“Not much more to say. I discreetly disposed of the snake—”
“Therein lies a tale,” Mr. Holmes commented sotto voce.
“—but I fear that an old tangle I have remembered from the war underlies this perfidy.”
“War?” Dr. Watson asked. “Perfidy?”
“Mr. Blodgett will explain directly.” Mr. Holmes fixed his disconcerting attention on Quentin.
That was Quentin’s cue to unravel the true tale within the false construct of our fiction as he told the detective and his companion what he had revealed to Godfrey, Irene and myself.
Quentin spoke thrillingly of his spy-work in Afghanistan and of his suspicions toward another British espionage agent called Tiger when the man slandered his friend, Lieutenant Maclaine. He dramatically described the blow to the head after his talk with Maclaine, and his awakening the next day in the midst of a harrowing British retreat.
Dr. Watson listened intently at first, then began to fidget subtly, tapping his fingers on the velvet pile of his armchair, shifting to find a more comfortable position for his leg.
“Yes,” Dr. Watson interrupted when Quentin paused for breath, “Miss Buxleigh thought I might have treated you. I remember encountering only one case of a blow to the head at Maiwand. I received a wound from a jezail bullet to my shoulder shortly after. The man I treated could have been you, but I cannot swear to it, Blodgett. I am sorry.”
Quentin sat forward on the sofa. “I am not, Dr. Watson, for I am sure of it! I was indeed he whom you tended moments before being shot in the shoulder yourself. Heavens, man, how amazing that we should meet again nearly a decade after Maiwand. Remember the dust?”
Dr. Watson laughed shortly. “Dust and Ghazi fanatics by the yard—who could forget? And the infernal heat. But I confess, Blodgett, that I did not even recall the exact instant of my wounding until Miss Buxleigh brought it back by inquiring after you a few days ago.”
“How did you find Dr. Watson?” Sherlock Holmes inquired suddenly.
Quentin was ready for him. “The last name. He mentioned it at Maiwand, one of the first things I remembered once my memory was resurrected from the past.” Quentin turned to the doctor with genuine emotion. “You will never know how relieved I am to see you again, Doctor! I feel in some way that my mislaid past has been redeemed.”
“I have recaptured some lost memories myself,” the doctor admitted.
“These mysteries unravel at a fearsome pace without my aid,” Mr. Holmes noted wryly. “You two gentlemen would seem to have more in common than a battlefield meeting and bad memories. You both have been recent recipients of Asian cobras.”
“Blodgett, too?” Dr. Watson demanded. “What is going on, Holmes? Is London infected by some sort of imported-serpent ring?”
“For that answer we will have to apply to Mr. Jasper Blodgett. He can begin by explaining how he managed to find you in time to set his trained mongoose on the cobra in your consulting room.”
“No!” Dr. Watson appeared sincerely shocked. “A mongoose. Why, I never thought of that, Holmes.”
“It is fortunate that I did, then, although I had not yet tracked the owner of the mongoose. Remember the nail marks on your windowsill? Obviously an animal’s. Well, Mr. Blodgett?”
“Utter simplicity, Mr. Holmes. Having finally remembered the good doctor’s name, I had determined to find any physicians named Watson in England, for by last month I had realized that Tiger was tracking me. In fact, when I attempted to look up Dr. Watson in the records at Peshawar, I discovered that a previous party had recently found—and removed—them.
“That is when I knew your life to be in danger, Doctor, and why I came to London. That you were the proper Dr. Watson came clear shortly after I found your residence and set watch upon it, planning to introduce myself to you if I thought you a likely candidate.
“That very night I saw a housebreaker import a box into your study. I may not be a detective—” here Quentin nodded at Mr. Holmes with some pride in his voice “—but I know the average cracksman doesn’t convey goods, beyond a few tools, into a house he’s planning to rob. I looked in from the windowsill after he had gone—a good clean job he made of it, too—and soon heard the rasp of a creature that chills the blood of any man who has spent time in India, the cobra.”
“You happened to have the mongoose with you, no doubt,” Holmes suggested with a trace of disdain.
“After the cobra I found in my hotel bedchamber, I went nowhere without it,” Quentin said with such feeling that it took me a moment to realize that this was a complete untruth.
In the ensuing silence, Quentin and Mr. Holmes regarded each other with narrowed eyes. Quentin radiated conviction. I was quite perversely proud of him, even though he was lying through his teeth. Mr. Holmes exuded another attitude, one I could not quite name. Perhaps it was skepticism.
“Go on,” the detective urged my supposed fiancé. Quentin only said, “So I nipped onto the sill, set the cage down, and let Messalina loose to do her work—
“Oh, Jasper,” I found myself simpering like any genuine fiancée (and for a brief second, in a strange way, felt that I was), “weren’t you frightened that your adorable little pet would succumb to the awful snake, especially in the dark?”
“There, there, May,” he said, startling me, for I had forgotten my recent rechristening. “I had not a thing to worry about. No mongoose can choose when to confront a cobra, and Messalina has never lost yet. Cobras can be a sluggish, slow-swaying sort of snake as well as deadly.”
“Yes, Miss Buxleigh,” the man said in obviously insincere consolation, “we humans may learn quite a lesson from the interaction of mongoose and cobra. Its results are applicable to London affairs daily.”
I had the dreadful sense that the detective was playing with us all, including his friend, as a mongoose may taunt the slower-moving snake. In this he reminded me of Irene at her most sphinxlike.
I shuddered slightly at the insight. Mr. Holmes seemed as cold-blooded as his friend had described him in the pages I had read in Paddington. “... his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind.” Now I saw that Irene shared some of that same clinical distance.
“Messy nipped back to her cage when the job was done,” Quentin said, describing, I am sure, exactly what had occurred. “I shut her up and slipped away, knowing Dr. Watson’s maid might have a bit of noxious tidying up to do on the morrow, but the doctor’s life was safe.”
“Indeed.” This time Dr. Watson shuddered. “The serpent was discovered under my desk, quite dead, but well positioned to bite me in the leg.”
“So Mr. Blodgett’s imported mongoose averted a tragedy and a second leg wound, Watson,” drawled the detective in an odiously knowing manner.
“There is no first leg wound, Holmes!” Dr. Watson insisted with some irritation. “I merely get a bit stiff in the joints as a lingering symptom of enteric fever. This London weather is dank to one who has broiled in the kiln of Afghanistan and India.”
“Utterly true,” Quentin put in fervently.
Mr. Holmes turned to him with an air of having toyed enough with too-tame prey. “So is there an explanation for this villainy, Mr. Blodgett, or is that what I am being consulted to detect?”
Quentin paused as if perplexed. “There you have me, Mr. Holmes. I have my suspicions, and we have the two dead cobras to show that something is up.”
“Not to mention the irregularities at the battle of Maiwand,” I prompted.
Quentin nodded soberly. “They are more than mere irregularities, my dear. If my suspicions are correct that the spy I knew as Tiger was secretly working for the Russians, it could mean that our troops lost that day only by treachery. Many more lives hang on that than poor Maclaine’s.”
“What are you saying, Blodgett?” Dr. Watson asked. “That an Englishman betrayed his own kind? Maiwand saw much carnage. I witnessed that before I myself was wounded. The Sixty-sixth Berkshires standing to cover the retreat took dreadful losses.
I would be most angry to learn that all of this waste could have been avoided.”
“If I am right, Dr. Watson,” Quentin returned, “your own wounding could have been avoided. I now believe that the bullet that shattered your shoulder was intended for me. Tiger knew that I was suspicious. I am certain that he struck me on the head the night before battle, intending to kill me and have me taken for a casualty. During the retreat, he saw me still alive under your care, and used the dust and confusion as a cover to try again to kill me. That is why I have come all this way after all this time: to warn you and preserve you. To my mind, you saved my life that day by taking a bullet meant for me.”
Nothing could belie the sincerity of Quentin’s words, or the concern that had driven his return to an England that was not only personally dangerous, but dreaded. The two veterans sat silent, affected by the emotion in his voice as much as by what he had said.
“My dear fellow,” Mr. Holmes told Quentin with more warmth than he had yet used, “there is no doubt in my mind that you saved Watson’s life by introducing your animal ally into his consulting room, and for that I am most grateful. On that score rest easy. That does not mean that the puzzle is solved, or the wrongdoers brought to justice. Do you have any proof that this Tiger is the traitorous spy that you claim he is?”
“Only this, Mr. Holmes.” Quentin reached into the breast pocket of his department-store suit and withdrew the paper Irene and I had prized from Dr. Watson’s Afghanistan bag only a day before.
I quite loathed to see Quentin hand it over to the detective, who bounded up and swooped it away to the light of the bow window. Irene had insisted that a copy of this nine-year-old document would not deceive the eminent detective, that Quentin had to surrender this precious paper, his only proof of Tiger’s betrayal, if indeed the cryptic scrawls could prove that. Still, I hated seeing Quentin surrender another piece of the past in which he had submerged so much of his life.
“Now we have something to grasp,” Mr. Holmes exclaimed. “Watson, my glass!”
He hunched over the document as if to consume it with his eyes. When his associate brought a magnifying glass, Mr. Holmes swept it across as well as up and down both sides.
“Hah! St. Petersburg deckle with a rag content that is no less than forty percent—and cut so that the watermark is conveniently missing.” His thin fingers rubbed the paper as appreciatively as Irene’s sensitive fingertips judged the weight of Chinese silk.
“This paper is so fine, so sturdy, it has virtually aged like cloth. First it was kept in arid circumstances—some of the fibers are desiccated.”
“That is not so mystifying,” Quentin said, “I obtained it in the Afghanistan steppes in the horrid heat of July.”
Mr. Holmes barely glanced his way. “Since then, I mean... most odd. I would judge it to be on the brink of rotting, having spent most of its span in a cool, damp climate. Where has this been kept all these years, Mr. Blodgett?”
I kept my glance from straying accusingly to Dr. Watson, who had allowed this invaluable document to languish in a London wardrobe, all unknowingly, of course, but ignorance is no excuse.
“Ah,” Quentin was saying as he flailed for an explanation that would not betray our latter-day acquisition of the paper. “With me. In India. I lived in the cooler hill country most of the time.” he lied with such conviction that I listened admiringly. “During the rainy season the climate there can indeed be hideously humid.”
“Hmm.” Mr. Holmes did not sound convinced. “Certainly little care has been taken with it.”
“I had forgotten much that occurred before the blow upon my head,” Quentin said. “It is a piece of luck that I kept it at all.”
“Yes,” Holmes mused, “luck and coincidence have a great deal to do with this case. As to the characters upon the paper, a language expert could translate them better, but they are written in Cyrillic Russian and list geographical locations. I recognize the Russian word for tiger.” The detective smiled briefly. “I have been invited to contribute to a matter or two in Russia, including the Trepoff murder in ’eighty-eight. You may have heard of it. These Russians are a most... er, assertive people.”
Mr. Holmes suddenly lowered the magnifying glass and strode to the sofa. “I am afraid that I cannot help you. This scrap contains nothing incriminating. There remains only your word that you took it from the belongings of this ‘Tiger,’ whose actual name you do not even know.”
I cannot convey the idly dismissive tone that the detective used, as if all of his interest in the matter had vanished.
“Mr. Holmes!” I said sharply. “For a famous detective you have omitted to ask the obvious. We do know the name of Tiger, for my solicitor has discovered his military records. We even know the name of his London club. Since he is the individual responsible for throwing live cobras into everyone’s path—it is not his fault that they die before they can do damage, thus far—I should think that a person deeply interested in crime in our metropolis could show a little less ennui and a bit more... energy.”
Dr. Watson spoke hastily. “You must overlook the lady’s distress, Holmes. She is remarkably devoted to Mr. Blodgett, as you can see.”
At this the detective leaned forward to sear me with his disconcerting gaze. I bit my lip, unsure whether I should suddenly confess all under that merciless inspection.
“Yes, Watson, a woman’s loyalty is commendable, if often misdirected, as may be her anger.” He turned to Quentin. “Do you have any notion why this Tiger would wait nine years to stalk you and Dr. Watson?”
“He thought me harmless,” Quentin answered promptly. “My memory was gone, and I was marooned in India and Afghanistan. Yet he still might fear that I had raved about the paper, about his treachery, to the good doctor. It was only as I ventured from the East that these attempts on my life began.”
Mr. Holmes softly rapped the paper against his open palm. “The entire affair reeks of the operetta stage. Were Watson not involved I would not waste my time on it, but I will look into your terrifying Tiger, though I suspect that London has tamed him. What is his name?”
“Colonel Sebastian Moran. His club is the Anglo-Indian.”
“To your knowledge, Mr. Blodgett, you have not seen him since you arrived in London?”
We shook our heads in unison.
“Watson, does my Index list the gentleman?”
The doctor once again rose to do the great man’s bidding, picking a massive volume off the bookshelf above the desk, which was cluttered with much domestic effluvia, such as pipes, vials and other oddities, no doubt including whatever appliances are necessary to the consumption of cocaine.
“There is indeed a reference, Holmes! Colonel Sebastian Moran, here between ‘Morais, Sabato, born 1823 in Leghorn, Italy, expert on Italian straw fabrication; emigrated to the United States in 1851’ and the Countess of Morcar.”
“We need no specifics on Her Ladyship,” Mr. Holmes said. “What are the particulars on Colonel Moran?”
“ ‘Moran, Sebastian, born 1840. Unemployed. Formerly First Bangalore Pioneers. Educated at Eton and Oxford. Heavy-game hunter in India. Served in Jowaki Campaign, Afghan Campaign at Charasiab, Sherpur and Kabul. Clubs: The Anglo-Indian, the Tankerville, The Bagatelle Card Club.’ “
Mr. Holmes fixed Quentin with a stern eye. “No mention of Maiwand, then?”
“Tiger was a spy,” Quentin returned. “He did not always say where he was, and neither did the military reports.”
“Hmm. Anything more, Watson?”
“He is the author of two monographs: Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas published in ’Eighty-one, and Three Months in the Jungle, in ’Eighty-four.”
“To a hunter used to such prey, one would think a domestic Paddington doctor would be something of a comedown,” Mr. Holmes said with a sudden twinkle in his formidable gaze. “Any threat, however unlikely, to my associate is one I take very seriously,” he added, his eyes again cold and speculative as they fastened on us. “I
will look into the affairs of this Moran. Call on me tomorrow at four o’clock.”
“That is wonderful—” I began.
“Four o’clock tomorrow?” Quentin echoed. “Surely that is not time enough to unravel such a mystery.”
“It is time enough for me,” Mr. Holmes said sharply. “I have, in fact, one or two notions about the case that may bear rapid fruit.”
He turned his back on us to rummage among the objects atop the rather crowded mantel. I saw him lift a Persian slipper, the most decorative of the objects to my view, and prod the toe.
Quentin and I had risen in a daze, recognizing our sudden dismissal. Then, to my horror, my wandering eyes found a familiar object among the odious and untidy assortment—the cabinet photograph of Irene in evening dress! It stood near a mass of papers skewered to the wooden manteltop by a large knife.
I may have whimpered during my sudden intake of breath. For whatever reason, Dr. Watson rushed anxiously to my side.
“Now do not worry,” the good physician counseled me. “Holmes can be brisk about his work once he sets his mind upon it, but he has rarely failed to help those in far more desperate circumstances than yours.”
“Oh, I do hope so, Dr. Watson,” I said in perfect honesty.
It was time for Quentin to lead a free life without Tiger’s ominous shadow at hand, and certainly Mr. Holmes should do something to earn the trophy he flaunted from the Briony Lodge Affair. Irene had intended it as a consolation prize for the king; instead this detective, this... commoner... had claimed it.
I had seen the claiming at the time, yet I had not known then of Sherlock Holmes’s cold and cocaine-consuming nature, nor of his apparent obsession with my dearest friend. How fortunate that I had insisted she not come in my stead! No good could come of these two individuals’ further association.
“Be cautious yourself,” Quentin advised the doctor during their parting handshake, as I nodded vigorously. “My tale may sound extravagant, but it is true. You have seen the proof of it on your consulting-room rug.”
A Soul of Steel (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes) Page 32
