by Mike Hogan
“Well, we progressed in our most important case,” I said as we jogged towards home.
I took off my bowler and mopped my brow with my handkerchief. “The sots Morgan and Trent-Hall, and the giggly Donovan brothers do not deserve the dread that their names have evoked. It is a pity that, with our time in France cut short, we did not have time to investigate the case of the aluminium ladder. That will be the title I shall use when I come to write up and publish my notes. The idea of a ladder made of precious metal is so absurd that it will induce a curiosity in the reader to know more.”
“I am afraid that fame with our posterity may elude you,” said Holmes. “It seems that aluminium will soon be as commonplace as steel.” He pulled the sheaf of telegrams from his pocket and picked out a lengthy transatlantic cable.
“I refer you to the following telegram from Mr James Willis of the Pinkerton Detective Agency in Chicago. I communicated with Pinkerton’s on the question of possible manufacturers of aluminium in America. Mr Willis telegraphed the following from Chicago.
‘Mr Holmes,
On a request from our New York office, and subsequent enquires in the industry, I contacted Mr Charles Hall of Oberlin College. He is a brilliant young man who has developed a new process for the commercial production of aluminium. He claims he will bring the cost of the metal down by two-hundred per cent.
In December last year, Mr Daly of an unnamed government department in Washington approached him with a special job: a ladder that would go inside the arm of the statue the French gave America last year, the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World. He needed a light ladder of about thirty or thirty-five feet to stretch from the space inside the body through the arm to the torch. The iron ladder initially installed was too heavy; the arm threatened to buckle in high winds. Something much lighter was needed. Naturally, this information was given in the closest confidence. Daly said that the government did not want the French to feel slighted at this change in construction. He was sworn to secrecy.
Daly gave Hall a plan drawing of a ladder in three sections that was to be removed and stored when not in use. It folded like a carpenter’s measuring stick.
Hall informed Mr Daly that he was still at the experimental stage, but that he could accommodate him in six to twelve months. Daly insisted on a shorter timescale and the use of Hall’s existing stocks of aluminium produced in the various experiments he had undertaken to prove his process. He was warned that Hall would not guarantee the purity of the metal. Daly said that it was not a concern, as the ladder would be well framed with iron, and would be used for occasional maintenance.
Hall made the ladder at Oberlin in the college workshops. He said that it was a useful technical exercise. Mr Daly paid the considerable cost with a draft on a New York bank.
Mr Hall added that he would not have slept easily if he had thought that the ladder would be used as a wooden ladder of the same size might have been. However, well supported along its length and lightly used, he had no fears for the structure.
Mr Hall wrote Mr Daly at the address he had given in Washington in March to enquire whether the ladder was to his satisfaction; he did not receive a reply. He told me that he hopes that our investigations prosper and asks whether we would let him know the results, as he is curious to know what happened to the ladder.’”
“It broke,” I said.
Holmes passed me another transatlantic wire. “The description of Mr Daly that the detective got from the people at Oberlin College fits our Mr Walsh, the fireman from Chicago now in the City of Westminster mortuary.”
“How will we reimburse Pinkerton’s for their efforts, Holmes, and for their telegraph costs?” I asked as we stepped out of the cab in Baker Street.
“I am owed by them. The Maupertuis affair had transatlantic reverberations.”
We stopped at our door and looked along the street. Strings of Union flags hung from the lamp-posts and bunting festooned the shop and house fronts. I saw that Mrs Hudson had placed a portrait of the Queen, surrounded by flowers and patriotic ribbons, in our sitting-room window. I persuaded Holmes to join me for a stroll along the street to view the decorations and illuminations.
The wine shop opposite our house exhibited an elaborate transparency that featured the great Naval Review that would be held in July. Assistants in the glass and crystal emporium on the corner were stringing a long wire of electric globes through their display of Jubilee-themed glassware. The manager bent over a large galvanic battery and read a page of instructions. The young clerk peering over his shoulder clearly ached to take command of the contraption.
We stopped at the newsagent’s. “Lend me tuppence, would you Holmes?”
I picked up a copy of the Sporting Times and leafed through to the bicycle racing pages. A meet was scheduled for the following week-end at the Crystal Palace.
Holmes took my arm and we turned back towards home, passing the glass and crystal emporium again. The young clerk was on his knees beside the battery, unrolling coils of wire, as the manager looked on and scratched his head.
“The next century will be the century of young men,” Holmes said. “And women, too. Did you see that a girl from Girton College beat all the Cambridge men in the Classics Tripos? The twentieth Century will be a time of innovation, in ideas, in industry and in social organisation.”
“We already live in an innovative age,” I countered. “The last decades of this century will be known for the introduction of the safety bicycle and the use of electricity for light and heat. By 1900, horses will disappear from our roads, replaced with pedal-power; gas lamps will be as old-fashioned as rush lights. It will be a golden age.”
“I agree, Watson. We are entering into a golden age of crime.”
“Crime, Holmes?”
“No vault or safe, not even the latest Chubb, can withstand the new explosives. The skilled cracksman with his moulds and skeleton keys is an anachronism. I expect a healthy increase in nitro-glycerine crime based on greed rather than political interests.
“Paper money abounds: stocks and share certificates are issued at a frantic rate and are forged just as readily. You noted that the Donovan brothers were printers, as was Davitt, despite his disability - his right thumb was perfectly spatulate. No more hammering out fake half-crowns in the basement; the printer’s shop will be the focus of fraud as never before. I have always thought it strange that so few printers turn to forgery. The temptation is obvious: the public are so very gullible. They believe that anything in print must be true, whether it is a fake fiver, or a libellous letter in the newspapers.”
“Parnell has communicated with you,” I said with a grin. “Or perhaps Monsieur Bertillon?”
“Both. A note from Parnell asking how we are progressing, and a telegram from Bertillon saying that his findings are on the way. We may get them this afternoon, or tomorrow morning. I must reply to Parnell.”
He picked another telegram from the sheaf in his pocket. “I asked Inspector Dubugue to contact Eifel et Cie for us. He telegraphs that he met Paul Héroult, the aluminium expert, at the Eifel works. He writes in exactly the same terms of that young Frenchman as Willis does of young Mr Hall of Oberlin College. They seem to have invented their methods simultaneously. An approach was made to Monsieur Héroult last year for a ladder to replace the iron one in the Statue of Liberty - this was in a Parisian bar over a game of billiards. Héroult informed Monsieur Eifel, who took offence at the suggestion that the structure of the statue was faulty and most emphatically refused the request. Dubugue has a description of the man who approached Héroult. A young man with a pale complexion, well-dressed, clean-shaven, and English or American.”
“Or Irish, Holmes!”
“Perhaps. It was a bold move, approaching an associate of Monsieur Eifel with a tale of flaws in his masterpiece. Our opponent is clever, but he might be charged with rashn
ess or impetuosity. Think of the defective ladder, the loss of his colleague, confusing Colonel Delacy with his unlovely brother, the ridiculous business of the cakes and bombing our house when we are abroad. This criminal enterprise has been at least six months in preparation, yet I detect signs of haste and making-do. These are the kind of elementary errors that suggest the amateur - or are meant to suggest the amateur.”
He waved another telegram. “Here we have the description of the man who delivered the bomb to the commissionaire’s station at Charing Cross: early twenties, felt hat, black suit, clean-shaven. No particular accent.”
“It could be the same man who contacted Monsieur Héroult in France, Holmes.”
“Or a different one. This is a case in which we would find Monsieur Bertillon’s système anthropométrique useful. Come, let us get inside out of the hot sun.”
Irene was parked outside 221B, the centre of an admiring crowd.
“I did not know that Bessie could cycle,” said Holmes.
“She is accomplished. I understand that she took lessons during her Temperance Society outing in March. Was there anything else interesting in the telegrams, Holmes?”
“A large number are from the Continent. The Royal Family of Scandinavia send their good wishes. One is from Crown Princess Liliuokalani of Hawai’i, another from President Grover Cleveland. They all express outrage at the bombing of our house, and relief that I survived. The Pope is effusive.”
I laughed. He passed me the relevant telegram and another.
“This is from Maharajah Duleep,” I said. “Ha, he wishes you a long and prosperous life, the hound.”
Holmes opened our front door, pushed me in front of him into our hall and dropped the bundle of cables on the hall table.
“The assistant in the cycle shop told me that Maharajah Duleep also owns a Humber,” I said, leafing through the telegrams.
I hung my bowler on the hat stand. “I must say that I am looking forward to a quiet evening at home. I am pooped with all this fagging back and forth to Pall Mall. And we will have a busy day tomorrow - Holmes?” I was talking to thin air.
What a How-d’ya-do
I found Holmes crouched in the window alcove of the waiting room, peering over the sill through our netted curtains.
“If you are trying to be inconspicuous, old fellow,” I observed, “you’d best take off your top hat.”
Holmes whipped off his hat and spun it onto the sofa. He motioned me to crouch with him. I removed my hat and looked out into Baker Street over the photograph of the Queen. A half-dozen gawkers clustered around my Humber. As we watched, a short man with a dark moustache in a flat cap climbed onto the front seat, pitching her on her nose-wheel, much to the amusement of the crowd. I made to jump up, but Holmes held me firmly by the arm.
“Across the street,” he said softly. “The dray.”
I looked beyond my tricycle and saw a light, single-horse brewer’s dray parked on the opposite side of the street, a yard or two along from the wine merchant. Two large beer barrels were lashed athwart the cart. By the look of the springs, the barrels were empty, or nearly so. I could see nothing singular about the cart, its load, or the driver. He wore a typical wide hat with a leather neckpiece and a smock. His face was in shadow. He waited for something or someone - I blinked.
“The horse: it is as fine-bred an animal as the one that drew the fake hansom.”
“It is the same horse, or its sibling,” said Holmes. “We are under scrutiny again.”
A row broke out around the tricycle as Billy pulled the young man out of the front seat. He and his friends stalked away making rude gestures. Billy set Irene up straight again and came to the front door whistling that infernal Christy Minstrel song. He knocked lightly at the front door. Bessie passed the open door of the waiting room drying her hands on a towel.
“Where’ve you been, Billy? Mam’s having a fit.”
“Getting the liver for the gent’s tea, like I was told. Her Highness don’t like the look of the beef so we are having it downstairs in a curry. The nobs is getting - oh, blimey.”
Bessie and Billy stood in the hall looking through the waiting room door at Holmes and I as we crouched at the window.
“Get my telescope, Billy,” Holmes whispered. “And the Doctor’s binoculars.”
Billy loped up the stairs three at a time and slid back down the bannister a few moments later.
“The front barrel,” I said as the boy passed me my binoculars.
“I see it,” Holmes answered, focussing his telescope. “The bung is out. Is that a glint of something in the hole?”
Holmes turned and sat against the wall. “Perhaps a pale young man and I are staring stupidly at each other through telescopes,” he said. “Or was that the glint of a rifle?”
“A French air cane!”
Holmes shrugged. “Unnecessary. A simple rifle would do the job: a shot coming from nowhere. If the sound is heard and there is a commotion, the dray moves off at a quiet pace. If no one in the street hears the shot, escape is even simpler. It could be done with singular ease.”
“Two rifle shots, Holmes.”
“Of course, my dear fellow, I am sure that they would also target you. They would be most remiss if they did not. I know that you would wreak a terrible revenge on my assassins.”
“Your assassins, sir?” asked Churchill from the doorway. He popped a segment of orange into his mouth. “Are we being stalked again?”
“They had an easy shot as we stood outside the door or as we sauntered along the street,” said Holmes. “But the likelihood of someone connecting a loud bang with my - our - bodies falling on the doorstep was much greater. No, they are waiting for the target to appear at an open window upstairs -”
“Churchill,” I said. “Get away from the window.”
“Why don’t I fetch the constable from Portland Place to bang on the barrel until the fellow comes out?” Churchill suggested. “What a lovely horse; it is a Kinski. My mother’s friend breeds them in Hungary.”
We crept upstairs to our sitting room and Churchill drew the blinds on our windows. “The Doctor could put a bullet right through that bung hole. You could, couldn’t you, Doctor?”
I laid my service revolver on the table with a box of cartridges. “Yes,” I said. “But would that bring us any closer to finding the Thakore’s emeralds? We need to find a way to spook the thieves so we can follow them back to their lair. Perhaps Billy could fetch a policeman and have them moved on for some reason. Then we could follow in a cab.”
“Or by tricycle.”
“Oh, by the way, Churchill,” I said. “I am sorry about my intemperate remark at Mycroft’s flat. I was afraid that your father might have expressed a less than flattering opinion of Lord Salisbury. I tried to avoid a scene, vainly as it turned out.”
“Ha!” said Holmes from his place on the sofa. “That was not a scene. During my last serious spat with Mycroft, I sustained a sabre wound in the thigh that required seven stitches; my brother almost lost an ear. We were arguing whether the male or female platypus has envenomed ankle spurs. That was a scene. I was nine at the time, and I was right.”
Churchill and I exchanged wry smiles as we digested a rare glimpse into life chez Holmes during his youth. His trip to France seemed to have had the effect of releasing, to a very limited degree, the iron bands that held Holmes aloof, not only from the expression of emotion, but also from the everyday exchange of personal anecdote that makes up so much of everyday conversation. He regarded the small talk that oils the social wheels as an abhorrent waste of time.
“I say, the dray has gone,” said Churchill from the window.
“What are we doing, Holmes?” I asked an hour later. “What are we waiting for?”
“You are waiting,” he replied as he sat, pasha-like on the
sofa in his old dressing gown and fiddled with his pocket watch. “I am meditating.”
“We must discover where the thieves hide if we are to have any chance of returning the stolen emeralds to Gondal. Should we not have chased the dray?”
Holmes put down his watch, lay back on the sofa and lit a long pipe as if we had all the time in the world.
“Tush, my dear fellow, calm yourself or you will over-strain your penetralia mentis. We may sit calmly, smoking a convivial pipe, while my inquiring tentacles snake through the city, delving and probing. I feel my opponent’s malignancy in the ether. He is the black eminence behind these plots and counter-plots, but to what end? My probing tentacles intertwine with his malevolent tendrils in a contortion of undulating inosculations.”
“What are you talking about, Holmes? Are you quite well?”
“Ha, I fear that we may tweak the lion’s tail, no more. We shall bag the young hyena if he continues to play the game with so little finesse.”
He passed me a slip of paper. I could make nothing of the numbers and squiggles written on it.
“I made a very discreet, very expensive enquiry. The little worm in the Professor’s bud, my informant Porlock, tells me that the hyena pup is a young man named Jonathan Dacre. He is not known to me.”
The doorbell rang downstairs.
“The man who larked about on your tricycle is at the door, Doctor,” said Churchill staring down into the street through the window. “His friends are all over her again. I will chase them off.”
“Calm,” said Holmes. “Trust to my inosculations.”
“When was the last time you were purged, Holmes?” I asked. “As your physician, I must insist on a vigorous emetic.”
Billy appeared in the doorway grinning from ear-to-ear. A young man pushed past him and swept off his flat cap to uncover short-cropped red hair. He peeled off his dark walrus moustache to reveal the face of a boy of fifteen or so.
“All right, then, gents? Any chance of a cuppa?”
“Wiggins!” I exclaimed. “I knew you’d turn up again like a bad penny.”
