdini, all is lost—’
‘We have no idea yet,’
Holmes interrupted. ‘But we have more information than you might imagine. Indeed, I have been a fool not to have seen it before.’
‘Seen what, Holmes?’
‘A few things – including the fact that we have been followed ever since we arrived in Austria.’
‘What?’
‘Patience, Watson. I suspect that we shall have some answers, at least, before the evening is out.’
To Watson’s complete surprise, Holmes then peered out into the passing darkness and began to mutter softly under his breath.
‘What was that you said?’
‘Nothing.’
‘It sounded like poetry.’
‘I was merely quoting the opening lines of O’Shaughnessy’s Ode.’
Watson tried to place the poem, but quickly gave up. ‘You’ll have to help me, I’m afraid.’
‘“We are the music makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams”,’ Holmes quoted, ‘“World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers, Of the world for ever, it seems.”’
‘Very profound, I must say,’ Watson muttered. ‘I take it that this verse is supposed to mean something?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘But you’re not going to enlighten me?’
Holmes smiled. ‘It will come to you in the fullness of time, I am sure.’
He said no more until the cab had dropped them outside the hotel twenty minutes later. He climbed out and paid the cabbie, adding a generous tip as he had promised. He then turned to Watson saying, ‘Wait here.’
What he did next left Watson speechless. With scant regard for his age or safety, he walked straight out into the street. There he raised his arms to stop a Unic cab that was heading directly towards him, and which he had noticed following them at a discreet distance ever since they had left Blood Street.
‘Holmes!’
The driver stamped on the brake and honked the horn energetically. Paying the irate cabbie no mind, Holmes walked around the vehicle and opened the passenger door.
‘It has been a rather eventful evening,’ Watson heard him say amiably, ‘and I should very much like the opportunity to thank you for the assistance you gave me not half an hour since.’
Watching from the pavement Watson tried his best to see inside the cab, but all he could make out was an indistinct silhouette. The passenger appeared to say something – perhaps to tell Holmes he had no idea what he was talking about – but Holmes would have none of it.
‘Come now,’ he said, ‘there is no further need for secrecy. I am onto you, albeit somewhat belatedly, and since we are both working toward the same end, I suggest we pool our knowledge, preferably over a warming glass of brandy.’
This argument seemed to win the day. The passenger grudgingly leaned forward and paid his fare, then climbed from the cab.
As Holmes stood back, Watson was astounded to see a man of about average height and athletic proportions whom he recognized at once. It was the Good Samaritan who had come to his aid during their meeting with Freud, the German fellow who—
Except that the man was not German.
For speaking crisply and in a cultured British voice, he said, ‘Very well, Mr Holmes. But I would much sooner have remained in the background until this business is settled. I have a feeling I would have been more use that way.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Holmes, grasping the man’s arm. ‘Come … let us get out of this foul weather. We have much to discuss, you and I. Much indeed, I believe.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Two Birds, One Stone
UP IN HOLMES’S room, the Good Samaritan took off his hat, self-consciously ran his hand up through his curly black hair then took a small warrant card from his pocket and passed it over. Holmes scanned it briefly and then handed it to Watson.
‘So,’ said Holmes as Watson inspected it, ‘you are Mr Roger Purslane. And, as I suspected, you are connected in some unspecified but doubtless important capacity with His Majesty’s Government. It therefore follows, does it not, that you were dispatched to keep an eye upon me and my colleague here by my brother, Mycroft?’
Watson looked up, surprised. ‘Mycroft?’ he repeated. ‘What the devil has Mycroft got to do with this business?’
Mycroft was seven years older than Holmes, as fat as Holmes was lean, and as seemingly indolent as Holmes was industrious. Over the years, Watson had come to learn that there was more to him than met the eye. Mycroft held some vaguely defined but vital position within the government. Not for one moment did Watson believe Mycroft’s claim that he carried out the audits for various government departments. He was more inclined to believe Holmes’s contention that, when the occasion demanded it, Mycroft himself was the British government and that his usual haunt, the Diogenes Club, was little more than a front behind which Mycroft’s shadowy department operated undetected.
As the thought occurred to him, he realized the significance of Holmes’s earlier quotation, just as Holmes had said he would. For if ever there was an example of O’Shaughnessy’s ‘movers and shakers’, it was indeed Mycroft.
Mycroft shared his younger brother’s eye for detail and observation; he was possibly even more skilled in the art of deduction. But, despite his brilliance, his extreme indolence meant that he seldom used his abilities to their full advantage, allowing others to do the work on his behalf.
Watson had not seen Mycroft for years, not since the affair of the Bruce-Partington Plans, in ’95. It seemed impossible that Mycroft should still occupy such a lofty position within the government almost two decades later. More puzzling still was why he should interest himself in Houdini’s present difficulties.
Purslane broke into Watson’s thoughts by saying: ‘Mycroft Holmes? I’m sorry, gentlemen, the name means nothing to me.’
‘Come, Mr Purslane,’ said Holmes impatiently. ‘It was no mere chance that brought you to Vienna at this time, no mere coincidence that you were on hand to help us escape the mob in the Beserlpark Alsergrund. And certainly it was no mere happenstance that you were on hand this very evening to throw a discarded milk bottle at a prowling fox, thereby saving me from discovery by a man who would most certainly have done me harm had he caught me.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Holmes. I have no idea—’
‘You have uncommonly small feet, I observe,’ Holmes interrupted. ‘I should say they are not larger than a size six – small indeed for a man of your height and build. And yet I found prints of a similar – I am tempted to say identical – size at the very spot from which I calculate that the bottle was thrown. That, plus the unmistakable aroma of Penhaligon’s Blenheim Bouquet – an aftershave I detected upon you during our first encounter, and of which you smell even now – makes denial a rather futile business. Incidentally,’ he added, ‘your German is very good, Mr Purslane. I could almost believe you were German or Austrian, but when we thanked you for your assistance the other day, you responded twice with the curiously formal ‘Bitte erwähnen Sie es nicht.’ I rather fancy that a native would have replied with the more casual Bitte, or perhaps Bitte sehr.’
Purslane sighed in defeat. ‘Mr Holmes, you are clearly everything your brother says you are.’
‘Then Mycroft did send you.’
Purslane shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘I will put the matter delicately, sir. None of us is getting any younger. And in sending you here upon a mission of what we believe to be some gravity, your brother also dispatched me with orders to keep an eye on you and ensure that neither you nor Dr Watson, here, came to any harm.’
Growing more confused by the minute, Watson said, ‘What does he mean, Holmes, that Mycroft sent you here? I thought this was supposed to be a simple holiday.’ Before Holmes could reply he added somewhat testily, ‘And didn’t you say something earlier on about a glass of brandy?’
Holmes turned to the drinks cabinet and filled three glasses with Denis Mounie Grande Reserve. ‘All
,’ he said as he turned back to his companions, ‘is not entirely as it seems.’
‘So I am beginning to realize,’ Watson murmured darkly.
‘Have a care, Mr Holmes,’ warned Purslane, taking his glass. ‘This business is about as secret as it can possibly be.’
‘There is nothing I cannot say in front of Dr Watson,’ Holmes informed him. ‘I trust him with my life. Indeed, I have done just that, and more than once, in the paSt And he is equally well trusted by my brother.’
‘Even so—’
But Holmes had already turned his attention back to Watson. ‘My apologies, old friend, but perhaps when you hear the story, you will understand why I did not involve you sooner. It might just as easily have been something as nothing. As it is, I now believe that it is something very dark indeed.’
Somewhat mollified, Watson wandered to one of the radiators and, setting his glass down on the windowsill, warmed his hands. ‘I’m listening,’ he said.
‘For some time now Mycroft has become increasingly concerned about the precedent set by Emperor Franz Joseph’s annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the ill-feeling that has engendered among the Serbs. He fears that Franz Joseph’s continued attempts at empire-building will foment discord across Europe and provide the catalyst for the world war he is sure is coming. His misgivings only increased when he read about the robbery that occurred at Christie’s a little under two weeks ago.’
‘I remember that business,’ said Watson. ‘The robbers stole some antiquities and took a hostage to ensure there was no pursuit after they made their escape. The hostage, an unnamed spinster, as I recall, was never seen again.’
Holmes nodded. ‘It was the object of the robbery which first drew Mycroft’s attention – not antiquities, Watson, but rather part of a collection of papers and cyanotypes, blueprints in other words, relating to the architecture of the Habsburg Empire.’
