THE ADVENTURE OF THE OLD RUSSIAN WOMAN, by Jack Grochot

Pitch dark settled in by the time Sherlock Holmes and I finished a fine fish dinner at Simpson’s, our favourite restaurant, and we walked at a leisurely pace from the Strand to our Baker Street apartment, talking about the recent successful conclusion of an investigation into a domestic complication involving Mrs Cecil Forrester, the erstwhile client. “If I had my way, Watson,” Holmes remarked, “her husband would have been dragged before his fellow members of Parliament and forced to admit his role in the corruption scandal. But, instead, she chose to sweep his participation under the rug and protect his seat, a source of income from which she too has reaped benefits. I was tempted to tip off one of my connections in the press, rather than keep mum and let the matter wither on the vine.”

“But if you had dropped a hint to the newspapers, that would have violated your pledge of confidentiality,” I proposed.

“That is the clincher, my good man,” he answered. “It is what has caused me to keep quiet. I gave Mrs Forrester my word, and that is my bond. I dare not yield to the temptation to go blabbing—it already has been decided.”

We soon reached our destination and entered our building. I ascended the stairs ahead of Holmes, who stayed behind to check with our landlady, Mrs Hudson, to see if anyone had left a message for him. When I went into our rooms, there was a crackling fire on the grate and, spookily, the silhouetted figure of a small human in an armchair near the hearth. I hurriedly lit an oil lamp to better view the person, who spoke not a word until I demanded to know who the intruder could be.

“I have come for help from Mr Sherlock Holmes,” said the elderly, stoop-shouldered woman, whose ashen face was marked by deep wrinkles and whose thinning, snow-white hair was tucked partially under a plain black babushka.

“I am not he—I am his roommate and confidant, Dr Watson,” I informed her. “Mr Holmes will be here directly.” I asked how she got in, and our visitor confessed that she used the back door and came into our quarters through the ground-floor kitchen, then up to the first floor, where the unlocked door bore our address.

“I was chilly, so I built a fire to warm my bones and wait for the famous detective to get home,” she stated with a distinctly foreign accent. “My name is Anna Barlova Pavlovna and I am from the Russian immigrant neighborhood in the East End of London. I am a widow in desperate need of an ally.”

At that moment, Holmes appeared in the doorway, surprised to glimpse an aged female sitting in his preferred chair at that hour. “Mrs Hudson mentioned nothing about our having a guest. What is this all about, madam?” Holmes queried.

She repeated her name and situation, explaining that she had traveled to our suite under the cover of a foggy night because she was fearful that she might have been under surveillance where she lived.

“Are you afraid of the police?” Holmes wanted to learn.

“Yes, but not the local police—the Okhrana, the secret police in my motherland,” she revealed. “They rely on torture and mayhem to extract information from the innocent, and they commit atrocities in plots against their adversaries.”

“Perhaps you should tell me your whole story, from the very start,” Holmes encouraged the fidgety lady, taking up the armchair next to hers.

“I shall be pleased to do that, sir, if in the end you will consider assisting me in my mission,” Anna Pavlovna began, tugging on the sleeve of her navy-blue wool sweater and repositioning to her lap the large, brown envelope she cradled under her arm. “I was born in 1839 to parents who were serfs in Saint Petersburg, house servants to an aristocrat and treated with dignity. When Tsar Alexander II freed the serfs by decree in 1861, my family remained with the nobleman because he was so kind to us.

“One evening at a party in the household, I served sherry to the son of another aristocrat and he was attracted to me, as I was to him. I was a beautiful young woman then, and the young man very handsome. We arranged to meet at an inn for supper the next day, and later that week at a park, soon falling in love.

“He proposed marriage and I accepted, but news of our courtship presented a terrible shock to his mother and father, first because I was a Jew, and second because of my station in life. They disowned their only child and caused him to live in poverty as an apprentice to a cabinetmaker out in the countryside. He and I were wed a month later by a rabbi who took pity on us. Although we struggled to survive, we had many happy years together, until the Tsar was assassinated in 1881. His successor, Alexander III, reversed most of the progressive policies of his father and became a tyrant. My husband and I joined the revolutionary underground and were targeted for arrest by the Emperor’s Okhrana. We fled to Lithuania, and then to England, where we remained in exile under the surname of Buk until my beloved husband, Mikhail, was murdered in his cabinet shop six days ago.

“I am afraid I am next, Mr Holmes, because of the activity in which my late husband and I were engaged since our flight to this country. I am a writer of novels in my native language, political allegories that inspire the social democrats in Russia. I smuggle the manuscripts through couriers to a printer in Saint Petersburg, who is also part of the underground, and he publishes the books for distribution to our comrades throughout the Empire. I have one of those manuscripts with me tonight, and in it is the fact that the wrong men were hanged for throwing the bomb that destroyed Tsar Alexander II. It was not conspirators from the People’s Will who carried out the assassination, but rather henchmen of the nobility displeased with the Tsar’s liberal decrees. I am to rendezvous with one of my couriers after I leave you. But the East End is teeming with spies and double-agents for the Okhrana and I believe they have identified me as the author of the banned books. My husband was a financial supporter of the revolution, and I suspect that is why he was killed—his throat was slashed from ear to ear—not simply because he was the victim of a robbery, as Scotland Yard presumed. My husband’s safe was rifled when I found him, which is what led Inspector Hopkins to conclude that a bandit had done away with him. The culprit was looking for a manuscript, not money. My little house behind my husband’s shop was also torn apart while I was away at the market.

“I told Inspector Hopkins all about my husband’s involvement in the movement, but it amounted to nothing worth pursuing in the youthful policeman’s eyes. He said the Okhrana could not operate in London without Scotland Yard being aware of it, and the intelligence unit never reported the existence of any such organization.”

“I once had high hopes for Stanley Hopkins,” Holmes interjected, “yet the more I hear of his methods the less impressed I am with his results. Now tell me, Mrs Pavlovna, what would you have me do to assist you?”

“You can avenge my impending death and expose the elements of the Okhrana so that my countrymen will know even more of the regime’s evils,” Mrs Pavlovna bravely predicted. “The more the people know of the truth, the more likely the overthrow of the brutal autocrat, Alexander Alexandrovich Romanov.”

“Come now, Mrs Pavlovna, you must not consider your fate in such dire terms,” Holmes pleaded. “The danger you face might only be the theft of a manuscript, not the end of your life. Possibly your husband resisted the intruder, and that is why he died.”

“The Okhrana wish to silence me,” she responded. “And the only means they have is to eliminate me. Otherwise, I shall continue creating my tales until I am too feeble to put pen to paper.”

Holmes told her he would honour her request, then offered to accompany her safely home, to which she replied that doing so would only prolong the inevitable. “Besides,” she added, “my courier would disappear without the manuscript if he saw someone he didn’t recognise escorting me.”

I suggested a hot cup of tea to the courageous old Russian woman before she ventured into the concealment of the darkness outside, but she declined the invitation and bade us farewell. “I appreciate your hospitality, but I am already late for the appointment with my contact,” she said apologetically, then ambled down the stairs toward the rear exit, passing Mrs Hudson’s rooms unnoticed.

“I can’t imagine a more dedicated, loyal, and stoic individual,” Holmes observed after she had departed. “What do you suppose of her chances of staying alive until morning, Watson?”

“She is no doubt crafty, slipping in and out of here like a ghost, so I assume she can manage to outwit a squad of secret police and their agents,” I answered. “But what if they actually have discovered that Anna Buk is Anna Barlova Pavlovna, the originator of subversive novels?”

“In that case,” Holmes conjectured, “Inspector Hopkins could have two coincidental homicides to probe that he attributes to the work of a street thug.”

Holmes excused himself and went up to his bedroom, coming down a few moments later in his lavender dressing gown and relaxing near the fire with his Index, an encyclopedia he maintained with memoranda on the world of crime, plus various other topics.

“It says in here that the Okhrana has far-flung tentacles,” he apprised me. “Its influence extends to other continents, including Europe and America. So, it is altogether possible that Mrs Pavlovna’s fear is justified.”

Shortly after dawn the following day, Holmes shook me awake from a peaceful sleep and curled his bony finger to summon me out of bed. “Come, Watson, if you are wanting for another adventure to chronicle,” he beckoned. “I am anxious to determine if Mrs Pavlovna made it back to her little house last night without incident. We can eat a quick breakfast at the Lime Street Cafe en route to Aldgate Station.”

Soon we were aboard an eastbound train to Craven Street in the heart of the Russian immigrant community. Holmes, who studied under a tutor in preparation for his trip to Odessa in the Tripoff murder case, spoke a Ukrainian dialect when he sought directions to the Buk cabinet shop from a vendor selling apples from a cart. It was a long, depressing walk, past hundreds of sheds and shanties and tenements. In these hovels, the population congregated at sunset after eking out a pittance, day after grueling day, hawking food or toiling at trades that produced wares only the well-to-do from other sections of the city could afford to buy.

In better than average condition, the Pavlovna domicile was set apart from the late husband’s shop by a short gravel path that ended at the intricately carved front door, apparently the handiwork of the cabinetmaker. Mrs Pavlovna, whom we saw peeking out the kitchen window from behind the lace curtains, responded to Holmes’s knock quickly and greeted us somberly. “I am in a melancholy mood today, missing my Mikhail terribly,” she explained, and politely invited us inside. “You are here to solve his murder?”

“That is one reason,” Holmes replied, and then said he was curious to know if the manuscript was on its way to Saint Petersburg.

“Yes, it is in the proper hands, and God will see that it gets to the printer in due course,” she told him, the conversation now lifting her dampened spirits a bit.

“No one tried to harm you yet?” Holmes continued.

“Not yet, but I am still wary—and you, Mr Holmes, must be cautious asking questions, because the enemy of the people has big ears,” Mrs Pavlovna warned.

“I am always careful,” Holmes went on, “so you needn’t worry about me. Tell me, on the day your husband was killed, did you notice anything out of the ordinary?”

“I did,” she disclosed matter-of-factly. “Two men, strangers in the neighborhood, were sitting on a bench across the street from my husband’s shop when I went to the market. When I got back, they were gone, nowhere in sight.”

“Did you tell this to Inspector Hopkins?” Holmes queried.

“He never asked, and I was so grief-stricken at the time I didn’t think to mention it to him. I don’t believe he is very thorough. Or maybe the violent death of a poor man from the slums is not so important to Scotland Yard,” she blurted, covering her mouth with the palm of her right hand and widening her dark eyes.

“What did these two men look like? Describe each of them, and what they were wearing,” Holmes prodded.

“One had long legs, the other short,” Mrs Pavlovna advised. “They were not talking; they were just watching. The one with long legs was about thirty years old and had a tan coat with knickerbockers, along with a cloth cap pulled down over the bridge of his long nose. The other man was about fifty years old and had a brown waistcoat, and wore laced brown boots. He wore a derby, and he had frizzy grey hair. And he had spectacles with thick lenses.”

“Excellent, my dear!” Holmes exclaimed, and he praised her observational ability, charming her in the special way he had with women. “Is there anything else about these men that you can remember?”

“Only that the one with long legs was smoking a cigarette with a cork tip,” she added.

“You have been more than helpful,” he told her. “Try to get some rest—I can see by the shaded circles under your eyes that you haven’t been sleeping.”

“It is hard without my Mikhail by my side. I pray that I live long enough for time to heal me,” she answered.

Holmes and I left Mrs Pavlovna in a better frame of mind than when we arrived. Before we started out on our return journey, however, Holmes let himself in the unlocked cabinet shop and spent about fifteen minutes examining the scene of the crime, while I sat on the bench across the street and puffed on my clay pipe. I could see every move Holmes made inside through the two large front windows. It was a perfect vantage point if I wanted to be certain the occupant of the shop was alone.

“There wasn’t any sign of a scuffle, Watson,” Holmes related when he emerged and joined me on the bench for a smoke. “That could only mean there were two intruders, one, the stronger of the pair who would have immobilised the old man, and another who cut his throat.”

“It is probable, then, that the attackers came here with murderous intent,” I volunteered, “because a routine robbery would likely be carried out by a single assailant.”

“That is a workable theory, but we must have even more data than what I already have gathered, else we jump to the wrong conclusion,” Holmes chided.

“But if what I surmise is correct,” I persisted, “then Mrs Pavlovna’s suspicions about the Okhrana agents might be true.”

“It is surely worth considering, Watson,” Holmes intoned. “Now let’s make our next stop the headquarters of Scotland Yard to determine whether the intransigent Stanley Hopkins has made any progress in his line of inquiry.”

* * * *

We alighted from the train at Whitehall Place and, in no time at all, we were waiting in a vacant office of the Metropolitan Police Service for Inspector Hopkins to finish interviewing a witness to a different event altogether.

“I am swamped with a number of investigations all at once,” he said as he poked his head in the door and scurried down the hallway. When he returned a few moments later, he begged our pardon for his inattentiveness to our concerns. “I have never seen it so busy,” he complained, adding that current circumstances were sufficiently cooled down to allow him to devote some time to our problem.

Holmes empathised and quickly got to the point, to which Inspector Hopkins reacted with chagrin. “Your purpose puzzles me,” he said. “Why would you be interested in a simple robbery in an impoverished part of town when you have all those high-profile cases I’ve been reading about in Dr Watson’s magazine articles?”

“Not all my affairs warrant extensive publicity, Inspector, as Watson can attest,” Holmes countered. “In this instance, I am engaged to protect the widow, Mrs Buk, because she is anticipating that something dreadful could be attempted against her.”

“Oh, balderdash,” Inspector Hopkins sputtered. “All this nonsense about cloak-and-dagger enforcers of the Emperor in Russia is the product of a wild imagination. I am inclined to speculate that one of our home-grown hoodlums is responsible for what happened to her husband, which is why I have my informants pounding the cobblestones to unearth a more practical outcome.”

“But if it was a simple robbery, as you hypothesise, what cash or valuables could the thief have been after? The victim was a person of less than modest means,” Holmes challenged.

“These immigrants horde money like a squirrel hordes acorns in autumn, and the bandits know that all too well. Mr Buk had a safe, didn’t he? Something of value must have been kept in it,” the official detective contended finally.

We wished Inspector Hopkins well in his endeavours and rode in a cab back to our rooms at Baker Street, marveling at his closed mind.

When we entered our flat, Holmes tossed his cape and jacket onto the coat rack, then rolled up his shirt sleeves before he sat at the deal-topped table and ignited the Bunsen burner. “I took a sample of dried blood from a pool on the floor of the cabinet shop, and I shall analyse it, for I am convinced both killers were spattered with it. They will have the deceased’s blood on their clothing when we encounter them,” he postulated.

While Holmes was occupied with his vials and chemistry, I made notes of the developments thus far, activities which brought us to the dinner hour. I offered to pick up sandwiches at the corner shop and Holmes readily concurred. “I am not hungry enough for a full meal,” he said off-handedly, “and sandwiches will be faster. We need to be going soon. There is no time to waste.”

“Going? Where?” I wanted to know.

“To Claridge’s Hotel in the East End near the Russian immigrant community,” he apprised me.

“What do you expect to find there?” I insisted on learning.

“Our two suspects!” he barked, saying not a further word.

The adventure would prove to be harrowing, taking us to within centimeters of losing our lives.

* * * *

It was nearly nightfall when Holmes and I briskly navigated curvy Curzon Street, where Claridge’s Hotel stood with its five stories facing the intersection of Mincing Lane, a seldom-used avenue that paralleled the main road into the Russian section of the city. We went through the dim, shabby lobby to the hotel desk clerk’s station, which was unoccupied. Holmes pulled the bell rope and we heard it ring in a room behind the counter. More than a minute passed before a raggedly-dressed, middle-aged man with crumbs dangling from his black, bushy mustache opened the door to the back room and growled at us. “Seven shillings for each of you, if you share the bed,” he asserted.

Holmes dug in his trouser pocket and came up with the right amount, dropped it on the desk, and then showed the clerk a sovereign. “This is for you if you can tell us where we can find our two friends,” he said, almost whispering. He described the men Mrs Pavlovna saw on the bench.

“Number 33,” came the rapid response, and with that the clerk swept his hand across the counter and snatched the money from Holmes’s fingers, glancing around the lobby to see if any of the four men lingering there had noticed the transaction.

“We would like a room close to Number 33,” Holmes requested. Our cooperative host answered that the one across the hall was vacant, Number 32. “Go on up then—no key, there are no locks,” he snapped. Nor was there a register to sign, which disappointed Holmes, because he wanted to establish the identities of the two suspects. We climbed the steps and entered Number 32 after Holmes listened with his ear against the door of Number 33.

“No one seems to be in there, Watson, so you stand guard in the hallway and signal me if you hear footsteps coming,” Holmes ordered as we shed our outer garments and threw them on the squeaky bed.

“It makes me nervous when you trespass, but I’ll position myself at the top of the stairs and rap twice on the door if I detect any sound of someone approaching,” I informed him.

Holmes crossed the gloomy corridor and stealthily went into the opposite room, but he almost instantly came out and waved for me to return to Number 32.

“One of them, the tall one, is asleep and there was no indication of where the other could be,” he announced quietly when we were safely out of sight. “I was in there long enough, however, to find a pack of Red Kamel cigarettes next to the basin on the wash stand.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It is the same brand as the crushed butt I discovered on the floor of the cabinet shop,” Holmes disclosed. “It is unavailable as an import here, and it is made from an expensive Turkish blend of tobacco with a cork tip. It is much preferred by the elite in Russia. Commoners can’t pay the price.”

“So we are on the right track—the smoker must have come from Russia recently, and he was inside the cabinet shop,” I observed.

“A brilliant and plausible deduction, Watson,” Holmes commended.

We left our door slightly ajar and waited in the unlit room for almost three hours before we heard movement near Number 33. Holmes watched through the opening as the short, bespectacled hotel guest went into Number 33 carrying a large, brown envelope the size of the one Mrs Pavlovna brought with her to Baker Street the preceding night.

“He has the manuscript,” Holmes whispered to me. “Mrs Pavlovna’s courier, or the one next in line, apparently is in league with this pair. Otherwise, if there was a chance of a fight before the contact was relieved of the package, not one but both operatives would have gone to intercept it.”

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“We wait even longer, and if they leave the room together, we shall follow them, for I believe if anything is about to happen to Mrs Pavlovna, tonight is the time.”

There was no activity at Number 33 as the midnight hour came and went. While we were idle, I wondered to Holmes how he knew to come to Claridge’s Hotel.

“On the floor of the cabinet shop was an empty box of wooden matches with the name of this place on the top,” he revealed. “I deduced that no one other than the killer or his accomplice could have discarded the box, because there was no scent of cigarette smoke in the Pavlovna household, meaning the husband didn’t indulge. The presence of the match box and the cigarette butt told me even more, though. The assailants spent more than enough time with their victim than was necessary to take his life. They obviously were interrogating him for a lengthy period, probably trying to coerce him into confessing that his wife was the writer in exile, and to reveal to them the location of her latest work. Terrified though he must have been, he never compromised her with information they were searching to gain. That is the reason they rifled his safe.” But Holmes said he needed more evidence than what he already had before reporting his findings to Scotland Yard. “Something more convincing to Inspector Hopkins to demonstrate he has been barking up the wrong tree,” Sherlock Holmes concluded.

I was dozing in a chair at about two o’clock in the morning when Holmes placed his fingertips over my lips and roused me. “I detected some activity across the hallway, so be prepared to move out, Watson,” he said in a hushed tone.

It wasn’t long before both occupants of Number 33 left the room and started down the stairs. We gave them about a half-minute head start while we donned our jackets and capes, then walked on tip-toes to the steps. We quietly went down, pausing before we reached the lobby until we heard the door to the outside close. Holmes and I both were armed, our .32 caliber revolvers loaded and secured in our right-hand jacket pockets. We trailed our two subjects at a moderately fast pace down Mincing Lane toward the vicinity of Mrs Pavlovna’s house. Holmes led the way, I at his heels. He ducked behind a tree now and then in case the two men looked back to see if they were followed. Once, they halted, as if to orient themselves, and turned in our direction, but we were hidden behind the corner of an apartment building.

The men walked abreast with determination, finally turning onto Rochester Row, on which Mrs Pavlovna’s dwelling was located a couple of blocks farther up.

As we turned the corner, we came face-to-face with two other men, each brandishing a handgun pointing directly at us. They menaced us briefly until one of them spoke in Russian, so only Holmes could understand what the assailant was saying.

“They want us to accompany them to that shed and go inside, Watson,” Holmes told me, nodding toward a tiny, dilapidated structure to the rear of a butcher shop. We complied. Inside was a bare table and four chairs, plus two cots. The more aggressive of the two motioned for us to sit, so we did as he indicated. Thoughts of our losing precious time to rescue Mrs Pavlovna raced through my brain, and I was certain of the same occurring in Holmes’s mind. Neither of the hostage-takers spoke again for several moments, until the one giving the orders glared at Holmes and demanded to know if we were the official police.

Holmes told him no, but offered nothing more. It seemed to make the man angry and he sat down at the table with his weapon trained between Holmes’s eyes. Holmes slipped his left hand under the tabletop and casually dipped his right hand into his jacket pocket. With one motion, he heaved the table upward, knocking both men backwards and off balance. They fired rapid bursts in succession, indiscriminately, and missed us entirely. At the same instant Holmes squeezed off all of his five shots through his clothing and struck both men once, each squarely in the chest, killing the interrogator before he folded onto the dirt floor, and mortally wounding his partner.

Holmes leaned over the man who was still conscious, but barely. “Okhrana?” Holmes bellowed.

“Da,” the man gasped, and died.

“Quickly, Watson!” Holmes yelled. “To the old woman’s house!”

Holmes was peering through the bedroom window when I caught up with him, breathing hard. Mrs Pavlovna, flat on her back, was bound to the bed posts with babushkas around her wrists, and the suspect wearing spectacles stood at her side, clutching a straight razor. His accomplice was seated next to the headboard, smoking a cigarette. There was talking, but we could discern nothing.

Holmes crept to the open front door and entered the kitchen. I removed the revolver from my pocket and lagged quietly and closely behind him.

“They won’t realise my pistol is empty, so we shall both rush in on them at the same time with our weapons flashing,” he whispered.

We filled the bedroom doorway side-by-side and ambushed the assailants, startling them sufficiently to cause them to freeze. Holmes ordered the short one to drop the razor, but instead he thrust it to Mrs Pavlovna’s throat.

“Drop guns or I kill her,” he threatened in broken English.

“Hurt her and you are a dead man,” Holmes warned.

“He is a dead man nonetheless,” I added, taking aim and shooting. My bullet creased the reprobate’s skull, sending his derby flying and him hurtling across the room, shrieking and bleeding profusely. He cowered in a corner, holding his crimson forehead, weeping and begging for mercy. I had an urge to finish him off, but resisted it. Holmes grabbed the razor from the oval rug and began to free Mrs Pavlovna while I covered the two criminals, the muzzle of my revolver alternating between them. The one in the chair spoke broken English as well, adamantly proclaiming it was not his idea to murder the Pavlovnas, as if that mattered.

“They were trying to get me to name all my cohorts in the movement, and give up the locations of their homes,” Mrs Pavlovna said forcefully. “The tall one said I would join my husband tonight if I didn’t cooperate, but the Okhrana don’t know I am a true patriot with a stubborn streak stronger than their devotion to the dictator.”

“Hand me your revolver, Watson,” Holmes instructed, “and see if you can roust that constable sleeping on the bench across the street. If all the commotion in here didn’t awaken him, it is possible he is among the dearly departed.”

I left, Holmes keeping the miscreants at bay with four cartridges in the cylinder. On the way out, I hurriedly examined the wounded man’s injury and handed him my handkerchief, advising him to apply pressure to his gushing scalp. I returned about five minutes later with the drowsy policeman, to whom Holmes provided only sketchy details of what had transpired. Befuddled, the official stepped outside and blew his whistle to summon help.

When two more constables came in with him, Holmes introduced us to them, along with criminals Leonid Gutnik and Vladimir Prost: “These two gentlemen are purported to be agents of the Okhrana, the secret police in Russia. Mr Gutnik has admitted they murdered Mrs Buk’s husband last week, and they still carry the bloodstains on their coats. They were on the verge of killing Mrs Buk tonight until Dr Watson and I disrupted their devious plans. Inspector Hopkins is investigating the murder of Mr Buk. Please arrange for the inspector to meet us here as soon as he can.”

“We’ll bring him in his nightshirt if we must, Mr Holmes,” said one of the constables, a sergeant. “I’ve read about you in the periodicals, you know, and two things are certain—you always get your man, and what you say is gospel.”

“I’m pleased you believe that,” Holmes replied, “for there is something else I’m compelled to tell you now. There are two dead bodies in the shed attached to the butcher shop up the street. I shot them while they held Dr Watson and me at gunpoint to prevent us from saving the life of Mrs Buk. They definitely were agents of the secret police, a fact one of them confirmed before he expired. I’m sure Inspector Hopkins will have no difficulty ironing all this out before it becomes an international incident.”

“Two corpses, eh? Inspector Hopkins will have a full day ahead of him,” remarked the sergeant. “I’d better see to it that he gets an early start. I’ll leave one of my officers here with you to help guard the prisoners.”

After the sergeant had gone off to fulfill his duties, Holmes questioned the taller, younger of the two culprits about how they came into possession of Mrs Pavlovna’s manuscript.

“From a party loyal to Tsar,” he related, but refused to name their confederate. “I wish to stay England, like him; death for me if I go back Russia after failing mission.”

“Death awaits you here, too, on the gallows,” Holmes stated grimly.

It was almost sunrise when Inspector Hopkins arrived to sort out the events with a humbled attitude and an open mind. “I don’t know yet how to express these circumstances to the reporters without embarrassing the Yard,” he lamented as the assassins were escorted away in shackles.

Holmes and I returned to the hotel to retrieve Mrs Pavlovna’s manuscript from room Number 33 and, later, delivered it to her. It came as no shock to the old woman that one of her couriers was part of the Okhrana network.

“I have always been suspicious about one of them, Anatoly Breznikop, because his roots are in the aristocracy and he can travel to and from Russia without interference,” she said. As we conversed, she sliced us each an ample portion of rhubarb pie that she said she had baked the afternoon before. “I bake every day, but not today—I am still too nervous about what has happened,” she allowed.

“Place your trust only in those who have earned it, my sweet lady, and always make a carbon copy of your manuscripts to send through other channels, just in case the originals fall into the hands of a traitor,” Holmes recommended to her while we ate our treat.

And thus ended the affair of the old Russian woman, but for this epilogue.

* * * *

About a month had gone by without mention of her when Holmes called my attention to an item in the Evening Standard about the unexpected death of one Anatoly Breznikop, which appeared to be the result of a heart attack until relatives demanded an autopsy.

“It says here that Scotland Yard regards it as a homicide, Holmes,” I commented, “because the autopsy revealed an overdose of codeine in his bloodstream. Do you intend to involve yourself in the matter?”

“So far, only to the point where we should visit Mrs Pavlovna and find out what she knows of it,” he informed me.

The following afternoon, we were seated at her kitchen table watching her dish up pieces of warm apple pie that she earlier had placed on the window sill to cool.

“Anatoly sent me a message the day before he died,” she recalled, “and said he would stop by on the morrow in the event I had a new book prepared. He lied to me then, insisting that two men accosted him and stole my manuscript, though he bravely tried to fend them off. He ate pie and drank coffee, then went on his way. He reached Lark Hall Lane, just a short distance away, and collapsed, grasping at his chest. That is all I know.”

She gave us a half smile.

“Eat up, men. Yours is not poisoned like the pies I feed to the rats,” she assured us.