The Adventure of the Plated Spoon and Other Tales of Sherlock Holmes

Predating Sherlock Holmes by a year (1886), Nick Carter is the American bridge between Holmes and Bulldog Drummond: clean-cut, two-fisted, cerebral, and a master of disguise. The creation of Ormond G. Smith and John R. Coryell, he appeared in hundreds of dime novels and pulp magazines—including Nick Carter Weekly—but is virtually forgotten today, despite a 1972 pilot for a TV series starring Robert Conrad. (He’s not to be mistaken for the “Nick Carter” who appeared in a flurry of paperback spy novels in the 1970s.) In The Adventure of the Plated Spoon, he teams up with Holmes, Watson, and Mrs. Watson to smash a conspiracy that still plagues us: human trafficking. It is published here for the first time, by permission of the author.

I.
I Misplace My Wife

Readers who are unfamiliar with the chronicles involving my friend, Sherlock Holmes, may not assign much weight to an appalling tale cast with unspeakable villains, all centred upon so homely an item as a table utensil; yet I ask them to be patient until I have presented all the evidence.

In April of 1897, my wife, Mary, and I were preparing to join another couple for an evening at the Lyceum, where Henry Irving and Ellen Terry were appearing in Hamlet after a triumphant tour of the Continent. I was laying out my tailcoat when the bell rang.

“It can’t be the Anstruthers,” said Mary. “It’s too early, and we’re to meet them on the way.”

Watson,

I REQUIRE YOUR IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE IF NOT TIED UP.

P.S. IF TIED UP BREAK YOUR BONDS

“How impertinent.” Mary looked sternly at the uniformed courier. “Tell him we weren’t at home.”

“You know him as well as I,” I said, reaching for my overcoat. “He’s only brusque in matters of urgency.”

“Be sure you have time to dress. Bad enough to miss the curtain without arriving looking like a vagabond.”

I shan’t try the reader’s patience with the details of our evening’s excursion, although they present interest sufficient to support a full accounting elsewhere. The conundrum turned out to be child’s play (if only for Holmes), but it took time enough to deprive our friends and my wife of the pleasure of my company in our box.

The house was dark when I returned. I crept up the stairs as quietly as possible, cursing inwardly the lateness of the hour and the impossibility of finding an open florist’s shop, however inadequate a bouquet of posies would prove towards raising my marital stock. Grateful as Mary was to Holmes for the affair that had first brought us together, his continuing dependence upon my aid, to the detriment of my domestic responsibilities, had sorely tried her stores of good will.

It was a clear night. A three-quarter moon shone brightly through the bedroom window, falling full upon my tails laid out on the counterpane exactly as I had left them. Mary wasn’t there. To her pillow was pinned a note in her hand on her personal stationery:

John,

We’ll have a good laugh over this message if we read it together. Otherwise, you will find me at the Anstruthers’ in the morning and we shall revisit your relationship with Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

I spent a sleepless night in pursuit of some gesture that would repair the rift; but here at last was one problem even my friend, the world’s first (and so far the greatest) consulting detective, could not solve. Bright and early I bathed and shaved carefully, put on the morning coat that was Mary’s favourite, and hastened to the Harley Street home of Dr. and Mrs. Anstruther, stopping along the way to buy the showiest floral display in Piccadilly and a five-pound box of Vienna chocolates. The bell was answered by Gloriana, their maid from South America, who informed me her master and mistress had left for a holiday in Scotland by the first train.

“Is Mrs. Watson alone, then?” I was somewhat relieved to know my self-abasement would be private.

“Sir, she was never here. Doctor and the missus came home alone from the theatre.”

II.
At Scotland Yard

I proceeded directly to New Scotland Yard, where a sergeant informed me that Inspector Lestrade was away on an investigation but that his colleague, Inspector Gregson, was at his desk.

Tobias Gregson, a large, bluff, red-faced mastiff of a man, more given to immediate action than his counterpart—and almost invariably misdirected—sat behind a mountain of papers and ledgers, muttering over the necessity of an active soldier in the war against the criminal classes being reduced to the duties of a clerk. So involved was he in his plaint, several moments lapsed before he noticed my presence.

“Humph! Chang without Eng. I should think Barnum would have the whole force out looking for you.”

“Holmes and I are not joined at the navel, nor are we Siamese,” I retorted. “Might it not have occurred to you—even you—that I might be here upon my own behalf as a British subject?”

As is frequently the case with bullies, my sharp tone put him into retreat. He rose, his face assuming a deeper shade of scarlet, and turned his great bear’s-paw of a palm towards the chair facing the desk. “There’s no reason to take on so, doctor. It’s just that with Lestrade gallivanting off on another of his fool’s errands, I’m left with his paperwork as well as my own. Have a seat.”

I ignored the invitation and gave him a full account of the reason for my visit. Moment by moment his colour faded to its normal shade of ruddiness. He lowered himself back into his seat, interlaced his fingers across his broad middle, and heard me out.

“I shouldn’t be alarmed if I were you,” he said when I’d finished. “Where you see a tragedy, I see a tiff between a man and his wife. Odds are she’s gone to stay with her mother.”

“Her mother died long ago. She has no blood relatives. Will you issue a bulletin?”

“My hands are tied. When an adult goes missing, regulations require twenty-four hours must pass before action is taken.”

“I can’t go about flaunting the rules as a favour to a personal acquaintance.”

I straightened, seething. “Holmes once said you and Lestrade were the best of a bad lot. He was being diplomatic.”

His face darkened again. “At least neither of us has gone and lost track of his wife like an old umbrella.”

III.
I Become Holmes’s Client

When I entered the sitting room we once shared at 221B Baker Street, Holmes was perched on the stool before his acid-scarred deal table, looking for all the world like a gigantic bird of prey. He wore his old mouse-coloured dressing gown and was pouring a bilious-looking liquid from one test tube into another, staring intently at the reaction. A greenish cloud of thick vapour rose from the freshly filled vessel, further staining the plaster ceiling directly above the table, a palimpsest created by dozens of chemical experiments and at least one explosion. For a moment after he returned the empty tube to its stand he continued to watch the phenomenon until the last wisp vanished, then to my horror lifted the phial to his lips and drank down the contents at a gulp.

“Rest easy, old fellow,” said he, touching a handkerchief to his mouth. “The criminal situation isn’t so stagnant that I’ve chosen the Socratic method to escape it. It’s a mixture of pulped avocado and quinine, with soda for effervescence.” He belched delicately into his handkerchief. “I beg your pardon. I suspect a bad oyster at Simpson’s to be the culprit.”

“You have my word. I trust you’ve made amends with Mrs. Watson for last night’s desertion.”

“Supposition, aided by evidence. I’ve prevailed upon your leisure frequently of late. A domestic contretemps seemed as inevitable as the lingering odour of violets and bird-of-paradise on your person. You buy her flowers only when you’ve transgressed. Old friend, what’s happened?”

I’d collapsed into my old armchair, alarming him out of his musings. He was on his feet and halfway towards me in a lunge.

“For once,” said I, “I wish you’d deduced it all at a glance. Might I trouble you for a whisky at this improper hour?”

He reached for the siphon at once and poured a stiff tot. I seized the glass and drank off half. “I scarcely know where to begin.”

“At the beginning is not only customary but the most conducive to understanding.” He sat in his basket chair, tented his long narrow hands, and closed his eyes, as I had seen him do so many times when a problem was being placed before him.

I told all, starting with Mary’s disapproval when Holmes’s summons came and finishing with my expulsion—polite, but final—from the office of the superintendent of Scotland Yard. Holmes listened without interruption, then:

“Not hurried, and I should say not particularly upset. I know from firsthand experience that she is not easily rattled. The affair of the Four might have unsettled the Queen herself.” He returned the note. “What say the Anstruthers?”

“You’re distraught. You rarely leave that level head of yours at home with your nightcap. You must wire your friends and ask if Mrs. Watson attended the theatre with them. Then we shall know whether our trail begins when they parted company, or hours earlier when she left the house.”

“You are not Newton, but neither are you Punch. You have had no practise in separating your head from your heart.”

“Wait for me at your house. For all we know your wife is there now, awaiting your apology.”

IV.
Mr. Lysander P. Gristle

The Anstruthers kept a country home near Aberdeen. I sent them a brief explanation along with my question, and directed them to address their response to my house. With a quickening heart I returned home, but Mary was still absent. I unstopped my brandy decanter, but deciding that I was no good to anyone in a state of inebriation, I put it back. As the hands crawled round the clock on the mantel, I attempted to interest myself in The Times, The Telegraph, and finally the Bible, but could not concentrate upon the news of the day and found no solace in scripture. I smoked a cigar without tasting it and paced through all the rooms—all the empty, echoing chambers of my lonely house—until at last someone pulled on the bell.

I tore open the door, but instead of Holmes discovered a lumpy-faced stranger on my doorstep, wearing a loud chequered suit and a flat-crowned straw hat at an insolent angle. His eyes were hidden behind blue-tinted spectacles, and a gold tooth winked in his greasy smile. He smelled offensively of lavender and lime, in which, judging by the strength of the odour, he appeared to have bathed.

He tipped his hat, exposing momentarily a head glistening with pomade. “Beg pardon, guv’nor,” said he in a voice that was both high-pitched and unctuous. “Lysander P. Gristle at your service. It is my h’intense pleasure to acquaint you with the h’inwention of the century.”

As he spoke, he produced from a voluminous side pocket a slender silver-coloured cylinder.

“I’m afraid someone beat you to it long ago,” I said. “It’s a pen.” I began to push the door shut.

He stopped it with a foot shod in square-toed leather and a bright yellow gaiter. “I ’aven’t finished, guv’nor. This pen contains its own supply of h’ink in a sealed reservoir, rendering it as portable as a pencil and making the h’inkwell a fing of the past.”

“’Old on, ’old on, there’s more.” He placed the ball of his thumb against the nib. “H’inside ’ere is a steel sphere one-tenth the size of a pea, h’allowing the h’ink to glide onto the page like a duck in a pond. No more blobs or scratches, and the pen does all the work. You can write h’all day wifout a cramp. See for yourself.” Thrusting the device into my hand, he retrieved a fold of foolscap from another pocket, snatched off his hat, cradled it in the crook of his arm, and spread the sheet on the crown.

Seeing that there was no other way to get rid of the fellow, I placed the nib against the page and began to write my name. It split on contact, spurting ink and staining my cuff.

I cursed—and stopped in mid-syllable upon recognising the sardonic laugh of the stranger at my door. Lysander P. Gristle unhooked his coloured spectacles, exposing the sharp grey eyes of Sherlock Holmes.

“Rest easy, old fellow. It’s vanishing ink, made according to my own formula. In five minutes your laundress will be none the wiser.”

I opened the door wide and turned to follow him as he entered, peeling away the putty that had altered the shape of his face. “I am at my wit’s end, and you stoop to a practical joke?”

Without awaiting an invitation, he threw himself into a parlour chair, pried the gold cap from a perfectly sound tooth, and poked it into his waistcoat pocket. “You must pardon an amateur actor’s conceit. Once immersed in a role, I find that time alone can bring me back to the surface. I’m fresh from a successful tour of Harley Street and the stately home of Dr. and Mrs. Anstruther.”

“No; and I was glad of that event. It gave me the opportunity to audition my act in private with the maid.”

“Not at all. She knows everything and said nothing. When you told me her name is Gloriana and that she is South American, I remembered a certain domestic from Argentina whose modus operandi was to join the staff of a wealthy household—armed, naturally, with glowing references, expertly forged—take inventory of the house’s contents, and conveniently neglect to latch the back door when her masters weren’t at home. She managed this feat no fewer than three times at three different houses before a constable happened upon her companion, one Archie Munch, grappling a Chippendale cabinet down the back stairs with the maid helping to steer it from above.

“Even so,” he continued, “I might have misplaced the memory had she not in those days travelled under the nom de crime Celeste. It’s no great leap from heaven to glory. If we British weren’t so insular we would all benefit from a healthy exposure to languages other than our own.”

“Forgive me; but at the risk of offending my bent towards the dramatic, please trust me when I say you need have no fear for the safety of Mrs. Watson. No.” He stopped me in mid-pounce with an upraised hand. “Without suspense, you will hear nothing of what I have to say. It’s critical that you understand.”

“Dash it all.” I opened the cabinet and poured us both a brandy. When he had his, I perched on the edge of the settee and took a medicinal sip to flatten my nerves.

But he set his glass down untasted and reached inside yet another pocket. By what great powers of organisation he knew which of those many patches and pouches contained the item he sought, I cannot say. He produced a wicked-looking object that appeared to be a cross between a nutcracker and a corkscrew, with a polished wooden handle.

“’Ere, madam,” he said, resuming his Cockney cant, “is the h’answer to an ’ousemaid’s dream: an instrument that will render everyfing else in the kitchen h’obsolete. It’s a h’inwention of my own, which I’m proud to ’ave christened the Gristlizer.”

“I haven’t the foggiest.” The device had vanished along with Mr. Gristle’s nasal drawl. “On a sudden inspiration I pinched it from the evidence room at the Yard, where it was no longer required after the defense had exhausted every appeal. It was sufficient to get my persistent flogger’s foot in the Anstruthers’ door, and to steal a moment alone with Señorita Celeste-Gloriana-Paraiso; the last being the name she used in Buenos Aires. I helped Lestrade make his original case with a bit of research.

“Abandoning my pose, I put the thing to her quite simply: the truth in return for a head start, and the chance to avoid arrest and deportation to Argentina, which has unfinished business with her, our system having given her her freedom for peaching on Archie Munch. It did not take much persuading, as she feared the wrath of her current companion more than the law in either country. It developed that he had his eye upon your friends’ silver candlesticks and a teak chest that had sailed round the world with Drake, and he wouldn’t be any too pleased to learn she’d blown them both just when her master and mistress were away and unable to prevent their removal.”

He sighed. “Very well. If I’m to be forced to leave my tale unfinished, I shall yield the floor to another.”

He stood up abruptly, and in three strides was at the door, which he flung open to give my dear Mary entrance to the house we shared.

V.
The Ordeal of Mrs. John H. Watson

She was dressed for the theatre, in her emerald-coloured ball gown, white fur cape, and pearls. As out of place as she looked in broad daylight, at that moment she was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. I fell in love all over again, if anything more intensely than I had at the time of the affair of the Agra treasure, which had brought us together the first time.

She nearly fell into my arms. I held her so tight I wonder now how I didn’t break some delicate bone. I kissed her feverishly. Only when we separated ourselves by a few inches, some full two minutes later, did I realise that we were alone in the room. Holmes had absented himself, discreetly and as in a puff of smoke.

I apologised for my careless behaviour; she stopped me by placing a gloved hand against my lips.

“John, I don’t care. Since I thought I should never see you again, I can hardly hold you to account for an evening’s desertion. You were impetuous, I was churlish; please, dear, let us leave it at that. Do you suppose you could pour me some brandy?”

Although I had rarely known her to drink anything stronger than tea—and never even that, at that early hour—I wasted no time in escorting her to a chair and filling another glass. As she touched her lips to it, I saw that although she seemed physically unharmed, she had been through a harrowing ordeal. The tiny fissures at the corners of her eyes, which she loathed and I adored, were etched deeply as if with an engraving tool, and she was as pale as candle-wax.

This was the story she told, when the spirits had helped her to place her thoughts in order:

As arranged, she’d taken a cab to the Anstruthers, still in high dudgeon over my failure to return from my assignation with Holmes in time to accompany her; from there, our party was to proceed to the Lyceum aboard the couple’s own coach-and-four. No sooner had the cab pulled away when Gloriana told her at the door that her employers had already left. She could (or would) offer no explanation as to the change in plan. Thereupon, Mary returned to the street to hail another cab. One pulled up immediately, as well it should; for the maid’s own accomplice in crime sat in the driver’s seat. Somewhere in their association, the partners had agreed to broaden their activities to include abduction.

When the passenger realised the vehicle was heading in the wrong direction, she called out to get the driver’s attention. Instantly a whip cracked, the horse broke into a gallop, and she found herself hanging onto the seat with both hands to keep from spilling out onto the cobblestones. She could no more follow the swaying coach’s course, or identify the buildings streaming past, than could a seed in a gourd.

When at last the vehicle came to a jarring stop, nearly pitching her forwards over the dashboard, the driver leapt down and, before she could recover herself enough to alight, threw his arms round her in a death-grip.

“No, you don’t, little missy,” said he. “Old Snipe ’as a sweet treat for you h’inside.”

She struggled desperately, but could not break the hold of his sinewy arms, nor escape his fetid breath; his face, all pocked and stubbled under a filthy tile, was inches from hers. So constricted was she that she could not summon the breath to cry for help.

Suddenly the man’s expression shifted from triumph to astonishment, then disgust.

“Cor! You h’ain’t nofing but a dried-up old ’ag of thirty! What was Glory finking? Nobody’d pay a farthing for the like of you!” Whereupon he freed one hand with the intention of smacking her across the face.

“Great Scott!” I said, horrified, at this point in her narrative. I wanted to hunt down the swine and throttle him barehanded.

But the blow never fell. With only one arm holding her, she managed to shove him away far enough to draw back a foot and kick him on the shin.

No rugby player ever kicked the ball harder or with greater desperation. The man Snipe howled and let go of her to cradle his barked tibia in both hands. In a thrice, Mary spun round and raced off down the street, lifting the hem of her gown and clattering the heels of her pumps on the pavement.

Snipe gave chase, but a glance back over her shoulder revealed a pursuer much hindered by his injury, limping along like a man with a peg leg.

She dared not alter her pace, however, or risk another look back. She wove her way through the press of pedestrians, turned this corner and that, dashed down alleyways with no sense of where she was in London or whither she was headed, determined as she was to put as much distance as possible between herself and the fiend who sought to recapture her.

Finally, thoroughly winded, her heart pounding and her throat raw from her panting breath, she slowed to a stop. No sooner had she done so than a hand touched her shoulder.

She whirled and lashed out with all her might, striking a hard cheek with her small fist; seeing only in the next instant that it belonged to a constable in uniform.

London’s Finest are not so easily vanquished, however, and although astonished, the officer kept his footing and caught her in both arms as she swooned. When, assured that she would not be arrested for assaulting a member of the Metropolitan division, she’d recovered herself sufficiently to relate her tale, he looked down and said, “Here, madam, what’s this in your hand?”

She looked down, startled to find that in her struggle to break free from her captor she’d snatched something inexplicable from the villain’s waistcoat. As it was clenched in the same fist she’d swung at the officer, the fact that he had not been sent reeling spoke leagues about his constitution.

“Mr. Holmes will show you,” she said. “He gave me a fair turn when the policeman accompanied me by van to the Anstruthers’ to identify the housemaid and we found a disreputable-looking stranger hastening down the front steps.”

“Thank you for the review,” said Holmes, rejoining us from the next room. “I rather think Gristle was one of my least penetrable impostitures.”

Although he still wore the loud suit of clothes, he’d removed all traces of the door-to-door barker from his face and was rummaging in another of his multiplicity of pockets. “Perhaps not as unusual a thing to find in a thief’s waistcoat as one might think.” He held up the object Mary had snatched from Snipe: a thing so common and homely as to elicit laughter under any other circumstances.

“No, Watson,” said he. “A key. The one that unlocks the secret to this whole affair.”

VI.
A Plot Unfolds

“Plated pewter, almost certainly. The time required to confirm the point with nitric acid and a jeweller’s scale would be far out of ratio to its value.”

“Then this Snipe is an ass as well as a jackal, to steal something so worthless. Where is the bounder? I ask just five minutes with him alone before he’s turned over to the police.”

“We must possess our souls in patience. Mrs. Watson was in no state to identify the terminus of her unwanted journey, and his accomplice fled out the back door as I was coming out the front. Her liberty was the price of the information she had to give. There was nothing else for it, and of the two fish she was the one small enough to throw back. I believed her when she said she didn’t know where Snipe and his captive were headed.”

“She can manage a tall story, I’ll give you that, but not with me in the audience. She convinced her employers that Dr. and Mrs. Watson had left hasty word by way of an oral messenger that they were to meet them at the theatre rather than at their house. That way there would be two fewer witnesses to the abduction. Snipe must have been pleasantly surprised to learn that the lady was alone, and that the cudgel in his pocket would not be necessary to remove her escort as an obstacle.”

Holmes scowled. He alone was standing. I sat on the arm of Mary’s chair, holding both her hands in mine.

“Your wife already has, and with good reason. Snipe isn’t your ordinary footpad, scampering away at the sound of an advancing tread. Given the nature of his extracurricular activities—I do not speak of mere burglary—he would not scruple to make her a widow in order to achieve his end. You are a courageous man, Watson, formidable in battle; but I daresay a scoundrel with neither mind nor conscience is as deadly as a wounded brute.”

Any protest I might have made died when Mary squeezed my hand. “But what is his end?” I cried.

He looked at Mary. “Pray do not be distressed by the fellow’s vile remarks upon your maturity. Gloriana misjudged your age when she described you as a likely candidate for his enterprise. You may consider that alone, coming from another of your sex, to be a compliment.”

“In any event, it isn’t so much fading youth as strength of will and wisdom of experience that he abhors in a victim. Post-adolescent girls are more susceptible to guile, and easier to intimidate once the veil is torn away.”

I disengaged myself from Mary and shot to my feet, fists balled at my sides. “Confound it, Holmes! Patience is one thing and torture quite something apart. We are all adults, and as you can see, my wife isn’t so fragile she cannot face harsh reality. You’re saying that in addition to a cutpurse, this blackguard Snipe is a procurer.”

“A euphemism if ever there was one. He is a white slaver, and this, like the Freemason’s apron, is the symbol of his order.” He held up the silver-plated spoon.

VII.
The Tale of the Spoon

“Crime, like science, is never static,” said Holmes. “If it were, any unlettered charwoman could recognise its patterns and I should be in early retirement. Today’s traffic in young girls is not your grandfather’s racket.”

“A term of relatively recent American coinage, but with a six-thousand-year-old pedigree. In Arabic, rack is the palm of one’s hand, the oldest of weapons. The derivation in Sanskrit means ‘to stretch,’ a definition which the Spanish Inquisitors took quite literally. Americans regard a racket as a raucous noise, and applied it to the rough-and-tumble of housebreaking overheard by neighbours. From there it spread to encompass any organised criminal endeavour. I’m compiling a dictionary of underworld vernacular as a companion volume to my magnum opus, The Whole Art of Deduction. It will be the Rosetta Stone the authorities require to de-riddle the secret language of crime.”

I gave vent to an oath. Mary had left us temporarily, to freshen up and change; thus my freedom of language. Inwardly I was relieved that she would not be present for what promised to be shocking revelations about that most vicious of smuggling operations, flesh-peddling. “Holmes, this is not the time to discuss scholarship.”

“Just so. However, I am not static either. As we speak, Scotland Yard is scouring the city in search of Snipe’s lair, armed with a sturdy constable’s dead-reckoning based upon where he encountered your wife and the information I gave, based upon her prize.” Once again he held up the spoon, as if he expected it to reveal as much as the trusty convex lens he employed to ferret out vital clues.

“That is some comfort,” I concluded, “but I confess I’m as much in the dark about the significance of the utensil as ever. What has it to do with enforced prostitution?” My voice fell to a whisper when I used the word.

“A great deal. In the days of the old Bow Street Runners, the traffickers were almost invariably swarthy foreigners, easy objects of suspicion, who worked out of dank cellars, filthy brothels, rat-infested warehouses, and opium dens—dives, to use the colourful term suggested by the divans where the addicted fed their habit chasing the dragon. Again, easy targets for the authorities to aim their investigation. When the newspapers turned their crusading efforts in that direction, awakening public indignation and popular pressure, the police stepped up their efforts, raiding those establishments, arresting the inhabitants, often for transgressions decades old, and padlocking their doors.

“Needless to say, whilst the mice were captured, the rats got away; but just as a rat is intelligent enough to abandon a ship in peril and a house where no food is available, the men behind the men who worked the racket turned their attention in less hazardous directions, albeit no less criminal. Not quite as unsavoury, let us say. Outrage was satisfied; after all, a shipment of stolen rum is not the same as a woman snatched off the street in Westminster and sold in Cairo.

“Skip ahead to the Industrial Age,” he continued, putting a match to his favourite pipe from a pouch of his odiferous shag (those pockets!). “Cotton is no longer refined by hand, and whilst the police still maintain a weather eye upon bleak dungeons where men of low character congregate, the market in naive young women has moved to rooms reserved for private parties in good hotels, the sculpted gardens of country estates, and the corner ice-cream parlour.”

“Good old Watson. Though the train runs late, it can be depended upon to arrive at the station eventually.”

I had grown accustomed to these sly barbs—he was as much a slave to them as to his former drug of choice—and so failed to rise to the bait. To all appearances unvexed, he toyed with the utensil, spinning it between his fingers so that the bowl flashed in the light.

“The libretto may vary, but the music is always the same: A starry-eyed girl from the country is accosted on a railway platform—not by a dark-complected outsider, but perhaps a dashing young Englishman resembling one of the well-dressed blades who are always seen accompanying the Prince of Wales in rotogravures. He tips his hat, remarks upon the young lady’s charms, and invites her to a clean, brightly lit public place for a strawberry sundae. The flavour is immaterial; I merely use it to establish the tableau. You have seen how these parlours proliferate, and how they sparkle, with all their white porcelain and gleaming chromium, the starched white aprons worn by the clean-cut men who scoop the sweet confection into cups and bowls. Where is the mother who would not prefer to see her marriageable daughter courted by a gentleman in such a place than by a sinister-looking stranger in a low public-house?”

“As I said, while the storyline sometimes changes, the score remains the same. What does it matter whether the victim is charmed with praise from a man of evident education and good breeding, or seized by a coachman on a respectable street? Who is more invisible than a man who drives a hansom, and what vehicle less notable? The one fixed thing is the destination itself, which is not so easily changed. Your wife could not have chosen a more revealing souvenir of her adventure had she succeeded in obtaining Snipe’s fingermarks. The spoon says it all.”

“But why was she chosen? Naturally, I regard her as the most beautiful woman in London, if not the world; but a lucky man has his prejudices.”

“She is fair of hair and complexion, and slender. The type is rare in certain countries, therefore sought after. Every Arab sheikh must have at least one in his harem, or lose face.”

“I daresay most are above suspicion, even if their views on monogamy do not coincide with ours. However, the lower classes haven’t cornered the market on evil. I don’t judge a man by the colour of his skin, but by the darkness of his soul.”

“Nothing wicked, to the unpractised eye, and assuredly not in most. The odd poseur depends upon the trade’s reputation for innocent diversion, just as a cracksman may don a clerical collar to gain admission to a stately home. Honeyed words over sweet concoctions, delivered in a low voice. In your wife’s case, a clandestine departure by way of a labourer’s door into the kitchen—made easier, I should think, with a handkerchief soaked in chloroform—and from there, who can say? A voyage in the hold of a tramp steamer, a turn in an auction lot in the Orient, or delivery directly into the hands of a customer who has placed his order. The scenario is sometimes unique to the testimony of those few who have been rescued. The one detail that remains inviolate is the fact that these shining establishments are the last place any of them are seen in society.”

I sat back with my brandy, utterly drained. “We may thank the Lord—and you, of course—that my Mary is out of it.”

“Your Mary may be,” interposed a fresh speaker, “but my Mary is not. I shan’t be, until all these horrid places are shut down and the creatures that operate them are behind bars.”

We rose at Mary’s sudden appearance, in a grey frock more in keeping in bright sunshine than her evening dress. Her expression, however, was as troubled as before.

I said, “The matter is in the hands of the police. They will find the place where you made your escape, and handle the rest. Your statement in court will convict Snipe. I would spare you it, but it’s necessary. After that you’ll be out of it and in a position to forget the whole sordid affair.”

“I shan’t ever. What of the poor girls who weren’t so lucky? Do you think I can ever put them from my mind, knowing what I know? Mr. Holmes told me everything in the cab on the way home.”

“They were, yes,” broke in Holmes. “Now that she’s a veteran, she has every right not to be kept in the dark. To begin with, the police will, in all likelihood, once they find Snipe’s parlour, find it deserted. He may be dense enough to pinch a pewter spoon from his employers, thinking it sterling, but self-preservation is instinctive with vermin. A few gallons of cherry-vanilla swirl for the next Orphans’ Fund gala will be the sum total of Scotland Yard’s best efforts.”

“I never accept absolutes when they are applied to me. What Gregson and Lestrade will surely overlook once they identify the place, Sherlock Holmes certainly will not.”

VIII.
A Woman’s Will

Scarcely had Holmes made his declaration of war when someone rang at the door. Upon the step stood a stolid oak of a man in the helmet and caped uniform of the Metropolitan Police, sporting regimental whiskers magnificent enough for a general of the Raj—and, I noted, a purple bruise upon one stony cheek. Mary’s reaction, when she joined me, confirmed what I suspected, that here was the fellow who had rescued her from her headlong dash down the street, and had gotten a smiting for his trouble.

“Good afternoon, Officer,” said she. “You should put a steak on that eye.”

“Too late, missus. I’ve got a fair riding from my fellows for coming off second best in a bout with a lady.” He chortled. “I trust you’ve recovered?”

Holmes, impatient as usual, interrupted this cordial exchange. “What have you for me, Holcomb?”

The constable, who had removed his helmet for Mary, clapped it back on. “Three possibilities, Mr. Holmes, within the lady’s running distance in the time she estimated she was at it.” Producing a notebook from under his cape, he rattled off three addresses. “These places multiply like rats, I’m grieved to report.”

“We shan’t paint them all the same shade of black. The worst you can expect from most is an unsettled stomach. Let us concentrate on the one that’s closed its doors.”

“That’s just the thing, sir. They was all shut up tight as a lady’s”—he paused, blushing in Mary’s presence—“that is to say, as the Bank of England on Sunday.”

“Hum. They must all have learnt their methods of communication by way of the Newgate telegraph. Well, there’s no law against closing early, and two of the parlours may even be legitimate, hoping to avoid notoriety. We must visit them all.” He thanked the man and shut the door in the middle of his farewell. “We’ll stop in Baker Street on the way and put Lysander P. Gristle back in mothballs.”

“I spent a season in a music hall in Chelsea, carrying a spear under the name.”

I excused myself, to return from the bedroom moments later with my service revolver in one pocket and a handful of extra cartridges in another. To my astonishment, Mary stood in the entrance hall, dressed for the street in a becoming hat and woolen wrap over her grey dress, parasol in hand.

“If I may interpose,” said Holmes, interposing. “It was my suggestion. In her haste, Mrs. Watson may have forgotten something she saw that would help us pinpoint the scene of the crime. What the seers are conceited to call the sixth sense is often just a matter of jostling the memory.”

“Your argument is with me,” said Mary. “Mr. Holmes has taken responsibility for a decision I made upon my own. If I don’t accompany you, I shall spend the rest of my life asking myself, ‘Is this the place?’ whenever I pass an ice-cream parlour. I shan’t be able to look at a sorbet without shuddering. And I may be in a position to help.”

“It’s difficult enough to defend ourselves in times of danger. Will you have one of us take a bullet for fear of what may happen to you?”

“Have I lived in this wicked city all these years and learnt nothing? I’m anything but unarmed.”

In demonstration, she drew the pin from her hat, a wicked-looking six inches of razor-pointed steel with a pearl button, replaced it, and raised her parasol. I’d never noticed before how much the end of it resembled a fencer’s foil. She executed a neat flourish, slicing the air with a swish and finishing with it demurely resting upon her shoulder, her small hand gripping it near the carved ivory crook. A watch appended to a gold chain swung from the point.

In all my years of association with Sherlock Holmes, this was the only time I can recall when he absolutely roared with laughter.

I marshalled all my arguments, only to relinquish them with a heavy sigh. “Very well. It’s a poor soldier who knows not when to retreat from the field.”

She smiled at Holmes. “My apologies. Until this moment I never realised John’s value to you.”

IX.
A Triple Scoop of Detection

We stopped at 221B just long enough for Holmes to change. He emerged carrying a heavy-knobbed stick and, no doubt, his own revolver under his frock coat. The driver (once Mary had scrutinised him and declared him “not Snipe”), took us at a canter to the first address on our list.

I had never before visited one of those establishments that had recently sprung up throughout London like wildflowers, and knew nothing of what to expect; based upon Holmes’s sinister account I envisioned a cross between a low tavern and a pub of questionable reputation.

What I found resembled H.G. Wells’s vision of a foreign future: white, dazzling, and spotless, lit brightly through large, polished windows, with shining chromed steel trim. From the pressed-tin ceiling to the ornate taps behind the counter, fashioned into shapes like elephants’ heads and the curving necks of swans, there wasn’t a splinter of wood in sight. The tables were glass circles the size of bicycle wheels, supported by spindles of wrought iron matching the frames of the chairs, bent into curlicues. It all belonged to the next century, or yet the next.

After speaking with the constable on the scene, Holmes approached the proprietor, a nervous-looking man of forty or so named Osbert, with ruddy cheeks, pale hair, and wrists thickened by hour upon hour of scooping hardened ice cream from zinc-lined sinks into receptacles of china and glass. He’d been roused from a back room to reopen his doors for the purpose of official enquiry.

“The police will confirm that nothing suspicious goes on here,” he said. “I know of the vipers who befoul this honest business, and I wish you every success in rooting them out. When I learned they’d struck again, I gave all my customers their money back and closed up to spare them an unpleasant encounter with the authorities.”

“A stranger who poked his head in the door and said, ‘You’d best fold your tent before the peelers get here. The white slavers was at it just now.’”

He pursed his lips. “A ruffian, built thick and smelling so strongly of gin and onions the stench reached me behind the counter. His face was scarred from pox and he wore the clothes of a cab driver, high hat and all, but shabby in the extreme.”

Holmes looked at Mary, who nodded with certainty. He excused himself and drew near enough to us to whisper. “Did anything strike you outside as familiar?”

“Quite so. It’s possible this fellow wishes to throw Snipe on the sword to spare himself, but he must know the man would squeak on him when captured. We shall rule him out for now.”

We bade the man good day, thanked the constable for his cooperation, and walked to the next address, round the corner and only a few squares away.

I said, “I fail to see how competing enterprises can survive in such close proximity.”

“And yet show me a neighbourhood that doesn’t boast at least three tobacco shops. Sugar and milk are habits nearly as compelling as Cavendish.”

Mary tightened her grip on my arm. “If I ever grow stout, you’ll know it was on marrow and potatoes, and not on sweets. Today has cured me.”

The second parlour was much the same as the first, except that in place of a man in uniform we found Inspectors Gregson and Lestrade in charge. The latter, more bull terrier than mastiff, was every bit as aggressive as his colleague. “We’ve got the blighter,” he rapped.

I bridled. “You seemed little enough interested in pursuing it when I brought it to you.”

“It wasn’t the same thing then, was it? If the Yard was to start barging in on lovers’ quarrels, there’d never be an end to it.”

Mary turned my way. “Please forgive me. I thought you exaggerated when you told me of these men.”

“Thank you kindly, madam.” Gregson lifted his hat. “If I was to arrest a man entirely on appearances, I should not hesitate to clap the owner in irons. However, his piteous attempts at evasion quite settle the matter. Lestrade’s in agreement.”

“If I’m not out of order.” The other was plainly seething. There was no love lost between these two comrades in arms.

“To begin with, he pretended not to have any English at all, but there’s the bill of fare on the chalkboard, plain as the Queen’s.”

“Lestrade asked him point blank. One thing he can manage is to make himself understood. We tripped the bounder up in his own words. He’s cook, bottle-washer, and the gent that sweeps the floors.”

“Italian, which made him suspicious right off. They’re all of them the same, these Mediterraneans, thick as chowder. He shook his head and said, ‘No, no, no’ when asked if he had anyone with him in the business.”

“I see. Lestrade spoke slowly and loudly, which as we all know transcends all tongues, and interpreted the response as an answer to his question. As to his ethnicity as evidence for conviction, we must consult with Plutarch and Garibaldi before we lay it before the bench. May I speak with him?”

Gregson looked at Lestrade, who shrugged. “He’s in back with a constable, though what good it will do you I can’t say.”

Holmes asked to be alone with the man, to which Mary and I agreed, although we were able to watch the interrogation through a circular window in the swinging door leading to a storage room. There among the sacks, jars, and cartons, he drew a chair so close to where the proprietor sat that their knees almost touched, with yet another stalwart in blue standing by wearing an expression of determined comprehension. Dumb show that it was for us, the discussion was clearly no more within the officer’s grasp.

The man under guard was youthful in appearance, with black hair cut close to the crown, a long, sallow face, and modest moustaches by the standards of his people. He wore an immaculate white smock and a military stripe on his trousers. That the pair were conversing in Italian seemed obvious by the way both men waved their arms energetically while speaking; the Romans are a demonstrative race. The fellow being interrogated shook his head violently to some questions, nodded animatedly to others, listened with a thoughtful mien when he was silent, and, when Holmes leaned closer and appeared to whisper in his ear, responded with a show of gravity. Presently Holmes shook his hand and returned to the main room.

“His name is Antonio Valardi,” he reported. “He came here from Genoa when he was fourteen years old, after his parents perished in a diphtheria epidemic, and saved his labourer’s wages for ten years until he had enough money to lease this space and purchase equipment and supplies. He hopes to make enough to bring all his cousins here from Italy, and knows nothing of the white slave trade.”

“He said also that he employs a boy part-time to sweep up and write the bill of fare on the chalkboard. When you asked him if he had anyone with him in the business, he shook his head and said ‘no’ because he didn’t understand the question.”

“It’s easy enough to confirm or deny. He expects his boy to report to work any moment.”

“How can anyone live in London ten years and not pick up a word of English?” barked Lestrade.

“The Italian Quarter is an insular society. Many have lived their entire lives there communicating entirely in their native dialect.”

“I have no doubt you will, if you employ your usual methods. However, you will be helping the true criminal to escape justice. He has a good memory for phonetics. When I whispered the phrase ‘fold your tent’ in his ear, he told me that’s exactly what the stranger said.”

“The one the constables who visited the two other parlours will tell you about, who warned the proprietor to close up shop for his own good. You’ll find he answers to the name of Snipe.”

“He does, does he?” Gregson said. “What’s this ‘fold your tent’ business, I should like to know?”

“‘Let us fold our tents and steal away.’ It’s an Arab saying, not well known in Britain. Of course it made no sense to Signor Valardi, but it was said with such urgency he thought closing up the better part of valour. But here, if I’m not mistaken, is the lad who will confirm at least part of his story.”

Outside the plated-glass entrance stood a boy of sixteen or seventeen, whose surprise at finding the door locked at that hour was evident on his face. On his way out, Holmes held it open for him, and we left the inspectors blaming each other in strident tones.

Our visit to the third and last parlour is swiftly summarised. The manager was a lady of genteel manners who operated the establishment for her absentee employer, a Welsh entrepreneur well known to the press, and a confidant of the Prince of Wales. She told the same story as the others, and nothing about the neighbourhood awakened anything in Mary’s memory.

“Perhaps the first constable underestimated the length of her flight,” I suggested. “The search must be widened.”

Holmes’s face was dark. “I am the one who is guilty of underestimation. I misjudged the cunning of our enemy. We have already met Snipe this day.”

X.
Snipe’s Flight

We fairly leapt aboard the first four-wheeler that stopped, Holmes first, I gripping Mary’s wrist, effectively pulling her over the stirrup-step.

“A sovereign to you if you can get us there in five minutes,” he called out to the driver.

As we lurched forwards, flung back into our seats, Holmes fetched the floor a sharp blow with the ferrule of his stick. “I am a dunderpate, Watsons, worse than Lestrade and Gregson rolled into one arrogant fool! I count myself clever for taking in the doctor with a simple disguise and then fail to detect one far more obvious.”

“What do you mean?” I was far at sea, for the address he’d given the driver belonged to the first parlour we’d been to.

“Of course, I did not meet Snipe in his fancy dress, but I should have marked the signs in his alter ego. I attributed the redness in his cheeks to high emotion, or possibly accelerated circulation, a medical condition, when I should have taken note of his overall fairness and the likelihood of an allergic reaction to greasepaint.”

“Osbert, the ice cream man?” said Mary. “Snipe in disguise? Impossible!”

“That was no disguise; not in the physical sense of the term. There is no Snipe.”

“He is a wig, putty, and paint, with a dash of gin and onion to taste: an old country recipe for impersonation. I ought to have known from Mrs. Watson’s description, echoed by Osbert, that the man is a caricature out of Dickens, too broad for truth.”

“Letter perfect. Salt in the wound, and well earned. Of course she would not provide me with the picture of the real man, lest he return for retribution. Pray, Watson, write this one up. No man can live up to the paragon you’ve made me out to be.”

He lit a cigarette, took two nervous puffs, and threw it outside. “Beekeeping in the South Downs looks better and better. To err this way or that would cost but the lives of two or three hundred Apidae, which regenerate by the month.”

I squeezed Mary’s hand, communicating to her the futility of any attempt to draw Holmes out of his characteristic bouts of melancholy.

Finally—within the requisite five minutes, but hours in the imagination—we arrived at our destination. Holmes tossed the driver his disk of gold whilst the coach was still rocking on its springs, and was at the door of the parlour before I could help my wife down to the pavement.

The constable who had greeted us before let us in. When Holmes demanded the whereabouts of Osbert, he said, “Why, he’s in back, sir. When I told him the inspectors will want to ask him some questions, he went in to settle his nerves with a pot of tea. There it goes now.”

The kettle could be heard whistling from the other side of the door behind the counter. Holmes raced that way with Mary and me close upon his heels.

It was a plain storage room much like the one at Valardi’s, but with a coal stove in one corner, atop which the kettle was pouring steam towards the ceiling. No one was inside. As I removed the noisy thing from the stove, Holmes snatched up a shaggy wig from a pile of soiled clothing, padded ticking, and a disheveled tall hat on the floor. Mary took one look and nodded.

“Here is the rest of him,” said Holmes, indicating a stained rag on a table with a shaving mirror propped upon it surrounded by sundry jars and bottles. “Cold cream to strip off the makeup, and peppermints to cover the spirits and onions that finished the disguise. I’ll wager a quid our man Osbert trod the boards at one time or another.”

He held a palm above the stovetop. “Ten minutes at least to bring the pot to a boil at this temperature. Ten hours would not be less convenient to us.” He opened a door that looked into an alley behind the building.

“He seemed quite harmless,” suggested the constable, who had followed us into the room. “I overheard you say it yourself.”

“So I did. You are not the blunderer.” He turned towards Mary. “I failed you. Believe me when I say that whatever disappointment you feel about my performance I share tenfold.”

She shook her head. “You have been instrumental in foiling a foul business. Osbert, or Snipe, can hardly continue his activities while he is in hiding.”

“At all events,” said I, “it would take much time and money to create another establishment such as this. You must consider this a victory, measured in the number of women you have saved potentially from his clutches.”

“Osbert was a flea on the back of the hyena, Watson, and a trained one at that. There are others. I shall not rest until I make an example of him that will shatter their complacency.”

“Snipe, of course, alarmed his legitimate competitors in order to stir up dust to cover his tracks. Don’t you think he’d choose his language towards the same purpose? Anyone casually acquainted with The Thousand and One Nights knows the phrase. Our lecherous sheikh is a comforting image, lulling us into the belief that no fellow countryman would ever stoop to manipulate a machine so vile, yet the brothels are always recruiting, and the poorhouses are never in short supply of broken women. We look at Snipe and think, ‘There’s a fellow worthy of his work,’ and look right past an Osbert because of his tidy appearance. Our culprit may have shared a box with the Anstruthers, and gone backstage to shake Irving’s hand and bow over Terry’s.”

He smiled for the first time since we’d left the third ice-cream parlour. “Then Mr. X must be on his guard, for we are a formidable force.”

XI.
The Society of the Spoon

I must now ask the reader to consider that four months passed after my wife’s adventure, with little but the usual to occupy our time. When our friends returned from Scotland, curious about the reason for our abandonment of them on theatre night and my mysterious wire, we explained that I had been called away to attend to a patient, and Mary had stayed home with a sudden headache. Upon returning home and finding no sign of her, I’d acted without stopping to consider that she had gone to a chemist’s for powders. They were an amiable couple, who accepted our apologies for neglecting to cancel, and there seemed no point in troubling them with the truth.

“I was certain it was something of that nature,” said Anstruther. “Henrietta fretted, but we had an early train, and little enough time as it was to rest before our journey.”

Throughout this period I saw almost nothing of Holmes. He was some ten weeks on the Continent, probing an affair of such delicacy on behalf of the state that he could not share the details even with me, and then, with nothing taking place in the criminal world to excite his attention, spent many days and nights in the reading room of the British Museum and the libraries of the city’s newspapers researching The Whole Art of Deduction, his own equivalent of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. It was grueling work, and on those few occasions when I dropped in upon him I did not stay long, marking his plain exhaustion.

Osbert the ice-cream man vanished like a drop of water on a hot stove. A likeness based upon his description appeared in all the papers, and a reward posted by The Times for information leading to his apprehension, but no one came forward with anything useful. There was no record of a man bearing that name and resembling him to be found, and it was quickly decided that Osbert was an alias as surely as Snipe. With nothing new to report (and with Gregson and Lestrade’s stern admonition not to mention the parts played by Holmes, Mary, and myself), the entire episode was soon supplanted by other items of interest.

Soon the columns were filled with the mysterious disappearance of Jane Chilton, the grown daughter of Sir James Chilton, whose textile mills in Middlesex produced uniforms for the British military. She was an heiress, and it was at first conjectured that she had been kidnapped for ransom, but when the anticipated demand failed to materialise, a darker suggestion emerged, that she had been slain for her purse and jewels and the body discarded. Grisly sensation was the specialty of the house in those days, and the illustrators found no limit of inspiration in Eugene Aram and Sweeney Todd. Given my own recent association with a vanishing-woman case, I had suspicions of my own; however, as there was no mention of her ever having been seen anywhere near an ice-cream parlour, I assigned them to personal sensitivity.

Holmes was abroad when the story reached its crescendo. It presented some arcane features I felt sure would attract his curiosity when he returned; but then Sir James received a letter in his daughter’s hand, postmarked San Francisco, informing him that she had eloped with that fixture of romantic fiction, a penniless young man Not Suitable for marriage with a woman of good breeding, and after the inevitable flurry of sentimental claptrap, the curtain descended upon this act as well.

In the middle of August, with the streets hot and fetid and a white sun nailed to a burnt-out sky, I found my friend bright-eyed and cheerful, his feet propped upon an ottoman beside an open window and holding something close to his face. With a start I recognised it as the silver-plated teaspoon Mary had torn from the waistcoat pocket of the man she’d known as Snipe.

“Not my favourite trophy by any means, in view of the unsatisfactory conclusion,” he said. “Why it should fascinate me enough to interrupt my work in my magnum opus has posed a vexation until this very hour. Exercise your faculties, Watson. What do you surmise is the reason?”

“Dissatisfaction, as you indicated. To you an unsolved case is worse than a failed chemical experiment.”

“The reasoning is sound, but the explanation is inapplicable. I never dwell on past mistakes, only seek not to repeat them. Does nothing else occur to you?”

I sat down opposite him, defeated. “You’ve remarked before upon my matchless talent for grasping the obvious. I’ve fired my one round.”

“I was a prize ass to accuse you of a crime I’ve committed myself. When the spoon first came to light, we both assumed that Snipe had stolen it out of old habit. At that time we thought him to be a thief who had expanded his operation—“changed his lay,” as the Americans say—to embrace abduction. Now that we know he owned the establishment to which the spoon undoubtedly belonged, the theory is groundless. Why, then, did he have it on his person?”

“Possibly. Criminals are often superstitious. It’s a hazardous vocation, after all. But let us widen our loop and consider other solutions. Gogol tells us the Zaporozhye Cossacks carried their dining utensils on their belts wherever they went, but there was nothing remotely Eurasian about Osbert’s features. Judging by the lice in Snipe’s wig, he wasn’t overly fastidious, so we can eliminate any phobias about filth.”

He pointed the spoon at me, like a conductor his baton. “Do you remember something I said about fraternal organisations? I thought it profound at the time.”

I produced the notebook I am seldom without. In time it will join its hundreds of ancestors in the box I keep at my bank for the edification of future generations. I paged back four months, scanning my personal shorthand. “Of Snipe, you said, ‘He is a white slaver, and this, like the Freemason’s apron, is the symbol of his order.’”

“Hum. I remembered it as more lyrical. I should have listened more closely to myself in any case, because I believe I had hit upon the truth. In the absence of a more compelling argument, I consider this to be Snipe’s bona fides, providing access to others in his racket. These types haggle and trade amongst themselves, bartering in human chattel, and they are constantly on the lookout for infiltrators. A tangible badge of office saves paragraphs of challenge and response.”

“All the more reason to keep it secret. And should a suspicious constable waylay and search you, a cheap utensil would hardly be cause for arrest. For want of a better name, let us call this baleful brotherhood the Society of the Spoon, and put the hypothesis to the test.”

XII.
The Leopards Change Their Spots

I shook my head. “Not this time. If you won’t heed my advice about the danger, consider that having a woman along would tip our hand.”

“Will you dress up as gypsies, with rings in your ears and bandannas wrapped round your heads?”

“Holmes says no, as regards me. My face is not as well known as his, thanks to the illustrators at The Strand, so no disguise is necessary in my case. I think also he sought to spare my feelings, as there is more to carrying off a role than fancy dress and a false nose.”

“I have never known him to give any thought to your feelings at all.” Her expression softened. “I withdraw that remark. I saw quite a different side of him last spring. But surely you’re dressed too well to masquerade as a brigand.”

She excused herself, to return from the pantry a minute later, dragging a bulky burlap sack. “Here are some of your old clothes I’ve been saving for charity. See what suits your pretense.”

I retired to the bedroom, where I found the favourite pullover I’d missed for weeks. There was plenty of wear left in it in spite of the tiny balls of wool that had erupted upon its surface, but it was too heavy for the season. After clucking my tongue over some other unpleasant revelations (women are born for subterfuge), I selected a seersucker suit, a pair of brogans worn round at the heels, and a bowler beyond blacking. The crowning touch was a cravat a patient had given me one Christmas, with a Balinese dancer hand-painted on it in bright colours. Standing before the glass, I saw a shady character staring back, ready to pick my pocket or offer to sell me the Tower. I stepped back into the parlour and asked how I looked.

“Like something I’d expect to see at the races. Whatever possessed you to buy that suit in the first place?”

“You were away visiting a sick friend, and it seemed a bargain at the time.”

At the door she kissed me with particular affection and admonished me to be careful. I lowered one eyelid and patted the revolver in my pocket.

On this particular clandestine occasion, I had no trouble recognising Holmes when we met in his sitting room. Although a light dusting of freckles and a red wig altered his appearance enough to throw off the casual observer, I was surprised to see that he looked less shabby than I, in broad chalk stripes and a crushable hat with a feather in the band. He took one look at me, shook his head, and relieved me of my cravat.

“Fasten your collar and go without,” he said. “These men are low, not stupid.”

“Save your apologies, old fellow. Why should the salt of the earth develop a talent for dissembling?”

“Our quarry is doubly suspicious than the ordinary culprit, and double more so since Snipe’s close call. They’ll be looking for tricks of theatrical magic, whilst the gay attire will throw them off the scent after the fashion of Poe’s purloined letter. In any wise, I am counting upon that. This affair is heavy enough with false whiskers and cobbler’s wax as it is.”

Osbert’s parlour, we knew, had been padlocked by order of the superintendent of Scotland Yard. We ruled out the other places we’d visited, first because we’d have been recognised, second because we’d eliminated their personnel as suspects. Holmes, I was not surprised to learn, had acquired an encyclopedic knowledge of all the similar establishments in the city, but when we introduced ourselves to the people in charge—as the Messrs. Sherrinford and Sacker—they regarded with open bewilderment the spoon he produced from his pocket.

One, a burly Irishman, accused us of pinching it from his parlour and demanded its return. When Holmes refused, he tried to snatch it from his hand, much to his immediate regret, as presently we left him lying on the floor upon his back, no doubt wondering how he came to be in that position. In truth, it had all happened so fast I all but missed it, and on our way out I said, “Baritsu?”

“A refined version, which I picked up in Tibet. Kung fu is the name. It reaches back to the Zhou Dynasty, a thousand years before Christ.”

We had no success in the other half-dozen places we went to, and returned to Baker Street, where I removed my broken-down brogans and massaged my aching feet.

Holmes poured whisky. “I feared this. The Osbert business attracted too much attention for comfort, driving the other slavers to some other cover. There’s an argument to be made in favour of allowing one or two known dens of iniquity to remain open, so that justice always has a place to fish.”

“Perhaps the flesh pedlars were sufficiently frightened to abandon the practice entirely.”

“Good old Watson. If I could distill and bottle your optimism like these spirits, I’d be as rich as Gladstone.”

I finished my drink and left him in a brown study. I was concerned for him. He was like a horse with the bit in its teeth and no place to gallop, and I knew all too well where that might lead. It was ironic, then, that the most foul of all the foes we’d ever opposed should be the one to rescue him from the lure of the needle.

XIII.
The Chilton Affair

We were experiencing one of the hottest summers in memory, and the English being what they were, I was soon busy treating patients for sunburn and heat exhaustion, prescribing cocoa butter, salt tablets, and cold compresses to wretches more accustomed to overcast skies and declining mercury than sunshine and eighty-degree temperatures. Reverse the situation and imagine South Sea Islanders building snowmen in a freak blizzard, and you may have a fair picture of the epidemic of temporary insanity. As a result, it was a fortnight before I saw or heard anything of Holmes. When I did, it was he who initiated contact.

The telegram arrived as I was explaining to a sufferer that an umbrella was quite as necessary in an August such as we were having as in rainy November. He left, muttering something about a “dashed parasol,” and I slit open the envelope.

WATSON

WHAT SAY YOU TO A SPOONFUL OF ADVENTURE

HOLMES

“Really, John,” said Dr. Anstruther, when I stopped at his office on my way to Baker Street. “I’m up to my knees as it is in patients scarlet as red Indians. I suppose you’re off on another frolic with your friend the bloodhound. You’re the only good physician I know who finds time for a hobby.”

“All the more reason to bless my good fortune to have such a generous colleague.”

I hastened away before he could protest further. As opaque as I find things Holmes regards as elementary, “a spoonful of adventure” to me meant only one thing.

My friend met me at the street door. He was dressed for the country, in his ear-flapped cap and tweeds, but waved off my reservations about my city dress with impatience. “Our client won’t issue you any demerits. He’s misplaced his daughter, and has engaged us to secure her return.”

I accompanied him to Baker Street station, where we caught the four o’clock train north. No sooner had the conductor announced the stops than I said, “Middlesex! It’s Jane Chilton then.”

I shall treasure forever the look of astonished admiration that appeared upon his face. However, lacking his flair for theatre, I told him all, summarising the newspaper accounts of the search for the textile heiress. Disapproval displaced surprise.

“A chance strike. Five counties were announced, each with a bevy of country homes with grown daughters in residence.”

But I was too intrigued to be put off by his chiding. “The investigation was closed when Sir James Chilton received a letter telling him of her runaway marriage. He swore it was written in her hand.”

“He is no graphologist; and my own William Thackeray has taken in experts. One dabbles, Watson,” he said with a smile. “I had a sabbatical with a book forgery ring in Manchester. I may boast, but given the proper materials I could dash off a Shakespeare First Folio that would put me up comfortably in Sussex for the rest of my days, quietly tending to my bees.”

It was the second time in the process of this case he’d mentioned beekeeping and the Downs. In all the years of our association, I never knew when he was having me on.

He returned to the subject. “Sir James is no one’s fool, or he should not have beaten out dozens of competitors for his contract with Whitehall. He engaged an American private enquiry agent to investigate the source of the letter posted in San Francisco. The man, whose reputation even I am aware of, could find no trace of the sender. Until convinced otherwise, I suspect some colleague of Osbert’s, if not the man himself, had an accomplice in California forge the letter. How he obtained a sample of her script may prove the solution to the affair.”

“Still, the gulf between the girl’s vanishing and the white slave trade is a long leap.”

“I concur. But when a knot reveals the end of the rope, one pulls upon it, on the off chance it’s the authentic Gordian.”

After this pronouncement he changed the course of the conversation, drawing upon his pipe and directing my attention to some anomalies in the compositions of Sarasate.

We were met at the station by a grey-faced man with impressive white side whiskers, who wrung Holmes’s hand, took mine in a grip less fervent, and introduced himself as James Harvey Chilton, Bart., founder of Chilton Mills and father of Jane. Beside him stood a young man, muscular but not bulky, in a sporty suit of a decidedly American cut with a pearl stickpin in his cravat and a tan bowler—derby, as it was called on that side of the pond—and displaying a broad handsome face with a determined chin. His slim hand mangled my knuckles in a steely grip.

“This gentleman is the enquiry agent I wrote you about,” said Sir James. “He was kind enough to cross the ocean at my request to consult with you.”

“How do you do?” said the stranger, in a pleasant, middle-register voice devoid of the broad, nasal tones I associated with American speech. “Nicholas Carter, at your service. Please call me Nick.”

XIV.
Mr. Nick Carter

Sir James’s carriage conveyed us all to Chilton Hall, a sprawling manor of red and yellow brick laid in chessboard fashion in the midst of rolling green country, dotted with thatched tenant farmhouses and the inevitable sheep. Once ensconced in the library, surrounded by volumes shelved from the floor to the ceiling sixteen feet above, we sat in deep leather chairs and made free with the cigars offered by our host.

“I’m restless, I admit,” said Nick Carter, drawing with pleasure upon a dark Havana. “One may be absent from Paris for two or three years, and from London almost a lifetime, and find little changed on his return. But in a few months, New York City will have reinvented itself beyond recognition.”

“I can’t decide whether you’re casting aspersions or singing the praises of any of those places.” I was somewhat nettled by his ease of manner in what must have been intimidating surroundings for most of his countrymen.

“Neither, John; I hope I can call you John? We’re informal in the States. It comes from twice sending you Brits packing bag and baggage back to Old Blighty.”

“Gentlemen, we’ve drawn our lines in the sand. For myself, I envision a future in which the ghosts of our two Georges, Hanover and Washington, address each other as equals, and unite in the commonality of our shared language.”

“I’m swell with that.” Having delivered this puzzling declaration, Carter unstopped a grin of dazzling American workmanship and sincere good fellowship. “You must make allowances, John.” He hesitated. “John, eh?”

“Where I come from, we test a man, probing for weakness. A thin skin often means a weak nature; which is nothing you want to take with you into a game of stickball where winner takes all.”

Holmes cleared his throat. “I can attest that while Watson may swing at a bad pitch, he can hit a fast ball over the fence.”

Silence ensued; broken by my own hearty laugh. “I’ve no earthly idea what a curve is, but show me one and I assure you I’ll hit it.”

“How much of what this fellow says he can do can he do?” Carter asked Holmes.

“Watson never boasts, idly or otherwise. I trust him with my life, which he has returned to me upon several occasions.”

Our host, who had been listening without interrupting, coughed rumblingly. “Gentlemen. Fascinating as this game is, must I remind you that my daughter may be in great peril?”

“None of us has forgotten that for a moment,” said Holmes. “As Mr. Carter said, it’s as important to familiarise oneself with a new partner as with a tool of recent purchase. Suppose you recount to us in your own words the circumstances of her vanishing.”

“And who else’s words might I use?” the baronet put in testily. But he proceeded without further delay with a succinct report. The last time he saw Lady Jane was on her way out the door for a shopping excursion in Piccadilly. Her father had arranged to have her presented at Court, and she was determined to find the perfect ensemble to wear for the occasion. She had brought along Emma, her lady’s maid, to avoid the impropriety of venturing out into the streets unescorted. In a dress shop with a seal announcing its service to the British royalty, the girl selected a frock and left Emma to wait whilst she tried it on in a dressing room.

She never emerged. When Emma investigated, the room was empty. There was no other door than the one leading into it from the shop, and that entrance was in plain view from where the maid had stood waiting.

“Of course. She has time on her hands, as I’m sure you can imagine.” Sir James rang for the butler, who appeared presently, bowed, and went off to fetch the maid.

Moments later we were joined by a plain-looking woman in livery, who curtseyed and faced her interrogators with hands folded at her waist.

Holmes deferred to the visitor from abroad, who asked her if she’d kept her eyes on the dressing-room door the whole time Lady Jane was gone.

A grim smile came to the servant’s lips. “Your pardon, sir, but from your speech I take it you’re new to some of our customs, including ladies’ clothing. Twenty minutes or more is not unusual.”

“I called out to my lady to ask if she needed assistance. When there was no reply I knocked at the door. She still said nothing, and that was when I asked the shop girl to let me in.”

Holmes assumed the role of questioner. “You remained standing for thirty minutes and never once looked away from the door.”

“Yes, sir. I take my duties seriously. The city can be dangerous. Another pair of eyes is useful.”

“And yet a dress shop would seem to be a sanctuary of sorts; unless you saw something suspicious? A sinister-looking clerk or customer, or an unorthodox way of conducting business?”

“Stuff and nonsense!” said I, for I could take no more. “Women don’t disappear from locked rooms.”

Holmes said, “You must pardon Dr. Watson for his customary military directness. However, I concur. You were distracted by something: an attractive pair of gloves, perhaps, or a lace bodice on a form. No one can fault you for that. Such establishments offer the same temptations as a display of new sporting arms to a gentleman.”

Carter crushed out his cigar in a silver tray. “You’re sure the shop girl let you into the dressing room? You didn’t take the key from her and do it yourself?”

Holmes took up the chase. “The girl told you it was locked from inside, did she not?”

It was then that the two detectives went after her hammer and tongs. I felt almost sorry for the girl as, bit by bit, she crumbled, finally admitting that the shop employee had offered to show her a bolt of calico freshly imported from America stored in the back room. The maid had never seen the material and was curious to see and feel it. She was thus engaged for at least three minutes with no one to watch the dressing-room door. At last she blurted out an apology, broken by sobs.

“I didn’t mean to lie, really I didn’t. I was afraid I’d be blamed for what happened.”

“That’s your mistress’s responsibility, not mine. I shall instruct Hubbard to reassign you to the cleaning staff until further notice.”

“One more question, Emma,” said Holmes. “Can you describe the shop girl who showed you the bolt of fabric and opened the door of the dressing room for you?”

“I can, sir. She was young, black-haired, and pretty. She said her name was Estrella. I remembered it because it’s unusual. Or perhaps not, where she comes from.”

XV.
The Foreign Quarter

“Holmes!” I exclaimed, once the maid had been dismissed from the room. “Do you suppose it’s coincidence?”

“The phenomenon exists; until its own evidence piles up against it. Estrella is the Spanish for ‘star.’ Can there be three young women of Spanish descent named for ‘heaven,’ ‘glory,’ and ‘star’ in the same case? We may proceed as if the answer is no, until we have gathered all the facts.”

Nick Carter exhibited a bemused smile. “Please take pity on a traveller three thousand miles from home. I’m out of my element and three steps behind.”

Holmes told him of our experience with the white slave trade, from Mary’s crisis through Osbert/Snipe’s flight. Sir James interrupted but twice, saying, “Good Lord!” both times. Carter said nothing until after the conclusion of the narrative.

“Yes, I’d say that when we find Estrella, we’ll find Gloriana, Celeste, and Paraiso all in one package.”

“The police questioned the shop girl, but they were inclined to believe her story,” said Sir James. “When they went back for another interview in light of recent events, they were informed she’d resigned. No one there seems to have known where she went or even where she resides.”

“She won’t be there in any event,” Holmes said. “We’ve learned two things, thanks to Emma: Our Hispanic siren is still in the business, and Jane Chilton has become ensnared in it.”

“Three things,” I corrected. “If Gloriana is involved, Osbert cannot be far behind.”

Carter shook his head. “Guesswork. It’s just as possible she’s latched on to a new partner, or—”

“—the apprentice has become the master,” finished Holmes. “I approve of the way you reason. It’s always a mistake to theorise—”

I declared myself hors de combat from this exchange. I had neither the ammunition nor the high ground.

“I could go underground,” Carter suggested. “I’ve read of your talent for disguise, Sherlock, but I’m a fair hand with makeup myself, and I have the advantage of being unknown here. All I need is to appear as one who’s come down in the world, and pound the bricks, picking up this and that.”

“I don’t doubt your abilities, even if all your own published exploits are autobiographical.” Holmes smiled. “I have a standing order with an American bookseller for anything written on a criminal subject. However, what you suggest can take weeks, and time is critical. Also, as I said to Watson, the mere thought of crowding another bit of Grand Guignol into this case weighs heavily upon my patience. Have you that letter from San Francisco, Sir James?”

“The police have that. They were more interested in the postmark than the contents, once read.”

“They run true to form. Any accomplice, or just someone who will perform a simple act for money, can take delivery of a parcel in America, remove the contents, and mail them to England. It’s far more difficult to reproduce a government seal that would fool even a child.”

He produced his pocket lens and, standing by the window to study the letter in the sunlight, spent five minutes examining it. “No penman of my acquaintance did this. You’ll pardon me for not taking your word at face value.”

“I’ve an eye for detail, Mr. Holmes. I started my business with a needle and thread.”

“I believe you. There’s nothing new about forcing a captive to write a letter and address an envelope.” He offered the sheet to Carter, who declined with a smile. I disliked him a little less for that demonstration of faith.

“An advertisement?” I brightened. His subterfuges by way of the agony columns had never failed to turn up something useful.

“It’s far less expensive than a costume, and reaches more people than walking about London with a sandwich board. What do you think, Carter?”

There was, I learned, a newspaper district in our city outside Fleet Street. Two floors of an ancient and crumbling building near Saffron Hill, home of the foreign quarter, sheltered a string of journals belonging to one concern, with a steam-press in the basement that ran day and night, turning out the news of the day in Italian, French, Spanish, German, and several of the Scandinavian dialects, each journal having its own staff fluent in the language of its particular subscribers.

The workers were not paid as well as their colleagues to the west; an easy deduction, based on the variety of odours belonging to packed-in luncheons representing all the nationalities served by the company. Flaking black paint on pebbled glass identified the door belonging to La Lengua, the publication that circulated among the Spanish-speaking residents of London.

Before our visit, Holmes and Carter—who, if anything, had more of the language than the polyglot Holmes (“My tutors were my neighbours in old Mexico, Texas, Los Angeles, and Spanish Harlem,” he explained)—had bent their heads over their project for an hour. I here translate the text into English:

DESIRED; Spanish-speaking female companion for La Dona Cristina, twenty-year-old daughter of the Comte Arturo de el Algarve, grandee, custodian of 10,000 hectares in southern Spain, during her tour of Britain.

“A phantom,” said Carter. “Like the count himself. I came across him in a dime novel.”

“The New World’s answer to the yellowback,” Holmes furnished before I could enquire. “The name does resound.”

Carter shook his head. “That brand of literature is in the stalls about as long as fresh fruit, and once read is thrown in the trash. There’s never a second printing. It’s a small risk. We’ve only to decide how to handle the response if there is one.”

Holmes placed a comradely hand upon the shoulder of the detective from America. “How is your Latin?”

“Rusty, compared to my Spanish,” said he, appearing to understand instantly. “Luckily, I never travel without my Blackstone.”

XVI.
Oliver Nicholas, Esq.

Directly we left the newspaper office, Carter asked Holmes if he had personal acquaintance with the proprietor of a print shop. “I could look one up in a directory, but I doubt a stranger could get him to press fewer than a hundred cards in one lot.”

“I know several who are in my debt,” said Holmes. “One in particular provides the best engraving, on stock worthy of a representative of foreign nobility. You know him, Watson.”

“I even have a title,” said I, “when you let me publish it. ‘The Adventure of the Printer’s Devil.’”

A four-wheeler deposited us before an address near the Embankment, connected with an investigation whose particulars I have yet to share with the world. The building’s location, near the Houses of Parliament and the offices of most of the leading firms of solicitors in the city, gave me an inkling at last of the masquerade that Carter was planning.

Inside, amid the fearsome chattering of Linotype machines and the clunkety-clunk of a platen press, Holmes accepted the hearty handshake of Leopold Szadny, a man of dignified mien whose crisp white hair, full beard, and gold-rimmed spectacles might have marked him as a member of the House of Lords but for his ink-smeared leather apron and bizarre paper hat, fashioned by folding a sheet of broadside.

“How good to see you, my friend,” said he, in his heavy Hungarian accent. “I have been for some time meaning to bring you a pail of Mrs. Szadny’s goulash, the finest this side of Budapest.”

“I look forward to it. This isn’t a social visit, I’m afraid. You know Dr. Watson. Allow me to present Mr. Nicholas Carter, a newcomer to our shores.”

Szadny seized my hand in his powerful typesetter’s grip, then turned to Carter, whose own grasp, I could see from the printer’s reaction, was formidable despite his slender hand. “New this visit,” he added. “I’ve stuffed my belly with borju rolada at the Laughing Gypsy more times than I’ll count.”

The printer fairly squeaked with pleasure. “I celebrate my birthday there every year.”

Whereupon the pair conversed for two minutes in what I assumed to be Szadny’s native tongue. I began to suspect Carter of possessing supernatural powers.

Holmes broke up the exchange, raising his voice above the din of machinery. “Is there a quiet place we can talk?”

“This I can arrange.” Szadny reached inside the bib of his apron, drew out a brass cab-whistle suspended from a ribbon round his neck, and blew an ear-splitting blast. Instantly the press and Linotype went silent. “Tea, gentlemen,” said he to his subordinates, then led us through a door into a small office containing an oaken desk and chairs.

When Carter explained what he required, the printer beamed, opened a deep drawer, and hoisted a heavy-looking object onto his blotter. It was identical to the hand-operated press in the shop, down to the treadle, brake lever, platen, table, and flywheel with its gracefully curving spokes, all fashioned from iron; except it was only a fraction of the other’s size. It was scarcely larger than a bread tin.

“It was manufactured in Chicago, in the same building as the one outside. The American pedlar carried it round to demonstrate how the machine worked. I persuaded him to include it as part of the purchase.”

We watched as he assembled the necessary type and locked it in place. From another drawer he took a flat deal box and showed us the contents. “Swiss linen,” he said. “The finest in Europe.”

The sheet also in place, he pumped the machine’s treadle with his thumb, setting all the parts into whirling, clacking motion. When he’d finished printing, he cut the stiff sheet into ten rectangles, using a guillotine-like device, and passed one over to Carter for inspection. It read:

Oliver Nicholas, Esq.

Solicitor

Villa do Bisto, Spain

XVII.
A Thorn by Any Other Name

“It’s a good idea to work my own name into an alias,” said Carter, as our cab rolled away from the printer’s. “That way there’s no suspicious delay when someone I know calls it out unexpectedly.”

“A tribute to Oliver Wendell Holmes, a famous jurist in my country. I don’t suppose he’s a relative.”

“I’ve been asked before, but I know rather more about my French roots than any other.”

Carter tapped the pocket containing the leather case into which he’d placed all ten cards. “Best to have extras, just in case. Say, that was decent of him not to charge me a cent. What was it you did for him?”

“I prevented him from innocently reproducing a harmless-looking document that would have landed him in Reading Gaol.”

I winced still at the American’s habit of making free with my given name. “That’s up to fate. I promised Holmes I wouldn’t send it off until ten years after a certain party is deceased.”

At Holmes’s instruction, we stopped before Claridge’s, that magnificent edifice on Brook Street that had brought French splendour to London hotel life nearly a century before.

“I think it best to establish residency immediately, in a place commensurate with the quality of your stationery,” Holmes said. “It’s dear, I’m afraid. I trust Sir James isn’t niggardly when it comes to financing his menials.”

“He says I can write my own ticket. Will you send my bags round from Charing Cross station?” He pressed the necessary ransom into Holmes’s hand.

“I’m not the snob you think. I shot the rascals myself in the Florida Everglades.”

On that amiable note we parted. As we made our way to Charing Cross, Holmes lit his pipe. “Interesting fellow; but then, so are most Yankees. He puts me in mind both of the cattle herders of Texas and of that Pinkerton chap, Birdy Edwards.”

“He’s rather familiar for my taste, but I like him well enough, up to a point.”

“‘How much of what this fellow says he can do can he do,’ indeed. I might ask the same of him. It wouldn’t surprise me if those bags of his turned out to have been shot in a shop in Philadelphia, with dollars for bullets.”

“He’s the genuine coin, and no mistake. I may be no hand at stalking ferocious reptiles, but I can sniff out a charlatan with the wind at my back.”

At the station we redeemed the trunk and valise, striking in their scaly exteriors, and when we returned to the hotel were directed by the clerk to an upper-storey suite with a balcony overlooking most of Westminster. The linens were impeccable, and the rugs Persian. Holmes inspected the view, then pushed his way back inside through the heavy velvet curtains. “An inspired choice.”

“Thanks.” Nick Carter had begun to unpack. “Let’s hope the lady doesn’t insist on taking the air.”

I witnessed the transfer of item after item from bags to drawers: a crossbow, a set of tails, several pistols and revolvers, Chinese pyjamas, a knife as big as a hand axe, a collapsible silk hat, a cosh, various cravats, and a twin-barrelled fowling piece no longer than a man’s forearm. “Great Scott! Are you going on safari?”

“I was, in a way.” He worked his fingers into a brass device that turned his fist into a bludgeon. “Sir James’s cable caught up with me in Peru, just as I was set to go down the Amazon. It was blind luck I’d brushed up on both my Spanish and my Portuguese. Fate’s a funny old girl.” He flexed his fingers, then slid the contraption off his hand. “Cannibals. They say you never see them till they’re right on top of you.”

“I should keep it within reach,” I said, “especially if Osbert is in the picture. He looks meek enough, but my wife is no frail creature, and his arms held her as fast as iron bands.”

“So it is with any man who works with his hands.” Carter crushed the oval of heavy brass all out of shape in one fist. “I brought along two sets, if you’re interested,” he said to Holmes.

Smiling grimly, Holmes held out a palm, accepted the mangled weapon, and, using both hands for leverage, prised it back into its former configuration.

I took my revolver from my pocket and showed it to him. “I need my fingers to stitch up cuts and tie bandages.”

Holmes said, “Two talented writers are the best weapons in our arsenal. Should we flush our game, we’ll need a description of La Dona Cristina that no white slaver could resist.”

“Who needs words?” Carter took a cloth-wrapped parcel from a pocket of the trunk and undid the string.

Holmes and I admired the framed likeness of a comely young woman with black hair and lashes so long they cast shadows on her dusky cheeks. “Christine’s uncle was a famous Jewish sculptor. That’s where she got her colouring. Wherever I go, she goes with me.”

“I see now how you arrived so quickly at a Spanish lady,” said Holmes. “Would she not object to being used in such an enterprise?”

“Unfortunately, she’s dead. She committed suicide when her uncle objected to her courtship by a Gentile.”

“Water under the bridge. Had we married, I’d never have become a detective. She wanted me to enter the bar.”

“That explains the Blackstone.” Holmes consulted his watch. “The editor at La Lengua promised our advertisement would appear before the afternoon post, which has run by now. Watson, would you do the honours?”

I agreed to go to the post office, although none of us expected results so soon. Holmes and Carter were surprised, then, when I returned bearing an envelope with a City postmark.

Carter examined the envelope. “A woman’s hand. I’ve never known a man who could forge it convincingly.” He gave it to Holmes.

“I’ve known two. One is deceased, the other transported to Australia.” After a cursory glance, Holmes slit it open with his clasp knife. He translated the letter aloud:

Kind sir or madam,

This letter is in response to your notice seeking a female companion. I am an experienced social secretary conversant in both Spanish and English, and should like to meet with you to discuss an arrangement.

(signed)

Celeste Flores

“Either that, or she’s run out of Spanish synonyms for the firmament,” said Carter.

“Well, a thorn by any other name is just as treacherous.” Holmes looked at the return address. “The sly thing took a box in the same post office we did. You might even have passed her in the foyer, Watson.”

“Even so, we’ll ask Oliver Nicholas to post our reply. Anyone might be expected to walk into so busy a public facility, but criminals are wary by nature, and prone to take flight upon encountering a face connected with an unpleasant memory.”

“Any more Spanish and I may have to ask for my fee in pesetas.” Nick Carter drew a chair up to the writing desk and dipped a pen.

XVIII.
We Flush Our Game

“Hadn’t we better suggest a meeting in the restaurant?” I asked. “She is less likely than most women to agree to an assignation with a strange man in his suite.”

“And twice more likely to dodge our net, with only one man to stop her,” said Holmes. “There is no place for you and me to conceal ourselves in such an open place.”

We were silent for a moment. Then our partner spoke up. “We’ll take the bull straight by the horns and invite her to bring a male escort.”

“Capital,” said Holmes. “We may ensnare her accomplice as well. Dona Cristina, of course, prefers that her representative discuss the delicate negotiations in private.”

“We’re a fine trio of liars.” Carter wrote, placed one of Oliver Nicholas’s cards in the envelope, and dashed off to catch the last post.

That night, rather than return to our own respective quarters, Holmes and I made ourselves comfortable in the sitting room. He gallantly offered me the relative comfort of the settee. “Twaddle,” said he when I protested. “We shan’t have your old wound impeding our success.” Whereupon he fashioned himself a bed using two chairs.

In the morning we breakfasted in the suite, then smoked on the balcony to avoid offending our expected guest with the lingering odour of tobacco. We had an excellent view of Hyde Park, with its strollers in light summer clothes carrying parasols and swinging sticks, and Carter regaled us with comparisons to the Central Park in New York City, where he’d once “nabbed a mug,” in his colourful parlance.

A knock came to the door just as the mantel clock struck the hour suggested for the meeting. Carter slipped a Norfolk jacket on over his waistcoat and went inside to answer it, carefully closing the curtains behind him and concealing us both. He had no weapons concealed on his person, lest a suspicious bulge tell the tale. Holmes and I took turns peeping through a crack between the curtains as our drama unfolded.

The housemaid I had known as Gloriana bore small resemblance to the glamorous creature who stepped in from the corridor, wearing an emerald-green frock becoming to her slender waist and a fashionable hat with a short black veil pinned to it. Under normal circumstances, I might not have recognised her had we passed on the street. Carter, visibly impressed, held the door for her as she entered, followed closely by a man whose face I would have known anywhere.

Gloriana/Celeste’s escort wore the clothing of a boulevardier: grey bowler, patterned jacket and waistcoat, elk’s-tooth fob, grey flannels and all, gripping a bamboo cane; but these things could not dissemble his true identity. Holmes and I had met him as Osbert, the ice-cream parlour proprietor. My Mary had known him as the loathsome cabman Snipe.

XIX.
Lady Judas

He had, to a degree, taken other steps to alter his appearance. A monocle clung to one eye, its ribbon attached to a lapel, he’d dyed his fair hair dark brown, and a mole I had not noticed before drew one’s attention away from the rest of his features towards his left cheek. The unnatural ruddiness which Holmes had attributed to an allergic reaction to greasepaint (encountered in his role as Snipe) was absent, but I had no doubt as to his identity. In his present role he looked like a cross between a circus barker and a racetrack tout; and, as the three made small talk, it developed that he had adopted the pose of Celeste’s somewhat inglorious uncle. Hinkel was the name he gave.

In preparation, we had ordered an extra pot of tea with our breakfast and two additional cups and saucers. “Mr. Nicholas” bade them sit and poured for all.

“I’d hoped La Dona Cristina would be present,” said “Hinkel,” in a tone of mild disappointment.

“I wanted to conduct the interview myself and report,” Carter replied. “Her most recent travelling companion proved to be unsuitable, a fact that cast a shadow on her judgment.”

“You are American, are you not?” Celeste’s accent was more pronounced than when I’d known her as Gloriana.

“I am, miss. I studied law in Philadelphia and finished at Oxford.” This was the story he and Holmes had collaborated upon to explain Carter’s unorthodox British inflection.

“The very best. She attended the finest finishing school in Barcelona at a young age. She’s learning English, and plays the harp like an angel.” Carter’s smile was disarming. “She almost hired Miss Flores sight unseen when she found out she spoke the language. Any objection to adding ‘tutor’ to your other responsibilities?”

“Let’s not put the cart before the horse,” said her escort. “I should like to visit my niece from time to time, and I don’t mind telling you I’d rather spend the day with two good-looking women. There’s a deal of humpbacks and warts among these inbred continental nobles.” The leer he wore during this confession seemed worthy of Snipe. O, what a studied villain is this, thought I.

Carter affected not to disapprove. “I can settle your worries on that score.” From an inside breast pocket he drew the photograph of the late lamented Christine, removed from its frame.

It was my turn at watch. A spark of naked greed flew from “Celeste’s” face to Osbert’s as the picture passed between them.

Osbert returned it. “Well, sir, I’m satisfied. One doesn’t want one’s prize foal trotting about with a donkey.”

I couldn’t decide whom I despised more, this crude Herod or his Lady Judas, who betrayed members of her own gender to her foul profession.

My impatience was growing. I wanted to lay hands on them both, and let the devil take the hindmost as to my position regarding the fair sex. But as Carter took command of the conversation, drawing one genteel lie after another from Celeste about her background and education, I realised that he and Holmes had charted out this very course, to lull our “victims” into laying aside their highly developed sense of suspicion.

Although I had missed this particular conference, I recalled with clarity the signal they had worked out to draw Holmes and me from hiding. Carter had surreptitiously locked the door to the outside corridor after letting them in. The only other exit was by way of the balcony, four storeys above the street, and we would stand before it.

Directly he said “Jersey,” Holmes and I jerked open the curtains and stepped out between them, revolvers in hand.

XX.
Flight

We had misjudged our foes’ reflexes. Recognising us instantly, Celeste Flores pounced, pantherlike, from her seat, ignoring my weapon, and sank her teeth deep into my wrist. In the same instant, Osbert launched himself, rugby fashion, into Nick Carter where he sat, carrying man and chair over backwards onto the floor with a smash. Momentum built, the white slaver charged at Holmes, swinging his cane and striking his gun hand. The revolver fell to the floor.

I had only the barest sense of these actions. In my pain and rage, I struck Celeste a smart blow on the top of her head with my revolver; but her hat, a thing of wire and stiff felt, absorbed most of it, though the impact forced her to release my wrist from her jaws and drove her to her knees.

Osbert neither slowed nor stopped. Shouldering Holmes aside in the same movement with the swinging of the cane, he raced across the balcony, leapt onto the railing, and dropped from sight.

Holmes and I darted to the railing. Down on the street, a buzzing crowd had begun to form round a broken thing lying on the cobblestones like a shattered doll.

We have spent many an hour reliving that moment: Whether the villain intended suicide or hoped to attain the neighbouring rooftop—a good twenty feet away—remains a point of contention. As a practising Christian, I lean towards the former motive, in expiation for Osbert’s sins in this life by way of damnation in the next.

Such was not an issue upon the instant. We spun to assist Carter; but were too late.

When Celeste fell to her knees, Holmes’s fallen revolver was within her reach. Now she stood with her back to the door to the corridor, closing us all inside firing range.

I retained my weapon, but it was at my side. As I raised it, she fired a shot that screamed past my head.

Holmes grasped my wrist, paralysing the tendon. “No, Watson! You may strike an artery, and then we shall never know what became of Jane Chilton.”

For a full ten seconds I retained my pressure upon the trigger. Finally I nodded, an almost infinitesimal movement of my head. He released his grip. I let the weapon fall.

Celeste Flores laughed shrilly, a peal of pure madness. It choked off when she reached behind her and discovered the door was locked. She motioned toward Carter. “The key! Throw it!”

The canny American detective took the key from his waistcoat and threw it low; but Lady Judas had the instincts of a cat. She dipped a knee, caught it with her free hand, and fumbled it into the keyhole awkwardly. At length the tumblers turned.

“Puercos!” she spat. “It would have made no difference if you killed me. You may find me eventually, but not in time. The Chilton wench will be dead in an hour!”

We stood, arms away from our sides, and watched her open the door behind her and step one foot backwards into the corridor.

Abruptly, something in the shape of a grappling hook closed round the wrist of her gun arm and jerked it downwards. A bullet pierced the Persian rug at her feet and buried itself in the floor.

Carter stooped swiftly, grasped the rug, and jerked it from under her, throwing her onto her back. Her revolver went flying, to be caught by Carter one-handed. Only when we both had her pinned down in our crossfire did I feel it safe to regard our rescuer. Mary Watson stood in the doorway, resting the crook of her parasol at shoulder arms.

XXI.
A Race with Death

We had been joined by a constable, there to enquire after Osbert’s fatal leap and the subsequent gunfire. Upon confirming our identities and hearing Holmes’s rapid explanation, he had manacled Celeste Flores to the arm of a chair, where she sat seething between Holmes and Carter, both men now armed; the American with his blunt, wicked-looking fowling piece. Having underestimated her once, they were leaving nothing to chance.

“I won’t be put off by secrecy,” my wife replied. “I went round to Baker Street and spoke to Mrs. Hudson. She is a woman, and we are bound by our gender. She told me you were here. The clerk at the desk gave me the number of the suite. I heard the first shot from the stairwell, but reached the door only as Gloriana was backing out.”

“Intuition.” Holmes shook his head. “It is the X factor in every equation where a woman is involved. No man has cracked it as yet.”

“Call it what you will. When I recognised her voice, I knew what was to be done.”

Our captive sent her a look of raw hatred. She spat a torrent of Spanish too rapid for even Holmes and Carter to follow. They looked at each other and shrugged.

“Best not to know,” said the American. “Well, Miss Celeste-Gloriana-Paraiso-Estrella, what’s this business about Jane Chilton having only an hour to live?”

“She will die gasping. Her last prayer will be for air, and you will be impotent to grant it.”

We pressed her for details, but she had fallen silent, and would not be drawn out by threats or pleas to her humanity or promises to speak to the magistrate upon her behalf. When it was clear to us all that we were wasting precious time, Holmes asked the constable to take her away. In seconds she was manacled to his wrist, instructed as to her rights under English law, and removed from our sight; but not before she turned her head at the door and closed her free hand round her throat in the unmistakable gesture of strangulation.

“My God!” said I, in a shuddering whisper. “Can it be she shares the same gender with the Blessed Virgin?”

Mary, the Blessed Virgin’s namesake, was less naive. “Let us not forget Jezebel.”

“It seems clear to me,” I said. “Another accomplice has her in a sort of noose, with instructions to choke her to death if she and Osbert fail to return in the time allotted.”

Carter spoke up. “I can’t agree. I’ve witnessed hangings. There’s not much gasping at the end of a rope—no room in the trachea for it—just a desperate struggle followed by insensibility, and certainly no time for prayer.”

Carter shook his head. “If she’s got an hour of oxygen—on top of the time these mugs spent with us, not counting coming and going—the burial vault would be the size of this room. Criminals are lazy, by and large, or they’d work for their living. I’ve never met one who’d invest the time and labour digging a hole that size.”

Mary said, “If they came here by cab, the driver would know where he picked them up. Scotland Yard—”

“—is methodical, beyond doubt,” finished Holmes. “They might even locate the man by tomorrow morning.”

He and Carter exchanged a glance heavy with meaning. Both men nodded. They went for their hats.

Carter traded the cumbersome shotgun for a revolver that fit his small sinewy hand. His smile glittered. “Well, sure. We need as many weapons as we can muster.”

We took the Underground. As noon approached, the streets were clogged with hansoms, growlers, dray-wagons, and pedestrians, and at such times the relative discomfort of the subterranean railway is worth twice its price in terms of speed.

The detectives’ expressions were tense. Holmes said, “We mustn’t place too much faith in Señorita Flores’s assessment. The experts themselves seldom agree on matters involving the human lung and cubic feet of air. Not everyone breathes at the same pace.”

“Or at his own, under pressure,” said Carter. “You don’t draw it mild when you’re shut up in a box.”

The train stopped with maddening regularity, jettisoning and acquiring passengers at station after station. I felt almost like a victim of abduction myself, not knowing our destination and wondering if each name called out by the conductor was our terminus. I expected the detectives to spring to their feet every time we slowed to a halt; but they kept their seats, perched on the edges like cats poised to pounce. Observing their pale, drawn faces, I deemed it inadvisable to ask.

When at last they shot upright, Mary and I exchanged a glance. Instinctively, we knew from the announcement where we were headed.

Holmes and Carter sprinted ahead down the street. We struggled to keep them in sight, Mary on my arm. If we were mistaken, we might have been left inexorably behind, so intent were the detectives upon their race with death.

We did, as a matter of fact, misplace them at one corner, but caught up with them where we’d expected to, before the shuttered ice-cream parlour formerly owned by the late Osbert. But my heart sank when we drew within sight of the front door. The padlock placed upon it by the police was still intact.

Holmes, however, did not hesitate. He grasped the lock and rattled it fiercely, releasing a thin shower of pewter-colored dust: The hasp had been sawn through and plaster and paint applied to make it appear that it still held fast.

“They took no chances,” rapped Carter. “Any passerby might have wandered in out of curiosity and freed their hostage.”

They swung open the door and bolted inside, Mary and I close behind. The store was empty, stripped of its fixtures and furniture, and we were alone in it. But Holmes and Carter went directly to a door at the back, adjacent to the storage room entrance and built of what appeared to be double-reinforced oak, painted so thoroughly in shining white enamel that no space showed between the planks. Oddly, it had a homely familiarity I could not quite place.

Holmes ran his fingers along one edge. “A rubber gasket. It’s the cold room, where the ice cream was stored.”

I knew then what the door had struck in my memory. It resembled the hatch of an icebox. The realisation nearly stopped my heart. If cold could not escape, oxygen could not enter. The room beyond was Lady Jane Chilton’s death-cell.

It, too, was padlocked, this time securely. Holmes clawed from a pocket the small leather case he was never without, containing an assortment of picks and skeleton keys for any occasion.

Carter, less patient, seized a great chunk of hickory that had been leaning against the wall, evidently intended to prop the door open when someone was inside, and swung it with all his might, striking the lock with such force the door jumped in its gasket. Once, twice it banged against the lock. Then Carter planted his feet apart solidly, brought the piece of timber back as far over his right shoulder as he could, took a deep breath, and swung with biblical force, his muscles splitting his Norfolk wide from collar to hem. The lock shattered.

XXII.
We Retire the Spoon

Holmes’s tone left no room for dispute, even had I wanted to offer any. As Mary and I hurried inside, he and Carter were already bent over something in a far corner of the tiny room, blocking our view of anything but the empty shelves on the walls.

I crossed the floor in a stride, parting the pair roughly, and knelt beside the woman who lay at their feet, a young, slender creature with her strawberry curls in disarray and her fashionable dress soiled for want of a change. Her eyes were closed and she appeared not to be breathing.

I was prepared for the worst—I carried no instruments or restoratives—but as I placed my hand behind her head to lift it and raised my other hand in an attempt to slap colour into her pale cheeks, she arched her back suddenly, took air into her lungs, and expelled it in a fit of bitter coughing. Immediately I lifted her into a sitting position and forced her head between her knees. She coughed and gasped for two minutes at least, then her breathing settled into a rhythm, rapid but regular. I helped her sit up in the normal fashion. Her blue eyes darted from one face to another, like a frightened bird’s.

“Calm yourself,” I said gently. “I am a doctor. You’re among friends. You’re safe from the villains who mistreated you. Can you tell me your name?” I was still unsure whether her respiratory ordeal had affected the function of her brain.

“My name is”—she hesitated, then—“Jane. Jane Chilton. My father is Sir James Chilton, of Middlesex.”

I sighed in relief, noticing only then that I’d been holding my own breath. I looked up at the others and smiled.

“Friends,” Holmes said. “There is time enough to get acquainted later. For now, I’m sure Dr. Watson will want to admit you to hospital to make certain of your health before your father comes to take you home.”

The coda to our adventure was a happy one for Lady Jane Chilton. Six months after her complete recovery and safe return to her father’s arms, her betrothal to Lord Wadsworth, the popular and eligible heir to a fortune equal to Sir James’s, was announced. By all accounts, the handsome young peer was delighted with his choice, of whom Her Majesty had approved when she was presented at court.

At this writing, “Celeste Flores” is a bone of contention between Great Britain and her native Argentina. The Crown wishes to try her for complicity in the abduction of seven young women since rescued from bondage, whilst the government in Buenos Aires is eager to reunite her with her old burglary ring behind bars. During this contretemps it came out, interestingly enough, that she was born in a tiny fishing village under the distinctly earthbound name of Inez Sobraco. Holmes informed me that the surname is the Spanish for “armpit.”

Scotland Yard—prodded by the newspapers and popular outrage—pledged to apply all due pressure to eradicate the pernicious white slave trade in England, and the Home Secretary declared to do the same in all its possessions. The Foreign Secretary demanded cooperation from those countries that depended upon the goodwill of Great Britain. The Russian Czar and the King of Egypt promised their cooperation. Not to be outdone, the American President vouchsafed to put his Attorney General upon the case, making special mention of Sherlock Holmes in an address to the public.

“He’s a politician, after all,” said Holmes, when I congratulated him. “Thanks to you and Carter, I’m fodder for his re-election.”

Notwithstanding this disclaimer, the flesh pedlars are now reported to be in full rout across the globe, peaching upon their fellows in order to save their own necks from the gallows. Some of the names mentioned in connection with the foul trade locally have rocked the Empire to its foundation; but that foundation is built upon solid rock, and will survive because of its conviction to human decency.

Sherlock Holmes’s last conversation with Nick Carter, whilst awaiting the latter’s boat train to Southampton, centred, of all things, upon a spoon. Holmes thought it worthy of inclusion in his personal Black Museum of grotesque mementos, whilst Carter made an earnest case in favour of remanding it to the Pinkerton Detective Agency for its edification in persecuting the white slave trade in America. They agreed to break the impasse by appealing to my own judgement in the matter.

“I know you for a just man by your deed as well as your word,” Carter said, “and I’m confident you won’t be swayed by your friendship with Sherlock.”

Holmes, who had come to terms more than I with the American’s free use of Christian names, smiled sardonically. “Neither will he be moved by flattery. Well, Watson?” He handed me the utensil, as a bailiff would deliver an item of evidence to a magistrate.

“I declare Mary Watson to be the rightful owner,” said I. “She can throw it in with the everyday silver until it becomes nothing more sinister than an instrument for dining.”

THE ADVENTURE OF THE PLATED SPOON

LOREN D. ESTLEMAN

I.
I Misplace My Wife

II.
At Scotland Yard

III.
I Become Holmes’s Client

IV.
Mr. Lysander P. Gristle

V.
The Ordeal of Mrs. John H. Watson

VI.
A Plot Unfolds

VII.
The Tale of the Spoon

VIII.
A Woman’s Will

IX.
A Triple Scoop of Detection

X.
Snipe’s Flight

XI.
The Society of the Spoon

XII.
The Leopards Change Their Spots

XIII.
The Chilton Affair

XIV.
Mr. Nick Carter

XV.
The Foreign Quarter

XVI.
Oliver Nicholas, Esq.

XVII.
A Thorn by Any Other Name

XVIII.
We Flush Our Game

XIX.
Lady Judas

XX.
Flight

XXI.
A Race with Death

XXII.
We Retire the Spoon

THE ADVENTURE OF THE PLATED SPOON

LOREN D. ESTLEMAN

I.I Misplace My Wife

II.At Scotland Yard

III.I Become Holmes’s Client

IV.Mr. Lysander P. Gristle

V.The Ordeal of Mrs. John H. Watson

VI.A Plot Unfolds

VII.The Tale of the Spoon

VIII.A Woman’s Will

IX.A Triple Scoop of Detection

X.Snipe’s Flight

XI.The Society of the Spoon

XII.The Leopards Change Their Spots

XIII.The Chilton Affair

XIV.Mr. Nick Carter

XV.The Foreign Quarter

XVI.Oliver Nicholas, Esq.

XVII.A Thorn by Any Other Name

XVIII.We Flush Our Game

XIX.Lady Judas

XX.Flight

XXI.A Race with Death

XXII.We Retire the Spoon

I.
I Misplace My Wife

II.
At Scotland Yard

III.
I Become Holmes’s Client

IV.
Mr. Lysander P. Gristle

V.
The Ordeal of Mrs. John H. Watson

VI.
A Plot Unfolds

VII.
The Tale of the Spoon

VIII.
A Woman’s Will

IX.
A Triple Scoop of Detection

X.
Snipe’s Flight

XI.
The Society of the Spoon

XII.
The Leopards Change Their Spots

XIII.
The Chilton Affair

XIV.
Mr. Nick Carter

XV.
The Foreign Quarter

XVI.
Oliver Nicholas, Esq.

XVII.
A Thorn by Any Other Name

XVIII.
We Flush Our Game

XIX.
Lady Judas

XX.
Flight

XXI.
A Race with Death

XXII.
We Retire the Spoon