Sherlock Holmes: The Quality of Mercy and Other Stories

by William Meikle

  We spent the rest of the afternoon talking to everyone who had lost something to the sneak thief. As it turned out, that was most, if not all, of the crew. We started with the purser, a neat, tidy man of average height, middle-aged and most polite in his manner.

  “I noticed the cigarette case was gone that very first night we started our journey home,” he said.

  We were in the Captain’s cabin, having appropriated it for our interviews, much to the Captain’s disgust. The purser seemed quite at home sitting in Prentice’s chair, puffing on one of Holmes’ cheroots. He was also a natural storyteller, and all Holmes and I had to do was sit back and let the tale unfold.

  “I was most distressed to lose it, for it had been a present from my wife on departure from Southampton at the start of our voyage, and had been inscribed with endearments from her and my children.

  “We had been berthed at the native village for almost a month, and the crew were becoming heartily sick of a diet of seal meat and herring, and were pining for home. There may even have been talk of a mutiny, such was the discontent. But the Captain would not be swayed. He had been involved in secret negotiations with the tribal leaders for some weeks, and wished them brought to an advantageous end before our departure.

  “The night we left port, the old man arrived back from the village with a face like thunder and announced that we would be leaving on the morning tide. The crew was happy to oblige him, and if he drank rather too much that night, we turned a blind eye, just overjoyed to finally be on our way home.

  “I was out on deck that same night. It was late, and I just wanted one last look at the moon over the glacier before we left it behind. I met the obviously drunk Captain coming up the gangplank. He carried something under one arm. It looked too heavy for him, but he would not let me see what it might be. He pushed me aside and made for his room. The whole encounter had so discomforted me that I felt the need for a cigarette.

  “I reached for my case in my lapel pocket; a spot where it had sat these last two years.

  “It had gone, and I did not see it again until this last week when the thief was finally caught.”

  When Holmes spoke, he did not ask what I considered to be the obvious question.

  “These negotiations the Captain was undertaking … did you know what they concerned?”

  The Purser shook his head. “No, sir. The old man played it close to his chest at all times. All I know is that they did not seem to end well, and the Captain has been in a foul mood all the way home.”

  Our next interview was with one of the engine stokers, and the contrast with the Purser could not have been more marked. This man seemed almost terrified to be in the Captain’s cabin. He refused to sit in the old man’s chair.

  “I couldnae dae that, sirs,” he said, his Scots brogue coming through thick and strong. “It widnae be seemly.”

  He stood in front of us, shifting nervously from foot to foot, and would not look us in the eye, choosing to stare into space at a spot somewhere over my left shoulder. This time it took us a long, tedious hour to get to the bottom of the man’s tale. All he had lost was a shilling from his pocket.

  “But it was ma lucky shillin’, sirs,” he said. “And the very night I lost it I saw the hideous dwarf in the pantry. Terrible it was, all gray and ghostly. Now you tell me whether ma luck held or no.”

  Again Holmes ignored the obvious question, making no mention of the dwarf.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Did you have any contact with the Esquimaux natives?”

  At that the man perked up.

  “Oh aye, sirs. Fine drinking folks they are too. They make a liquor there that’s not as smooth as the cratur, but it fair puts a fire in your belly.”

  “And did you ever speak to them while you were sharing their liquor?”

  “Yes, sir. Although their old man, the one with the bones, he didnae like his folk fraternizing with the likes of us.”

  “Bones?”

  “Aye. Some kind of fortune-teller he was. He claimed to speak directly to their god … a heathen thing, a big beastie that lived under the ice and looked after them. Tomba, I think they called it, no’ that I have any truck with yon pagan nonsense. Will that be all, sirs?”

  Holmes dismissed him with a wave of his hand, but I could tell by the look in my friend’s eyes that he had the bit between his teeth now.

  It was a long afternoon filled with a variety of interviews; some pleasant, some truculent, but all with much the same story. Holmes had been right about the lost items having some significance rather than the purely monetary. They had all lost something of sentimental value to them, and most of them claimed to have seen a spectral dwarf in the region of the ship’s pantry. We learned little more of the Captain, or of the Esquimau people, as it seemed that the old man had indeed carried out most of his presumed negotiations in the utmost secrecy.

  But when Holmes spoke after our last bout of questioning, I had already guessed what would be on his mind.

  “It seems we must spend the evening aboard, old friend,” he said as we filled our pipes. “Are you ready for a night-watch?”

  The Captain was none too keen on having strangers on board his ship overnight, but as he had been the one to request our presence in the first place, he could scarcely be over-zealous in his complaints now. He had a pair of chairs brought to the pantry, but after just twenty minutes both Holmes and I decided to move them out into the corridor to gain at least some relief from what had become a biting cold.

  The Captain’s man brought us a light supper tray at eight o’clock, and a most welcome flask filled with the Captain’s brandy. After that Holmes and I were left on our own as the ship closed down for the night around us, leaving us just a flickering oil lamp for company.

  Holmes was in contemplative mood. “We are obviously after a thief of great technical skill,” he said. “This is no mere pickpocket. He employs techniques I have only seen before in the markets of the Far East, and even so, I think our quarry here has an ability that surpasses even those masters of the art. Let us see how he manages against the likes of you and me, shall we, Watson?”

  “But how has he managed to stay hidden? If this dwarf is indeed a stowaway … which I am guessing is your conjecture … then where has he been hiding these past months?”

  “Well, a pantry is a good place to start,” Holmes said, and laughed. He sucked on another of his cheroots, but he had a pipe on his lap, his old favorite briar that he always turned to when he needed to think. He saw my glance.

  “This is my sentimental item. Bait, if you would rather think of it in that fashion.”

  I took my service revolver from my pocket and let it sit in my lap. “Sentimental as this is,” I said. “It may also serve some practical value if need be.”

  We were used to nights such as this. It passed slowly, neither of us speaking much, smoking and lost in our own thoughts. I felt the old thrill of the chase; the night before battle.

  The boat felt cold, as if some memory of its long journey north had lingered in its hull, and once again I was grateful for the warmth provided by my overcoat. I was about to remark on the fact when I noticed my breath misting in front of my nose.

  Holmes looked up and winked at me.

  The game is on.

  Once again it came at first as a noise, a series of watery gurgles and splutters followed by pops, like a child blowing bubbles. It got much colder, a biting chill that reached down into my bones. Something slapped wetly on the floor, just by my feet.

  I looked down. At first there was nothing to see; then I wiped my eyes, thinking them clouded by sleepiness. A fine mist seemed to be rising from the deck, like a Scotch fog.

  Holmes leaned forward for a closer look. At the same instant a pair of arms seemed to form in the mist. Beyond the outstretched limbs lay a rounded shape which, if I squinted, might look like a hunched dwarf. But at that moment I only had eyes for the misty hands, one of which stretched toward the pistol in my lap, t
he other reaching for Holmes’ pipe.

  “I have you,” Holmes shouted in triumph, and rolled forward out of his chair, in the same movement clasping the lock of a handcuff around the reaching wrist.

  Any triumph was short-lived. Holmes fell all the way to the floor, dissipating the mist with the bulk of his body. The handcuffs fell beside him, still locked, but empty.

  A heavily accented voice spoke, as if from everywhere, yet nowhere.

  Tomba gives. And Tomba takes.

  There was no sign of Holmes’ pipe, and when I looked down, it was to see that my service pistol had gone from my lap.

  3

  It was a chastened Holmes who stood beside me on the deck as a watery dawn came up over the Thames.

  “Either I am getting slower in my advancing years,” he said, “or whatever we encountered last night is not quite the corporeal thief I had come to expect.”

  “I think I concur with the latter,” I replied. “When the gun left my lap, I did not even feel the weight lift. It was as if it faded, gradually, out of existence.”

  Holmes nodded. “As it was with the pipe.”

  “And where did that voice come from?”

  Even as I asked, I was more than a bit afraid that Holmes had not even heard it, that I might be losing my touch on reality. But he quickly put that fear to rest.

  “To answer that question, we need some answers. And for that, we will need to interview one last person … the only one who has avoided any answers so far … Captain Prentice.”

  In order to do that, we first needed to obtain a meeting with the man, but he was suddenly most reluctant to speak to us. It was only through the combined weight of the Purser, the First Officer and the Captain’s own man that he could be persuaded to once again join us in his cabin.

  Before any questions could be asked, the Captain’s man insisted on preparing us a light breakfast. Ham and eggs was most welcome, and did much to revive my spirits, although the strong dark coffee preferred by the Captain was much too bitter for my tastes. I was still smoking a pipe to clear the taste from my throat when we retired to the chairs set around a small stove, and the questioning proper began.

  As ever, Holmes took the lead, and began with his usual directness.

  “I believe I now know the why, if not quite the how, of your recent crime wave, Captain. But to get to the bottom of the matter, to bring it to an end, there are several questions that require answers.”

  The Captain’s face reddened. “And you think I am the thief? Is that it?”

  Holmes allowed himself a thin smile.“This will go more quickly if you just answer the questions. Perhaps a stiff drink might help?”

  The Captain was not sure whether he was being mocked or not, but in either case, the allure of the liquor won. He got up, poured himself a drink, and downed it in a single gulp that would have floored a horse. When he sat back down opposite Holmes he immediately seemed more relaxed.

  “I’ll tell you what I can,” he said. “But I doubt I can be of any help in this matter.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” Holmes said. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fingers steepled in front of his face. “Tell me, Captain. What was the nature of your negotiations with the Esquimaux?”

  The Captain seemed startled by the question at first.

  “I’m afraid I cannot talk about that,” he finally said. “It is a state secret.”

  Holmes tried to press the issue. “I read the newspaper, Captain. It had to do with drilling and mining rights in the Arctic, did it not?”

  The Captain refused to answer.

  Holmes was dismissive. “If it comes to it, I shall just ask my brother, Mycroft,” he said. “But what I really want to know is what happened when these talks broke down. The tribal leader rebuffed you, did he not?”

  For the first time, I spotted a furtive look in the Captain’s eye. Holmes was getting close to the bone.

  “Promises were made, and not kept,” the Captain said. And now there was a pleading tone there, a childlike attempt at justification. I recognized it immediately—I have heard many criminals use it under interrogation by Holmes—I just did not expect it from a Naval captain.

  “And you did something … took something away from that place that you had no right to, did you not?” Holmes asked. He was still, his eyes staring directly into those of the Captain. Few men had ever failed to be swayed by that stare, and the Captain proved to be no exception.

  “It was promised,” he said, pleading now the dominant tone in his voice. “It was to be a great gift for the Queen.”

  “And a feather in your own cap, no doubt,” Holmes said, not bothering to disguise the disgust in his voice. “But what I am most interested in is what you had to do to obtain the tusk … for that is what we are talking about, is it not?”

  The Captain refused to look Holmes in the eye.

  “It was promised …” he started, but Holmes cut him off.

  “You may save your attempts at justification for the court martial. Just tell me. Did you kill him?”

  I was the one who started at that, for the conversation had just taken a turn I hadn’t foreseen. As I had been rudely jolted from my own concentration I noticed another fact that had not yet come to the attention of the others; the cabin had become decidedly colder.

  “He wouldn’t give it to me,” the Captain said. “And when I went to take it he started shouting some of his mumbo-jumbo. I had to shut him up. I had to.”

  He finally looked at Holmes, his eyes red with new tears. “God damn it, man. I was drunk.”

  “That is no excuse,” Holmes said. “In the morning you were sober. You could have handed yourself in for punishment then and there.”

  “But I am the Captain.”

  “No,” Holmes said softly. “You were the Captain.”

  Something caught my eye in the corner of the room, a blue mist starting to rise and coalesce.

  The Captain had got some of his composure back.

  “I am not sorry,” he said.

  Holmes’ reply was so quiet I almost didn’t catch it. “No. You’re not. And therein, I believe, lies the problem. But at least you have confessed. That might be enough.”

  “Enough for what?” the Captain said.

  Holmes wasn’t given time to reply.

  Tomba gives. Tomba takes, a voice said from the corner.

  I looked over again. A squat figure stood there. I realized it was a small man, made squatter by the heavy swaddling sealskins that served as clothing.

  The Captain saw me looking and turned.

  His face drained of color. “I killed you,” he said.

  The room filled with noise, a strange amalgam of liquid burps and pops. It got colder still, and I tasted icy salt spray on my lips. The sound of wet hands slapping ran around the walls.

  The small man moved forward, heading for the glass case on the Captain’s desk. He seemed to move as if on small wheels, the lower half of the misty body moving as one piece as spectral arms reached toward the desk.

  “No!” the Captain shouted. He overturned his chair in his rush to rise, and almost knocked the glass case from the desk as he lunged for it. He opened the case and took out the tusk, brandishing it between himself and the approaching figure.

  “I killed you,” he whispered.

  Tomba gives. Tomba takes, a voice said.

  Holmes, in the meantime, had scarcely moved in his chair.

  “I suggest you do the right thing, Captain,” he said. “Hand it back, and repent. You may yet be saved.”

  “Saved? From those savages? I will take my chances with the good Lord,” he said.

  At almost the same moment a new mist rose behind the man, a darker gray, looming at first, then opening in the impression of a vast mouth. The noise in the room got louder, liquid breathing, groaning, and the sudden stench of rotting fish. A vast maw opened behind the Captain.

  “Captain!” I shouted. I launched myself from my chair but I
was far too late. The huge mouth closed. The Captain screamed at the same time as the accentuated voice said something I did not quite catch as I fell to the cabin floor with a crash.

  By the time I rolled over and looked up there was only Holmes and myself in the room. All trace of the mist had gone … as had the Captain … and the scrimshaw tusk.

  Holmes had something in his hand that he passed to me … my service revolver. It felt wet, and as cold as ice. He showed me the pipe he held in his other hand.

  “I think we will find that everything is now where it should be,” he said quietly. “Including our former Captain.”

  “What just happened?”

  Holmes thought for long seconds before replying.

  “I do not think our coming here was a coincidence,” he said. “I believe someone, or something, arranged all of this. The thefts, the purser’s cigarette case being returned, an innocent man arrested, all were tactics in a long game, the end point of which was, I believe, to get me here, and to get the Captain to confess … and possibly to give him a chance to repent. A chance, I am afraid, that will not come again.”

  “What was spoken, there at the end?” I asked. “In my haste to help the Captain I did not hear it.”

  At first I wasn’t sure Holmes would reply. And after he did, I half-wished he had not.

  “He said Tomba gives. Tomba takes,” Holmes replied, packing his pipe for a fresh smoke. “And, at the end, he said one more thing.”

  Tomba gets hungry.

  The Color That Came To Chiswick

  EF

  I hoped that my friend Sherlock Holmes would be more settled when I called on him that evening. His recovery from his travails in France and the subsequent excitement in Reigate meant that a period of house rest was prescribed. As ever, he paid little attention to my ministrations and pleadings, and over the course of the previous fortnight had driven poor Mrs. Hudson to despair with a series of petty requests.