Knowing that Holmes was at the time involved in several important cases including the Barnaby-Ross case and the mystery of the disappearance of Lord Penrose’s private secretary, I agreed immediately, feeling somewhat ashamed that I should burden him with my trivial concerns and very grateful for his offer of help. So it was agreed that on Wednesday week, the date of my fortnightly appointment with Thurston at the Kandahar, I would confer with Carruthers along the lines that my old friend had suggested and then report back to him on the outcome of the interview.
In the event, however, I did not see the colonel on that particular date. Thurston was there at the club but Carruthers was absent. On my inquiring into his whereabouts, Thurston replied that he did not know.
‘I have not seen him since the last time we met here.’
‘Oh, what a pity!’ I remarked with more honesty than Thurston could possibly have realised. ‘I was looking forward very much to seeing him again.’
‘Were you really? I had the impression you did not much care for the fellow.’
I hurried to cover up the faux pas I had made, at the same time warning myself that Thurston was much more perceptive than I had given him credit for and that I would have to tread a great deal more carefully in the future. The tactics that Holmes had referred to were more complex than I had imagined and I found myself admiring my old friend’s techniques more than ever.
However, my self-confidence was restored a little by Thurston’s next remark, which helped to convince me that I had handled the situation a lot better than I had imagined.
‘I am not sure when he will call in again at the club but perhaps this fellow will know,’ Thurston continued, raising a hand to summon a passing waiter, who came over to our table. After listening to Thurston’s request for information regarding Carruthers’ plans about future visits to the Kandahar, the man replied without any hesitation.
‘Indeed, sir. I understand from the manager that the colonel has changed his regular luncheon booking from Wednesdays to Fridays at eleven o’clock. Is that all, sir?’
Thurston cocked an interrogative eyebrow in my direction and, when I shook my head, he thanked the man before dismissing him.
‘It is such a pity he has changed his arrangements,’ Thurston remarked when the waiter had left.
‘Indeed it is,’ I agreed with genuine disappointment. I had hoped to quiz Carruthers the next time we met over luncheon and, by so doing, to learn more not only about the man himself but also about my own confused feelings about him. I also felt that I would be letting Holmes down if I failed to carry through my inquiries.
Unaware of these private feelings of mine, Thurston picked up the thread of our earlier conversation.
‘Yes, a very interesting man. Before you arrived on that Wednesday, he talked at some length about his army experiences,’ he remarked and, as he did so, it suddenly occurred to me that Thurston could serve as a secret conduit to Carruthers and that all was not yet lost.
‘What did he have to say?’ I asked, trying hard not to sound too keenly interested. ‘Did he mention Afghanistan?’
‘Oh, at some length. He was clearly much taken with the country and its culture, in particular its fighting men for whom he had a great deal of admiration, despite its tendency to unseemly behaviour at times.’
I nodded solemnly, trying not to look too aghast at Thurston’s inappropriate use of language. The gruesome habit of dismembering any enemy soldiers left lying on the battlefield, whether alive or dead, with the aid of their womenfolk, struck me not so much as ‘unseemly’ as downright barbaric. It was only through the swift action of my orderly, Murray, who threw me over the back of a packhorse when I was wounded at Maiwand and led me to safety at Kandahar,11 that my life was saved. As a desk-wallah in Calcutta at the time of the battle, Thurston had a reason for not being fully aware of the facts, but I could think of no excuse for Carruthers’ ignorance.
‘Indeed they are brave to the point of fanaticism,’ I replied. ‘Did he mention the siege of Kandahar?’
‘Several times. It must have been an appalling experience that you, too, of course, had to endure. Thirty days with no food and very little water! The suffering you had to go through! You must have been so thankful when Carruthers arrived with the relieving army.’
‘Indeed we were! Very relieved in both senses of the word, although for my part I was still recovering from my wound and at times was not really aware of what was going on. Did Carruthers by any chance mention when he was wounded?’
‘No, I don’t think he did. Is it important?’
‘Not at all, Thurston, not at all,’ I said dismissively, at the same time inwardly rejoicing that Thurston had unwittingly placed in my hands the information I needed to prove I was right. As I had suspected, Carruthers was certainly not pukkah! Indeed, so great was my jubilation that afterwards I beat Thurston at billiards by two frames to one.
Something of my delight must have shown in my expression, for when I returned to Baker Street later that afternoon, the first remark Holmes made when I entered our sitting-room was, ‘I see from your face that you have won a victory. I assume you beat Thurston today at billiards.’
‘Not only that, Holmes, but I now know without a shadow of a doubt that Carruthers is a wrong ’un!’
‘Really? That is good news! Draw a chair up to the fire, my dear fellow, and tell me how you came to this conclusion. Was it something he said at the Kandahar this afternoon?’
‘No; he was not there and I have the feeling that he absented himself on purpose to avoid meeting me again. On the contrary, it was something Thurston said. A fortnight ago before I arrived at the club, he was having a conversation with Carruthers. Apparently, Carruthers spoke in some detail about his experiences in Afghanistan, in particular about the siege of Kandahar.’
‘Do go on,’ Holmes urged as I paused for a moment to draw breath and put my thoughts into a more coherent order.
‘Well, Holmes, in this conversation, Carruthers evidently referred to the fact that, during the siege, I and my fellow soldiers had to suffer thirty days at Kandahar with no fresh water.’
‘So?’ Holmes inquired, raising his eyebrows. ‘What is the point, Watson? I assume there is one.’
Chastened by this remark, I hurried to make good my mistake.
‘The point is, the siege lasted twenty-four days, not thirty, and there was no shortage of water. There were enough wells in the garrison to keep all the troops supplied. Had he been there, he would have known this. If you want my opinion, I think he was using information he had picked up from soldiers who had been at the siege but who had exaggerated the facts in order to make the situation more dramatic.’
‘Could he not have exaggerated the facts himself?’
‘That is a possibility,’ I conceded, ‘but I think not. Any officer worth his rank would have kept to the truth. It is generally the other rankers who add colour and excitement to their accounts. This could explain Carruthers’ change of arrangements at the Kandahar. I think he wanted to avoid another meeting with me in case I became suspicious about him for, to be perfectly frank, Holmes, I do not believe for a moment that he was in Kandahar or even in Afghanistan.’
Rising to his feet, Holmes took two or three turns up the room, chin in hand, and, knowing him in this reflective mood, I said nothing to interrupt his thoughts. After a few minutes of silent contemplation, he seemed to come to a decision, for he strode back to his chair by the fire where he sat down bolt upright, his eyes bright.
‘You say Carruthers now comes to the club on a Friday?’
‘Yes; according to the waiter who spoke to Thurston. He apparently arrives at eleven o’clock.’
‘Then I shall make sure to be in the vicinity of the Kandahar at the same hour.’
‘Shall I come with you?’ I asked eagerly, keen to witness Carruthers’ downfall.
‘No; not yet. It is too early in the case. Besides, if he saw you, he might leave at once and ruin the whole plan
. Let me reconnoitre on my own to begin with. I may need your assistance later in the investigation.’
‘Then would you like a more detailed description of him?’ I asked, keen to contribute something, however small, to the inquiry.
Holmes laughed out loud.
‘That is hardly necessary! The eyepatch alone should mark him out!’ he replied, much to my discomfiture.
The following Friday, Holmes set off in good time to arrive at the Kandahar a little before eleven o’clock. Knowing he would not be back until after lunchtime, possibly later if he followed Carruthers after he had left the club, I tried to settle down to the exasperating business of waiting on events, an exercise in patience in which I confess I am not very accomplished.
I tried reading the Daily Gazette in an effort to while away the time, but after an hour I gave up and, laying aside the newspaper, I decided to walk to the Metropolitan Railway station12 in Baker Street before returning home, but a thin cold drizzle drove me back to the fireside in our Baker Street lodgings with no sign yet of Holmes.
It was nearly four o’clock and getting dark before he finally arrived back from what had evidently been a successful foray, for I heard the street door slam shut behind him before he came bounding jubilantly up the stairs.
‘You were right, Watson!’ he announced, bursting into the room. ‘Carruthers is definitely a wrong ’un, as you so pertinently observed. So congratulations, my dear fellow! I do not think I could have done better myself!’
It was praise indeed, for Holmes rarely paid compliments unless they were fully deserved, and I felt the warm blood course up into my face with pleasure.
‘What did you find out?’ I asked eagerly.
‘Oh, really, Watson! Let me tell my account from the beginning. You of all people should know the importance of not giving away the ending before first building the story up to its climax. Well, then, to begin. I strolled up and down Orchard Street for a good ten minutes before Carruthers emerged from the Kandahar. From there, he walked into Oxford Street, where he caught a Bayswater omnibus,13 alighting from it in Holborn. Having arrived there, he set out on foot down the Gray’s Inn Road before he turned into that maze of little streets in the Clerkenwell area, finishing up eventually in Pickard’s Close, at number 14, to be precise, where he let himself in at the front door.’
‘What sort of place is it?’ I asked, thinking that from what Holmes had said about it, the district hardly sounded a suitable address for an army colonel – an unspoken criticism which my old friend expressed more succinctly out loud.
‘It is a terrace of shabby, run-down little houses,’ he said. ‘I am sure you know the type: no front gardens, grubby lace curtains at the windows … I leave the rest to your imagination, Watson. Anyway, Carruthers’ disappearance inside number 14 placed me in something of a dilemma. I had no idea how long he would remain within the house and I could hardly knock on the front door and ask to speak to him. That would have given the game away immediately.’
‘What did you do, Holmes?’ I asked, as tense with anxiety over the situation as if I had experienced it myself.
‘Thank goodness we English are a nation not so much of shopkeepers, as Napoleon would have had us believe, but of topers. There was a convenient little tavern on the corner named, most inappropriately, I thought, in view of the sooty bricks and the muddy doorsteps, “The Farmer’s Boy”, complete with a hanging sign depicting a cherry-cheeked, curly-haired youngster dressed in a spotlessly white smock and carrying an equally freshly laundered lamb on his shoulder.
‘I retired there and ordered half a pint of ale – a suitable beverage, I thought, given the circumstances – and carried it over to a table by the window, from which I had a clear view of Pickard’s Close and the front door of number 14. I should add that I had dressed down for the occasion in a short jacket, pepper-and-salt trousers and a bowler hat.
‘Even so, I attracted some attention from the other customers. Thinking it over later, I came to the conclusion that my shoes were too clean. One has to be so careful in some districts of London such as Clerkenwell, which are almost tribal in their exclusiveness and regard any stranger as a potential enemy. So after looking me over suspiciously, they turned their backs on me as a man to show their disapproval. They may have concluded from my bowler hat that I was a debt collector or perhaps a nark: a police informer to you, Watson.
‘I waited for at least half an hour before Carruthers emerged, wearing a shabby overcoat and carrying several letters in his hand. There was also one other significant change in his appearance. He was no longer wearing the eyepatch, which was obviously a prop, such as an actor would wear, in his case to win public sympathy. There is nothing like a crutch or wooden leg to increase one’s earnings as a beggar or a confidence trickster. Remind me, by the way, to give you an account of the three-handed widow one of these days.’
‘The three-handed widow …!’ I began but Holmes, ignoring my interruption, pressed on with his own account.
‘Anyway, to return to Carruthers. His was a remarkable transformation. In that short time, he had changed from an officer and a gentleman who had lost an eye, presumably in battle, to a down-at-heel individual, although he still walked with the brisk, upright gait of a soldier, which led me to believe that he had been in the army at some point in his life.’
‘How extraordinary, Holmes!’ I declared. ‘Why do you suppose Carruthers went to such lengths to falsify his appearance?’
‘The answer, I believe, lies in the letters he was carrying, which he posted in the nearest pillar box.’ Seeing my puzzled expression, he continued with the kindly air of a schoolmaster explaining some abstruse mathematical equation to a not-overly-bright pupil. ‘He is a screever, Watson, a writer of begging letters to you and me, or, if you prefer a more succinct description, a professional cadger. He probably has other methods of persuading innocent citizens to part with their money. Gagging, for example.’
‘Gagging?’
‘Convincing a complete stranger that they are old acquaintances and, on the strength of that supposed friendship, borrowing money from him. Here is a possible scenario. The gagger pretends to recognise the victim, perhaps just a passer-by in the street, as an old acquaintance and, to celebrate their reunion, invites him to join him in a tavern or a hotel bar for a celebratory drink. However, when he is presented with the bill, he discovers, on searching through his coat, that he must have lost his wallet. The victim, of course, offers to pay not only for the drinks but to supply a little extra cash so that his “friend” has the fare for a cab home. They exchange addresses so that the cadger can reimburse his victim. Of course, he never does but the cadger makes a pound, say, from the “lay”.’
Seeing my puzzled expression, Holmes hastened to explain.
‘A “lay”, my dear fellow, refers to the particular method used to deceive or defraud. In this case, it would be a “gagging lay”, which could bring in an extra bounty on top of the original “gag” because the cadger now knows the address of the victim, which he can then sell on to a “screever”, who in turn makes money from the innocent citizen.’
‘Oh, Holmes! How despicable! Is there nothing we can do? I hate the thought of a bounder like that preying on the members of the Kandahar.’
‘Well, I suppose I could speak to Lestrade about him. He may already be known to the police. But better still, I could approach Sammy Knox, an old acquaintance of mine, who used to be a “shofulman”, and before you ask, Watson, that is someone who passes on counterfeit money; banknotes, in Knox’s case. He used to buy them from a pair of brothers, the Jacksons, who were experts in producing false banknotes, or “gammy soft”, as they are known in the trade. They owned a small but apparently respectable printing firm in New Cross producing visiting cards, invitations, that sort of thing. Sammy, who was a keen gambler on the horses, used to pass on the “soft” at the various race meetings, not just on the course itself, but at various public houses which flourished in the neig
hbourhood. If anyone knew about any unlawful business involving money it would be Sammy.’
‘Is he still a – what was the word? – a “shofulman”?’ I asked, fascinated by my old friend’s knowledge of the sporting underworld.
‘Officially, no,’ he replied. ‘He was arrested a couple of times and had spent time in “stir”, but when I last met him he was adamant he had given up his old, bad ways, although I rather doubt it. Leopards and spots, Watson, if you take my meaning.’
‘Should I warn Thurston and the other members of the Kandahar about Carruthers? He seems a thoroughly bad lot.’
‘Heavens, no! That would send him running for cover. Give me time to find out where Sammy Knox is living these days and to ask for his help in the matter before we speak to Thurston and the club members, even Lestrade. Now we have the man in our sights, it would be a pity to lose him through hasty action. As the old saying goes: “Softly, softly catchee monkee”.’
I do not know how Holmes set about finding out Knox’s whereabouts but within four days he had evidently been successful, for on the Tuesday afternoon I was invited by Holmes to a rendezvous at the Crooked Billet in Castle Street, off Holborn, to meet Sammy Knox.
It was a discreet public house partitioned off by wooden panels into separate cubicles like loose boxes or narrow railway compartments. The one Holmes had chosen faced the door and I felt, as we took our seats on one of the settles, that my old friend was familiar with the place and had used it before for similar meetings. We had not long to wait, for, soon after our own arrival, the door opened and a man entered: Knox, I assumed, from the way Holmes immediately sat up in readiness to greet him.
Secret Archives of Sherlock Holmes, The, The Page 6
