“If there is any way to pull the fangs of this human pit-viper whom you suspect of being responsible for the deaths of so many good men at Maiwand, you may be sure that Sherlock Holmes, however reluctant, is the man for the job.”
“Thank you for your assurances,” I told the doctor in farewell, wondering if he would ever discover that his Afghanistan bag was missing, poor man.
“Good day, Miss Buxleigh, Mr. Blodgett. Many happinesses to you both,” he added warmly.
I blushed like a bride at his remark, however well intended, yet it pleased me enormously in an odd way.
Quentin took my arm in a most proprietary manner, all in his role of Jasper Blodgett, of course.
“We will see what the morrow brings,” he said vaguely.
“Thank you,” I added to our good-hearted physician.
I longed to tell him that he would find far more satisfaction keeping to his own hearth than in accompanying his unconventional friend on wild adventures of a criminal sort. Nothing good could come of such an association; certainly his pathetic scribblings would never amount to more than kindling, from what I had glimpsed of them.
But discretion sealed my lips. Instead of endowing Dr. Watson with my honesty, I simply mumbled a cowardly “Good day” and left.
“Oh, it is too delicious! Better than a Punch and Judy show. Are you saying that by four o’clock tomorrow the unenthusiastic Mr. Holmes expects to have done with Colonel Sebastian Moran? That is a contest I should like to witness. You must tell me everything!”
Irene stopped pacing in the salon of her suite and flounced down onto an embroidered ottoman, sitting raptly as a child, staring at Quentin and myself.
We told her what we could, but none of our efforts satisfied her hunger.
“What sort of ‘odd things’ were ‘lying about’ and where, Nell? Do you realize how maddeningly vague such a description is? You should memorize an environment as an actor commits a stage setting to the senses. No detail is unimportant. A man with so little patience for triviality as Sherlock Holmes would tolerate nothing unessential about him.”
“I did notice a gold coin upon his watch chain,” I put in hesitantly.
“Excellent!” Irene’s exuberantly clasped hands showed thanks for any small crumb of intelligence that escaped me. “A gold coin. Not a terribly original watch-charm, but still... an observation.”
“What kind of gold coin?” Godfrey put in with a frown.
“A sovereign.”
Now Irene frowned. “A sovereign? But that is the—” She suddenly stopped speaking.
“Is what—?” Godfrey asked.
“Is the oddest thing,” she finished with a light laugh. “Who would expect Sherlock Holmes to adorn himself with such a commonplace token?”
And she sank into silence even as I stuttered my way through a few more vague and uninteresting details, such as the Persian slipper and the basket chair.
“The most important fact,” Quentin said, “is that this Holmes is willing to pursue the matter despite himself. I sensed that he has other objectives than the obvious.”
“Ah!” Irene revived again, like a puppet whose strings have been pulled. “He always has his own objectives, I fancy. Such a man never fails to be working on a master puzzle. Why else do you two babes-in-the-woods think I sent you to him?”
“Out of perversity,” I answered a bit crossly.
I was not pleased to be found wanting for not having made a mental inventory of the clutter at 221 B Baker Street. Naturally I said nothing of the prominent place accorded to Irene’s photograph. It would encourage an elevated opinion of herself, and Godfrey would fret to hear it.
Irene shrugged blithely. “I really must see this fountain-head of crime-solving for myself. I am determined to go as Miss Buxleigh tomorrow.”
“Irene! You cannot.”
“I most certainly can. You wore a concealing veil, Nell, and I will, too. My acting and camouflaging techniques are sufficient to overcome any discrepancy in our height or hair color. Oh, I am longing to see this den of detection for myself. Who knows when we may be in England again?”
“Irene, I have sacrificed myself and committed several untruths to masquerade as a fictional person’s fiancée. It shall not be for naught. I absolutely will not hear of you interjecting yourself into a plan that is working well only so that you may satisfy your abominable curiosity.”
“I agree,” Godfrey said suddenly. “No matter how well you do it, Irene, you risk the greater venture. Besides, to substitute yourself for Nell treads far too close to exposure. It is one thing to hide behind the unlikely facade of a street urchin or a grande dame; aping Nell would allow for very little disguise and too much risk.”
“Thank you, Constable,” she grumbled in return, for Godfrey was right.
The more out-of-character the guise, the more likelihood of deception. It was the very fact of my never expecting to see Godfrey in the role of a bobby that allowed him to sweep us all into a carriage without Quentin’s or my recognizing him, though he wore virtually no disguise other than the helmet and a false mustache.
“I do not suppose I could wear a false mustache as Nell,” Irene admitted glumly. “Oh, well. Another time.”
We dined that night at Simpson’s in the Strand, a restaurant famed for its rare roast beef, which Quentin savored with the intensity of an exile. That entire evening was a pleasant, almost tranquil time. Our foursome chatted like old friends, as Quentin and I recalled new details of our outing to Baker Street that amused our companions. I truly felt that Quentin and I had been fellow adventurers in a sense, even as I considered with a pang that the necessity should soon be over and our paths would part.
The evening ended with the usual smoking session in the Norton sitting room—I was thankful that my draperies were not subjected to such a cloud of ill-smelling smoke. But how could I deny my friends their small vices, especially in the face of looming triumph?
“Sherlock Holmes is the key,” Irene said expansively, lounging rather casually on the sofa in her pale peach-colored mousseline de soie gown. “The problem that has enmeshed Quentin also echoes in far-off corridors of power. I am convinced that Mr. Holmes can disarm Colonel Moran for us, or I never would have sent you to him.”
“A pity,” Quentin noted, “that we will have to wait until tomorrow to know anything.”
“Yes, it is.” Irene offered a sympathetic smile. “How you must long to see your family again.”
“Actually... I rather dread it. I don’t know how they will accept me after my foreign sojourn.”
“With open arms!” she insisted. “I propose that after your second interview with Mr. Holmes, and if his results assure you that your life is not in such danger that your family must be avoided, you and Nell pay a visit to Grosvenor Square.”
“Oh, Irene, I could not intrude at such a time!” I objected.
“Whyever not? You were associated with the family years ago. They have met you again recently. Your presence will cushion any awkwardness. You are the perfect go-between in this instance.”
“That’s true,” Quentin said with pathetic eagerness. “Will you go with me, Nell? After all, had I not found you in Paris, I would not be contemplating a return to my family.”
“I do not see the necessity—”
“This would not be necessity, Nell,” Irene told me. “It would be nicety.”
“Of course I cannot object to nicety...”
“Then it is decided,” Irene said, with an air of having settled a vital matter.
She was the most definite of persons, and never more so than immediately after her will had been thwarted.
Chapter Twenty-nine
A LUKEWARM SOLUTION
A message from Holmes summoned me from Paddington to Baker Street at noon the day following his interview with Jasper Blodgett and his fiancée. Our maid Prudence had refused to cross my carpet since the incident with the cobra, so I was forced to take the note at the consulting
-room door, then went to the window to read it.
“Watson,” it read. “Come at once. All is solved.”
In this case, I had a more than casual interest in Holmes’s effort to stop a man determined to kill me as well as Jasper Blodgett. No patients had appeared all morning, so I had been writing my memoir titled “The Adventure of the Devious Diva.”
As much as Holmes might pooh-pooh my literary ambitions and my taste for “sensation,” as he called it, I was loath to leave my desk, being in the midst of a stirring account of the woman’s trickery at Briony Lodge.
Once I had informed my wife of my destination and taken a brisk walk to Paddington Station, my enthusiasm for real life as opposed to fiction had revived. I was, after all, fairly twitching to know what Holmes had learned of the bounder who had introduced a venomous serpent into my home.
I found the windows of 221 B open and Holmes sitting in the basket chair, his feet upon an ottoman and the familiar pipe perfuming the balmy air.
“Ah, Watson, as prompt as the tax collector, as usual. Sit down. Mrs. Hudson left some lemon curd tartlets from elevenses.”
“Oh, excellent, Holmes. I thought, though, that I was to return at four o’clock.”
Holmes set his black clay pipe in an empty gravy tureen. “No. I am afraid that you have seen the last of Mr. Jasper Blodgett and his most definite fiancée, Miss Buxleigh.”
“Surely they have not been attacked again—and successfully?”
Holmes’s smile was weary. “Of course not, my dear fellow. They are as safe as houses, or as safe as anyone can be in modern-day London, and so are you.”
“Then you’ve performed the miracle of permanently cutting the Tiger’s claws?”
“Not I, Watson. My brother Mycroft.”
As I frowned in puzzlement, he rose and went to lean against the mantel, his eyes idly resting on the photograph of the very woman whose actions occupied the current exercises of my pen.
“The matter is far more complicated—and dangerous—than assassin cobras and spoiled spy-work long ago at Maiwand. It involves the most eminent figures in the governments of three nations, Watson. Colonel Moran has influence with two of them, so it was a tricky bit of work, but he will trouble you and Mr. Blodgett no longer. He now has worse worries that render his past concerns moot.”
“What wonderful news, Holmes! Mary is the most understanding of women, but the matter of my reptilian visitor was most unsettling.”
“I do not doubt it. That is why I am informing you as quickly as possible of how things stand. Certain facts in the matter must not be made public, not even to the pair who commissioned me to investigate. Too much would be risked. This Colonel Moran is a vicious piece of work, Watson. His reptilian emissaries are creatures of great integrity compared to their keeper.”
“You have seen this man?”
“More than that. I was very nearly required to horsewhip him from the Anglo-Indian Club.”
“Indeed!”
“You see, Watson, I was not entirely unaware of his existence even before the unfortunate Blodgett called. Yet matters were of such delicacy that I was forced to appear more ignorant than I was.” Holmes’s dark eyebrows clashed above his aquiline nose. “A most unpleasant necessity, Watson; I trust I shall not be compelled to do so again.”
“But what more evil has this man Moran done beyond our suspicions of skullduggery at Maiwand, wounding me and harassing poor Blodgett?”
Holmes sighed. “I must ask you to keep this in strictest secrecy, old fellow. You cannot even begin to dream of so much as committing it to paper.”
I nodded and assumed a sober expression as proof of my worthiness.
“Pray do not look so gloomy! The worst is over, and the odd thing is that this new case is linked to the old one.”
“Old one? Which old one?”
“The matter I have just dealt with involving your old school friend Percy Phelps.”
“But that was solved, Holmes. I sat here in Baker Street not a week ago as you passed Percy his missing papers under cover of Mrs. Hudson’s breakfast dishes. I will never forget his expression as he lifted the cover and found the cylinder of paper in place of the likely kippers.”
“I will never forget his faint,” Holmes added with a smile. “The poor chap was exhausted by his ordeal, or the surprise solution to his dilemma would not have had such a severe effect on him. At least a doctor was present to tend him.”
“I have never seen a more grateful man.”
“Or a luckier one, Watson. His precious paper was safe. You know, of course, that the culprit, Joseph Harrison, escaped after surrendering the treaty to me, and taking something of a beating at my hands.”
“Yes,” said I. “You felt that both the young couple and Percy’s uncle the Cabinet Minister would prefer discretion over justice in this matter.”
“And so it is with the case of Jasper Blodgett.” Holmes suddenly rose and went to the open bow window to gaze down on Baker Street in all its hustle. “Have you ever noticed how crime follows a certain natural law, Watson? Where a flower will put forth petals that mirror one another, so too the unhappy works of the criminal mind often produce a parallel symmetry?”
“No, Holmes, I cannot say that I have.”
“Consider the engaged couples in the two cases: both faithful and devoted women; both men whose reputation and future have been sullied by events beyond their control. Granted that Blodgett’s unhappy circumstances began nine years ago, but otherwise these two men’s situations are not that different.
“Now, Watson, consider the fact that the same evil influence has governed both men’s lives: Colonel Sebastian Moran, late of India and Her Majesty’s forces, and now all too thoroughly of London.”
“Then Blodgett was right!”
“Oh, Blodgett was right enough, but he can never know how much so. Had it struck you that the naval-treaty affair had a rather lukewarm ending, Watson?”
I pondered his question. “I must say that if I had any desire to turn it to fiction, I would find the ending rather inconclusive and unsatisfactory. Happy enough for poor Percy, of course.”
“And that is how we must leave poor Blodgett as well, Watson: reunited with his fiancée, safe but in the dark. For you see, however in debt Joseph Harrison was, and however well placed to seize the document from his future brother-in-law in the Foreign Office, and however vicious his temperament, he is not the sort of mastermind who could begin to handle the delicate business of hawking this stolen treaty to either France or Russia, or most likely to the higher bidder of the two. Joseph was the thief, but he was a mere hireling.”
“Then this Colonel Moran—?”
“Watson, once again you leap on the train of my logic with your usual promptitude. Colonel Moran commissioned Joseph to take the treaty and planned to force France and Russia to pay a pretty penny to see it. He has had a Russian connection since his Afghanistan days, from Blodgett’s rather damning testimony. I don’t doubt that his nefarious career has taken him to France. In fact, I have sent cables to both Inspector Dubugue and Le Villard on the matter.”
“How fortunate, then, that Blodgett found me. Without him, you would never have been able to link the two cases.”
“Yes.” Holmes went to the mantle to delve in the Persian slipper that contained his shag tobacco, but paused to lift the photograph of Irene Adler. “How... amazingly fortunate.”
He abruptly set the frame down and returned to burrowing for more tobacco.
“How have you disarmed this renowned game hunter, Holmes? He does not strike me as one easy to discourage.”
“He is not,” Holmes said grimly. “First I spoke to Mycroft, who had already been making inquiries among his diplomatic sources. There is no man in London better placed than Mycroft to stir the subtle threads of international relations. Mycroft has discredited Moran with his supporters in both camps by revealing his double-dealing nature. Every nation needs spies but none need counterspies. I predi
ct that the colonel will be much occupied with finding work, now that his important supporters in foreign capitals have melted from him like snow leopards in winter. He has no reason to kill to protect his past since it is no longer worth protecting, nor is his present.
“Besides, he now has sworn to kill me instead, and that should serve to divert him from lesser prey.”
“Good God, Holmes! Is he serious?”
“Absolutely. I had a most unpleasant interview with him at the Anglo-Indian. It seems that my call interrupted a crucial card game. A powerful and intelligent man, Watson, gone over totally to evildoing. All life to him is a game, a tiger hunt, and he is the supreme predator. I fancy I can teach him a thing or two about that game. Certainly he knows that if he lays a hand upon a hair of your head he will have more to answer for than even he would care to.”
“Did you really horsewhip him out of his club, Holmes?”
My friend’s often melancholy face took on the rare radiance of joy.
“The club walls were accoutered with every exotic weapon known to man and many of the exotic animal victims of those weapons. In fact, an Argentinean bullwhip was at hand—actually at shoulder level. Moran tried to surprise me with a revolver.”
Holmes flexed his knuckles, which still bore the marks of Joseph’s knife attack of a few days before.
“See how crime blossoms in parallels, Watson? Moran’s hand bears a slash much like mine, only from a bullwhip, not a knife. There is a certain justice, do you not think, in a man who has used snakes to do his dirty work being disarmed with the long, leathery length of a bullwhip?”
“Perhaps...” said I, even then envisioning a parallel literary construction: two tales told in matching tracks like a train’s that met and entwined into complementary denouements....
“But you must not write a word of this, Watson. I know your habits. Even though your scribblings are unlikely to ever see the light of public print, it would be too dangerous to commit them to paper. See how an old piece of paper, miraculously preserved, helped undo Moran? You must say nothing of this to anyone.”
A Soul of Steel (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes) Page 33
