“I have often had cause to remark that it is a capital mistake to draw conclusions based on partial information. It is extremely galling to discover that I am as guilty as the next man of such an oversight.”
Holmes prowled about the office, his hands busy lighting his pipe while his brain turned over Craggs’s startling revelation. If he were to be believed, the man we had assumed to be entirely mute had spoken several times at the time of Miss Crane’s murder. Indeed, Craggs claimed that he heard Rawlins address him as Peter just before the fatal shot was fired.
“Why should a man pretend to a mutism from which he does not, in actuality, suffer?” Holmes stabbed the bowl of his pipe in the air as he considered the question. “Either to ensure that he remains unobtrusive, or because his voice is distinctive in some way.”
“I fancy that the few words I heard Peter say had a Germanic tint to them,” Craggs contributed.
“Piennar, I think, Mr Craggs. Hans Piennar is the man’s name, though it would be understandable enough to mix Peter and Piennar in the conditions under which you heard it said. We almost had him in the Five Points, but someone—” Holmes glared across at Bullock, who returned the look with an irritated one of his own, “—interfered, from the finest of motives, however, and so the chance was lost. I assume that neither you nor one of your men have seen Piennar since that terrible night?”
Craggs glanced from Holmes to Bullock, as if he had reached an important decision. “In coming here, I thought myself to be admitting defeat, but now some measure of hope has been rekindled in my breast by the presence of you, Mr Holmes, and you, Dr Watson. In view of that, it would be churlish of me to withhold the fact that I have had men following you for some time, since the name of Sherlock Holmes was first mentioned in Hoffmann’s house. I had to discover if you were the man I sought, you see.”
“The man who stood and stared at you, Holmes!” I cried, remembering the odd encounter outside Hoffmann’s home.
“Of course, Watson,” Holmes replied impatiently. “Who else did you imagine it might have been? I suspect Mr Craggs is also responsible for the gentleman you followed when first we arrived. One very minor mystery is solved, at least.”
“All well and good, Mr Holmes, but we still have a murder case on our hands, and evidence which points directly to this man.” Bullock’s irritation had been growing throughout the course of the interrogation, and I wondered if this was to be the moment at which it boiled over completely, but quite the reverse proved to be true. “I admit that I’m as yet unconvinced as to your innocence, Mr Craggs, but I’ve heard enough just now to detain you in one of our empty offices, rather than in a cell, while we decide what is to be done next.”
Whether Bullock entertained serious doubts regarding Craggs’s guilt or merely felt some sympathy for his motives, I cannot say, but I will not pretend that I was not pleased to see him escorted from Bullock’s office to another, much the same but with a far stouter lock.
I was not sure where I myself stood as regards Craggs’s guilt or innocence. Had this been a trial in a court of law, I suspect I would be obliged to say that he had killed Rawlins, but equally I would have recommended to the judge that mercy be shown, for the provocation was beyond that which any man should be expected to endure. That Rawlins and Piennar between them had murdered Millicent Crane was, I think, certain beyond any reasonable doubt, and Bullock and Holmes agreed with me that this was the single element of the affair that took priority.
We none of us had eaten all day, and so Bullock took Holmes and myself to the small, dingy restaurant we had dined in together some days previously. There, over turtle soup and glasses of Madeira, we discussed the revelations of the day and our plans for the next.
“We may assume that Piennar remains in the city,” Holmes offered as a starting point. “He and Rawlins did not flee after the murder of Donaldson, nor after that of Mrs van Raalte or Miss Crane. It is ludicrous to think that the former would run after killing his partner-in-crime. At worst, he will be lying low, waiting for the public gaze to be fastened on Henry Craggs. Only then will he attempt to escape from New York. Added to that, we know he abandoned a portion of their ill-gotten hoard and so, short of funds, he has another reason for staying hidden for now. Our task is to flush him out, to drive him from cover…”
I knew Holmes of old. “No doubt you have a suggestion as to how we might go about that?” I asked.
“Simplicity itself. All we need do is ensure the truth is given voice. Inspector, are you able to spread the news of Mr Craggs’s capture? Let it be known that he has identified the killer of his fiancée and that the police expect to arrest the guilty party in short order. That should drive him out into the open.”
Bullock grasped Holmes’s suggestion at once. “Of course,” he replied, draining his glass. “News of this development will be known by the whole of New York by tomorrow morning.”
“Very good,” said Holmes, “and in the meantime, if you could provide me with a trusted officer, who I might send on an errand or two?”
“I’ll have Officer Hendricks report to you as soon as we arrive back at the station, Mr Holmes.”
“That would be ideal.”
* * *
Bullock proved true to his word. Within minutes of our arrival back at the station, a young officer presented himself at Bullock’s office, which we had commandeered while the inspector saw to it that word of Craggs’s capture was spread throughout the city. Hendricks was a tall, slender man of no more than twenty years, fair-haired and with a thin moustache which he rubbed nervously as Holmes invited him in.
The topic of their conversation remained unknown to me, for Holmes had asked me to check on Craggs while he gave the young officer his instructions. The prisoner was asleep, and I saw no reason to disturb his peace, but though I was gone only five minutes, by the time I returned Hendricks had departed and Holmes had already lit a pipe, which he smoked while slumped in Bullock’s chair. He gave no indication that he had registered my presence, and with nothing else to do, I took one of the other seats and settled down to wait.
Two hours passed in such a fashion, with Holmes lighting one bowl after another and I dropping in and out of an uneasy doze. The air was thick with smoke by the time a knock on the door jerked Holmes into activity.
“Come in,” he instructed, knocking the ashes of his pipe into an ashtray and straightening himself in his seat.
I had expected our visitor to be Officer Hendricks, but in his place stood another officer and, by his side, a small, unkempt boy, dressed in torn short trousers and a jacket several sizes too large for him buttoned over a ragged shirt, once white, now stained a dirty grey. His feet were bare and filthy and he was painfully thin, but other than that he appeared to be in reasonable health.
“Sherlock Holmes?” he asked as the officer pushed him into the room, holding out a folded sheet of paper to my friend.
“The same,” Holmes responded, reaching out and taking the paper, which he spread on the desk before him. Whatever information it contained clearly proved satisfactory, for he smiled with pleasure and handed the boy a small coin for his troubles. As the officer led the boy from the room, he folded the paper again and slipped it into his pocket.
“Have you any objection to a short trip, Watson?” he asked, already rising from his seat.
“None whatsoever,” I replied. “Do you have a particular destination in mind?”
“I do. I think now would be a good time to revisit the dockland area. Something tells me that Mr Piennar may be found there this evening.”
* * *
The docks at night were a very different affair from the bright and bustling scene we had witnessed on our arrival. Much of the area was entirely in darkness, with here and there islands of sulphurous light marking the location of an office yet open or a gang still hard at work. A rain shower just prior to our arrival had slicked the cobblestones and made them treacherous underfoot, adding to the sensation that this was not a welcoming place.
Holmes, however, advanced into the gloom with no hesitation, making directly for a derelict shed from beneath whose ill-fitting door a dim light could be seen. I followed with my hand tight around my revolver and an eye on every shadow.
To reach the shed that I was now convinced was Holmes’s destination, it was necessary to cross a long, flat patch of hard earth. A wooden fence, broken in sundry places, enclosed the space, an open gap with rusted brackets for a gate providing the only entrance. The shed itself sat at the far end of this enclosure, surrounded by darkness that had been rendered no clearer even by ten minutes blundering about. I stilled my breathing and listened carefully, but except for the tread of Holmes’s boots in front of me, I could hear nothing out of the ordinary.
Even so, I was not relaxed, and it was this tautness that allowed me to swing the butt of my revolver across the temple of the dark figure who reared up from the ground as we passed through the gap in the fence. My assailant fell back while I fumbled with the gun, but before I could twist the weapon round to bring it to bear on the swine, I felt strong arms around my midriff and a voice in my ear saying, “For pity’s sake, Watson, must you assault everyone you meet?”
I shrugged off Holmes’s arms with irritation and not a little confusion, keeping my gun in hand, as the door of the shed creaked open and a not unfamiliar voice requested that we hurry inside. The man I had struck struggled to his feet and returned to his place by the gap in the fence. He was a guard, I surmised – set to check any man approaching the shed. This supposition was confirmed by Holmes, who whispered, “It’s quite an impressive set-up, wouldn’t you say, Watson – a base complete with troops,” leaving me reassured and confused in equal measure. I had no time to query Holmes, however, before we slipped inside the shed and the door closed softly behind us.
Inside, a lantern on the floor illuminated three men sitting round an upturned barrel that they were using as a table on which to play cards. I did not recognise the two men sitting to the left and right, but as the man directly in front of me turned in his seat to watch us enter, I realised that the voice that had asked us to hurry belonged to Bob Peters, the seaman Holmes had saved from the noose on our voyage over.
He touched a forefinger to the brim of his cap as the other two men vacated their seats, and invited us to take them. They disappeared out into the darkness, leaving Holmes, Peters and I alone.
“Good evening to you, Mr Peters,” Holmes said cheerfully. “I hope you have some success to report?”
“I do, Mr Holmes, sir. The lad you’re after is bunked up on the Patricia, a German ship bound for Marseille.”
In contrast to the last time we had met, Peters was confident and clear-spoken. I was at a loss to explain his presence here, but plainly he was expecting us, for once we were seated, he reached into a tattered bag at his feet and pulled from it a scrap of paper on which I recognised a description of Piennar in Holmes’s handwriting.
“Weren’t hard to find him neither,” the sailor said, his mouth stretched in a wide grin. “There ain’t many even in New York look like that big brute.”
“I am obliged to you, Mr Peters. If you will point my colleague and me in the direction of the Patricia, we will take a police officer – possibly more than one – and effect an arrest.”
“Best make it several more, Mr Holmes. Thon’s a big lad, so he is.”
In reply, Holmes clapped the man on the shoulder. “Never worry. Watson here has a revolver with him, and Inspector Bullock would be only too happy to provide further men, if required. I’m sure we shall manage somehow, if you would be so kind as to arrange for someone to run to the inspector’s station and alert him to our need of assistance.”
I did not doubt that Holmes spoke truly, but even so I was not unhappy to see Peters frown, then, having come to a decision, march across to the door of the shed. He carefully pushed it open, then said something quietly into the darkness. The other two seamen followed him back inside, closing the door behind them.
“I’ve sent a lad to speak to Bullock, but I’d not forgive meself if anything unpleasant was to happen to you, Mr Holmes,” Peters said. “So I think it’d be best if me and a couple of the boys kept you company, just in case.”
“There really is no need, my dear—” Holmes began, but got no further, as Peters interrupted politely but firmly.
“I’d be sitting in the condemned cell today, Mr Holmes, if I weren’t already done for, were it not for you. You’ll allow me to repay that debt a little, won’t you?”
Holmes did not insult the man by claiming there was no debt. Instead he gave a single sharp nod of gratitude and agreed that we should leave at once, with Peters and his friends to accompany us. I had hoped that Holmes would explain himself before we set off, but there was no time to waste, according to Peters, as the ship on which Piennar was stowed would set sail later that night. He grabbed a pickaxe handle from behind the door and led us all out into the darkness.
* * *
Emptiness is the defining quality of a dock bereft of working men. What is all bustle and noise during the day is quiet as a churchyard at night. So it was that we made our way – Peters in the lead, followed by Holmes and me, with the two other sailors guarding the rear – across open ground, our every step potentially visible to any sharp-eyed observer on the ships that lined the docks.
In the end, either nobody looked or the dark was enough to hide us, for we arrived at our destination unmolested and, I thought, unobserved. A wooden gangway, wide enough for two men to walk abreast, stretched from the dockside to the entryway of the Patricia herself. The ship moved as the water moved, rising and falling in a rough rhythm, though never enough to concern even a land-loving soul such as myself.
The only light came from a lamp flickering atop a pole attached to the gangway. We made sure to remain in shadow as Peters brought us to a halt and whispered that he and his friends would briefly board the ship to ensure that the man we sought was still in his cabin. They slipped soundlessly up the gangway and were soon lost to sight.
I took the opportunity, while Holmes and I were alone, to ask for some explanations – how he could possibly have known that Piennar would head for the docks chief amongst them.
“Really, Watson, that particular deduction does me little credit. As soon as we knew that Piennar was not the mute we had thought and thus was hiding some identifying factor in his speech, I wondered what that might be. Once Mr Craggs mentioned his belief that he had heard a Germanic note in his pronunciation, I realised that an Afrikaans accent might easily be mistaken for a Teutonic one. A native German speaker might hide for some time amongst his émigré countrymen in the Five Points, but an Afrikaner, forced by his need of assistance to speak and so reveal his true origins? I thought not, and so asked the inspector to post men at every road out of the city, while I sent word to Peters and requested that he seek out any Boer looking for passage to Europe or Africa. There are plenty of captains in these waters who would be happy to hide such a man on board until they were ready to sail. Fortunately, there is a brotherhood amongst sailors, and Peters was swiftly able to identify a huge Boer with little by way of luggage and a pressing need to be somewhere other than America.”
Holmes’s speech raised far more questions than it answered, but before I could quiz him further, Peters returned and, from the top of the gangway, waved that we should follow him.
Quickly we ran across and onto the ship itself, where Peters waited in the shadow of a doorway. “This way,” he said, “and mind how you go. It’s darker than you’ll be used to.”
Sure enough, what light there was inside the ship was widely spaced and untrustworthy, consisting mainly of smoky oil lamps that swung this way and that with the motion of the ship. We clambered down grimy ladders and through seemingly identical murky corridors for several minutes, moving slowly, with an ear for any legitimate crew who might detain us, but even such slow progress soon brought us to our destination.
Peters halted before one door much like every other, a painted wooden slab with a brass handle, but no other markings.
“Your man is inside, Mr Holmes, sir,” Peters whispered. He held his pickaxe handle in one hand and now, with the other, he reached into his jacket and removed a length of metal piping from within. “You best take this, sir,” he said to Holmes, handing it over, then, “Doctor, you have your revolver with you?” he asked. I held the weapon out silently in confirmation.
“Good. Stay behind me and the lads then, when we get in there.” He turned to the other sailors. “In three, lads,” he said, before holding up three fingers, each of which he lowered in its turn. As the last finger folded in on itself, he nodded and, with a cry of “NOW!” kicked the door with all his strength, sending it flying back on its hinges. We pushed our way into the room behind him, ready for anything, our various weapons held out before us, violence in the very air.
The room was empty.
A bunk holding a disordered heap of dirty linen stood directly in front of us, taking up most of the back wall. By its head, a small metal cabinet sat with its door ajar, and at its foot a wastepaper basket. There was no other exit, and though Peters dropped to his knees to look under the bed, no place to hide. It seemed that somehow our man had absconded.
“I was under the impression that you had checked whether Mr Piennar was within this room?” Holmes asked, making an admirable, if obvious, attempt to keep any note of recrimination from his voice.
“We did, Mr Holmes,” Peters replied unhappily. “He was here not five minutes since, I promise you.”
Holmes moved inside the room, wordlessly brushing past the three sailors as he glanced inside the metal cabinet and poked in the wastepaper basket with the metal pole Peters had given him.
“He has certainly been here recently,” he said after a moment’s thought. “See here: a crushed pack of the brand of cigarette we know he favours and…” he laid a hand on the bed sheet, “…the bed is still warm. There is a little money in the cabinet, so we may assume he will—”
Whatever he was about to say was lost, however, as a gasp from behind warned me in the nick of time that our quarry had returned. I had a moment in which to duck and attempt to bring my revolver to bear before a blow like an iron bar descended on my arm, striking my wrist and causing me to let go of my grip. The gun spun into the darkness as I found myself face to face with Hans Piennar.
He was as large as we had been told, six and a half feet tall and almost as broad, with the thickest neck I had ever seen on a man and hands the size of my head. He swung one of those ham-sized fists at me while I was still reeling from the pain in my arm, and though I twisted to avoid it and so was spared a direct hit, his knuckles glanced off my chin with sufficient force to knock me backwards, where my head crashed against the wall. I tried to stand but my legs had lost all utility. I was forced to remain seated, the pain in my head competing with that in my arm and my jaw, and all attempting to send me spinning into unconsciousness at any moment. Piennar stepped past me, and I reached out a hand to stop him, but there was no strength in my arm and he easily brushed me off – though not before I noticed that one shining brass button was missing from the greatcoat he wore, a match I was sure for the one Holmes had found on Mrs van Raalte’s body.
For the next several minutes I was obliged to take a spectator’s role in proceedings. My compatriots turned as one and engaged the man, but he was too strong and pressed them back, allowing them no time to come at him en masse. One of the sailors went down under the impact of a ferocious double-handed blow, and Piennar quickly stooped and grabbed the fallen man’s weapon, a short, metal-tipped stave, which he swung before him.
I could see Holmes pushing against the men in front of him, frustration plain on his face.
“Take him alive, if possible,” he shouted over the others’ cries. “I have questions I should like to ask him.”
Taking him in any fashion seemed unlikely, however. As Holmes spoke, the second of Peters’s comrades was brought to his knees, then dispatched with a savage uppercut. I felt consciousness threatening to leave me too as I watched the unfortunate man strike the back wall, then fall, eyes open but unseeing, on the bunk. I tasted blood in the back of my throat and felt it running over my eyebrow and down my cheek.
By the flickering light of the single lamp outside the cabin, I made out Peters pushing forward to thrust a blade deep into Piennar’s shoulder, and I wondered if this marked the turning point in the fight. If it did, though, it was not as I would have hoped, for the huge Boer simply pulled the knife from his flesh and returned it to Peters with the full force of his strength. He buried the blade to the hilt in our friend’s chest, then allowed him to drop to the floor.
Holmes was alone with Piennar now. He held the metal pole he had been given, extended before him like a rapier, and bounced on the balls of his feet as the Boer kicked Peters’s body out of the way and advanced. Piennar’s own stave hung loosely at his side, as though he had no intention of using it, as though his superiority was so clear he could kill Holmes with his bare hands. I pushed myself up against the wall, ignoring the waves of dizziness and nausea which washed over me, searching for my revolver, but the room spun and I fell back.
I refocused my eyes just in time to see Holmes lunge forward and Piennar brush off his attack with no more exertion than a man would show when swatting a fly. Holmes’s weapon flew from his hands and clattered away, and Piennar’s massive hands closed round my friend’s throat. I tried again to stand, crying out Holmes’s name as I watched him turning purple then blue in the face, and managed two steps in his direction before my legs gave way once more. I had strength enough left to turn my face, to bear witness to my dearest friend’s final moments, as the life was throttled from him.
And then, as unconsciousness finally overcame me, I fancied that I heard a loud bang and saw Piennar jerk and loosen his hold on Holmes’s neck. Another loud retort caused my head to ring. Just as my eyes closed I thought I saw him slump to his knees and blood bubble from his mouth.
I could not be certain, however, and without another thought, darkness claimed me for its own.