Authors: Robert Ryan
That explained the watches on the young man who, clearly, was this gentleman’s brother.
‘It seemed to me that this business of the cheque had really given my brother a fright, and that there was some chance of his settling down into an honest line of life. My mother had
spoken with him, and what she said had touched him, for she had always been the best of mothers to him and he had been the great sorrow of her life. But I knew that this man Sparrow MacCoy had a
great influence over Edward and my chance of keeping the lad straight lay in breaking the connection between them. I had a friend in the NewYork detective force, and through him I kept a watch upon
MacCoy. When, within a fortnight of my brother’s sailing, I heard that MacCoy had taken a berth in the
Etruria
, I was as certain as if he had told me that he was going over to England
for the purpose of coaxing Edward back again into the ways that he had left. In an instant I had resolved to go also, and to pit my influence against MacCoy’s. I knew it was a losing fight,
but I thought, and my mother thought, that it was my duty. We passed the last night together in prayer for my success, and she gave me her own Testament that my father had given her on the day of
their marriage in the Old Country, so that I might always wear it next to my heart.
‘I was a fellow traveller, on the steamship, with Sparrow MacCoy, and at least I had the satisfaction of spoiling his little game for the voyage. The very first night I went into the
smoking-room, and found him at the head of a card-table, with a half a dozen young fellows who were carrying their full purses and their empty skulls over to Europe. He was settling down for his
harvest, and a rich one it would have been. But I soon changed all that.
‘“Gentlemen,” said I, “are you aware whom you are playing with?”
‘“What’s that to you? You mind your own business!” said Sparrow, with an oath.
‘“Who is it, anyway?” asked one of the dudes.
‘“He’s Sparrow MacCoy, the most notorious card-sharper in the States.”
‘Up MacCoy jumped with a bottle in his hand, but he remembered that he was under the flag of the Old Country, where law and order run, and gaol and the gallows wait for violence and
murder, and there’s no slipping out by the back door on board an ocean liner.
‘“Prove your words, you . . . !” said he.
‘“I will!” said I. “If you will turn up your right shirt-sleeve to the shoulder, I will either prove my words or I will eat them.”
‘He turned white and said not a word.’
I recalled that newspaper article I had been reading the very day when Henderson had called. ‘He would have revealed that he had an elastic band down the arm with a clip just above the
wrist,’ I said.
‘Yes. It is by means of this clip that they withdraw from their hands the cards that they do not want, while they substitute other cards from another hiding place. I reckoned on it being
there, and it was. He cursed me, slunk out of the saloon, and was hardly seen again during the voyage. For once, at any rate, I got level with Sparrow MacCoy.
‘But he soon had his revenge upon me, for when it came to influencing my brother he outweighed me every time. Edward had kept himself straight in London for the first few weeks, and had
done some business with his American watches, until this villain came across his path once more. I did my best, but the best was little enough. The next thing I heard there had been a scandal at
one of the Northumberland Avenue hotels: a traveller had been fleeced of a large sum by two confederate card-sharpers, and the matter was in the hands of Scotland Yard. The first I learned of it
was in the evening paper, and I was at once certain that my brother and MacCoy were back at their old games. I hurried at once to Edward’s lodgings. They told me that he and a tall gentleman
(whom I recognized as MacCoy) had gone off together, and that he had left the lodgings and taken his things with him. The landlady had heard them give several directions to the cabman, ending with
Euston Station, and she had accidentally overheard the tall gentleman saying something about Manchester. She believed that that was their destination.
‘A glance at the timetable showed me that the most likely train was at five, though there was another at 4.35, which they might have caught. I had time to get only the later one, but found
no sign of them either at the depot or in the train. They must have gone on by the earlier one, so I determined to follow them to Manchester and search for them in the hotels there. One last appeal
to my brother by all that he owed to my mother might even now be the salvation of him. My nerves were overstrung, and I lit a cigar to steady them. At that moment, just as the train was moving off,
the door of my compartment was flung open, and there were MacCoy and my brother on the platform.’
‘In disguise,’ said Holmes. ‘Because Scotland Yard was after them? Yet you recognized them?’
‘I did. MacCoy had a great astrakhan collar drawn up, so that only his eyes and nose were showing. But that nose, that great red beak, I’d know it anywhere. My brother was dressed
like a woman, with a black veil half down his face, but of course it did not deceive me for an instant, nor would it have done so even if I had not known that he had often used such a dress before.
I started up, and as I did so MacCoy recognized me. He said something, the conductor slammed the door, and they were shown into the next compartment. I tried to stop the train so as to follow them,
but the wheels were already moving, and it was too late.
‘When we stopped at Willesden, I instantly changed my carriage. It appears that I was not seen to do so, which is not surprising, as the station was crowded with people. MacCoy, of course,
was expecting me, and he had spent the time between Euston and Willesden in saying all he could to harden my brother’s heart and set him against me. That is what I fancy, for I had never
found him so impossible to soften or to move. I tried this way and I tried that. I pictured his future in an English gaol; I described the sorrow of his mother when I came back with the news. I
said everything to touch his heart, but all to no purpose. He sat there with a fixed sneer upon his handsome face, while every now and then Sparrow MacCoy would throw in a taunt at me, or some word
of encouragement to hold my brother to his resolutions.
‘“Why don’t you run a Sunday school?” he would say to me, and then, in the same breath: “He’s only just finding out that you are a man as well as
he.”
‘“A man!” said I. “Well, I’m glad to have your friend’s assurance of it, for no one would suspect it to see you like a boarding-school missy. I don’t
suppose in all this country there is a more contemptible-looking creature than you are as you sit there with that Dolly pinafore upon you.” My brother coloured up at that, for he was a vain
man, and he winced from ridicule.
‘“It’s only a dust-cloak,” said he, and he slipped it off. “One has to throw the coppers off one’s scent, and I had no other way to do it.” He took his
toque off with the veil attached, and he put both it and the cloak into his brown bag. “Anyway, I don’t need to wear it until the conductor comes round,” said he.
‘“Nor then, either,” said I, and taking the bag I slung it with all my force out of the window. “Now,” said I, “if nothing but that disguise stands between
you and a gaol, then to gaol you shall go.”
‘“Oh, you would squeal, would you?” MacCoy cried, and in an instant he whipped out his revolver. I sprang for his hand, but saw that I was too late, and jumped aside. At the
same instant he fired, and the bullet which would have struck me passed through the heart of my unfortunate brother.
‘He dropped without a groan upon the floor of the compartment, and MacCoy and I, equally horrified, kneeled at each side of him, trying to bring back some signs of life. MacCoy still held
the loaded revolver in his hand, but his anger against me and my resentment towards him had both for the moment been swallowed up in this sudden tragedy. It was he who first realized the situation.
The train was for some reason going very slowly at the moment, and he saw his opportunity for escape. In an instant he had the door open, but I was as quick as he, and jumping upon him the two of
us fell off the footboard and rolled in each other’s arms down a steep embankment. At the bottom I struck my head against a stone, and I remembered nothing more. When I came to myself I was
lying among some low bushes, not far from the railroad track, and somebody was bathing my head with a wet handkerchief. It was Sparrow MacCoy.
‘“I guess I couldn’t leave you,” said he. “I didn’t want to have the blood of two of you on my hands in one day. You loved your brother, I’ve no doubt;
but you didn’t love him a cent more than I loved him, though you’ll say that I took a queer way to show it. Anyhow, it seems a mighty empty world now that he is gone, and I don’t
care a continental whether you give me over to the hangman or not.”
‘He had turned his ankle in the fall, and there we sat, he with his useless foot, and I with my throbbing head, and we talked and talked until gradually my bitterness began to soften and
to turn into something like sympathy. What was the use of revenging his death upon a man who was as much stricken by that death as I was? And then, as my wits gradually returned, I began to realize
also that I could do nothing against MacCoy that would not recoil upon my mother and myself. How could we convict him without a full account of my brother’s career being made public –
the very thing that of all others we wished to avoid? It was really as much in our interest as his to cover the matter up, and from being an avenger of crime I found myself changed to a conspirator
against Justice. The place in which we found ourselves was one of those pheasant preserves that are so common in the Old Country, and as we groped our way through it I found myself consulting the
slayer of my brother as to how far it would be possible to hush it up.
‘I soon realized from what he said that unless there were some papers of which we knew nothing in my brother’s pockets, there was really no possible means by which the police could
identify him or learn how he had got there. His ticket was in MacCoy’s pocket, and so was the ticket for some baggage that they had left at the depot. Like most Americans, he had found it
cheaper and easier to buy an outfit in London than to bring one from New York, so that all his linen and clothes were new and unmarked. The bag, containing the dust-cloak, which I had thrown out of
the window, may have fallen among some bramble patch where it is still concealed, or may have been carried off by some tramp, or may have come into the possession of the police, who kept the
incident to themselves. Anyhow, I have seen nothing about it in the London papers. As to the watches, they were a selection from those that had been entrusted to him for business purposes. It may
have been for the same business purposes that he was taking them to Manchester, but – well, it’s too late to enter into that.
‘I don’t blame the police for being at fault. I don’t see how it could have been otherwise. There was just one little clue that they might have followed up, but it was a small
one. I mean that small, circular mirror that was found in my brother’s pocket. It isn’t a very common thing for a young man to carry about with him, is it? But a gambler might have told
you what such a mirror may mean to a card-sharper. If you sit back a little from the table, and lay the mirror, face upwards, upon your lap, you can see, as you deal, every card that you give to
your adversary. It is not hard to say whether you see a man or raise him when you know his cards as well as your own. It was as much a part of a sharper’s outfit as the elastic clip upon
Sparrow MacCoy’s arm. Taking that, in connection with the recent frauds at the hotels, the police might have got hold of one end of the string.’
‘The mirror,’ said Holmes. ‘I should have known.’
I kept quiet. I had been reading that article about card-sharpers and it had mentioned the very same device and technique. Yet my mind had not made the connection. That, of course, is the
difference between Holmes and the rest of us – his brain would have seen the link at once.
‘I don’t think there is much more for me to explain,’ Peredue continued. ‘We got to a village called Amersham that night in the character of two gentlemen upon a walking
tour, and afterwards we made our way quietly to London, whence MacCoy went on to Cairo and I returned to New York. My mother died six months afterwards, and I am glad to say that to the day of her
death she never knew what happened. She was always under the delusion that Edward was earning an honest living in London, and I never had the heart to tell her the truth. He never wrote; but then,
he never did write at any time, so that made no difference. His name was the last upon her lips. Once she was gone, I felt I owed it to the authorities to travel here and put the record straight
and take my punishment. But before going to Scotland Yard, I thought I would offer the explanation to you, as I followed the news carefully, and knew you had been consulted. It must be very vexing
to a man of your unblemished record—’
I suppressed a smile, knowing that there was a clutch of cases that represented a blemish. Norbury, for example.
‘Oh, I would not bother with Scotland Yard, Mr Peredue,’ said Holmes.
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘I will convey the basic facts to Chief Inspector Vane. I am sure he will decide that unless you can produce Sparrow MacCoy, there is little point in reopening the case.’
‘But I—’
‘Lost a well-loved brother. None could have done more to try and save his soul. I am grateful you have drawn a line under The Rugby Mystery.’
‘Very well, Mr Holmes. There’s just one other thing that I have to ask you, sir, and I should take it as a kind return for all this explanation if you could do it for me. You
remember the Testament that was picked up. I always carried it in my inside pocket, and it must have come out in my fall. I value it very highly, for it was the family book with my birth and my
brother’s marked by my father in the beginning of it. I wish you would apply at the proper place and have it sent to me. It can be of no possible value to anyone else. If you address it to me
at Bassano’s Library, Broadway, New York, it is sure to come to hand.’