Cynthia Manson (ed) (7 page)

“I’ve had enough of you and your
geese.” he shouted. “I wish you were all at the devil together. If you come
pestering me any more with your silly talk I’ll set the dog at you. You bring
Mrs. Oakshott here and I’ll answer her. but what have you to do with it? Did I
buy the geese off you?”

“No; but one of them was mine all
the same,” whined the little man.

“Well, then, ask Mrs. Oakshott for
it.”

“She told me to ask you.”

“Well, you can ask the King of
Proosia, for all I care. I’ve had enough of it. Get out of this!” He rushed
fiercely forward, and the inquirer flitted away into the darkness.

“Ha! this may save us a visit to
Brixton Road,” whispered Holmes. “Come with me, and we will see what is to be
made of this fellow.” Striding through the scattered knots of people who
lounged round the flaring stalls, my companion speedily overtook the little man
and touched him upon the shoulder. He sprang round, and I could see in the
gas-light that every vestige of colour had been driven from his face.

“Who are you, then? What do you
want?” he asked in a quavering voice.

“You will excuse me,” said Holmes
blandly, “but I could not help overhearing the questions which you put to the
salesman just now. I think that I could be of assistance to you.”

“You? Who are you? How could you
know anything of the matter?”

“My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is
my business to know what other people don’t know.”

“But you can know nothing of this?”

“Excuse me, I know everything of it.
You are endeavoring to trace some geese which were sold by Mrs. Oakshott, of
Brixton Road, to a salesman named Breckinridge, by him in turn to Mr.
Windigate, of the Alpha, and by him to his club, of which Mr. Henry Baker is a
member.”

“Oh, sir, you are the very man whom
I have longed to meet,” cried the little fellow with outstretched hands and
quivering fingers. “I can hardly explain to you how interested I am in this
matter.”

Sherlock Holmes hailed a
four-wheeler which was passing. “In that case we had better discuss it in a
cosy room rather than in this wind-swept marketplace,” said he. “But pray tell
me, before we go further, who it is that I have the pleasure of assisting.”

The man hesitated for an instant.
“My name is John Robinson,” he answered with a sidelong glance.

“No, no; the real name,” said Holmes
sweetly. “It is always awkward doing business with an alias.”

A flush sprang to the white cheeks
of the stranger. “Well, then,” said he. “my real name is James Ryder.”

“Precisely so. Head attendant at the
Hotel Cosmopolitan. Pray step into the cab, and I shall soon be able to tell
you everything which you would wish to know.”

The little man stood glancing from
one to the other of us with half-frightened, half-hopeful eyes, as one who is
not sure whether he is on the verge of a windfall or of a catastrophe. Then he
stepped into the cab, and in half an hour we were back in the sitting-room at
Baker Street. Nothing had been said during our drive, but the high, thin
breathing of our new companion, and the claspings and unclaspings of his hands,
spoke of the nervous tension within him.

“Here we are!” said Holmes cheerily
as we filed into the room. “The fire looks very seasonable in this weather. You
look cold, Mr. Ryder. Pray take the basketchair. I will just put on my slippers
before we settle this little matter of yours. Now, then! You want to know what
became of those geese?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Or rather, I fancy, of that goose.
It was one bird, I imagine, in which you were interested—white, with a black
bar across the tail.”

Ryder quivered with emotion. “Oh,
sir,” he cried, “can you tell me where it went to?”

“It came here.”

“Here?”

“Yes. and a most remarkable bird it
proved. I don’t wonder that you should take an interest in it. It laid an egg
after it was dead—the bonniest, brightest little blue egg that ever was seen. I
have it here in my museum.”

Our visitor staggered to his feet
and clutched the mantelpiece with his right hand. Holmes unlocked his strongbox
and held up the blue carbuncle, which shone out like a star, with a cold,
brilliant, many-pointed radiance. Ryder stood glaring with a drawn face,
uncertain whether to claim or to disown it.

“The game’s up, Ryder,” said Holmes
quietly. “Hold up, man, or you’ll be into the fire! Give him an arm back into
his chair, Watson. He’s not got blood enough to go in for felony with impunity.
Give him a dash of brandy. So! Now he looks a little more human. What a shrimp
it is, to be sure!”

For a moment he had staggered and
nearly fallen, but the brandy brought a tinge of colour into his cheeks, and he
sat staring with frightened eyes at his accuser.

“I have almost every link in my
hands, and all the proofs which I could possibly need, so there is little which
you need tell me. Still, that little may as well be cleared up to make the case
complete. You had heard, Ryder, of this blue stone of the Countess of Morcar’s?

“It was Catherine Cusack who told me
of it.” said he in a crackling voice.

“I see—her ladyship’s waiting-maid.
Well, the temptation of sudden wealth so easily acquired was too much for you,
as it has been for better men before you; but you were not very scrupulous in
the means you used. It seems to me, Ryder, that there is the making of a very
pretty villain in you. You knew that this man Horner, the plumber, had been
concerned in some such matter before, and that suspicion would rest the more
readily upon him. What did you do, then? You made some small job in my lady’s
room—you and your confederate Cusack—and you managed that he should be the man
sent for. Then, when he had left, you rifled the jewel-case, raised the alarm,
and had this unfortunate man arrested. You then—”

Ryder threw himself down suddenly
upon the rug and clutched at my companion’s knee. “For God’s sake, have mercy!”
he shrieked. “Think of my father! of my mother! It would break their hearts. I
never went wrong before! I never will again. I swear it. I’ll swear it on a
Bible. Oh, don’t bring it into court! For Christ’s sake, don’t!”

“Get back into your chair!” said
Holmes sternly. “It is very well to cringe and crawl now, but you thought
little enough of this poor Horner in the dock for a crime of which he knew
nothing.”

“I will fly, Mr. Holmes. I will
leave the country, sir. Then the charge against him will break down.”

“Hum! We will talk about that. And
now let us hear a true account of the next act. How came the stone into the
goose, and how came the goose into the open market? Tell us the truth, for
there lies your only hope of safety.”

Ryder passed his tongue over his
parched lips. “I will tell you it just as it happened, sir,” said he. “When
Horner had been arrested, it seemed to me that it would be best for me to get
away with the stone at once, for I did not know at what moment the police might
not take it into their heads to search me and my room. There was no place about
the hotel where it would be safe. I went out, as if on some commission, and I
made for my sister’s house. She had married a man named Oakshott, and lived in
Brixton Road, where she fattened fowls for the market. All the way there every
man I met seemed to me to be a policeman or a detective: and, for all that it
was a cold night, the sweat was pouring down my face before I came to the
Brixton Road. My sister asked me what was the matter, and why I was so pale;
but I told her that I had been upset by the jewel robbery at the hotel. Then I
went into the back yard and smoked a pipe, and wondered what it would be best
to do.

“I had a friend once called
Maudsley, who went to the bad, and has just been serving his time in
Pentonville. One day he had met me, and fell into talk about the ways of
thieves, and how they could get rid of what they stole. I knew that he would be
true to me, for I knew one or two things about him; so I made up my mind to go
right on to Kilburn, where he lived, and take him into my confidence. He would
show me how to turn the stone into money. But how to get to him in safety? I
thought of the agonies I had gone through in coming from the hotel. I might at
any moment be seized and searched, and there would be the stone in my waistcoat
pocket. I was leaning against the wall at the time and looking at the geese
which were waddling about round my feet, and suddenly an idea came into my head
which showed me how I could beat the best detective that ever lived.

“My sister had told me some weeks before
that I might have the pick of her geese for a Christmas present, and I knew
that she was always as good as her word. I would take my goose now, and in it I
would carry my stone to Kilburn. There was a little shed in the yard, and
behind this I drove one of the birds—a fine big one, white, with a barred tail.
I caught it, and, prying its bill open, I thrust the stone down its throat as
far as my finger could reach. The bird gave a gulp, and I felt the stone pass
along its gullet and down into its crop. But the creature flapped and
struggled, and out came my sister to know what was the matter. As I turned to
speak to her the brute broke loose and fluttered off among the others.

‘Whatever were you doing with that
bird. Jem?’ says she.

‘Well.‘ said I, ‘you said you’d give
me one for Christmas, and I was feeling which was the fattest.’

‘Oh,‘ says she, ‘we’ve set yours
aside for you—Jem’s bird, we call it. It’s the big white one over yonder.
There’s twenty-six of them, which makes one for you, and one for us, and two
dozen for the market.‘

‘Thank you, Maggie, ‘ says I; ‘but
if it is all the same to you, I’d rather have that one I was handling just
now.‘

‘The other is a good three pound
heavier, ‘ said she, ‘and we fattened it expressly for you.‘

‘Never mind. I’ll have the other,
and I’ll take it now,‘ said I.

‘Oh. just as you like. ‘ said she, a
little huffed. ‘Which is it you want,

then?’

‘That white one with the barred
tail, right in the middle of the flock.‘

‘Oh. very well. Kill it and take it
with you.‘

“Well, I did what she said, Mr.
Holmes, and I carried the bird all the way to Kilburn. I told my pal what I had
done, for he was a man that it was easy to tell a thing like that to. He
laughed until he choked, and we got a knife and opened the goose. My heart turned
to water, for there was no sign of the stone, and I knew that some terrible
mistake had occurred. I left the bird, rushed back to my sister’s, and hurried
into the back yard. There was not a bird to be seen there.

‘Where are they all, Maggie?’ I cried.

‘Gone to the dealer’s, Jem.‘

‘Which dealer’s?’

‘Breckinridge, of Covent Garden.‘

‘But was there another with a barred
tail?’ I asked, ‘the same as the one I chose?’

‘Yes, Jem; there were two
barred-tailed ones, and I could never tell them apart.‘

“Well, then, of course I saw it all,
and I ran off as hard as my feet would carry me to this man Breckinridge; but
he had sold the lot at once, and not one word would he tell me as to where they
had gone. You heard him yourselves tonight. Well, he has always answered me
like that. My sister thinks that I am going mad. Sometimes I think that I am
myself. And now—and now I am myself a branded thief, without ever having
touched the wealth for which I sold my character. God help me! God help me!” He
burst into convulsive sobbing, with his face buried in his hands.

There was a long silence, broken
only by his heavy breathing, and by the measured tapping of Sherlock Holmes’s
finger-tips upon the edge of the table. Then my friend rose and threw open the
door.

“Get out!” said he.

“What, sir! Oh, Heaven bless you!”

“No more words. Get out!”

And no more words were needed. There
was a rush, a clatter upon the stairs, the bang of a door, and the crisp rattle
of running footfalls from the street.

“After all, Watson,” said Holmes,
reaching up his hand for his clay pipe, “I am not retained by the police to
supply their deficiencies. If Horner were in danger it would be another thing;
but this fellow will not appear against him, and the case must collapse. I
suppose that I am commuting a felony, but it is just possible that I am saving
a soul. This fellow will not go wrong again; he is too terribly frightened.
Send him to jail now, and you make him a jail-bird for life. Besides, it is the
season of forgiveness. Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical
problem, and its solution is its own reward. If you will have the goodness to
touch the bell, Doctor, we will begin another investigation, in which, also, a
bird will be the chief feature.”

“At home we always
used to go to Midnight Mass. I can’t remember a Christmas when we missed it,
though it meant a good half hour’s drive from the farm to the village.”

The speaker, Sommer, was making some coffee on a little
electric stove.