The Empress of India (38 page)

“I see,” said Holmes. “So you’re using this gold to support the Indian system of higher education.”

“A worthwhile endeavor,” Moriarty said. “But I didn’t take the gold. My word on it.”

Holmes looked sourly at Moriarty and then turned to Captain Iskansen. “I think you’d best unlock the inner door now,” he said. “It’s time for me to crawl about and get the knees of my trousers dirty.” He patted his pockets and located a small magnifying glass. “While I’m at it, I would suggest, Lestrade, that you have the
Empress
searched thoroughly, top to bottom, stem to, ah, stern. Two tons of gold is hard to disguise.”

“Where do you suggest I look, Holmes?” asked Lestrade.

“Ignore the obvious places,” Holmes said. “Look in places that are so obscure that you don’t see how the gold can be there, or look at what’s in plain sight, and see if it isn’t gold.”

Lestrade opened his notebook. “How’s that again, Mr. Holmes?”

“Never mind. Just do make a record of all the places you’ve looked. And post men around to see that no one moves anything large and bulky about until you’ve had a look at it. And see that nobody goes ashore.”

“I don’t know if I have that authority, Mr. Holmes.”

“I do,” said Captain Iskansen. “No one leaves the ship until you say so, Mr. Holmes.”

“There are some special guards from the bank,” Lestrade said. “I’ll get them aboard to help.”

“And keep an eye on him,” Holmes said, taking off his jacket and pointing his long, sharp nose in Moriarty’s direction.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
—William Shakespeare

A
twenty-one-pound four-ounce bar of gold is not very large, gold being one of the heaviest natural elements. It would not be difficult to think of any number of ingenious hiding places for one bar of gold. But two hundred and some of them in six-bar wooden crates, or even out of the crates, is another matter. They would make an awfully noticeable lump just about anywhere. And if you separate them and scatter the two hundred and some bars of gold in various hiding places aboard a ship, even a ship as large as
The Empress of India,
you’d think that a band of dedicated and trained searchers would unearth—or perhaps unship?—at least one of the missing bars.

None were found.

The search went on. Lestrade went down to the vault to share information—such as there was—with Holmes.

“Have you discovered anything?” Lestrade asked.

“Several suggestive facts,” Holmes said, dusting off his knees and emerging from his two-hour investigation of the vault walls, floor, and ceiling. “Nothing conclusive.”

“I’d appreciate your sharing your thoughts with me,” said Lestrade, “inconclusive though they may be.”

Holmes nodded. “There are holes in the walls,” he said.

“Holes?” Lestrade rubbed his hands together. “Holes, indeed! Well, now—”

“Perfectly circular holes, nine of them, three in each of the side walls and three in the rear wall. Six feet off the ground. Slightly less than one inch in diameter.”

“Large enough for someone to have slivered the gold bars and passed the slices through,” Lestrade suggested.

“All in one night?” Holmes asked. “Besides, the holes lead to air pipes that feed up through the decks and end at a ventilator topside. I inspected the pipes from the outside. They are firmly painted in place, and the paint is at least a few months old.”

“Air pipes?” Lestrade frowned. “Whatever for?”

“They serve a dual function, according to the ship’s first officer. First they would supply air in the event that anyone got locked in the vault. And second, they would cause the room to flood if the ship sank.”

“That’s curious,” said Lestrade. “Why would they want the room to flood?”

“Pressure,” explained Holmes.

“How’s that?”

“In the event of attempting to retrieve the gold—or whatever might be in the vault—from a sunken ship, the pressure of the water on the vault door would make it impossible to open unless it was equalized by
the pressure within the vault. Or so the first officer explained it to me. In other words, the vault has to be equally flooded for the door to open.”

“Ah!” said Lestrade, not understanding a word of the explanation. “So that explains the holes, through which, at any rate, the gold could not have been removed. And have you any other findings?”

Holmes shrugged. “Some burned bits of wood, perhaps twenty in all. None over six inches long or an inch wide. Most much smaller. Some gray dust of a particularly powdery consistency.”

“And they relate to the crime?”

“They are anomalous, but I have no explanation for them as of yet. The task is to collect facts. When we have enough facts, we can make deductions.”

“But not yet?”

“No, not yet. And you have made no discoveries?”

“The soldiers who were on guard last night report hearing a strange ‘wooshing’ noise shortly after midnight.”

“A sound unfamiliar to them?”

“They had never heard it before.”

“Anything else?”

“The lights stayed bright all night.”

“The lights?”

Lestrade gestured. “These electrical lights in the hall. They, apparently, stayed bright the entire night.”

“And that is unusual?”

“The guards report that the lights often fluctuate, brighter and dimmer, during the course of the night.”

“But last night they didn’t?”

“That’s what they say.”

Holmes rubbed the side of his nose. “Thank you, Lestrade,” he said. “That is very interesting.”

“Really, Holmes? What does it signify?”

“I don’t know. I know little of the operation of electrical lighting—but I’ll put a bit of money on the proposition that Professor James Moriarty knows all there is about electrical lighting—and a bit more than he’s told us about the disappearance of the gold!”

Lestrade looked doubtful. “You’ve expressed that belief often before, Mr. Holmes, and been proved wrong.”

“Or been outsmarted by a clever rogue!” Holmes interjected. “Well, we’ll see what’s what this time. I’ll find that gold, Lestrade—see if I don’t.”

“I certainly hope so, Mr. Holmes,” Lestrade told him. “So what would you have me do now?”

Holmes stared at the far wall for a minute, and then poked Lestrade in the waistcoat with a sharp forefinger. “Keep a close watch on Professor James Moriarty,” he said.

Lestrade sighed. “Very well, Mr. Holmes. Anything else?”

Holmes’s finger went forth again. “Send one of your men to procure some professional divers,” he said.

“How’s that, Mr. Holmes?” Lestrade asked, retreating slightly from the probing finger.

“If the gold isn’t on the ship, it has to be somewhere. When you have eliminated the impossible—divers!”

“You believe that the gold is no longer on the ship?”

“I believe no such thing—I did not conduct the search myself. If it comes to that, I will do so.” Holmes did a series of baritsu warm-up exercises to relieve the tightness in his arms and legs from crawling around and peering into cracks and corners. “But as you have searched and you haven’t found the gold, it is reasonable to assume that the gold bars are no longer aboard. There wasn’t time between last night and this morning to melt them down and turn them into, oh, say, statues of an Indian goddess, but they might have been thrown overboard for later retrieval.”

Lestrade nodded. “I see,” he said. “But how did . . . whoever . . . get them out of the vault?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Holmes said. “But get them out he did, clearly, as they are no longer here.”

“The passengers are raising a fuss. They want to go ashore,” Lestrade said.

“No doubt,” said Holmes. “I suggest letting them debark. Make sure you have their names, and inspect their luggage.”

“The customs people will do that,” Lestrade said.

“Yes. Of course.”

“What’s that about Indian statues?” Lestrade asked.

“Professor Moriarty’s midget friend is bringing a couple of crates of them back, presumably to sell in the sort of store that carries little Indian statues,” Holmes explained. “Each of them should be examined with the thought that a gold bar might have been, ah, inserted into its interior. I don’t really think you’ll find anything, Moriarty is far too subtle for that, but we mustn’t overlook the obvious.”

“Have you any reason to believe that Professor Moriarty is involved?” Lestrade asked. “Beyond the fact that you always assume that he is?”

“My dear inspector . . .” Holmes took a breath and considered. “I often become convinced that Professor Moriarty is involved in some major crime, especially if it is difficult to solve, or even explain, because I know the sort of man he is, and the sort of challenge he likes. If you know of a man who, let’s say, makes intricate and precise pocket watches and fits them into impossibly small square cases, and you find him standing next to such a watch, in such a case, the presumptive evidence is strong. I admit that I cannot accuse him of this particular crime because I have no proof that he was involved and only the vaguest notion as yet as to how it was carried out. But that very secrecy, the very impossibility of the crime, is one of the professor’s hallmarks.”

“I see,” said Lestrade, a not-so-fine edge of sarcasm to his voice. “It couldn’t have been done, therefore the professor did it.”

Holmes chuckled. “Not up to my usual standards of logic, is it? I’m afraid Moriarty has that effect on me. Come, let us go upstairs and reason together.” He put his around Lestrade’s shoulder. “There is an answer to this conundrum, and perhaps we can find it.”

“Well,” said the Artful Codger, tightening the leather straps on his small steamer trunk, “a good time was had by all while it lasted. It’s time to set foot back on good old terra-bloody-firma.”

Cooley the Pup sat down on his bunk, his arms crossed firmly about his chest. “I ain’t leaving.”

“What do you mean, you ain’t leaving? You’ve got to leave, don’t you? I mean, we’re there, we’ve arrived; we’re back in bloody old London, ain’t we?”

“And down there on the dock somewhere are bloody old Angelic Tim McAdams and the Twopenny Yob, ain’t they? And they’re going to want to know where the gold is at, ain’t they? And what are we going to tell them?”

“We’ll just tell him the truth.”

“That Pin Dok Low turned out to be Sherlock Holmes?”

“Well, it’s the truth.”

“And a lot of help that will be. ‘Where is the gold?’ McAdams will ask.”

“Well, we’ll just tell him how we rescued it, and how we’re going to get a reward. We’ll split the reward with him, that should make him feel better about it.”

“Oh, we will, will we?” Cooley the Pup stood up and leaned forward, his nose inches away from the Codger’s nose.

“What’s the matter? You unwilling to share with a pal?”

“A big pal with a nasty disposition and a tendency toward breaking
bones? Naw, I’ll share with him, all right. And just what is it I’m supposed to share?”

“The reward.”

“And which reward would that be?”

The Codger started to answer, and then a horrified look crossed his face. “You don’t think—”

Cooley the Pup nodded forcefully. “I do. I certainly do. They ain’t got the gold now, what it has gone missing. And it stands to reason that they ain’t going to pay any reward for it what they ain’t got it, now, don’t it?”

The Artful Codger grimaced. “Stands to reason,” he agreed.

“You think the professor’s got it?”

“Professor Moriarty?” The Codger thought about it. “Seems likely,” he said.

“You think Sherlock Holmes will find it?”

The Codger pictured Angelic Tim McAdams waiting for them somewhere near the dock. “If he don’t,” he said, “I think we should turn right around and take the
Empress
back to Calcutta.”

“I was thinking the same thing myself,” said the Pup.

The Honorable Eustace Bergarot, governor of the Bank of England, leaned back in an overstuffed chair in the Owners’ Lounge, one of the small suite of rooms reserved for any of the Board of Directors of Anglo-Asian Star steamship line who should happen to travel aboard the
Empress.
It was being used as the command center for the continuing investigation into the missing gold. Standing or sitting around the Honorable Bergarot were Holmes, General St. Yves and his daughter, Captain Iskansen, Moriarty, Colonel Moran, and Inspector Lestrade. It was now noon, and most of the passengers had left the ship, but the refitting for the return voyage was yet to begin.

“I’ve asked that everything be kept as it is until we determine what happened to the gold,” Holmes explained.

Bergarot nodded. “Quite right,” he said calmly, his hands wrapped over the golden lion that formed the handle of his ebon walking stick. “What did happen to the gold?”