Sherlock Holmes In Montague Street Volume 2 (27 page)

Both Mrs. Seton and her husband agreed that she had, and that, so far as they were concerned, no further steps should be taken. And when she was told where to go, Mrs. Seton went once to offer Mrs. Isitt her forgiveness and sympathy.

But Mrs. Isitt's punishment came in twenty-four hours, when her husband died in the surgeon's hands.

The Case of the Flitterbat Lancers

It was late on a summer evening that I drowsed in my armchair over a particularly solid and ponderous volume of essays on social economy. I was doing a good deal of reviewing at the time, and I remember that this particular volume had a property of such exceeding toughness that I had already made three successive attacks on it, on as many successive evenings, each attack having been defeated in the end by sleep. The weather was hot, my chair was very comfortable, and the book had somewhere about its strings of polysyllables an essence as of laudanum. Still something had been done on each evening, and now on the fourth I strenuously endeavored to finish the book. I was just beginning to feel that the words before me were sliding about and losing their meanings, when a sudden crash and a jingle of broken glass behind me woke me with a start, and I threw the book down. A pane of glass in my window was smashed, and I hurried across and threw up the sash to see, if I could, whence the damage had come.

The building in which my chambers (and Sherlock Holmes's rooms) were situated was accessible - or rather visible, for there was no entrance - from the rear. There was, in fact, a small courtyard, reached by a passage from the street behind, and into this courtyard, my sitting-room window looked.

“Hullo, there!” I shouted. But there came no reply. Nor could I distinguish anybody in the courtyard. Some men had been at work during the day on a drainpipe, and I reflected that probably their litter had provided the stone with which my window had been smashed. As I looked, however, two men came hurrying from the passage into the court, and going straight into the deep shadow of one corner, presently appeared again in a less obscure part, hauling forth a third man, who must have already been there in hiding. The third man struggled fiercely but without avail, and was dragged across toward the passage leading to the street beyond. But the most remarkable feature of the whole thing was the silence of all three men. No cry, no exclamation, escaped any of them. In perfect silence the two hauled the third across the courtyard, and in perfect silence he swung and struggled to resist and escape. The matter astonished me not a little, and the men were entering the passage before I found voice to shout at them. But they took no notice, and disappeared. Soon after I heard cab wheels in the street beyond, and had no doubt that the two men had carried off their prisoner.

I turned back into my room a little perplexed. It seemed probable that the man who had been borne off had broken my window. But why? I looked about on the floor, and presently found the missile. It was, as I had expected, a piece of broken concrete, but it was wrapped up in a worn piece of paper, which had partly opened out as it lay on my carpet, thus indicating that it had just been crumpled round the stone.

I disengaged the paper and spread it out. Then I saw it to be a rather hastily written piece of manuscript music, whereof I append a reduced facsimile.

This gave me no help. I turned the paper this way and that, but could make nothing of it. There was not a mark on it that I could discover, except the music and the scrawled title, Flitterbat Lancers, at the top. The paper was old, dirty, and cracked. What did it all mean? One might conceive of a person in certain circumstances sending a message - possibly an appeal for help - through a friend's window, wrapped round a stone, but this seemed to be nothing of that sort.

Once more I picked up the paper, and with an idea to hear what the Flitterbat Lancers sounded like, I turned to my little pianette and strummed over the notes, making my own time and changing it as seemed likely. But I could by no means extract from the notes anything resembling an air. I half thought of trying Sherlock Holmes's door, in case he might still be up and offer a guess at the meaning of my smashed window and the scrap of paper, when Holmes himself came in. He had been examining a bundle of papers in connection with a case just placed in his hands, and now, having finished, came to find if I were disposed for an evening stroll before turning in. I handed him the paper and the piece of concrete, observing, “There's a little job for you, Holmes, instead of the stroll.” And I told him the complete history of my smashed window.

Holmes listened attentively, and examined both the paper and the fragment of paving. “You say these people made absolutely no sound whatever?” he asked.

“None but that of scuffling, and even that they seemed to do quietly.”

“Could you see whether or not the two men gagged the other, or placed their hands over his mouth?”

“No, they certainly didn't do that. It was dark, of course, but not so dark as to prevent my seeing generally what they were doing.”

Holmes stood for half a minute in thought, and then said, “There's something in this, Brett - what, I can't guess at the moment, but something deep, I fancy. Are you sure you won't come out now?”

I told Holmes that I was sure, and that I should stick to my work.

“Very well,” he said; “then perhaps you will lend me these articles?” holding up the paper and the stone.

“Delighted,” I said. “If you get no more melody out of the clinker than I did out of the paper, you won't have a musical evening. Goodnight!”

Holmes went away with the puzzle in his hand, and I turned once more to my social economy, and, thanks to the gentleman who smashed my window, conquered.

At this time my only regular daily work was on an evening paper so that I left home at a quarter to eight on the morning following the adventure of my broken window, in order, as usual, to be at the office at eight; consequently it was not until lunchtime that I had an opportunity of seeing Holmes. I went to my own rooms first, however, and on the landing by my door I found the housekeeper in conversation with a shortish, sun-browned man, whose accent at once convinced me that he hailed from across the Atlantic. He had called, it appeared, three or four times during the morning to see me, getting more impatient each time. As he did not seem even to know my name, the housekeeper had not considered it expedient to give him any information about me, and he was growing irascible under the treatment. When I at last appeared, however, he left her and approached me eagerly.

“See here, sir,” he said, “I've been stumpin' these here durn stairs o' yours half through the mornin'. I'm anxious to apologize, and fix up some damage.”

He had followed me into my sitting-room, and was now standing with his back to the fireplace, a dripping umbrella in one hand, and the forefinger of the other held up boulder-high and pointing, in the manner of a pistol, to my window, which, by the way, had been mended during the morning, in accordance with my instructions to the housekeeper.

“Sir,” he continued, “last night I took the extreme liberty of smashin' your winder.”

“Oh,” I said, “that was you, was it?”

“It was, sir - me. For that I hev come humbly to apologize. I trust the draft has not discommoded you, sir. I regret the accident, and I wish to pay for the fixin' up and the general inconvenience.” He placed a sovereign on the table. “I 'low you'll call that square now, sir, and fix things friendly and comfortable as between gentlemen, an' no ill will. Shake.”

And he formally extended his hand.

I took it at once. “Certainly,” I said. “As a matter of fact, you haven't inconvenienced me at all; indeed, there were some circumstances about the affair that rather interested me.” And I pushed the sovereign toward him.

“Say now,” he said, looking a trifle disappointed at my unwillingness to accept his money, “didn't I startle your nerves?”

“Not a bit,” I answered, laughing. “In fact, you did me a service by preventing me going to sleep just when I shouldn't; so we'll say no more of that.”

“Well - there was one other little thing,” he pursued, looking at me rather sharply as he pocketed the sovereign. “There was a bit o' paper round that pebble that came in here. Didn't happen to notice that, did you?”

“Yes, I did. It was an old piece of manuscript music.”

“That was it - exactly. Might you happen to have it handy now?”

“Well,” I said, “as a matter of fact a friend of mine has it now. I tried playing it over once or twice, as a matter of curiosity, but I couldn't make anything of it, and so I handed it to him.”

“Ah!” said my visitor, watching me narrowly, “that's a puzzler, that Flitterbat Lancers - a real puzzler. It whips 'em all. Ha, ha'.” He laughed suddenly - a laugh that seemed a little artificial. “There's music fellers as 'lows to set right down and play off anything right away that can't make anything of the Flitterbat Lancers. That was two of 'em that was monkeyin' with me last night. They never could make anythin' of it at all, and I was tantalizing them with it all along till they got real mad, and reckoned to get it out o' my pocket and learn it at home. Ha, ha! So I got away for a bit, and just rolled it round a stone and heaved it through your winder before they could come up, your winder being the nearest one with a light in it. Ha, ha! I'll be considerable obliged you'll get it from your friend right now. Is he stayin' hereabout?”

The story was so ridiculously lame that I determined to confront my visitor with Holmes, and observe the result. If he had succeeded in making any sense of the Flitterbat Lancers, the scene might be amusing. So I answered at once, “Yes; his rooms are on the floor below; he will probably be in at about this time. Come down with me.”

We went down, and found that Holmes in. “This gentleman,” I told him with a solemn intonation, “has come to ask for his piece of manuscript music, the Flitterbat Lancers. He is particularly proud of it, because nobody who tries to play it can make any sort of tune out of it, and it was entirely because two dear friends of his were anxious to drag it out of his pocket and practice it over on the quiet that he flung it through my windowpane last night, wrapped round a piece of concrete.”

The stranger glanced sharply at me, and I could see that my manner and tone rather disconcerted him. Burt Holmes came forward at once. “Oh, yes,” he said “just so - quite a natural sort of thing. As a matter of fact, I quite expected you. Your umbrella's wet - do you mind putting it in the stand? Thank you. Come in, come in.”

We entered the room, and Holmes, turning to the stranger, went on: “Yes, that is a very extraordinary piece of music, that Flitterbat Lancers. I have been having a little bit of practice with it myself. I don't wonder you are anxious to keep it to yourself. Sit down.”

The stranger, with a distrustful look at Holmes, complied. At this moment, the housekeeper entered from the hall with a slip of paper. Holmes glanced at it, and crumpled it in his hand. “I am engaged just now,” was his remark, and the woman vanished.

“And now,” Holmes said, as he sat down and suddenly turned to the stranger with an intent gaze, “and now, Mr Hooker, we'll talk of this music.”

The stranger started and frowned. “You've the advantage of me, sir,” he said; “you seem to know my name, but I don't know yours.”

Holmes smiled pleasantly. “My name,” he said, “is Holmes, Sherlock Holmes, and it is my business to know a great many things. For instance, I know that you are Mr Reuben B. Hooker, of Robertsville, Ohio.”

The visitor pushed his chair back, and stared. “Well - that gits me,” he said. “You're a pretty smart chap, Mr Holmes. I've heard your name before, of course. And - and so you've been a-studyin' the Flitterbat Lancers, have you?” This with a keen glance at Holmes's face. “Well, s'pose you have. What's your idea?”

“Why,” answered Holmes, still keeping his steadfast gaze on Hooker's eyes, “I think it's pretty late in the century to be fishing about for the Wedlake jewels.”

These words astonished me almost as much as they did Mr Hooker. The great Wedlake jewel robbery is, as many will remember, a traditional story of the 'sixties. I remembered no more of it at the time than probably most men do who have at some time or another read the causes celebra of the century. Sir Francis Wedlake's country house had been robbed, and the whole of Lady Wedlake's magnificent collection of jewels stolen. A man named Shiels, a strolling musician, had been arrested and had been sentenced to a long term of penal servitude. Another man named Legg - one of the comparatively wealthy scoundrels who finance promising thefts or swindles and pocket the greater part of the proceeds - had also been punished, but only a very few of the trinkets, and those quite unimportant items, had been recovered. The great bulk of the booty was never brought to light. So much I remembered, and Holmes's sudden mention of the Wedlake jewels in connection with my broken window, Mr Reuben B. Hooker, and the Flitterbat Lancers, astonished me not a little.

As for Hooker, he did his best to hide his perturbation, but with little success. “Wedlake jewels, eh?” he said; “and - and what's that to do with it, anyway?”

“To do with it?” responded Holmes, with an air of carelessness. “Well, well, I had my idea, nothing more. If the Wedlake jewels have nothing to do with it, we'll say no more about it, that's all. Here's your paper, Mr Hooker - only a little crumpled.” He rose and placed the article in Mr Hooker's hand, with the manner of terminating the interview.

Hooker rose, with a bewildered look on his face, and turned toward the door. Then he stopped, looked at the floor, scratched his cheek, and finally sat down and put his hat on the ground. “Come,” he said, “we'll play a square game. That paper has something to do with the Wedlake jewels, and, win or lose, I'll tell you all I know about it. You're a smart man and whatever I tell you, I guess it won't do me no harm; it ain't done me no good yet, anyway.”

“Say what you please, of course,” Holmes answered, “but think first. You might tell me something you'd be sorry for afterward.”

“Say, will you listen to what I say, and tell me if you think I've been swindled or not? My two hundred and fifty dollars is gone now, and I guess I won't go skirmishing after it anymore if you think it's no good. Will you do that much?”