The Secret Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes (13 page)

However, even as we placed the ladder in position, I could see that our efforts had been in vain. The blind to that particular
window was drawn firmly down, excluding any possible glimpse of the interior.

I was about to point this out to Holmes but he had already climbed the ladder, bucket in hand, with great nimbleness and dexterity, as if quite used to this employment, and had begun to wash over the panes.

Hardly had he finished the upper portion of the window when the front door flew open and a man appeared in the porch.

There was no doubt in my mind that he was Josiah Wetherby for, with his full, dark beard and coarse complexion, he closely resembled the description which Dr Moore Agar had given to us. It was also clear that he was extremely angry.

‘What the devil are you doing?’ he demanded in a strong American accent, coming out on to the door-step and addressing Holmes on the top of the ladder.

‘What does it look like, guvn’r?’ Holmes riposted, continuing to wipe over the glass with his wash-leather.

‘Come down at once!’ Wetherby demanded, his face scarlet with rage. ‘I gave no orders for the windows to be cleaned.’

Holmes gave a last polish to the pane before descending the ladder.

‘This is number twenty-three, ain’t it?’ he asked, his face expressing bewilderment. ‘Mr h’Atkinson’s ’ouse? I ’ave a standin’ h’arrangement with Mr h’Atkinson to clean ’is winders back and front every last Friday of the month and that’s today.’

‘Mr Atkinson must have been the previous tenant,’ Wetherby said, still angry but mollified a little by this explanation. ‘I had no idea of such an arrangement or I would certainly have cancelled it.’

‘Then you don’t want your winders cleaned, guvn’r?’ Holmes asked.

‘No, I do not, either now or in the future! Leave immediately!’

‘That’s all very well,’ Holmes said, assuming an aggrieved air, ‘but when we’ve gone to the trouble of pushin’ this ’ere cart all the way up from Potter’s Yard, it don’t seem right we’re to be sent away h’empty-’anded.’

Anxious to be rid of us, Wetherby took a florin from his
pocket which he handed to Holmes with the command, ‘Now clear off and take your d – d ladder with you.’

Holmes touched his cap but before he could reply, Wetherby had gone inside the house, slamming the front door after him although I could see him standing at the bay window, glaring out at us as we loaded up the cart and pushed it up the path.

I waited until we had reached the pavement before voicing my disappointment.

‘What a waste of time and effort, Holmes! With the blind down over the window, you cannot have seen anything.’

Holmes laughed out loud.

‘On the contrary, my dear Watson, I had an excellent if limited view through a small slit in the fabric which I had expected to find from Dr Moore Agar’s description of the room. He said it was shabby. I have observed before that, when furnishings have been neglected, it is invariably the blinds, which are in daily use, that are the first to suffer from wear and tear.’

‘What did you see?’ I asked eagerly.

‘Enough to convince me that Dr Moore Agar was correct in his fear that some illegitimate business is being conducted on those premises. I saw a bed on which was lying a young, fair-haired woman who answered the doctor’s description and who appeared to be asleep. Seated on a chair beside the bed was a middle-aged, stout woman, the housekeeper without a doubt, who seemed to be keeping guard over her. But whether it will be enough to satisfy Lestrade is another matter.’

‘But surely, Holmes, if it is a case, as you suspect, of abduction, Lestrade will not hesitate to apply for a search warrant?’

‘Lestrade is a man of little imagination and excessive caution, a combination of qualities which does not readily lend itself to swift and decisive action. He will, I am sure, raise all manner of objections. To him, the situation may appear perfectly innocent – a case of a respectable American citizen with a sick daughter who, for reasons of her health, has to be kept in a darkened room with a woman servant in attendance.’

‘What can be done then?’

‘Leave it to me, my dear fellow. I know a bait which will persuade Lestrade to swallow our hook.’

He would say no more on the subject and, as soon as we had left the hand-cart at Small wood’s, we returned by cab to Baker Street where, having changed into his own attire, he immediately left again to call on Dr Moore Agar at Harley Street, his intention being to proceed from there, accompanied by the doctor, to Scotland Yard to lay the case before Inspector Lestrade.

After I also had changed into my own clothes, I waited impatiently for my old friend’s return, anxious to know if he had persuaded the Inspector to act positively in the affair.

He was gone for more than two hours but I could tell by the manner in which he banged the front door behind him and came running jubilantly up the stairs that his efforts had been successful.

‘The hook has been taken!’ cried he, striding into the room. ‘Lestrade has agreed to apply for a warrant which will be signed by a magistrate later this evening. He has also agreed that you and I, Watson, shall be present when the premises are searched and that Dr Moore Agar shall be on hand as well in case the young lady needs further medical attention.’

‘What was the bait you used, Holmes?’ I asked.

‘Wait and see, my dear fellow!’ said he, his deep-set eyes sparkling with mischief.

It was ten o’ clock that evening when, for the third time that day, we returned to Hampstead, on this occasion attired in our own clothes, stopping briefly on the way at Potter’s Yard to return the parcel containing Mr Small wood’s garments before proceeding to Maplewood Avenue.

On Holmes’ instructions, the cab halted a little distance from number twenty-three to join a small group of other vehicles already drawn up including a four-wheeler containing Lestrade, a sergeant and two constables, and a brougham in which was seated Dr Moore Agar, accompanied by a nurse.

Leaving the doctor to wait, Holmes, the police officers and I approached the house on foot, the sergeant and one of the constables making their way to the back of the building to cover
any rear entrance should an attempt be made by Wetherby and his female accomplice to make their escape.

At the time I thought this an unnecessary precaution as I did also the heavy walking-stick with which Holmes had armed himself.

There were a few lights burning in the house, one in the hall, one in the ground-floor room through the window of which Wetherby had watched Holmes and I depart with the cart, the last behind the drawn blind of the upstairs room where Holmes had seen the young woman lying in the bed.

While the rest of us waited in the porch, Lestrade knocked on the door, three heavy, officious-sounding thumps, which must have echoed throughout the house. There were a few moments of silence, followed soon afterwards by a rattle of bolts being drawn and keys being turned before the door opened a scant few inches on its chain and Wetherby’s dark, bearded face appeared in the aperture.

‘Who are you? What do you want?’ he demanded.

I fear that in several of my published accounts of investigations with which the official police have been associated, I may have given the impression that the officers concerned were incompetent, Lestrade in particular. In comparison with Holmes’ quick intelligence and scientific deductive methods, they have indeed at times appeared slow-witted.

However, when it is a matter of a formal arrest or, as on that occasion, the presentation of a search warrant, I doubt if even Holmes, consummate actor though he is, could have produced quite that combination of a dignified, not to say pompous, manner and the officially polite form of address.

‘I have a warrant to search these premises,’ Lestrade announced, ‘so you will oblige me, Mr Wetherby, by removing the chain from the door and allowing entry to myself and my colleagues. And I should warn you, sir, that I have two other officers posted at the rear of the building.’

Wetherby appeared to acquiesce for, without any protest, he withdrew his head, removed the chain and opened back the door to allow us to enter.

I was therefore astonished when Holmes, pushing Lestrade
to one side, rushed ahead of him into the hall and brought down his walking-stick with considerable force on Wetherby’s right arm.

‘Now, Mr Holmes!’ Lestrade protested. ‘There’s no need for any violence …’

He broke off, his mouth agape, as a Colt revolver fell from Wetherby’s hand on to the tiled floor.

‘You said nothing about Wetherby being armed,’ Lestrade continued in an aggrieved voice when the man had been finally overcome and was led away in handcuffs by the two constables, still struggling wildly, his face distorted with rage.

‘I suspected it from the bulge in his right-hand pocket when he came to the door this afternoon,’ Holmes explained. ‘However, a stick is as good a weapon as a firearm if used at the right moment. And now, Lestrade, pray let us proceed upstairs.’

Holmes led the way, making straight for the room where the young lady was incarcerated and where we found her still lying in a drugged state upon the bed. The housekeeper, who had been alerted to our presence by the noise of Wetherby’s arrest, was cowering behind the door. She, too, was taken away for questioning and a constable dispatched to fetch Dr Moore Agar and the nurse.

In the mean time, Holmes and I wrapped the patient in blankets after I had taken her pulse and pronounced her in no immediate danger.

Even in her comatose state, she was a most attractive young woman, with an abundance of fair hair and features of a refined nature, made even more delicate by the extreme pallor of her complexion.

When she had been carried downstairs to the waiting brougham to be driven to Dr Moore Agar’s consulting-rooms in Harley Street, Lestrade, who had been examining the room with great suspicion, turned to address my old friend.

‘And where, Mr Holmes, might I ask, is the forging press you said you saw when you looked through the window?’

Holmes’ expression was most apologetic.

‘I fear, Inspector,’ said he, ‘that I was mistaken. As I explained to you this afternoon, I only glimpsed the interior of the room
through a tear in the blind. I am afraid that I took that wash-hand stand against the far wall for the printing press. You must agree that, with the jug and basin standing upon it, it would look remarkably like forging equipment if seen in the half-light. I do most heartily apologize for the mistake although your time has not been entirely wasted. You have made an arrest in a most serious case involving abduction and unlawful imprisonment.’

From the expression of heavy suspicion on Lestrade’s face I deduced that he was not entirely convinced by this explanation although there was nothing he could do for Holmes was careful to preserve his look of genuine regret.

It was not until we were inside the cab and on our way back to Baker Street that he burst out laughing.

‘You see now, Watson, what my bait consisted of?’ he asked.

‘Indeed I do but I fear Lestrade suspected you had deceived him and did not take kindly to it.’

‘Oh, he will come round eventually. Even if he has lost a forger, he has gained an abductor, for which he will, of course, win all the credit. There is no doubt in my mind that, as in the case we investigated a few months ago in Surrey,
*
the young lady is the heiress to a considerable fortune which Wetherby was attempting to seize into his own hands.’

In this assumption, Holmes was not altogether correct.

About a week later, we received a second visit from Dr Moore Agar who called to inform us that the young lady, a Miss Alice Maitland, was recovering in a private clinic in Kent and had sufficiently regained her health to be able to give an account of herself and her abductor whose real name was Victor Rouse.

It appeared that Miss Maitland was the only daughter of
Henry Maitland, a Californian gold prospector who, together with his partner, Rouse, had once owned a small mine in a place called Lazy Creek which had been only moderately successful. Both men eventually took wives but, being of the opinion that a mining camp was no fit place to bring a woman or to raise a family – although of the two, only Maitland had a child – they invested their modest capital in a small business in the nearby settlement, selling stores and equipment to the other miners.

Over the years, the store had prospered, Rouse taking charge of the sales side of the business while Maitland, an engineer of considerable talent, had, after the death of his wife, turned his attention to designing new machinery, in particular a drill for breaking into the ore-bearing rock.

The drill was still in its experimental stage, although a patent had been applied for, when Maitland was killed in a rock fall while he was testing it. In his will, everything, including his half-share in the store and all his papers and notebooks, was left to his daughter, Alice, who was then twenty-one years of age.

It was these papers, rather than the money, which his partner, Rouse, had wished to acquire, knowing that a large fortune could be made once the drill was successfully manufactured and sold.
*

With this purpose in mind, Rouse had offered to take Miss Maitland on a trip to England, thinking that, if she were separated from her family and friends, he might persuade her to sign over her father’s papers to him. As chaperone, he took with him his wife, Agnes, the same woman who had played the part of the housekeeper. The pretext for the journey was to give Miss Maitland a much-needed holiday and change of scene after her father’s tragic death.

At first, they had rented a comfortable house in a fashionable
district of London and the Rouses had gone to great pains to entertain their young guest, taking her on visits to the West End shops, theatres and art galleries.

But Miss Maitland had proved obstinate and no inducement would persuade her to sign any documents which would place her father’s papers in Rouse’s possession.

As the weeks passed and the date of their return passage to America drew nearer, Rouse had resorted to more desperate measures. If Miss Maitland would not part willingly with her father’s documents, then she must be coerced into doing so.