The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus (79 page)

             
"Well, Professor," Barnett said, "I think they have you suckered in right good, as we'd say at home. Scotland Yard's been after this bird for a month, and they haven't come anywhere near him. He doesn't seem to leave any clues behind—just corpses. Even Sherlock Holmes has gotten nowhere with his investigation. And you're coming to a very cold trail, which has already been stomped over by every detective, amateur sleuth, and journalist in London. I don't see how you're going to get a handle on it. Tell me, Professor, are you really going to try solving this thing, or did you just agree to look at it to keep your friends happy?"

             
"I doubt whether these people would stay happy if I failed to get results," Moriarty said. "But it is not quite as hopeless as your analysis would indicate."

             
"You mean you have some clue as to who the murderer is?" Barnett asked.

             
"Not at all," Moriarty said. "But I discern seven separate and distinct approaches to the problem. However, that must all be put aside for now. We have an appointment with a baggage car."

Don Desperado Walked on the Prado, And there he met his enemy.

— Charles Kingsley

             
Qunicy Hope was dead. His body, throat gashed open from ear to ear, lay supine on the floor in his consultation room, arms stretched out cruciform, feet, curiously, raised neatly up onto the seat of the leather couch. He was still in his evening dress, just as he had been when he arrived home a half hour before he was found, missing only his hat and shoes.

             
"I haven't touched a thing, sir, I assure you. Not a thing. I couldn't," Gammidge, the valet, told Mr. Sherlock Holmes. A tall, skinny, stoop-shouldered man whose garb appeared too large for his frame, Gammidge stood right inside the room, hovering by the door, and seemed on the verge of tears. "Everything was exactly like this when I found the master, and no one has entered the room since that moment. I only left long enough to go outside and whistle for a policeman. What a dreadful thing, sir."

             
"You did right, Gammidge," Holmes said soothingly. "What sort of room is this?" It was a long, rectangular room on the ground floor, to the right of the main entrance of Quincy Hope's large, luxurious house. Across from its paneled door was the comfortable leather couch upon which rested the legs of the corpse, from the black-trousered knees to the black silk-stockinged toes. To the left, a low table and some chairs were by the front windows; to the right, a massive flat desk and chair, flanked by a tall glass-front cabinet and a wooden examination table.

             
"It's Hope's consultation room, Mr. Holmes," Inspector Les-

             
trade said. "Mr. Hope would appear to have been some sort of medical man."

             
"What sort?" Holmes inquired.

             
"Why, he was—I don't really know," Lestrade said. "Gammidge?"

             
"I couldn't say, gentlemen," Gammidge told them. "I served only as Mr. Hope's valet. There were several persons who came in during the daytime and aided the master with his medical practice. I really know nothing about it."

             
"What about the other servants?" Lestrade asked.

             
"Well, sir, Frazier, the butler, may know more about the master's affairs."

             
"Right enough. Bring him down here, then. Tell him Scotland Yard wants to talk to him."

             
Gammidge shrank back slightly. "I'm sorry, sir," he said, with the air of one who knows that whatever happens, it's all his fault, "but Frazier isn't here this evening. He and the other servants have the night off. They have all, I believe, gone home to various relatives."

             
"All gone, eh?" Lestrade asked, sticking his head forward pugnaciously.

             
"I believe so, sir," Gammidge said, twisting his hands together nervously as he talked. His eyes darted about the room like a caged bird who thinks that an invisible carnivore has somehow entered his cage. "I'll go and check, if you like."

             
"What's the matter with you, Gammidge?" Lestrade asked suspiciously. "Something on your mind?"

             
"No, sir; only
..."

             
"Yes, yes; only what, Gammidge?"

             
"Only, Inspector, I'd like to leave this room, if I may. It's making me quite faint, really it is; being in here with the master's body and all. It's not the sort of thing I'm used to, you see, and I've always had a weak constitution."

             
Lestrade stuck his nose square in front of the poor valet's face, making him inadvertently leap backward. "Are you
sure
that's all, Gammidge? Are you
sure
you don't know something more about this? You'd better speak up now, you know; it will save you a lot of trouble later."

             
Gammidge turned white. "I don't feel so good," he said, and fainted dead away on the floor.

             
"Very clever, Lestrade," Holmes said sharply. "You've managed to render unconscious the only man who was here while the crime was committed; the only one who might be able to tell us anything of what happened here."

             
"So you say, Mr. Holmes," Lestrade said, looking down unsympathetically at Gammidge, who lay crumpled on the rug. "I say he's faking; and I say he could probably tell us a good deal of what happened here; and I say it's a most peculiar circumstance that the rest of the servants have the night off, but this here one remains."

             
"Let us be honest, Lestrade," Holmes said. "You like finding the servants guilty of crimes because you still suffer from an inborn reverence for the upper classes. Every time you hear someone speaking who clips his vowels, you instinctively want to tug your forelock. If the criminal classes would take elocution lessons, Scotland Yard's arrest rate would be cut in half."

             
"Now, Mr. Holmes, that isn't hardly fair," Lestrade protested, following after the consulting detective as he dropped to his hands and knees and began examining the floor in the murder room with his magnifying lens. "We usually end up arresting the lower orders because most crime comes from the lower orders. Which only makes sense, after all. No call for a duke with an income of a hundred thousand clear every year to cosh someone for his wallet."

             
"I'll grant you that, Lestrade, but murder knows no social boundaries. Would you turn up those gas mantles on the wall? I need more light."

             
"Um," Lestrade said, doing as he was bidden. "I don't know what you expect to find, crawling about on the rug."

             
"Truthfully, Lestrade, I don't know what I expect to find, either. That's why I look."

             
The valet sat up, looked around for a second, a puzzled expression on his face, and then pushed himself to his feet. "Is there anything further I can do for you gentlemen?" he asked weakly, holding onto the doorframe for support.

             
Lestrade turned around and advanced on the valet, raising a hectoring finger.

             
"Why, yes, Gammidge," Sherlock Holmes said, looking up from the rug and cutting Lestrade off as he was about to speak, "I'd appreciate it if you would go up to your master's bedroom and have a look about. See if anything has been disturbed, and especially see if anything seems to be missing."

             
"Very good, sir," Gammidge said, and he fled up the stairs.

             
"Bah!" Lestrade said. "You expect something to be missing? What?"

             
"I expect nothing," Holmes said. "But I would like to know.
"

             
"
But Holmes, how do you expect to learn anything from what
isn't
here?"

             
"What
is
here," Holmes said, carefully extracting a bit of brown matter from the green rug and inserting it into a small envelope, "is suggestive, but what
isn't
here is even more suggestive, and I expect, with any luck, to learn a great deal from it."

             
"What
isn't
here?" Lestrade looked around, baffled. "What on earth are you talking about, Holmes? What isn't here?"

             
"The victim's shoes, Lestrade. They are missing. Along with his top hat. I have great hopes for the victim's shoes, although, frankly, I don't expect as much from the hat."

             
"You think the missing shoes are important?"

             
"Very!"

             
Lestrade shrugged. "If you say so, Mr. Holmes. But we'll probably find them under the couch, or in the bedroom."

             
"I've looked under the couch, Lestrade. And he never got up to the bedroom."

             
"Then why send that valet up there?"

             
"The murderer may have got to the bedroom."

             
"Oh." Lestrade thought that over. "Nonsense!" he said. "Missing shoes. Missing hat. I'd say that all that shows is that he had a new pair of shoes. The murderer probably took them for himself."

             
"Could be, Lestrade," Holmes said. "That's good thinking. Only
..."

             
"Only what, Holmes?" Lestrade asked, looking pleased at the compliment. "Just you ask me. I'll be glad to give you the benefit of my years of professional experience. What's troubling you about this case?"

             
"Only, Lestrade, if he took Hope's shoes, then what did he do with his own?"

             
"Well—carried them off with him, I suppose."

             
"Come now, Lestrade. You think our murderer has developed an acquisitive instinct for his seventh killing? What about all the fine jackets and waistcoats and cravats and assorted men's furnishings at each of the previous victim's abodes?"

             
"It's just possible the fellow needed a pair of shoes," Lestrade insisted. "Perhaps he suddenly developed a hole in one of his own, or the uppers separated from the lowers. And he didn't leave his own behind because he was afraid of our finding some identifying mark on them."

             
"So he took them off with him to discard unobtrusively?
"

             
"
Right, Mr. Holmes. Like that."

             
"I don't think so, Lestrade. I think he took the victim's shoes because he wanted the victim's shoes; but not to wear. I think he wanted the shoes themselves, or something concealed in them. But with any luck we may soon find out whether you're right or I'm right. Lestrade, have your men scour the area for ten blocks in every direction. Have them carefully examine gutter drains and dustbins, and any other place of concealment. Instruct them to bring back any article of clothing they find, most especially shoes or parts of shoes."

             
"Certainly. Mr. Holmes. Whatever shoes they turn out to be, I agree that it will be useful to find them. I'll send to the division station for some large bull's-eye lanterns and put some men right on it."