“No!” the beast cried. “It’s mine!” He took one step towards Holmes and without thinking of the ramifications of my actions, I was quickly upon his back again, trying to give Holmes time for an escape. While Thornwald struggled with me I watched as Holmes started for the door to the roof’s access shaft, but Thornwald and I were blocking it. So, Holmes turned and in three strides, he leapt for the roof of the neighboring tenement. He hit the facing roof field and because it was still wet with fresh water, he slipped, nearly sliding off the edge. Luckily, that weathervane was within his reach and he grabbed it, pulling himself up to the crest of the roof and to safety.
Thornwald had also seen this and, furious, he grabbed my wrist, throwing me off his back. The only thing that saved me from a long fall was that clothesline. It stretched under my weight but held, snapping me back on to the roof.
Thornwald moved with surprising swiftness, trying to repeat what Holmes had done. His huge, heavy legs successfully propelled him across the short distance to the other roof, but the combination of his weight and the subtle damage the wave of onrushing water had caused upon the roof a minute before was too much for the underlying structure. Thornwald went through the shingles like a falling meteor, disappearing almost as soon his boots made contact. His frantic wail faded as he crashed through floor after floor. In a breath, all that remained of Thornwald’s presence was smoke and dust streaming up through the hole he’d made.
Tired, sore and drenched, I hobbled over to the edge of the roof, glanced over at the hole then up at Holmes, who stood there perfectly at ease, his hand grasping the weathervane. “Good show, Watson,” he said. “Thank you for your assistance. You saved the case.”
“Clever of you... to use the weakened roof... against him,” I said, almost breathlessly. “I never... would have thought of that.”
“Thankfully, neither did he,” Holmes said. “Now stand aside, my friend, I’m coming back over.”
***
“I-I say, Holmes,” I stammered, staring at the abomination sitting inside the leather bag. The Pearl of Death resembled more a white, fossilized coprolite rather than a giant, shining, lustrous pearl. “It looks nothing like any pearl I’ve ever seen.”
“That’s why its value is so great, Watson,” Holmes stated as he closed the bag and handed it over to Detective Inspector Lestrade. “It took that deadly mollusk over a hundred years of constant irritation at the bottom of the sea to create something so large. The chances of finding another one like it are almost nil. It’s priceless really.”
The grunts of a dozen men brought our attention to the open door of a nearby tenement. Thornwald’s massive broken body was being carried out by six constables on each side, to an oversized flat cart sitting nearby. Groups of locals, adults and children and dogs, were standing around watching the spectacle.
“It appears the curse of the Pearl of Death certainly worked against Thornwald, wouldn’t you say, Holmes?” I prodded jokingly.
“Hmmm. Perhaps, Watson,” Holmes agreed, surprising me to the marrow. “Maybe if he threw some salt over his shoulder or kissed a horseshoe I never would have spotted the absence of his name on the liberty manifest. And maybe I wouldn’t have been able to trace him from London’s financial district to the Red Rabbit Pub, or-”
“Point taken, Holmes,” I said, utterly defeated by my try at dry humor.
“Then let’s get some dinner, dear Watson. I’m completely famished.”
Mrs Watson’s Gold Locket
“I was robbed, Holmes!” I ejaculated suddenly. “I was robbed, I tell you!”
It was a cool, overcast evening. Holmes and I were strolling north along Baker Street, completing our after supper walk. I was enjoying a fresh cheroot and he dangled a well-used pipe from his mouth as if it were a worm on a fish hook. He refrained from looking at me but my sudden outburst had clearly troubled him.
“Have you informed Scotland Yard, Watson?” Holmes asked with much concern in his voice. He stared at the ground as we walked, the often familiar form he took while silently performing mental exercises.
“No, no, Holmes,” I answered, removing the cheroot from between my teeth. “I thought this a case best suited to your talents.”
He nodded, swung his walking stick up so that it held securely in his armpit, then, his full attention focused on my predicament, he glanced at me finally. “Do tell me the story, if you will, Watson,” he said, rising up to the challenge. “And be sure to relay every detail.”
“Quite, quite,” I said. “It happened back in ’80, while I was serving her Majesty’s forces during the Second Anglo-Afghan war.”
“Yes,” Holmes recalled. “In Maiwand. You were wounded, took a Jezail bullet in the shoulder.”
“Right,” I said, then continued my story. “As I convalesced day after day on the dreary cot of a hospital ward in Peshawur, I was under the care of a young, skilled nurse by the name of Julia. Her hair was long and curled, the color of rose petals in full bloom, matching her lips. Her face was white and as unblemished as a China doll. Her bedside manner was delightful and it seemed she lavished upon me more attention than she did the other poor lads barracked with me.”
“Oh, come now, Watson,” Holmes interrupted skeptically. “She was a nurse, it’s their job to make you feel that way. The better and quicker to get you up and on your feet.”
“I understand that, Holmes,” I retorted. “But I was a rather dashing and fit figure before the Afghan conflict, strong and virile of youth. I had very little trouble meeting women. I know it may seem ridiculous as you look at me now but, she really did offer more of her time to me than with the others. For example, she read excerpts from the good book to me every night before the candles were blown out. I never once saw her reading to the other lads while I was there. And she always let me have a small nip of brandy after lunch-”
“She never let the others have a taste?” Holmes asked.
“Why, yes, of course she did, Holmes,” I replied. “But she never stayed and shared a glass with them as she did with me. She would slide my feet over, sit down on the cot and talk with me. It was during this time we would reveal details about our lives back home in England. She was welsh but had obvious Irish ancestry. Her father and mother owned a sheep farm near the coast. She had a younger brother, still in school at the time.”
“Did she have a beau?”
“She never mentioned one but it always occurred to me that a girl with her unmistakable beauty would be like a light to moths, attracting every man within seeing distance. In fact, some of the other lads would say the most derogatory things about her after she finished her rounds and left the ward, but I never joined in with them, even when they prodded me like a gang of school children. All of this behaviour was undoubtedly brought on by jealousy so I ignored them.”
“Good for you, Watson.”
“Thank you, Holmes. But what really made me think Julia had true feelings for me was this... each of us had a small lock box placed under the cot to house items of a personal nature. Most of the others only kept letters from home inside the box, or cigarettes. I, however, kept a small pocket Bible and something else very close to my heart... a gold locket with a painted picture of my late mother inside it. She passed away when I was very young so I had very few memories of her. When I joined her Majesty’s forces, my father gave me the locket as a gesture of good luck. It was all I had left of her. To keep the dogs of depression away while I recuperated, I always held the locket in my hand, that way I could open it up whenever I wanted and my mother’s beauty would always cheer me up.”
“Hmmm,” Holmes ruminated. “And how does this locket relate to Julia?”
“Well, she noticed the intense pain and discomfort I had to fight through in my shoulder as I reached down, opened the lock box and pulled the locket out in the morning, and she noticed it was the same in the evening
when I put it back into the lock box. So she took it upon herself to perform that chore for me... every morning it was the first thing she did and every evening it was the last thing she did. Very touching, really, Holmes.”
“I’m sure.”
“Then I contracted enteric fever and she doubled her efforts over my comfort. As I lay there sweltering, dying, she put the locket into my hand... every morning. And took it away every night. She read to me, kept my brow covered with a cold wet towel to bring my fever down, fed me broth to keep my strength up. She never left my side, ignoring the other responsibilities she had towards the other lads. I didn’t feel I deserved the sort of attention she was giving me but I loved it just the same.”
“You are only human, Watson.”
“Quite right, Holmes. Thank you for noticing.”
“Judging by the fact that you’re here walking and talking with me now, you recovered fully.” This was his attempt at speeding the story up.
“Quite right again, Holmes,” I said. “Thanks to Julia’s obsessive care and my will to live for her. But my injury, combined with the recent illness I’d just recovered from left me weak and emaciated, knocking me out of her Majesty’s forces. I had orders to return to England on the HMS Orontes in a week. This caused me a mountain of anxiety as I was completely, utterly under Julia’s spell and didn’t want to leave her. I had fantasies of the both of us returning home, getting married, buying a home, raising children, all the rest. This whole wonderful future was before me. So when I told her I’d received my orders and was going home, I asked her to marry me. She stood there like a piece of marble, staring at me as if my hair had suddenly caught fire. ‘Oh, dear,’ she said. ‘I-I can’t marry you, John. I’m already married. His name is Rickenbocker. He’s leading her Majesty’s forces up in Maiwand. I’m so sorry if I led you to believe-‘ I couldn’t hear the rest of what she’d said because I knew this Rickenbocker, he was the man who led the charge in which I’d gotten wounded. The pointed arrowhead of irony hit me square in the gut, Holmes, and I felt immediately sick again. Sick and humiliated. I couldn’t wait seven days, I made passage for the HMS Orontes immediately, without my dignity and my heart. It was just as you’d said... she was a nurse doing her job. I was too young and inexperienced to realize it.”
Holmes stopped walking, stared down at the sidewalk again in concentrated silence, thinking the whole story through. Then he looked up at me, his face a puzzle of confusion. “So, it wasn’t until you were well on your way home to England that you’d discovered Julia had robbed you of your mother’s gold locket?”
I hesitated a moment, then nodded. I remembered I’d begun the story by claiming I’d been robbed, forcing his brilliant mind to focus in on my mother’s locket as if a possible crime had been committed against it. So, expecting to solve a crime, he’d completely misunderstood the story I was telling him.
I didn’t have the desire to tell my good friend, Sherlock Holmes, that what Julia had truly stolen from me was my innocence.
Mystery of the Nameless Man
“You must help me, Mr Holmes!” the man sitting in the chair pleaded in a distinctly Scottish accent. “It’s been three days and I still don’t know who I am!”
He was an older, stoutly built man with a pair of large bulbous eyes protruding from under a brow completely naked of eyebrows. There was a purple, slightly swollen, oval-shaped bruise on his right temple. An uneven, patchy, thinly veiled mustache was trimmed tightly above his upper lip. His brown hair was thin and frizzy in front but thick and wavy in back. His face was round and wide and carried the unmistakable pink shadows of rosacea on his cheeks, chin and forehead. His nose, also stained pink, was flattish, with thin nostrils. His hands were large and heavy with thick fingers that seemed unnaturally tanned on the knuckles, except on his ring finger where a white halo was plainly evident where a wedding band used to be. His big hands moved around in quick, frantic movements as he talked. He wore a brown dress suit that looked as if he’d slept in it, wrinkled at the elbows and knees, stained and unkempt in other areas. In his breast pocket was a brightly colored plaid handkerchief of black, red and yellow. His black leather shoes had thick soles on them and would have presented nicely after a much needed shine.
Detective Inspector Lestrade stood behind the man, listening as he warmed his hands free of the late January chill in the newly stoked fire of our Baker Street hearth. He’d brought the man to us only a few moments before, just after our evening meal, obviously frustrated that he couldn’t help the man even with all the resources of Scotland Yard behind him. Coming to see Holmes was, as always, a last resort.
Holmes sat in his armchair, long legs crossed, fingertips pressed together at his chin. His dark, penetrating eyes narrowed intensely and his mouth became a granite-like slit as he listened to the nameless man tell his tale.
“Three days!” the man repeated, his voice was on the verge of breaking.
“And what happened to you three days ago, sir?” Holmes asked.
“Th-that’s just it, Mr Holmes... I don’t know. All I know is that I woke up in a forest with the morning light blinding my eyes and my head throbbing. My surroundings were perfectly alien to me, I might have been standing on the moon for all I knew. Even more horrible was that I couldn’t remember who I was. A quick check for a billfold upon my person revealed nothing.”
“You’d been attacked and robbed,” Holmes stated confidently. “Resulting in acute amnesia.”
“It-it would appear so, Mr Holmes,” the man said, then continued. “By a band of thieves desperate for treasure. So, frightened, battered and lost, I panicked and ran, luckily coming to a road a few minutes later that cut north and south through the forest. It looked a well-traveled avenue so I followed it south, hoping I would come across someone who could tell me where I was. But my bad luck continued, because for half a day I walked, thirsty and hungry, meeting no one until I reached the outskirts of what I later learned to be London. A rider on a horse heading north met me and saw my poor condition. He was good enough to take me to Scotland Yard where, for three days, none of the inspectors have been able puzzle out my situation. I’ve been staying in a hospital with only the clothes I’m wearing to suffice. Do you know how unsettling it is, Mr Holmes, not to know who or where you are or why you’re even here?”
Holmes nodded. “It must be very disorientating for you,” he said.
“To say the least!” the man exploded, then apologized for his outburst.
“Think nothing of it, my good man,” Holmes said calmly. “I understand your emotional state of mind completely. You are not to be held accountable.”
“Th-thank you, sir.”
Lestrade removed himself from in front of the hearth and pulled up a chair from our dining room table. He sat down with a sigh and looked at Holmes. “Well, what do you think, Mr Holmes? Can you help him?” he asked. From Lestrade’s haughty tone, I got the impression that this was a challenge to Holmes’ method of investigation, as if he’d finally brought the famous consulting detective a mystery he couldn’t solve.
Holmes reached over, grabbed his pipe from the side table, lit it then took a couple thoughtful puffs. From all this hesitation, I’d nearly concluded that Lestrade’s assumption may have been correct. Then, after re-lighting the bowl of his pipe, Holmes finally replied. “Of course I can help him, Detective Inspector. Everything you need to know to solve this gentleman’s case is sitting right there before you.” Holmes, using his pipe, pointed at the poor nameless man. “Not only can I tell you his name, I can tell you exactly where he’s from, what line of work he’s in, that he’s married, which forest he was left for dead in three days ago, and that he knew his attacker.”
“I did?” the nameless man asked incredulously.
“Yes,” Holmes answered. “In fact, my friend, you were never supposed to leave that forest alive.”
&n
bsp; Lestrade crossed his arms defiantly. “Unbelievable, even for you, Holmes!” he exclaimed.
“Skeptical? Shall I walk you through it then, Mr Lestrade?” Holmes asked rhetorically and began a most remarkable narrative. “We’ll begin with the mysterious forest our client here woke up in the morning after his attack. There are five major forests north of London but which one was it? Sir, you said that you’d walked half a day until you reached London, the only forest north of London that’s half a day’s travel on foot is Waltham Forest. This is important to know because, due to the heavy Scottish accent you carry, it’s clear you were traveling south from somewhere in Scotland and every traveler coming from there usually goes through Waltham Forest. But where in Scotland are you from? I’d say a positive guess is the Nairn region, directly northeast of Loch Ness.”
“B-but how could you know that?” the nameless man asked.
“Your handkerchief, sir,” Holmes answered. He reached over, pinched it from the man’s coat pocket and held it up for us to see. It was a plaid patterned wool cloth; thick black bands over a red field with a thin yellow line running through the bands. “The tartan of the Brodie Clan,” Holmes explained as he got up from his chair, went over to the bookshelf, pulled a rather heavy volume from the shelf and paged through it until he came across the page he wanted. Then he handed both the tartan and the volume over to the nameless man. The golden embossed title on the spine read “Historical Tartans of Ancient Scottish Clans.” Holmes continued: “Brodie... one of Scotland’s most ancient clans, located in the Nairn region. Most Scottish travelers wear some form of their clan’s identification when they leave their native lands. You probably wore a hat with a band of the same design but your attacker stole it.”
The man brought his hands up to his head. “I wore a hat?” he asked.
“Yes, but he forgot to take the handkerchief, which tells me that your attacker wasn’t a professional.”
Sherlock Holmes Page 2
