The Confidential Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (24 page)

“They are all strangers together in a strange land,” the baroness agreed. “It is to be expected. Yet the count seems to be as standoffish as—say, his sister?”

The count seemed genuinely uncomfortable. “I find my pleasures elsewhere.”

“In Fannsnufel, perhaps?” The baroness snatched one of the large and gooey pastries from the tray. “Come, take a bite.”

The count turned his head away.

“Perhaps knowledge of your family has taken away your appetite,” the baroness coaxed. “You see, I know of your stepfather, a certain Professor Van Zummann.”

“Van Zummann?” Colonel Gelthelm cried in alarm.

“Perhaps when bombs do not work, Count,” the Baroness continued, “you find subtler means of death, like poisoning the Fannsnufel. Or should I say—Countess?”

“Enough!” The count pulled a knife from deep within his coat. His—or was it her?—voice seemed to rise with every word. “Poison is too good for this lecherous duke. I will kill him myself!”

The colonel took a step forward, hoping no doubt to intercede.
He paused as he saw that three of the serving women had drawn knives as well.

The baroness reeled away. “Doctor, my salts!”

Everyone turned to look at me as I fumbled for my medical bag. I wished I had had the foresight to bring my revolver from Baker Street. What did Holmes want me to do?

“If you wish to get to the duke, you will have to get by me first.” I looked up to see that the baroness stood once more, but now, in her hand, she held my revolver!

“It is amazing what one can carry in one's bag,” she remarked casually. “But I assure you, Countess, I know how to use this, and, should you approach the duke, I will not hesitate to fire!”

“You are a woman of action!” the unmasked countess exclaimed. “Oh, how I have longed for a life such as yours. I was forced into this by my backwards nation! Look at this pitiful duke, so typical of the ruling class! Only someone as versed in politics as myself should be allowed to rule this land!”

But the baroness would not be moved. Colonel Gelthelm quickly shouted orders, and the uniformed sentries entered the room, their own guns at the ready.

“You see,” the baroness explained as the miscreants were led away, “the countess, no doubt working under her stepfather's orders, set up the means to poison the duke. But since she was in charge of kitchen staff, she would immediately fall under suspicion if such a thing were to happen. That is why she had to disappear, and the so-called Count Orlock took her place.”

“A countess masquerading as a count!” the grand duke marvelled. “Who could imagine such a thing!”

The baroness dropped her gun into her bag and once again took up her fan. “Oh, I assure you, my dear Duke, I can imagine that and more.”

If anything, this all appeared to make the duke more excited. “But Baroness, you reveal a new part of your personality. You are indeed a woman of action! It makes me desire you all the more!”

The baroness bowed her head. “Alas, my Duke. I am afraid my destiny lies elsewhere. I must go.”

She turned and strode gracefully but briskly from the ballroom. I nearly had to run to follow.

“You cannot desert me like this!” The duke's voice followed us from the room. “My life shall never be the same! If you exist, I shall find you!”

“Then,” Holmes spoke softly to me, “the baroness must cease to exist.”

Indeed, not a week later, we received a sealed letter at 221B Baker Street from that same embassy, a letter from the grand duke, a missing-person case. The duke was beside himself. Price was no object.

Holmes, regretfully, had to tell the duke he was otherwise involved. It was one case, in fact, that Holmes said might elude him forever. And a case that, while I write of it as I do all the rest, might best stay sealed for an equal time.

BY
A
LINE
M
YETTE
-V
OLSKY

O
ur visitor that winter evening was a lady, and a lovely one, most modishly turned out. I noticed Holmes's keen eye narrow as he bent over her ringless hand, a hand surely meant for the display of expensive rings, or so most observers would have thought. In fact I myself had noticed the obvious lack. Perhaps my close association with my friend was beginning to lend a sharper edge to my own powers of observation, or perhaps the fact that the lady's hand was gloveless as well as ringless had pointed it out to me.

I awaited his first words with some curiosity.

“Mrs. Norton” (so he had recognized her). With a nod he indicated a comfortable chair near the hearth where the firelight and the mantel lamp would conspire to light her facial expressions. To my shame I felt only amusement as I saw her balk his purpose by shifting her chair slightly as she seated herself. Now her features were somewhat shadowed and more difficult to read. In the face of
this small setback Holmes showed no discomfiture. I should have been surprised if he had.

“Mrs. Norton,” he repeated, “I am pleased to renew your acquaintance, although the signs of urgency which mark your arrival at my door give me cause for a certain amount of concern on your behalf.”

Her head came up at that. “Signs of urgency, Mr. Holmes? I am unaware of displaying any such signs.”

“When a lady has left home in such a distressed frame of mind that she has forgotten to wear gloves, and her journey has been so precipitous that her veil blows in and out with the swiftness of her breathing, I take these to be signs of anxiety.”

She nodded slowly. “Of course you are right, Mr. Holmes. I had almost forgotten the observant study you habitually make of your visitors. And yet it is for that very reason that I am here, to take advantage, if I may, of those powers for which you are so justly famous.”

“Thank you for your faith, and I assure you that my so-called powers will be put to work for you as willingly as they were used against you during our last meeting.”

He referred, of course, to the scandal in Bohemia when the king of that country, about to be married, had called upon Holmes to retrieve certain compromising letters and photographs of the glamorous opera star Irene Adler, as she then was. The great detective consultant had developed a respect and admiration for
“the
woman,” as he thereafter referred to her, which to my knowledge he conceded to no other of her sex.

Irene Norton sighed and lifted her veil, revealing the beautiful face and great glowing eyes which had helped to make her the toast of Milan and the jewel of La Scala. “I have long been the designer of my own destiny,” she told us, “or so I have thought myself. To a woman as independent as I, the reminder that there are influences which can work me personal harm or financial damage comes as an unwelcome surprise. And although I have racked my
brain—and believe me, Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson, I have!—I have been completely unable to discover the source or sources of these attacks on me or the reasons behind them.”

Holmes's long chemically stained fingers, witnesses to his years of scientific experimentation, tapped the arms of his chair. “When you mention attacks, madam, surely you do not mean attacks against your person?”

“Oh, but I do mean that. On a number of recent occasions I have been deliberately shoved by passing strangers; yesterday I was even pushed into an open doorway by a gang of street arabs—not hurt, mind you, but nasty language was used and my garments pulled about quite roughly.” She took a deep breath. “Now I am not unfamiliar with harassment, sir. If you will recollect my experience with the king of Bohemia—”

“But in that case you held something which was dangerous to him and which you refused to relinquish. So there was a reason.”

“So there was a reason. Yes. But in this case I pose no danger to—to anyone, so why am I being harassed in this increasingly alarming fashion? Who is my enemy? And what does he—or she—want of me?”

Holmes got up and moved over to the window which overlooked Baker Street, where he stood holding aside two inches of the drapery so that he could look out into the lamplit darkness. “No one in sight,” he remarked. “For the moment, at least, you seem to have shaken off your annoyers. I am, however, not convinced that the minor rudenesses you've been subjected to are actually anything more than coincidences. Your street arabs, for instance . . .”

“ ‘Minor rudenesses,' Mr. Holmes? Such as the burglary of my suite in the best hotel in London? The theft of my jewels by my new lady's maid after three days in my employ?”

Holmes moved his length away from the window to stand beside the fire, his look suddenly more attentive. “No, I must admit that where there occurs a sudden series of uncommon events, either all good or all bad, the probabilities are that they are being directed
by a purpose rather than by chance. Please describe to me more precisely the occurrences which have brought you to me in such haste this evening.”

“You wish me to describe each incident in detail?”

“As minutely as possible, if you please.”

She frowned in thought for a moment and Holmes took his keen gaze away from her face, as if to allow her a sense of mental privacy while she cogitated. It occurred to me that he was not always so thoughtful.

After a moment Irene Norton spoke again, her voice reflective. “To begin with, I would guess that this—campaign against me—”

Holmes pounced. “Campaign?”

“Yes, that is how I am forced to see it: a campaign of persecution. The petty annoyances such as the theft of my newspaper from before my door in the mornings and the scorching of a Worth gown I had given to my maid to be pressed (that incident was what led me to hire a new maid). As I've mentioned, she stole every piece of jewelry I owned, left my boxes bare of a single personal treasure—oh, but she was a merciless little thief!”

Her remarkable eyes flashed and Holmes darted an amused glance at me. “As far as thieves are concerned, madam, mercy toward the victim is not their strong suit. They do not leave consoling souvenirs behind them.”

“I'm aware of that, sir, but in this case I had a confidential conversation with this girl and found her so sympathetic in manner that I confided to her my deep regard for one or two special jewels, gifts from a very highly placed Personage: a diamond sea horse, my set of emeralds. . . And to think she stole those from me as well—oh, I suppose I've been a trusting fool and I'm ashamed to have you gentlemen see me in that light.”

“Madam,” Holmes said quite gently for him, “feel no shame. Your faith in humanity is far from unbecoming. Now do you have more of these hostile acts to relate to us?”

“Yes. On another occasion I was riding in a hansom cab on my way to an appointment in Threadneedle Street, and a man jumped onto the cab's running board. He swung himself into the carriage and ordered me to avert my face so I couldn't see his. I simply sat there, terrified, and did as I was told.”

“Not surprising. A ruffianly type, was he?”

“No, that was the odd thing: he was well dressed and his voice was—I can only describe it as gentlemanly.” She shook her head slightly. “When I think back on it I find myself puzzled. That voice—”

“Had you heard it before?”

“I can't say that exactly, but the tones themselves were somehow familiar, not dangerous—Oh, I know I'm not being helpful, but—”

She broke off. Holmes was strolling the hearthrug back and forth, his head bent. “I assure you that you
are
being helpful, Mrs. Norton. What exactly did he say, this unwelcome fellow passenger of yours?”

“That is the strangest part of all. He said, ‘Just continue to do what you're doing and your life as you know it is over.' ”

“ ‘And your life . . . is over' In other words he threatened your life?”

She hesitated. “It sounded more like a warning than an actual threat.”

“But he didn't indicate what it is that you've been doing that is so displeasing to—someone?”

“No.”

“Well, it is clear enough to me that the plan against you aims at subtlety, but the mind which evolved it is not devious enough to achieve it. For example,” said Holmes, hands flat upon his thighs as he leaned forward, “I submit that the person or persons who developed this plot are not criminals but people of British background, education and interest and that they firmly believe they are serving their country.”

“Against
me?”
Even in the dimness one could sense her sudden pallor. “But that would be dreadful! What on earth would lead them to suppose such a thing?”

“They have their reasons. Some strong conviction is moving them, of that you may be certain, since they are hiring various substitutes to terrorize you and being careful to keep their own identity a secret—at least so far. I expect that to change. Perhaps one of these hirelings can be bribed to name a name if only we can lay our hands on him long enough to make him an offer.”

“You mean a bribe.” Her foot tapped the carpet in involuntary protest. Holmes asked abruptly, “Do you have any idea at all what all this could be about? Have you any reason to think you have enemies here in London? Any reason whatsoever?”

She shook her head, her eyes on her own fingers as they smoothed her velvet bonnet ribbons.

Holmes regarded her thoughtfully, the firelight flickering on his gaunt features. Then he spoke. “If you will permit me to put it slangily, this campaign, as you term it, does not hang together. You tell me of a burglary
and
a threat
and
physical harassment—no. It offers too many different features, and the picture which they present is like an eccentric portrait, the mouth of which has been painted by Gainsborough, the eyes by Holbein, the nose and chin by Reynolds. You may imagine what the resultant picture would be: utter confusion. But where is the connection, one would ask. There must be, there has to be a connection which will tie these features together.”