The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes--The Counterfeit Detective

by Stuart Douglas

  Hoffmann stared at Holmes for a long moment in silence, his lips pressed together. But then – whether from the recollection that only “Lestrade” could save his reputation, or from a genuine desire to unburden himself, I could not say – his face softened a little and he recommenced his narrative.

  “Yes, yes, quite right, Inspector. Justice is rarely well served by anger, no matter how justified. But as I said, I would have let the drunken gent pass by unmolested, had George Appo and his cronies not forced me to it.”

  “You were concealed?” Holmes asked.

  “In a dirty side alley, little more than an alcove. The smell of refuse caught my throat and I coughed, and the others laughed because they were more used to breathing in that putrid stench. Appo and I were to the front, the others behind us, but we were all in shadow. The street was empty; I saw nobody when I first popped my head out to rid myself of the worst of the smell. Then I saw this old man making his way towards us. He could barely walk, swaying from side to side, singing something to himself.”

  “And then?”

  “I told George there was someone coming. He winked, like he did, and said we should lift his clip, but I wasn’t keen and said so. Said I had a bad feeling about it. And I did. Like a premonition. George might have gone for that, being part-Chinese or something like he was, but the others were laughing, saying I was soft – too soft to hang with them, and maybe I’d be better off back home with Mama, reading my scripture. Doing my needlework, Jimmy Donaldson says, and everyone – even George – laughed loudly at that, so loud I wonder that the drunk didn’t hear it.

  “Well, I wasn’t having that, not from that little weasel, so I stepped out into the street just when the drunk walks up. ‘Stop right there, old man,’ I said. But he didn’t – just kept on walking, like I wasn’t even there. Walked right past me, he did, with this little smile on his face, like he knew something I didn’t. And then Jimmy came up from the shadows and pushed something in my hand, said that the drunk thinks I’m nothing, that I’m invisible. That I’m worthless…”

  I glanced across at Holmes as Hoffmann’s voice died away. I had seen subjects of hypnosis mentally travel back to earlier points in their lives and act as though they were actually there, but this was the first time I had seen someone act in such a manner of their own volition. Earlier I had thought that Hoffmann’s voice had undergone a change, becoming less refined under the influence of whisky and fear, but this was altogether different. It was as though he had retreated to the point at which his future hung in the balance, the second in which his actions dictated the life he was destined to lead. Holmes, though, never took his eyes from Hoffmann.

  “Did you kill him?” Holmes’s voice was soft, but his eyes were like shards of grey slate.

  “Yes, I did that. I took the knife Jimmy gave me and stabbed the old man in the neck. He sagged, like he was broken. I wasn’t expecting that, so instead of holding onto him I let him fall to the ground. He was at my feet, curled up a little, with the knife still in him. We didn’t rob him, even. We just ran. George was angry. He said I was kicked out of the gang, that I couldn’t come back, that I didn’t belong in the Points. Even though I did what they wanted me to do.”

  “And so you returned home? You resumed your studies and, with no distractions, did well.”

  “Yes.”

  “The police never linked you to the murder?”

  “No. They never arrested anyone for it.”

  “You got on with your life. You went to college, obtained your degree, trained to be a minister. You bought this fine house, in a good area of town, and forgot all about the crimes of a young man you barely recognised as yourself…”

  “NO!”

  Hoffmann’s shout was loud enough to bring a knock on the study door, but the pastor speedily sent the concerned servant on his way.

  “No,” he repeated, more calmly this time, once he heard the servant’s footsteps retreat down the hall outside. “I never forgot. I never saw Appo or the others again after that night, but I was always certain that I’d pay for what I did, one day. Sin exacts a price from us all in the end, Inspector.”

  “A wage, surely, Pastor,” Holmes replied. “For the wages of sin are death, are they not? And James Donaldson has been paid in full.”

  I had missed the connection between Jimmy Donaldson and the murder victim whose home we had so recently visited, but Holmes had not. He sat now, his hands flat on the desk in front of him, his body hunched forward, all but willing Hoffmann to provide some useful information. His cigarette was forgotten, burnt down in a crystal ashtray in front of him, just as Hoffmann’s third whisky lay untouched before him. This was Holmes at his best, using his powerful mind as a weapon to tease out the truth. Hoffmann had no chance.

  “I read about Donaldson’s death when it happened. I wondered if that successful man could have grown from the vicious boy I knew. No more than that, though. A casual interest born out of a shared name. I dismissed it from my mind almost at once and did not think about him again until Isherwood appeared at this very door with an envelope in his hand.

  “Had Rawlins merely sent up a card, I believe I would have had him thrown out, but the envelope was to hand, and curiosity has always been a particular vice of mine, so I had Isherwood instruct my visitor to wait while I examined the contents. Inside was a letter, signed by Donaldson, which laid out in detail the events I have just described to you, though with a bias which suggested cold-blooded murder on my part. That was bad enough, but the rest…”

  “The photographs, you mean?”

  With a sob, Hoffmann buried his head in his hands. I had been fascinated to see that once he began to speak of current events, both his diction and vocabulary improved. I made a mental note to discuss the matter with Holmes later; perhaps there was something in the new ideas just beginning to come out of Europe regarding the link between lost memories and mental health.

  After a minute or so, Hoffmann muttered an embarrassed apology and composed himself once more. “Yes, there were four of them. Photographs of James Donaldson, taken on the day of his death.”

  “You recognised Donaldson?” asked Holmes.

  “I did, but even if I had not, the images would have sufficed to cause me grave concern and alarm. The first photograph was of Rawlins and Donaldson standing beside one another, holding a newspaper between them, with the date visible. The date, I was to discover, was that of Donaldson’s death.

  “In the second photograph, Donaldson was sitting on a chair with a sheet of paper held directly in front of him. I remember wondering if this was some form of foolish practical joke and, had it not been for the letter that accompanied the photographs, might have treated them so. Donaldson was holding the paper at an unnatural angle, but though I could not read it clearly, I had no doubt that it was the same letter I now held in my hand. The penultimate photograph though…”

  Again, Hoffmann shuddered. His voice cracked as he repeated the words, then rushed to a painful conclusion. “The penultimate photograph showed Donaldson holding a gun in his mouth, Inspector, and the last, his dead body half in the chair, half on the floor, with Rawlins crouched beside him, the devil!”

  “A devil, indeed, to kill a man merely for pleasure,” Holmes remarked.

  “For pleasure, Inspector?” The confusion on Hoffmann’s face was unmistakable. “I would not have said that Rawlins looked as though he were taking pleasure in the act. The reverse, in fact. But surely Donaldson was killed in order to demonstrate that Rawlins would stop at nothing. Or perhaps as a hint regarding my own fate, should I fail to co-operate.”

  “Which is it then, Pastor? A demonstration or a hint? Rawlins must have told you, or there would be little purpose in either!”

  “A demonstration. No, it was a promise. Or, no…”

  “Come now, Pastor. These intentions you have suggested are identical in purpose, and thus you cannot claim distinction for them. But still, there is something here that I am missing.
The blackmailer’s stratagem with Donaldson was too wasteful. There must be something more in it, a greater goal served by this sacrifice…”

  As Holmes’s voice faded to a contemplative murmur, Hoffmann rounded on him in panic-driven and, I suspected, largely feigned outrage. “Wasteful, sir? You speak of waste when the topic is a man’s very existence? You are a cold one, Inspector Lestrade, to casually consider the life of another human soul so small a trifle.”

  I expected Holmes to bridle at the accusation, but in this I underestimated my friend, who was just as capable of recognising feigned emotion as I. “Far from it, Pastor. I do the work that I do, in part at least, to prevent the loss of human souls. Yet I would also call Donaldson’s death wasteful. As the fable tells us, one is unwise to kill the goose that lays the golden egg, and what else was Donaldson? He paid Rawlins’s fee and told nobody, so far as we know. He would have continued to pay, too, rather than face scandal and ruin. His suicide makes that eminently clear. Even so, he was discarded in an especially bloody manner, thereby putting an end to his usefulness as a source of income.”

  He paused, distracted by a passing thought.

  “A warning, yes – that I can see. Pay what I ask or you will end your days like James Donaldson. There is a utility in that which would be some compensation for the potential loss of Donaldson’s future financial contributions. Though, did you not fear that you would be similarly treated, in the end?”

  Only a fool could fail to notice the beads of sweat on Hoffmann’s forehead or the way in which he blanched once again. I had no doubt that Holmes was on the right path. Rawlins had desired something more from Hoffmann than money, and the brutal staging of Donaldson’s suicide had been intended to encourage his compliance.

  But for all his fear, Hoffmann would say no more. Holmes asked for Rawlins’s address, but it seemed that the pastor had reached the limit of his co-operation and he shook his head and looked away. I suspected that he retained the foolish hope that the entire affair would somehow fade away and his own involvement would be forgotten should Rawlins escape our grasp. Frustrated, Holmes stood up abruptly, as if the presence of Hoffmann offended him, grabbed the door key from the desk and swept from the room. The pastor silently watched him leave, ashen-faced.

  I too was desirous of fresh air, far from the individual who sat before me. I paused only long enough to tell Hoffmann that we could be reached via Inspector Bullock, then followed my friend out of the study.

  Chapter Thirteen

  As was so often my experience with Sherlock Holmes, any expectations I might have had about my friend’s state of mind were confounded the second I caught up with him outside. I had expected to find him dissatisfied, rendered morose by his failure to elicit the name of the next victim from Hoffmann and despondent by the pastor’s lack of moral fibre.

  I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Holmes was far from downhearted. On the contrary, his mood was ebullient as he strode down the street, ignoring several cabs as they drove past.

  “I feel the need to stretch my legs, Watson,” he explained as he caught me glancing after one such rejected hansom. “I have too much energy to coop myself up in a cab – or to remain in the company of a man such as Pastor Hoffmann! And we have much to do, Watson, much to do!”

  I was delighted to see Holmes in such splendid good humour, but at the same time I wondered what could possibly have engendered such an emotion in him. True, we had established that blackmail was taking place, and we had identified both the blackmailer and his mode of operation. But were we really any nearer to finding the imposter, even now that we had his name? And where were we to look next, in the absence of a fresh link in the blackmailer’s chain, and with Hoffmann refusing to say where Rawlins now lived? I put both questions to Holmes.

  “Nonsense!” he exclaimed. “We have the imposter’s name – though it may, of course, be an alias, it does at least provide a further point of investigation – and that of his accomplice. Do not underestimate either of these things. More interestingly, however, we have a gap in the chronology of Mr Rawlins.”

  “A gap…”

  “Pastor Hoffmann was the next victim after Donaldson. But the newspaper that Donaldson was holding was dated last February. How then can it be that the pastor only received a visit a few months since?”

  I saw at once what Holmes meant. “An accident? It would be a simple matter to query local hospitals or check the newspapers. As you said yourself, the American press is extremely fond of such stories.”

  “An accident, Watson? Is that your answer to everything?” He laughed gleefully and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Come now, ask yourself this. Where do criminals routinely find themselves that would mean they would not be seen around town for an extended period of time?”

  Put like that, the answer was obvious. “Prison,” I said.

  * * *

  For confirmation, all it took was a telegram to Bullock, asking him to check the records for Rawlins’s presence in an American jail. Though it took him most of the day, by the time we made our way to the station later that evening, he had obtained the information we required and handed over a thin manila folder, inside which were the arrest and imprisonment records of one Noah Rawlins.

  Both documents made for interesting reading. Rawlins had been arrested for public drunkenness and assault of a police officer ten months previously and had been sentenced to six months’ imprisonment in the colourfully named Sing Sing. The arrest record also contained a description of Rawlins and a photograph of a dark-skinned, slim man of about thirty, with hair combed back to reveal a widow’s peak. Most intriguingly of all, the record listed an address for Rawlins – in a street in one of the better areas of the island, according to Bullock, who offered to take us there at our convenience.

  Holmes consulted his pocket watch. “Too late for today, but shall we say ten a.m. in the morning?” Holmes was always happiest when he believed he was making progress in a case, and today was the most content I had seen him in weeks.

  * * *

  So many of the better type of New York home looked identical to my English eyes that I would not have been able to tell Rawlins’s address from Hoffmann’s if my life depended upon it. A wide street lined with trees, and a succession of high, narrow buildings welcomed us the next day as our cab turned the corner and deposited us near what Bullock assured us was the address on the arrest sheet.

  The inspector led the way, as befitted his far more official status. He took the steps up to the door two at a time and, once we had caught up with him, rapped on it heavily with the back of his hand.

  To everyone’s surprise, the door swung open.

  The interior was dim and cool. A postcard hand-addressed to “The Occupant” lay on the floor at our feet. Bullock picked it up and glanced at the picture of Buckingham Palace on the front, then flipped it over, but the reverse was blank. He handed the card to Holmes, who nodded as if confirming something to himself, before slipping it in a pocket.

  The hallway extended the length of the house, with two doors leading from it on either side and a stairway that provided access to the first floor at its end. I had expected the house to be set up along similar lines to Mrs van Raalte’s, with each door leading to one set of living quarters or other, but in fact it seemed that the entire building either belonged to Rawlins or was rented by him. Clearly, blackmail was a lucrative business. I was about to remark on this fact to Holmes when Bullock’s cry from the first room on the left sent us running towards him.

  The reason for his alarm was plain. Lying on the floor on his back was a man dressed only in pyjamas and dressing gown. A ragged hole in the fabric marked the point where, I had no doubt, a bullet had struck the dead man in the shoulder. That he was definitely dead required no great medical knowledge, however, for as I rolled him over, it was clear that a second bullet had struck the man under the chin, passing up through his mouth, and exited via the back of his skull. A gun lay near his feet, though it
would require a more thorough examination before anyone could say whether it was the murder weapon or the dead man’s own gun (assuming the two were not one and the same).

  Holmes waited for me to conclude this briefest of exams, before moving into the place I had just vacated. He examined the corpse and its clothing for at least ten minutes, moving it as little as possible, but ensuring that he investigated every seam, pocket and stitch. I noticed that he spent some time on the fingernails, then examined the back of the corpse’s neck and ears in detail, though he gave no indication as to his particular interest in those areas. Finally, he rose to his feet.

  “So much for Mr Rawlins,” he declared. “A single grey, almost silver, hair that does not belong to his head, but other than that, few points of interest.”

  I should have realised that the dead man and our quarry were one and the same. Now that Holmes had pushed his hair back, the resemblance to his police photo was clear, though I thought him a trifle tanned to play Holmes. I was struck by how insignificant he looked in death, in contrast to the mayhem he had caused in life. I wondered if Holmes felt the same, for an odd expression crossed his face as he looked up to ask Bullock to check the other rooms in the house, to make sure we were alone.

  “Are you feeling quite well, Holmes?” I asked, as soon as Bullock had left the room.

  Holmes’s dismissive shrug was, I thought, as eloquent a response as I was likely to get. But in this I was wrong. Holmes was never likely to become the sort of man who speaks easily about his feelings, but on this occasion, he chose to explain himself a little.

  “It is most peculiar, Watson. I know that I should feel a terrible rancour towards this man, who impersonated me for his own gain and rendered my name no more than a brand to be emblazoned on any handy shingle. He is certainly a blackmailer and possibly a murderer, to boot. And yet, I feel a curious and most unexpected sense of kinship for a creature, no matter how low in morals, who for a time was Sherlock Holmes.” He smiled self-consciously in my direction and busied himself with closing the staring eyes of the dead man. “A foolish notion, of course,” he concluded, as he pulled out his magnifying glass and commenced a minute investigation of the carpet beneath a shabby dressing table that stood, incongruously, in one corner of the room, where it took advantage of the natural light streaming through the window.