Sherlock Holmes Stories of Edward D. Hoch (13 page)

He had eyes like a hawk and seemed to be watching activity in the room. At the cigar counter near the door, DuValle himself was cashing in chips for nervous customers.

Presently, Lanner came over to join us. “Mr. Holmes, if that drink wasn’t poisoned, do you have any idea how he might have been killed?”

“There are other possibilities,” Holmes said. “Someone at the table might have injected him with a hypodermic syringe. Or he might have received a slow-acting poison earlier in the evening.”

“The others at the table said they noticed nothing amiss until he keeled over.”

“If true, that might remove both those possibilities. A man getting poked with a needle surely would notice it and have some reaction. And almost all slow-acting poisons show their effects long before death, either through stomach pains, vomiting or unconsciousness.”

Holmes had been watching the club employees making their rounds. An employee in evening dress came by to collect glasses. He brushed the cigar butt and ash into a receptacle he carried. At that moment, Holmes sprang upon him, gripping his wrist.

“Here, Lanner! This is your man! Unless I am mistaken, his name is Wallworth, and he is one more of Antonio Juarez’s unfortunate victims.”

“I recognized him at once as your doorman,” Holmes explained to DuValle when the manager hurried over to join them.

Wallworth’s resistance had been short-lived.

“The mask did not hide that pleasing dimple. You told us a man named Wallworth had been so ruined by Juarez that you gave him a job. You also mentioned that he was a chemist. I detected an odor of almonds in that cigar butt, as if some sort of cyanide crystals might have been introduced into the tobacco. It was something a chemist might be able to accomplish, and the poison would not take effect until the cigar burned down to ignite the crystals. I noticed when we arrived that your doorman supplied cigars and snuff to the customers. He would have recognized Juarez by his goatee, and after seeing him again and again, ruining others as he had been ruined, he took his own revenge. I saw from the band on the dead man’s cigar that it had come from here, but there was always a possibility another player had given it to him. I waited until I saw your employees cleaning up. You were at the cigar counter by the door, cashing in chips, so I knew your doorman must be one of those helping to clean up. I recognized him from the dimple in his chin, and when he scooped up the cigar I’d placed in the ashtray, I knew he was attempting to retrieve the butt before we realized it was the murder weapon and traced it back to him. I guessed correctly that he was the man with a motive, the former chemist Wallworth.”

Foster and Miss Rutherford had joined us and had listened to every word. Inspector Lanner produced his handcuffs and took Wallworth away for questioning.

It was Foster who said, “Thank heaven I came to you, Mr. Holmes. Your skill astounds me!”

Holmes merely smiled. “Unfortunately, that skill does not extend to roulette. I lost a few quid at that.”

“You must at least allow us to invite you to our wedding.”

Sarah Rutherford nodded. “We talked it over while we were waiting. It will be in the spring, when the weather is better.”

Holmes offered his congratulations. “I trust you have had enough of the Domino Club. Let us hope that marriage affords you all of the pleasures and none of the risks of gambling. As for us, Watson, it’s time we returned to Baker Street and the warmth of our fire.”

I
T WAS A FINE
autumn morning in late September of 1899 when Sherlock Holmes and I received an unexpected visitor at our Baker Street lodgings. Accustomed as Holmes was to welcoming paying clients, it was rare indeed for Inspector Lestrade to visit us.

“Is this official business?” Holmes asked, pausing in the act of filling his pipe to study the lean, ferret-like countenance of the Scotland Yard inspector.

“It is indeed, Mr. Holmes.”

“I suspect it has to do with a body discovered along the shore of the Thames River, near Wapping, within the last three hours?”

Lestrade seemed taken aback by his words. “My God, Holmes! Has one of your Baker Street urchins brought you news of it already?”

“I hardly need that,” he replied, with the superior gaze I’d seen so many times. “You know my methods, Watson. Explain to the inspector how I knew the location of the killing.”

I studied him up and down for a moment. “Well, I can see moist sand dried to the knees of his trousers,” I suggested with some uncertainty.

Holmes finished lighting his pipe. “Of course! Moist sand in the city on a sunny September morning most like comes from the banks of the Thames at low tide. That particular grade of sand is mainly found near Wapping. A man of your rank, Inspector, would only have been called out for the most serious of crimes. The fact that you knelt in the moist stand tells me you were examining a body.”

“You never fail to amaze me, Holmes,” the inspector said, brushing the sand from his knees. “The body of a man was indeed found near Wapping this morning. Some sort of message was left in the sand near his body. It appears to be a cipher, and I heard of your success last year with the problem of the dancing men. I hope you can come with me to view this message before it is washed away by the rising tide.”

Holmes glanced in my direction. “What say you, Watson? Is your calendar clear for the next few hours?”

“Certainly, Holmes.”

The area of Wapping, near the Liverpool docks, was made up mainly of four-story buildings with shops on the ground floors and lodgings above. Facing west, one could see the Tower of London looming in the distance. Holmes and I followed Lestrade down to the stretch of damp sand by the water’s edge, where a pair of bobbies stood guard. I could see that the tide had already turned.

“The body has been removed,” Lestrade told us. “It was sighted just after dawn by the Metropolitan Special Constabulary—the river police—and officers were dispatched to the scene.”

“What was the cause of death?” Holmes asked.

“Stabbed once in the back. The knife was still in the wound. The victim was dressed like a seaman, with black hair and a short beard. Perhaps he was off one of the merchant ships at the Liverpool docks. He had no money or identification in his pockets, suggesting robbery as the motive. However, the killer missed this.” He held out a white disk, apparently made of ivory, with the number “5” imprinted on it in gold ink.

Sherlock Holmes grunted, his attention taken by three rows of block letters in the damp sandy soil at our feet:

Y V      I       Y      A      H

T   O      M     I       T

W A      H      T      Y      H

“It’s a cipher of some sort,” I agreed, “but hardly anything like the dancing men. Perhaps Roman numerals mixed with other letters.”

“The letters are much too regular for it to have been made by a person’s finger,” Holmes said thoughtfully. “Certainly not by a dying man’s finger. It looks more as if they were imprinted. Where was the body found, Inspector?”

“Right here, by the message. There were some footprints, but by the time the body was discovered and the police arrived, I’m afraid the original tracks could not be determined with any degree of accuracy.”

Holmes shook his head hopelessly, but still went through the motions of squatting down and examining the nearest footprints with his magnifying glass. He asked the two bobbies to lift their feet and examined the bottoms of their shoes as well.

“I can find very little,” he admitted. “The area is too cluttered.”

Holmes jotted down the apparent cipher in his notebook and we left the scene as the rising tide began to fill some of the letters with water.

“Did you see anything I missed?” Lestrade asked.

“Many things, Inspector, but nothing that points directly to the killer. Please let me examine that disk you showed us earlier.”

Lestrade handed over the ivory marker with the number “5” on it.

“Could it be a coat check?” I suggested.

Holmes shook his head. “Coat checks usually have a hole in them. And they’re not made of ivory. I would guess this is a roulette chip from a fashionable casino in the amount of five pounds.”

“That was my thinking exactly,” the inspector said.

“The casinos for the affluent are to be found in the West End. Are there any places near here, in the East End, which might use such chips?”

Lestrade considered the question. “Certainly not in this area, with its wretchedly poor people.”

“Still, there is a fine row of eighteenth-century houses to be seen in Wapping High Street. I could easily imagine one of those as an illegal gambling establishment.”

“We have heard rumors,” he admitted.

Holmes nodded. “I will look into the matter.”

“But what of the cipher?”

“All in good time, Inspector.”

Holmes said very little about the case when we returned to our lodgings in Baker Street, but I noticed him more than once puzzling over the message in the sand that he’d copied into his notebook. After dinner, when I was giving some thought to retiring early, he suddenly roused himself from his favorite armchair and announced, “Come, Watson, it is time we visited Wapping High Street.”

“Now, Holmes? It’s after nine o’clock!”

“This is just the time when London’s night life begins to awaken.”

Holmes directed our hansom cab to the block he sought on Wapping High Street and, when we arrived, he pretended he’d forgotten the number we sought.

“What is it you’re looking for, gents?” the drive asked from above.

“The casino.”

“Parkleigh’s?”

“That’s the one.”

The cab moved down a few houses and stopped before a three-story brick home of eighteenth-century design, where two gentlemen were just entering ahead of us.

Holmes paid the man and said, as we alighted, “Lestrade should check with the hansom drivers for his information.”

Once inside the door of the establishment, Holmes and I passed through a red velvet drape into a passage where a porter awaited us.

“Welcome to Parkleigh’s,” he said, and showed us into a large ballroom, which must have occupied a large portion of the ground floor. An attractive blond woman played a piano at one end, and there was a bar at the other end, with small tables and chairs along the walls. About a dozen couples were dancing to waltz music, and I expressed my surprise at the presence of women.

“They are hostesses provided by the establishment,” Holmes explained.

We proceeded upstairs to the gambling room, which was much more crowded. Perhaps fifty young and middle-aged men were grouped around the gaming tables, playing roulette and dice and chemin de fer. All were well-dressed, some in formal evening attire. I saw at once that Holmes had been correct. The ivory disk in the dead man’s pocket was indeed a roulette chip. In fact, the five-pound chip seemed to be the highest denomination in play. At the far side of the room was a glass-domed tape machine that supplied race results by means of a telegraph ticker. Apparently the establishment was open in the afternoons for wagering on horse races.

The murmur of conversation was low, broken only by an occasional shout or curse from an emotional player. Tobacco smoke hung heavy in the air, though there were no drinks served upstairs. We’d been observing the scene for some minutes when a short, thickset man who might have been a former prize fighter came over to introduce himself.

“I’m Jerry Helmsphere, the manager here. Can I help you gentlemen with anything?”

Sherlock Holmes smiled. “I had thought that I might help you. I understand that you have had some criminal activity here of late.”

The man seemed taken aback by his words. “Could you step into my office, please?”

We followed him into a small office where Holmes introduced us. It was obvious at once that the man recognized the name.

“Sherlock Holmes, the consulting detective?”

“The very same.”

“How did you learn of the theft of our tape machine?”

“I may have a clue to its whereabouts,” Holmes said, pointedly ignoring the question. “Would you care to hire me in an official capacity?”

The short man was hesitant. “How much are you asking?”

Holmes mentioned a figure and the man sighed. “I am only the manager here. I don’t possess that sort of money.”

“But you cannot request help from the police, since your entire operation is illegal,” Holmes remarked. “And you dare not report it to your owner.”

“The owner resides in Paris. He is better left undisturbed.” Helmsphere made a counteroffer. “That is as high as I can go.”

“Very well,” Holmes agreed. “Now, tell me exactly what happened to your missing tape machine.”

“You may have noticed one machine against the opposite wall as you entered. Its ticker reports the results from Epsom, Ascot and the other tracks. We had two such machines to accommodate more of our patrons who wished to read the results before they are posted. One was stolen overnight. I need not tell you that the tape machines are expensive, and illegal possession of one could lead to all manner of chicanery.”

I observed that beads of perspiration had collected on Jerry Helmsphere’s upper lip as he spoke. Clearly the disappearance of the machine was a matter of grave importance to him.

Holmes sensed it, too, and asked, “What sort of chicanery?”

He wiped a hand across his lips. Many of the smaller book-making establishments do not have tape machines like these. Whoever stole it could use it to place bets on winning horses before the official results reached those places. The other bookmakers might hold me responsible for their losses.”

His meaning was all too clear. The man feared for his life unless he could recover the stolen machine.

“How heavy is it?” Holmes inquired. “Could one man have carried it out alone?”

“Not easily. Two would be much safer.”

“At about what time would the theft have taken place?”

“We close here at two a.m. I’m usually around until three checking the books and making certain the place is cleaned up. We open at one in the afternoon on race days, so it makes for long hours.” He paused, then added, “The theft would have taken place between three a.m. and noon, when I discovered it.”