The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part II (23 page)

“Keep it safe,” he said, and I told him that I would.

“Good,” he said with a satisfied air. “Now, is there anything more, Doctor?”

“I... do not believe so,” said I.

I was not even certain about what we had, so after we had thanked Delebeck for his help and departed, I sat in the cab and tried to put things together as Holmes might have done. I had hardly begun my cogitations when Albert tapped on the communicating door.

“Have you reached any conclusions, Doctor?” he asked when I opened the door.

“Not yet,” I replied. “It seems that we have a good bit of evidence, but where does it lead us?”

“What would your friend Sherlock Holmes say?”

Again I tried to apply myself to a solution. I wanted to begin at the beginning of things and move forward, but where to begin?

“The rail schedule tells us that Bourdin seemed to be planning a return to France,” I said at length. “For that he needed money.”

“How would he obtain it?” Albert asked. “By performing some sort of dangerous task, perhaps?”

“The bomb,” said I. “Of course. He was not a violent person, according to Delebeck, but he might have resorted to placing a bomb for someone if the payment were sufficient.”

“And who might have a motive to pay a known anarchist to place a bomb at the observatory?”

The horse plodded along. The cold damp air invaded the cab, and it seemed to clarify my thoughts.

“Someone who could gain something or advance his cause,” I said. “Or both.”

“Someone like Henry Starnes?” Albert asked.

“Yes. This incident will cause many more people in England to turn against all anarchists, but especially those from other countries. Starnes and his nativists will certainly gain a greater voice in politics. His seat in parliament would be assured.”

“Very sound, Doctor,” said Albert. “And if Starnes wanted to cause a commotion rather than do real damage, the observatory would be a sufficient target. Well known, but not essential to the nation's business.”

“The death of Bourdin, though. He could not have predicted that.”

“No. It must have been accidental. Perhaps Bourdin fell and activated the bomb prematurely, thus bringing about his own demise.”

“It sounds very likely,” said I, “but we have no proof.”

“I think we do,” said Albert. “Did you not notice a certain smell in Bourdin's rooms?”

“Yes, but I could not put a name to it. It was faint and had soon faded away completely.”

“As if it might have been brought there on someone's clothing,” Albert said. “Like whatever stained the doorframe.”

Suddenly it came to me. “Paint,” I said. “The smell was oil paint.”

“Such as might be used to paint a sign,” Albert said. “I believe that if the sample in the envelope were to be compared to the signs of Starnes's group, it would be the same.”

I was momentarily elated, but something occurred to me. “Many people might have used that paint. We have no proof that it was Starnes.”

“Mycroft Holmes will soon find out by examining his clothing,” said Albert. “And he will question everyone along Fitzroy Street. Someone will have seen Starnes there.”

He was correct, and I felt sure that now I had solved the problem Mycroft had set me.

“We have arrived at the Diogenes Club,” Albert said.

The cab came to a stop, and I made my exit without assistance. I stood on the sidewalk, waiting for Albert to join me, but he clucked to the horse and the cab moved away.

“Wait,” I called. “You must come in and speak to Mycroft with me.”

“You have no further need of my assistance, Doctor. You have done a wonderful job on your own.”

“It was not entirely on my own,” said I, but he appeared not to hear me as the cab moved away and was swallowed up by the fog. I looked after him for a moment and then went inside the club to present my findings to Mycroft.

Perhaps now my readers are aware of why I have some misgivings about dating the return of Holmes to England as late as April of 1894. He was a clever man when it came to disguise, and during his career he fooled everyone, including me, more times than I care to enumerate. Could he have done it once again? If so, he never mentioned it after his recognized return. But now, after the passage of many years, most especially on cold winter nights when the fog settles over all, I still wonder about the case of the anarchist's bomb and just who was helping whom.

The Riddle of the Rideau Rifles

by Peter Calamai

As I write these lines, a dreadful darkness is descending over the civilized world. In Europe, only Britain, Ireland, and neutral Sweden and Switzerland remain free from the Nazis, and yet the United States of America remains on the sidelines as Herr Hitler extends his mailed grip around the Mediterranean and North Africa. Canada and the other self-governing Dominions are doing all they can to help our Mother Country. But without the industrial and military might of America on our side soon, I fear for the future of humanity.

This is not a propitious time to make public the tale which I recount here. Its publication now could arouse further those isolationist and anti-war sentiments already too evident among our neighbours to the south.
But it is a story which the world should hear someday, and while I am still able I must record how brilliant detective work averted what would have been a calamitous international incident between Canada and the United States.

Yet I am getting ahead of myself. In writing this narrative I have drawn upon my personal diaries and other original documents in my possession. Once I completed my task I destroyed those documents, lest others reveal matters that I believe must remain forever secret. To my nephew Jonathan - or indeed to his progeny - I leave the decision about when to publish this account of the wisest man I have ever known.

Bartholomew Evans

Ottawa, November, 1940.

The little water remaining in the Rideau Canal was still frozen solid that March Tuesday in 1894 when the Private Secretary informed me that the Prime Minister, Sir John Thompson, wished to see me. I hurried along the corridor in the Centre Block where I, a very junior aide, was privileged to share a cramped office with several other young men. To my surprise, I was instantly ushered into the Prime Minister's office.

“Evans, I have an important task for you,” Sir John said without preamble. “Read these.”

From a pile on his desk, the Prime Minister handed me what I recognized, even at that early stage of my career, as a sheaf of state papers. Or more precisely, fair copies of those papers. They revealed an astonishing development.

That great Liberal, William Gladstone, then Prime Minister of Great Britain for the fourth (and final) time, had written my Prime Minister, soliciting his support publicly for a movement called the Anglo-American reunion, which sought the ultimate federation of the entire English-speaking world.

“We would thus repair the ruction with America caused by the folly of George III and the blundering of Lord North,” Gladstone wrote.

Sir John had replied (no doubt also by diplomatic bag) that he was well disposed toward the idea, but domestic circumstances forbade any public show of support. His letter then marshalled facts of which I had been utterly unaware.

My Prime Minister said mysterious elements in Ottawa had begun fomenting anti-American sentiment within the past year, and their machinations had found favour in his own caucus and, indeed, even within his cabinet. Despite discreet yet concerted inquiries by Colonel Arthur Percy Sherwood of the Dominion Police, the source of this campaign remained unidentified.

“Until it is known and scotched, my hands are tied and I dare not act as you request,” Thompson had written.

The third and last letter was the response from Gladstone. He well understood Thompson's predicament, he wrote, and had a possible solution to offer. With our approval, the British Prime Minister would dispatch a personal representative to investigate the anti-American phenomenon. Although the investigator was as yet unknown to the wider world, his detecting talents were highly recommended by Mr. Gladstone's closest advisor, a man who sometimes constituted the entire British government because of his unparalleled knowledge of every portfolio.

“I agreed, of course, Evans. What else could I do? I have just had a cable saying that this man is arriving by train in an hour. Apparently his name is Sigerson. Your task is to offer him every assistance, acting with my full authority. But keep me informed as well.”

So overwhelmed was I by this sudden revelation of domestic unrest and secret prime ministerial investigations that it was all I could manage to stammer my assent and retreat from Sir John's presence, clutching the sheaf of papers. A quick consultation with the Private Secretary revealed that a suite of rooms had been booked at the Russell Hotel for Mr. Sigerson.

I met Gladstone's representative at the station what seemed like mere minutes later. My first impressions were favourable. Mr. Sigerson carried himself with a quiet authority beyond his years, which I judged to be about forty. Spaced widely above an aquiline nose, his grey eyes darted constantly, taking in details. When we shook hands his grip was firm, and his figure, while slight, was wiry. He stood perhaps an inch or more taller than my five-foot-ten. I judged that Mr. Sigerson would be a good fellow to have beside you in an altercation, should our mission come to that. Just as I completed this surveillance, he spoke:

“I am going to address you as Evans and you should call me Sigerson, now that you've taken my measure,” he said with a wry smile. “Our first order of business must be to gather data. I cannot make bricks without straw.”

I was to discover in our short time together that Sigerson (as I indeed came to call him) was given to uttering such homilies leaning heavily toward Biblical and classical allusions. From this habit and his precise manner of speaking, I judged that he was a university man like myself, although a product of the English system and a decade my senior. Yet I failed utterly during the next few days to draw from him whether he had attended Oxford or Cambridge.

My own university connections from Queen's, however, could serve us well for this sensitive mission. Many of my fellows were now placed within the federal government as I was, not yet exercising great authority, but in positions where their fingers rested on many quivering strands of information.

We agreed that we would conceal Sigerson's real mission in Ottawa, telling people instead that he was an academic from Norway making a study of Canada-U.S. relations as a possible parallel to Scandinavia. We left his bags at the Russell and took the chance of calling on two of my Queen's connections without making appointments.

In the first of what turned out to be continual surprises, not only did Sigerson immediately begin to speak English with what sounded to my ears like a Norwegian lilt, but he also somehow contrived to
appear
Scandinavian, if not actually Norwegian.

Unfortunately, the first interview with a university contemporary elicited little more than some embarrassing sobriquets by which I had been known in certain undergraduate circles. The second classmate, however, suggested it might be worthwhile for us to talk with a friend of his, Jack Wells, who was with the detective service of the Ottawa city police.

“I will send a note saying that you will call this afternoon. If there have been any day-to-day incidents arising from tensions between Canada and the U.S., Jack is the fellow to know,” said my classmate.

After a modest lunch, we walked to the police station and were quickly shown into the office of Detective Inspector Jack Wells. Events intervened even as we took our seats.

“I apologize if I seem somewhat distracted, gentlemen, but I received information of the most distressing nature only hours ago,” said Wells. A few questions from Sigerson drew out the whole story.

A promising young detective constable named O'Reilly had been killed in a fall early that morning, apparently after a bar room brawl. His battered body, reeking of liquor, had been found on the stone bottom of a drained lock of the Rideau Canal, adjacent to an old government building known as the Commissariat.

“It's a black eye for the force, sure enough, but worse than that, his family won't be eligible for any pension because he wasn't on duty when he died. And the wife has two small children to rear by herself.”

“What ought O'Reilly to have been investigating, Inspector?” I asked.

“Smuggling, Mr. Evans. We have reason to believe that someone is attempting to smuggle explosives into Canada. It could be some latter-day remnants of the Fenians.”

I quickly informed Sigerson about the rag-tag Irish-American nationalists who had sought thirty years earlier to “capture” Canada and hold it hostage until Britain granted independence to Ireland. With the exception of one raid, their military forays into Canada had been failures and, by the early 1870's, the Fenian Brotherhood had vanished.

“I should like to examine the constable's body,” Sigerson said without preamble. “My knowledge of advanced forensic techniques has proven useful to authorities in the past.”

Wells replied, “I don't see that any harm can arise from that. We will do anything to get to the bottom of this tragedy.”

In the station's basement mortuary, Sigerson drew from an inner coat pocket a magnificent brass-bound magnifying glass. Not that one was needed to see the terrible bruises, mottled yellow and purple, which covered almost every part of the constable's body. Instead, Sigerson studiously applied his glass to the man's hands, wrists, forearms and ankles. From one wrist he plucked something with a pair of tweezers, placing it in a small envelope. He did the same with a scraping from the sole of one of the constable's shoes.

“Your constable didn't die as a result of a bar room brawl or even a tumble onto the lock bottom, Inspector,” Sigerson announced as we mounted the station stairs. “He was beaten to death by several men who used clubs and also their feet, and they delivered the fatal blows when he was bound and unable to defend himself. It was homicide, likely deliberate murder.”

“You astonish me, Mr. Sigerson. How can you possibly know this?” asked Wells.

“Because the constable himself told me, or rather the evidence of his body did. The backs of his hands and forearms are cut and battered, the classic wounds suffered by someone trying to defend himself against a superior force which overwhelmed him in an initial assault.

“Rope burns around his ankles and wrists indicate he was struggling against restraints. I would hypothesize that he was beaten while bound in an attempt to extract some information. When your police surgeon performs an autopsy, he will likely discover many broken ribs, and possibly tibia and fibula as well. Those would not result from your standard drunken brawl.”

The Inspector was beside himself with excitement.

“If this is true, it will be a capital piece of good news in this sorry affair, Mr. Sigerson. Not only would it remove the stain from the constable's character, and from the force's, but it would go a long way toward convincing the commissioners to award a service pension to O'Reilly's widow. Is there no way to obtain some evidentiary proof?”

Sigerson replied: “I took the liberty of removing a small sample of the rope fibre that was adhering to the constable's skin. With access to a dark-field microscope, I expect to identify its origin. I have written a small monograph about distinguishing fibres of the seventy-three most common ropes.”

As luck would have it, another of my Queen's contemporaries had recently been seconded as an assistant to George M. Dawson, the second-in-command of the Geological Survey of Canada, which was Canada's oldest scientific agency. The survey was housed in a former hotel on Sussex Street and would have the latest in microscopes. I undertook to get in touch with my colleague and arrange access to the specialized equipment for a “distinguished scientific visitor from Norway.” Sigerson and I agreed to reconvene Wednesday at the hotel.

That morning we called first upon Jephro Clarke, also a friend from college. He turned out to possess an ample supply of the sort of “straw” sought by the British/Norwegian investigator to form the “bricks” of his case.

“Yes, I myself have noticed anti-American sentiments about town, and not just the letters to the editor in the
Free Press
,
Journal
, and
Citizen
. They are particularly strong in a society to which I belong,” Clarke confided.

“Pray tell us more, Mr. Clarke. Omit no detail, no matter how trivial it may seem to you,” Sigerson urged.

“There is not much to relate, Mr. Sigerson. I am a member of the Hibernian Debating Society, an assemblage of good fellows who convene every Thursday evening for invigorating discourse about matters of topical concern. We normally gather in a meeting room of an inn on Duke Street and then adjourn downstairs afterwards to the public bar where the discussion continues, usually becoming somewhat more animated.

“Yet animus has never been a feature of our discussions, at least not until these past months. A few members began voicing opinions antagonistic towards our American neighbours, and the sentiment seems to have gained a hold, certainly among some of the more vocal members.”

“Is there anything which distinguishes these particular men?” I asked. Sigerson shot me what I imagined was a look of approval.

“Not really, Bart. They're relatively new here in town but mostly from up the Valley, so there's the usual touch of Irish somewhere in their background. You hear traces of it when they talk. But they're solid fellows. I had occasion to recommend two of them, a father and son, to my superior for employment when we were faced with a sudden double vacancy at the Commissariat.”

At the second mention in two days of this building, Sigerson raised a quizzical eyebrow, and Clarke elaborated. Like me, he was a personal aide, in his case to the Deputy Minister of Militia and Defence. The department was responsible for the Commissariat Building, a substantial stone edifice beside the lowermost locks of the Rideau Canal. Dating from 1827, the building had originally stored tools and equipment during the canal construction. For the past four decades, it had served as a storehouse for military goods, with an armourer and carpenter actually living on the premises. The current holders of those posts had been recruited from the Hibernia membership after the previous incumbents were discharged by the Clerk of Military Stores, the official with day-to-day responsibility for the building.