EVEN IN MY PRIME, THE DAY’S EXERTIONS AND excitement would have caused me some weariness. But I was not in my prime; I was still recovering from my shoulder-shot, gut-sick Afghan misadventure. Thus, the instant we reached 221B Baker Street, I collapsed into my armchair before the hearth and slept.
I woke at a quarter to eight, famished and bedewed with my own drool. It was not my hunger but the slamming door that stirred me from my rest. Holmes rushed in with the evening paper in his hands and a look of terror upon his face. “On your feet, Watson, the game is afoot and the wolf at our door! Or anyway, he should be at our door in as little as fifteen minutes.”
Rubbing the sleep from my eyes and spittle from my chin, I asked him, “Whatever can you mean, Warlock?”
“I think I owe you an apology,” he said and flicked the newspaper into my lap. It was open to the classifieds; one of the advertisements was circled in black ink, that I might identify the source of our strife.
FOUND: one bakery wrapper, in the street outside No. 3 Lauriston Gardens. If the owner wishes to reclaim, I shall be in my rooms at 221B Baker Street, alone, unarmed and probably drunk from 8 p.m. until 9 p.m. I am physically feeble and my neighbors cannot hear loud, violent noises. Inquire Dr. John Watson, MD. Mother’s maiden name: Constance. Lloyds Bank account number: 8720764.
“What the deuce is this, Holmes?” I howled.
“The Times,” he said.
“No, this advertisement! How has this happened?”
“Well, I posted it myself, to lure the killer here.”
“When?” I demanded. “It takes days to get an advertisment in The Times!”
“I know. I think it was four, maybe five days ago that I submitted it.”
“Ridiculous! How would you have known what to say?”
“It was a surprise to me as well, I assure you,” he replied. “Though, I must say, it is nice to know what it means. I remember being quite baffled at the time.”
“Why have you included my bank account number?”
“Well, how should I know, Watson? To grant you increased verisimilitude, perhaps? This way, the killer can stop in at the bank and learn that there is indeed a Dr. John Watson residing at 221B Baker Street.”
“And clean me out while he’s there, I suppose.”
“Oh come now, Watson! Everybody knows you have no money to steal. I’m surprised that that one detail is what should concern you in any case! What is the theft of a few shillings, compared to the prospect of your murder? Well, I suppose I had better go.”
“What? Go where?”
“To get Grogsson, of course. We’ll want him here to intercept the killer. He’s just down the street. Shouldn’t take me more than twenty minutes, if the streets are clear. Back in a tick!”
Holmes was already at the door, hat in hand.
“Warlock! I may be dead by then!”
“Nonsense, Watson,” he scoffed. “The poison probably takes a few minutes, don’t you think? Stall him for us. Shoot him, if you must. You’ve got a gun.”
That was true; I had my service revolver. I was already mid-lunge, heading for the case I kept it in, when Warlock added, “I stripped it all down and cleaned it for you.”
“Where did you put it?”
“Why it’s… hmm… where did I put it?” he mused. “Ah! I recall that the chamber is on the bathroom sink. Tata, Watson. Good luck!”
The chamber? I went pale. How clearly my mind’s eye could picture it: Holmes in a fine mood, humming one of his absurd little ditties, cheerily cleaning this pistol component and then the next, carelessly discarding one the instant he was ready for another.
If somebody had asked me that morning whether I might be able to ravage all our rooms in eleven minutes, I should have said no. I would have been right, too. In thirteen minutes I could have done it, I think, but I ran out of time. I had the chamber, the carriage, the barrel, both halves of the handle, the revolving pin, the advance mechanism, the trigger and four bullets when I was interrupted by a knock at the door, promptly at eight. No hammer. I had no firing hammer. I let the pieces drop onto the dining table and called, “Yes?”
“Dr. Watson?” said Mrs. Hudson, poking her head in at the door. “Lady here to see you, Doctor.”
She swung the door wide. There, framed against my only reasonable route of escape, was a “lady” with a bulging purse and a copy of The Times. She was a strapping six-footer with well-muscled shoulders and a prominent Adam’s apple. Obviously she’d had some hurry getting here, for her face still bore traces of the lather she had used when shaving off her beard. The dress could not have been hers, for it was made for a person barely half her size, but the bonnet actually did suit.
I’d say the disguise was insufficient to fool anybody, were it not for the fact that Mrs. Hudson had been taken in entirely. She fixed me with the first friendly smile I’d ever seen her perform and chirped, “Well, I’ll be off then. I hope you’ll not be wanting anything, Dr. Watson. It’s scrap-metal night and I’m just off to fire up the grinder. No, I won’t hear you call, I don’t think. Why, that old contraption would beat a brass band, wouldn’t it? Anyway, sure it’ll drown out any noise you two could make up here. Night all.”
For a second, I thought Mrs. Hudson was leaving us alone because she would be happy to see me murdered, but the spritely glint in her eye gave me to realize she had other reasons. The idea that young, unmarried doctors might be willing to rendezvous with aged spinsters, unchaperoned in their quarters at night, was a source of great hope to her. Doubtless, she had several scandalous novels that began in exactly that manner. Her rusty old heart swelled with optimism, she tripped lightly down the stairs and was gone. The killer smiled and stepped through the doorway.
Realizing my only hope lay in playing along, I croaked, “Good evening, Mrs…?”
“Sawyer,” the killer said, effecting a pathetic impersonation of an elderly crone. “I come about the advertisement. Do you still got that wrapper?”
“Just there, on the table; you’re welcome to it,” I said, nodding my head to where the bakery wrapper lay, beside the ineffectual pile of pistol parts.
“Oh, God-a-mercy, thank ’ee, good sir.”
“You’re very welcome. Good day.”
“It belongs to me daughter, you see,” the murderer continued, visibly counting off his rehearsed speech on his fingers, point by point. “She married that Tom Dennis—regular fellow, he is, so long as he’s not in his drink. He’s true enough at sea, but in port, well, the women and the liquor they get the better of him. Oh sure, my good daughter was due for a savage beating had you not recovered her missing wrapper.”
“How lucky that I did. Please, take it back to her.”
“She lives at 3 Mayfield Place, Peckham and I live at 13 Duncan Street, Houndsditch. She was on her way to a circus that night, when she dropped the wrapper.”
“Ha!” I cried. “3 Lauriston Gardens does not lie between Mayfield Place and any circus that was open on the night of… Wait… I don’t care. Please take it.”
“Sally Sawyer, that was her name; now Sally Dennis since Tom Dennis wedded her. I have their marriage license here, if you care to see.”
“Not necessary, please…”
“Now ’ave a look, sir, and ye’ll know I speak true.”
“Please, I believe anything you say, no matter how preposterous!” I pleaded. “I have no intention of fact-checking any of this! Just take the wrapper and go!”
But he ignored me utterly and continued, “It was a token of their love you see.”
I gave a deep sigh and muttered, “How odd, yet perfectly credible.”
“It’s off the first donut what he bought her.”
“I’m sure it was a very nice donut,” I said, which turned out to be a terrible mistake.
The killer’s face went pale. A look of remorse and longing that would have drawn sympathy from the very stones crossed his face for a moment, but was chased away by a flood of vengeful hate that froze me where I stood. He howled with a rage so intense he managed to drown out Mrs. Hudson’s scrap grinder for a moment, then turned away to punch the wall. His fist shattered lath and plaster and sank in so deep I half fancied he’d broken through the opposite side as well.
“That it was,” he told me, all pretense of the fictional Mrs. Sawyer gone from his voice. “The best one ever.”
He closed his eyes, hung his head, withdrew his fist from the wall, then promptly plunged it through again, setting a second hole just six inches from the first.
With trembling hands, I picked the wrapper up from the table. Inch by inch, though terror gripped my heart, I approached him. A sudden inspiration took me; as stealthily as my unsteady fingers could manage, I tore a tiny corner from the wrapper and placed it in my pocket. I forced myself across the room to where he stood, with his fist in the wall and his petticoat all in disarray. I placed the wrapper in his free hand, closed his fingers over it and squeaked, “It’s yours.”
In my heart, I prayed he had not seen me tear away the corner of his precious wrapper. His back was to me. How could he have noticed? I hate to think what would have occurred if he had.
“Thank you,” he said. Strange how heartfelt his gratitude seemed. He sounded as if I had just saved him from the gallows and I had an instant of guilt when I realized I intended to do just the opposite. Without another word, he drew his fist from the wall and disappeared through the door. The moment he was gone, my knees gave out and I would have plunged to the floor, except I knew I must observe all I could about the man, in the hope of catching him later. I staggered to the window and sagged into the very armchair I had thought to deposit Warlock in just that morning. The killer walked into the street, approached a waiting cab and called out loudly, so that all the street might hear, “3 Mayfield Place, Peckham, driver.”
All this in spite of the fact that there was no driver. After shooting a fleeting glance up and down the street, the old crone bounded up into the driver’s seat herself and whipped the horse into a gallop.
At least we had it right that the killer was a cab driver.
The urge to collapse overcame me. I staggered across the room to the brandy decanter, then back to the chair before the fire. Here at last, I allowed my legs to buckle and I fell in a heap, interrupting my tremors, from time to time, to pour a healthy draught of brandy down my throat.
It was nearly an hour and a half before Warlock returned. By that time, I had already turned away two other callers. One was some sort of insane baked-goods collector. The other had just come from my bank and claimed to be a Nigerian prince, in spite of the fact that he was clearly of Chinese descent. His family fortune had been seized, he said, and if only I would deposit a thousand pounds in my own bank account (the number of which was written on a crumpled piece of paper, clutched in his right hand), this would somehow allow him access to his own monies, ten thousand pounds of which he would immediately pay to me. Exhausted and by no account sober, I told him I would. The instant he left, I made a note to open a new account at my earliest convenience.
At last, Warlock burst through the door, in high spirits. He clucked, “Hi-ho, Watson! I’ve just had a merry chase. I quite forgot: Grogsson was headed out to the theater this evening! I checked a few, but never found him. Any luck here?”
I nodded.
“Did you encounter the killer?”
Again, I nodded.
“Tell me all, Watson! Tell me all!”
I shook my head.
“Perhaps tomorrow, then. You look quite undone, I must say.”
He leapt into the other armchair and poured himself a snifter of brandy. He had no intention of drinking it, I knew, but would often pour himself one whenever anyone else had a glass, so he could pretend to be joining in. He settled back, smiling, but then jerked forward, his reverie interrupted by sudden remembrance. After rummaging through his coat for a few seconds, he withdrew a small metal curio and said, “By the by, Watson, I found this queer little device in my pocket. Have you any idea what it can be?”
I can hardly describe the wave of fury that washed over me. If I had not been in an alcoholic stupor, I think I would have leapt from my seat and throttled him. Yet, in my current state, there was nothing I could do but say, “That, Holmes, is the firing hammer of a Webley-Pryse .455 revolver.”
His face contorted in a mixture of amusement and wonder. “Is it?”
“I am fairly certain.”