Sherlock holmes and the.., p.32
Sherlock Holmes and the Sixty Steps, page 32
“What about the ransom note?”
“Ignore it.”
“And the Scroll?” asked Lestrade.
“If my deductions are correct, the Scroll is not far away either.”
“Come Mr. Holmes, you are full of riddles and evasions,” cried Horsburgh at the limit of frustration. “Tell us where it is, and we’ll get it!”
“Frankly, I am unable to state its exact location, and any premature attempt on your part to obtain it may result in its immediate destruction as it is material evidence to a serious charge of theft. However, if you will meet me on the river path just outside this house once darkness has fallen – but say nothing to the professor, you understand. Eight o’clock, then? We will need four constables, two in plain clothes.”
“Very well, then.”
“Oh, and bring two pounds of raw beefsteak.”
Lestrade had become inured to my friend’s eccentric ways and histrionics, but Horsburgh stared at Holmes as though he were a lunatic.
“And if you should weary somewhat between now and then,” my friend continued, with a glimmer of amusement in his eye, “I strongly commend you to a few hours’ light reading of the Showmen’s Gazette, Inspector Horsburgh. I must say I have found it quite the most interesting and useful thing I have discovered here. No? Well, I shall keep it then for the journey back to Paddington tonight, once we have the case tied up.”
With that, he turned upon his heel and led me off. He sent me to reserve a table at the Old Swan Uppers whilst he stopped off at the village pharmacists, an errand for which he did not advance any explanation. Holmes’s judgement in food was as impeccable as ever, and we dined exceptionally well at the inn. Once the plates were cleared, Holmes lit his pipe.
“I must say, Holmes, you have my head spinning. Do you mean to say that you have the case cut and dried already? Or was that a bit of bravado in front of Horsburgh?”
“Nothing of the sort, Watson, though I noticed that the inspector’s tone changed somewhat throughout our interview. Firstly, he appeared sceptical, then admiring, then finally he seemed annoyed when I disparaged his pet theory.”
“I thought you were rather offhand with him, all the same.”
“I genuinely admire his energy in getting the case started on a practical footing. But I have presented him with prime clues – including the one on which the entire case turns – and he refuses to acknowledge it! The problem with the official force is that they have an incorrigible tendency to be seduced by their own arguments; what has never been instilled into them is the discipline of searching for an alternative explanation for apparent facts. They are incapable of the mental exercise of falsifying their own theories, which ensures that they never rise above the mediocre; sometimes, they do not achieve even that.”
“As we are meeting outside the professor’s house without his knowledge, I take it that the Scroll and Patriarch are hidden there – is the professor the guilty one?”
“All in good time, Watson.”
***
The policemen were waiting for us at the riverbank, Horsburgh in a sour mood.
“Got your suspect under lock and key?” Holmes asked.
“I’ve got Tierney down at the station, not without a struggle,” he replied curtly, “searched his house and found nothing but an old service revolver which he may have used, but I’d rather have the Patriarch and the Scroll.”
“If you do exactly as I suggest, I promise that you will have both very soon.”
“I don’t see as I have any alternative.”
“Excellent. Your colleague here will attest that I have never yet broken a promise.”
Lestrade nodded glumly. Holmes asked if he could speak to the four constables in private, then drew them aside and whispered his instructions to them. Then we crept in darkness and silence down the river path to the back of Falconer’s Field, stopping at a line of trees close to caravans. A low fence at the farther end of the trees separated us from the camp itself, and the occasional voice from one of the fairground people floated across to us. Holmes paused at one point then turned to Horsburgh.
“Have you the beefsteak I asked for?” he asked. The bewildered inspector handed him a package, which he laid on the grass and then bent over for a few minutes. I could not see exactly what he was doing, though I could now begin to guess at the reason for his visit to the pharmacist. He stood up, tiptoed towards the fence, and gave a low whistle once or twice. We heard the pattering of feet and the yelps of the dogs, then Holmes threw the pieces of meat over the fence, and retraced his steps.
“Give it a few more minutes, and they should be comatose,” he whispered by way of explanation and then called the four constables forward. I could see him pointing out some features of the camp to the constables, then off they went through the trees. Holmes then motioned us forward, as though leading a salient upon an enemy territory, until we were within a few yards of one of the vans which was lit by a flickering oil lamp. We were still concealed, and I assumed the object of our visit was Bartram’s caravan, though in the darkness I could scarcely tell which was which. My attention was suddenly arrested by the two plainclothesmen who had walked up to one of the caravans and began to fiddle with the door handle as though attempting to effect an entry. Their actions seemed clumsy in the extreme, and it was no surprise to me when the door flew open with a hoarse cry, and the inhabitant peered out. I had expected to see Bartram, but I recognised the man as Dino, the acrobat. A second later his brother appeared beside him. The startled policemen made off in opposite directions, and the two brothers gave chase with heavy oaths. It occurred to me at that point that Dino was reported to have sprained an ankle; his recovery since the afternoon seemed to have been unusually rapid.
“Your men have blown it now!” I remarked to Lestrade.
“Not at all,” replied Holmes. “The plan went exactly as I had intended. One moment, and I shall be back.” With a few steps, Holmes was inside the caravan, the tails of his long coat flying behind him; in a matter of moments, he was back at our side.
“I have seen all I need to see,” he said, smiling.
“Will you please tell me what on Earth is going on?” asked Horsburgh, evidently still far from convinced.
“Yes. You have witnessed the arrest of the culprits you have been looking for since this morning. Your men should be marching the two acrobats down to the station by now, and all that remains is for us to repair to the professor’s house and I shall explain everything to you concerning this interesting little diversion.”
But a severe shock awaited us on arrival at the professor’s cottage. Sergeant Canterville, who had been left in charge, came rushing out to meet his superior.
“You’re not goin’ to believe this, sir,” he gasped, “but a second person claimin’ to be the Patriarch arrived here not half an hour ago!”
“What?” cried Horsburgh. “What have you done with this impostor?”
““I have him under lock and key and securely handcuffed to the professor’s kitchen table.”
“Good man, Canterville. Well, Mr. Holmes,” said Horsburgh with a sarcastic glance at my friend, “how does this fit in to your theory?”
“Confirms it in every respect,” Holmes replied with a smile. “Indeed, only a few hours ago I predicted as much. I told you, did I not, that the Patriarch would turn up in the fullness of time?”
“With respect sir,” said Canterville, “this is definitely not the same man as arrived last night. The professor confirmed that!”
“Of course it isn’t – I never said that it was. It is the real Patriarch, however, and I should lose no time in releasing him if you wish to avoid a charge of wrongful arrest. I suppose I ought to say the same regarding Captain Tierney who is equally innocent, though I am inclined to think that a night or two in the cells will do him no harm whatsoever. Now lead on, Inspector.”
It took some time to explain the train of recent events to the newly arrived and astonished Father Philoxenus, who now occupied an armchair in the professor’s drawing room, particularly as to the train of events which led to him receiving a telegram informing him of his own kidnapping; but once the entire party had been seated Holmes began his recapitulation.
“I am afraid, Professor Beasley, you were taken in badly – the person who appeared last night, claiming to be the Patriarch was the thief himself,” he said. “It is astonishing how stage make up and a false beard, added to some stage props, can take one in. It is highly likely that someone had intercepted your mail and knew of the arrangements between yourself and Father Philoxenus. That person could not possibly have been from the Coptic community; the reason will be clear in a moment. It was obvious to me from the outset that the escape of a thief, under the conditions described to me, was completely impossible. I had wondered at first whether the thief had managed to get out through the skylight – I had seen it done before in the Morstan case – but the idea that he could also take along an unwilling hostage was, frankly, ludicrous. You will recall the photograph of the footprints – the strange pattern? The thief was not drunk but in fact was–”
“Walking backwards!” I ejaculated, as the realisation dawned upon me.
“Indeed Watson. I deduced that what happened was that the thief, who was in all likelihood Dino Eusebi, once he had stolen the document opened the window, climbed down the roan pipe and walked backwards towards the fence – with the scroll in his possession, of course. You will recall my initial difficulty in establishing the precise direction in which the bushes in the garden had been pushed; it was quite clear that the person had gone away from, not towards, the house. Incidentally, as Watson will tell you, the involvement of acrobats in burglaries is by no means uncommon: cases in Hillerød, Denmark, in eighty-four, and one in Kensington in ninety-two spring to mind. In the latter case, the Eusebi brothers were actually amongst the suspects as I recall, but Inspector Lestrade’s colleague, Tobias Gregson, lacked the proof to bring the case to court, and as I happened to be in Tibet at the time, I was therefore unable to assist. On Monday afternoon Luigi had been lying in wait expecting our friend here – the real patriarch – at the station, in order to waylay him. You will recall Merryweather’s evidence of the man loitering in the Waiting Room. Of course, the real Father Philoxenus never turned up, because he had arranged to come on the day after Coptic Easter – Pascha – which, as you know professor, is next Monday, not yesterday.”
The patriarch nodded, “Yes that is correct, I was intending to come next Monday.”
“And I,” said the professor, “wondered why you had arrived a week early without any explanation!”
“Hence my deduction concerning the person who intercepted the mail. I have no doubt that it was an accomplice of the Eusebis, probably in the sorting office at Mount Pleasant, for the district is full of Italians. He, or she, would not have understood the difference in dates between the Coptic Easter which is reckoned by the Julian calendar and our western feast day, reckoned by the Gregorian.
“Now, the words which made up the ransom note – which was, of course, entirely spurious and cleverly designed to completely mislead us – were not cut from the ‘Army and Navy Illustrated’ as we initially thought but from the Showmen’s Gazette, of which I attempted to make you a present, Inspector. I obtained it from the Ringmaster, a Mr. Bartram who, I should add, is not only entirely innocent in this matter, but has also now lost two acrobats, a strongman, an exotic dancer, and will probably have to close the circus down. The Showmen’s Gazette, I observed, contained an advertisement by that gentleman, as well as photographs of the Eusebis, whom I recognised immediately as the Clerkenwell Acrobats whom Gregson had apprehended, but was unable to convict, in the Kensington burglary. My case was almost complete. There was also an article on the proposals to develop Battersea Fields as a pleasure garden: had you read it, you would have discovered such words as ‘Patrick’, ‘matriarch’, ‘carriage drive,’ at the cost, nota bene, of ‘ten thousand pounds’ – I need hardly elaborate on their significance. Obviously the Eusebi brothers cut these words out and rearranged them on the bogus ransom note which they left. I may say that the note rang false to me from the outset: ten thousand pounds is a quite preposterous sum of money, and it was pure expedience which caused them to use that number. Of course, it was never intended to be collected, but was used purely as a decoy to distract attention. I reasoned that the real patriarch would come here immediately after he saw the telegram which the professor had sent, and I knew that we should see him soon enough. Thus, my advice to you to call off your search. Incidentally, I suppose you will all have deduced that Dino’s sprained ankle was entirely spurious, a mere blind. In fact,” my friend continued as he extracted an object from the folds of his long overcoat, “this is his walking stick which I took the liberty of rescuing for you, Inspector, as it will no doubt constitute material evidence at the trial. It is an unusual specimen, quite bespoke, and heavy too, I should not like to receive a blow from this. Would you like to examine it, professor?”
Beasley took hold of the walking stick and looked at it doubtfully; more, it seemed to me, out of politeness than from genuine interest.
“Now, is there any detail which I have missed?” asked my friend finally.
“Where is the scroll?” Beasley and Horsburgh cried almost in unison.
“Oh, the scroll! Well, there is no real mystery about that surely? Why, the professor has it,” my friend replied with a mischievous gleam in his eye.
“What?” asked Father Philoxenus who had been following the conversation silently.
“My dear Mr. Holmes,” began the professor warmly, “whilst I acknowledge that I am under a great debt you for–”
My friend held up his hand. “Dr. Watson will tell you that I love nothing more than a dramatic denouement to a case. If you will simply grasp the top of the stick and twist it counter-clockwise, that’s it!” The professor did so, and a roll of parchment emerged from inside the hollow stem of the cane which he then placed it upon the table. I recognised the queer Coptic characters immediately. A cry of mingled triumph and relief erupted from him at the same time.
“They had to conceal it somewhere,” said Holmes, “until they were ready to sell it. An ankle sprain was the ideal feigned injury. It had the ring of truth about it when Luigi actually brought in another acrobat to work with him; it also meant that Dino could go anywhere without letting the precious scroll out of his sight for a second. Of course, he quite forgot himself when your constable feigned a break in.”
Father Philoxenus smiled politely at us. “I could not have believed this unless I had seen it with my own eyes,” he said.
“Words cannot express my gratitude to you, for bringing this most precious, rare, and sacred relic back to me,” said the professor, who looked as though he might burst into tears.
“I must add my sincere thanks too,” said Horsburgh frankly, “and to that I must also add an apology for having doubted you in the first place.”
“I suppose we had best be off then, for I believe that there is just time enough for us to catch the last train,” said Holmes.
“But not, surely, before I present you with some reward for your exertions on my behalf,” said the professor, standing up, “my cheque book is in the writing desk. After all, I should have been happy to part with my last penny in order to have the Scroll back.”
Holmes held up his hand.
“Not at all. Success is my reward, as both Dr. Watson and Inspector Lestrade will tell you. You are welcome to defray the few minor expenses to which we have been put, but that can wait until another day, for no doubt you gentlemen will have plenty to converse about,” he said.
The affair of the Two Coptic Patriarchs, as the newspapers called it, sustained a few months’ delay in coming to the Assizes, perhaps due to the complication in framing charges against the culprits: After all, as Holmes had later pointed out to Lestrade, the Eusebis could hardly be charged with kidnapping if no one had been kidnapped, and the brothers had made no attempt to collect any ransom; even the allegation of demanding money with menaces could hardly be sustained since there was no theoretical or actual victim, and so the charge was eventually reduced to theft. The case was finally tried the following year, but was kept off the front pages of newspapers, however, by the sensational disappearance of the chess-playing medic, Dr. Ray Ernest, during the same week that the name of Josiah Amberley, the retired colourman of Lewisham, gained infamy in the national press.
END
Afterword
In his article “Is Heathcliff a Murderer?”[1], John Sutherland explains why he thinks it is important to ask searching literary questions whose answers stand outside the text. For example: how many children Lady Macbeth had; what Hamlet studied at Wittenberg University and whether his grades were any good (it may occur to one to further ask whether academic failure there led to his suicidal tendencies, and worse still, to treating his girlfriend so atrociously); what Heathcliff did in the three years between his leaving and returning to Wuthering Heights; and how exactly Victor Frankenstein constructed his golem.
Studying Sutherland’s “implied and ambiguous world which lies on the other side of the word on the page” is an activity in which we Holmesians have been happily and irreverently engaged for over a century. Although Sutherland is no deconstructionist (indeed, his use of the “D” word is imbued with the sort of casual disdain that Huck Finn showed for “low-down Ab’litionists”), and although he approaches his Elizabethan and Victorian “literary brain teasers” rather light-heartedly, his focus is nevertheless, relentlessly Freudian with an occasional foray into literary-forensic serology[2]. Sutherland provides us with an interesting, and perhaps previously unnoticed (almost certainly uncommented upon) example of the operation of Watson’s subliminal perception.
