Warlock Holmes--The Sign of Nine Page 14

  “So already he’s managed to cleverly bargain himself up to a hundred shillings a week,” I observed.

  “And he whips out a ten-pound note and says he’ll pay me the first two weeks in advance,” Mrs. Warren confirmed. “But he’s got some conditions, see? First, he wants a key to the house. Well, that’s no problem. Lots of lodgers get those and for five pounds a week he might be in his rights to ask for a key to Molly’s room. He also says he wants to be left totally alone. Nobody is to come into his rooms, under any circumstances. He’ll ring for his meals and write us notes for what he wants. And for the price, I say that’s just fine. So he gives me the tenner and goes outside and brings up two huge bags—strangely frilly ones—and hauls them upstairs. Not so much as a word to me husband or Molly. But we’ve got ten pounds, so we don’t mind. Later that night, he goes out. Very late. In the small hours I hears him come back in, and that’s the last time he’s left his rooms. It’s been ten days now. Ten days!”

  “So your chief complaint, as I understand it,” said Holmes, “is that a stranger came and gave you a great deal of money for a certain living arrangement, under certain terms and then—and this is the part that upsets you—abided by those terms?”

  “Yes, but he also said I weren’t to go poking about, trying to find out anything about him.”

  “Which you are presently doing.”

  “Because it’s driving me mad!”

  “Another word for which, I believe,” Holmes whispered, from my shoulder, “is insane.”

  I gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  “Now, starting on the morning after his arrival, our guest had been leaving notes, telling me what he wants. I’ve been keepin’ ’em.”

  “Of course you have,” said Holmes.

  “Here’s the first one,” said Mrs. Warren, handing us a card that said SUBSCRIPTION TO DAILY GAZETTE.

  “A reasonable request,” said Holmes. “If I were going to spend my life locked in rooms I’d rented from a landlady who secretly hated me, I’d want something to read, too.”

  “Sure, for what he’s payin’ me, no problem getting him a paper every day. But then, two days later, we got this.” Mrs. Warren gave us a second card that said MATCH.

  “Hmmm…” I said. “Note the lack of a plural, Holmes. And the slightly different appearance of the handwriting from one card to the next. Now, block print in capital letters is probably the simplest writing style to copy. Nonetheless, I’d say it was possible this was written by a different person. A person with substantially limited vocabulary compared to the first individual as the note is only one word and omits the plural. Either that or he wanted exactly one match, for some reason.”

  “Yes, and I weren’t about to go buy one match, so I got ’im a box and much joy may he have of it. And then just days and days and days of nuffin’ but listenin’ to him pace back and forth up there, bringin’ him meals and Daily Gazettes, until he leaves a final note with his breakfast this morning.” At that point, Mrs. Warren turned to her oversized handbag and began digging about inside. Tired though I was, the sound of utensils clanging against glass spurred me to mental clarity. And to disbelief.

  “Wait… you brought the whole breakfast?”

  “Maybe it’s a clue?” said Mrs. Warren, disgorging her mysterious lodger’s dirty plates and discarded bits of egg onto our sitting-room table. Amongst the food scraps lay two used matches—just barely burnt down—and the stubs of two cigarettes, which had been smoked to within about a quarter inch of their ends. Apparently Mrs. Warren’s lodger was not one to waste tobacco. Also in the wreckage lay her lodger’s most recent note, which simply said: SOAP.

  “Hmmmmm…” I said, perusing the pile of refuse. “Much as I hate to admit it, this evidence certainly does raise a peculiarity. Can you spot it, Holmes?”

  “The fact that the strange man has been locked in those rooms for ten days and is only now requesting soap?”

  “By God! I hadn’t even thought of that!”

  “Probably beginning to smell a little close in there, eh?” said Holmes.

  “I shouldn’t wonder. However, I was thinking of something else. Look how far down these cigarettes have been smoked. It’s a miracle the person didn’t burn their lips. Now, would any man with a full beard and moustache dare to smoke a cigarette so far down? He’d have lit himself on fire.”

  “Ah! And we know this did not occur,” Holmes crowed, waving his I’ve-just-made-a-staggering-deduction finger about, “because the note he subsequently left says SOAP, and not REPLACEMENT FACE.”

  “Do you know something, Holmes, I am forced to concur. Personal hygiene is unlikely to be the primary concern of someone who’s just scorched off all their facial hair. Well done.”

  I could feel his cheek tighten against my shoulder as he beamed with pride.

  “We are now left with two possibilities,” I continued. “Either Mrs. Warren’s lodger met her while wearing a false beard—which would not be out of character, considering his desire for anonymity—or the person now in residence is not the original lodger at all. Recall that he went out late that first night, returned when the rest of the household was abed, and has not been seen since. Recall also that his luggage was strangely ‘frilly’. Finally, observing the difference in both writing and diction in the first card, compared with the last two, I am inclined to believe that Mrs. Warren now has an altogether different lodger.”

  “Ooooooh!” said Mrs. Warren, balling her fists in anger. “What should I do about it?”

  Holmes and I both had our mouths open to offer an opinion, when Mrs. Warren raised a finger to interrupt. “What should I do that won’t stop the five pounds a week?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Honestly, if that is your prime concern, I think the best answer is: nothing at all.”

  “I can’t do nuffin’,” she protested. “Not with my husband gettin’ abducted and all.”

  “Wait, your husband was what?”

  “Well, see, he’s got this big black bushy beard, like my lodger. And this mornin’ as he steps out to go to work, two big fellows whops him over the head with a blackjack, pops a coat over his head and shoves him in a carriage.”

  “Why on earth did you not begin your story with that?” I demanded.

  “I don’t know,” said Mrs. Warren, crossing her arms defensively. “Maybe because I’m a landlady and not a student of narrative structure!”

  “Have you heard from the kidnappers? Have they made any demands?”

  “Oh, no, no, no. My Warren’s back home safe and sound.”

  “Your… Warren? You call your husband by his last name?”

  “No, that’s ’is first name.”

  “His name is Warren Warren?”

  “And if I tell you his father were a right cruel bastard, maybe you’d be inclined to believe me,” said Mrs. Warren Warren. “Mr. Warren weren’t gone all that long. He says they drove him about, shouting at him in some foreign language for a time, and when he couldn’t answer, one of ’em took the coat off, took a look at ’im and started swearing up a storm. Well, they stopped the carriage, gave my Warren the boot, and sped off fast as you like. He came stumbling home less than an hour after he left.”

  “Well this paints the entire affair in quite a new light,” I admitted. “It would seem the assailants mistook your husband for your lodger. If they and the person secreted in your upstairs rooms happen to be foreign, that would not only explain why your husband’s kidnappers tried to interrogate him in a strange tongue, but also why your guest’s notes are monosyllabic. I’m sorry to say it, Holmes, but it seems as if Mrs. Warren was right to bring the matter to our attention; there seems to be some real mischief afoot.”

  “How should we proceed, Watson?”

  “I think we should try to sneak a look at this mysterious lodger. Mrs. Warren, what time does your guest usually take supper?”

  Mrs. Warren shrugged. “Six or so.”

  “Then be so kind as to jot down your ad
dress and we shall call upon you just before that hour. Good day, Mrs. Warren; rest assured that Holmes and I shall give the matter our utmost attention.”

  As I rose to see her out, I was reminded of how absolutely exhausted I was. True, I had rallied while sitting, but even the trip from the couch to the door was taxing.

  “Ugh. I’m not at my best, I fear,” I told Holmes as I returned.

  “Nor I, Watson. I can’t even move my legs.”

  “Then how did you make it out here?”

  By way of answer, Holmes raised his arms to show me his palms and elbows.

  “You dragged yourself?”

  “Needs must when the devil drives, they say,” he replied, “and Mrs. Hudson is pretty much the same as the devil if you leave her unanswered on the doorstep twice on the same day.”

  “True enough,” I agreed. “Yet I fear she is the next person I must consult in this case.”

  “Mrs. Hudson? Why?”

  “Because she never throws anything away until she absolutely has to, and because she is one of the few people in London gullible enough to subscribe to the Daily Gazette.”

  “You want her old papers?” Holmes asked.

  “Indeed. I can think of almost nothing to recommend the Gazette over the dozens of other papers our mysterious gentleman may have selected. It is utterly devoid of fact—unless you happen to be one of those people willing to believe that ‘Duchess Gives Birth to Goblin Triplets’ is real news.”

  “You can’t prove she didn’t!” Holmes shouted.

  Disregarding him, I continued, “But the Daily Gazette does have this going for it: almost nobody finds themselves in sufficient agony to use their agony column.”

  “Eh?”

  “Thus, anybody who wants to march into the Gazette’s office at lunchtime and drop two coppers can probably get anything they want printed in the evening edition and very few people would notice it. So perhaps Mrs. Warren’s strange guest is interested in the progress of London’s goblin babies. Or perhaps—as it seems the original lodger has spirited somebody else into the rooms and has had no direct communication with them for ten days—someone has actually found a reasonable use for the Daily Gazette.”

  The good news was that Mrs. Hudson did indeed possess an impressive pile of cast-off copies of the Gazette. The bad news was that she claimed she wasn’t done with them yet. She made me purchase her pile of as-yet-undisposed-of rubbish at full price. Happily, this proved to be money well spent. In the agony column from two days after Mrs. Warren’s mysterious lodger’s arrival, I found the message: “Be patient. Will find some sure means of communication. Until then, watch this column. G.”

  Three days later: “Am making successful arrangements. Patience and prudence. The clouds will pass. G.”

  And finally, in the previous day’s paper: “The path is clearing. Remember code agreed—one A, two B, and so on. High red house with white stone facings. Third floor. Second window on your left. Nine o’clock tomorrow night. G.”

  “Ah-ha!” I shouted, waving the paper at Holmes. “It seems that we are to have two missions this evening. First, to observe Mrs. Warren’s current lodger and see whether they are the original one. Second, we are going to intercept and decode a secret message intended for that person. Whoever has been communicating with them through the agony column of the Daily Gazette has foolishly put the time, location and cypher for the message all in one place. Indeed, judging by the particular code they have selected—a favorite of schoolchildren the world over—I imagine this ‘G’ is a man of no very great intelligence.”

  Then again, the men who contrived against him—Holmes and I—were currently men of no very great ability.

  I think it took us twenty minutes to get down the stairs. By the time we did, we were already a sight, our clothes in disarray, our brows slicked with sweat, leaning on one another to stay upright. Holmes had recovered some of his strength, but not much. Still, when one considers the state of most fellows who’d drunk what he had the previous night, it was a miraculous achievement. I was… wavering. Though the trill of intellectual challenge energized my mind and body, I was still rather used up. The urge to lie down—even if only for a moment—overtook my every thought.

  We hailed several cabs but each of them seemed to be engaged (even if they were clearly empty) or just going off duty. So sorry, guvnor, said the waves of every cabby who didn’t just pretend not to see us.

  “Come on, Holmes,” I said, struggling under my friend’s weight. “Great Orme Street. It’s just by the British Museum. We can make it!”

  “What? No we can’t!”

  “But… try?”

  “Watson, I couldn’t possibly.”

  Fortunately, Blind Harold—one of the local knife grinders—was passing with his cart. By “cart” I mean “some old, stolen wheelbarrow with a grindstone set in and held in place by nothing but gravity and the luck that attends beggars and scoundrels”. Still, never one to look askance at the gifts of providence, I gave Harold four shillings, told him his mobile service model was settling into a permanent location for the day, lifted the grindstone out of the barrow, and set my friend in its place. Then, with a tip of our hats, Holmes and I were off.

  Though, not at any great pace. The wheelbarrow did better than might have been expected, but I did not. At the start, I was trundling. Two streets later, I was staggering.

  “Turn left here,” Holmes said.

  “Ungh,” I agreed.

  “No, no! My left!”

  “But… we’re facing the same way, so my left is your left and…”

  “Well then, shouldn’t it have been even easier to get it right?”

  “Um… right?”

  “No! Left!”

  By the time we arrived, six o’clock had just passed. Fortunately, dinner had not yet been delivered to Mrs. Warren’s mysterious guest. She told us she had a disused box room we might secrete ourselves in, just across from the door to the lodger’s rooms. And perhaps that was true, but do you know what else she had? Stairs. There was simply no way I was getting Holmes up there. In truth, I was glad to have him as an excuse because I rather suspected there was no way I was getting up there.

  Instead, at my direction, Mrs. Warren set her full-length mirror in the corridor, so it might reflect the lodger’s door. Then she set Molly’s mirror at the top of the stairs to reflect the first. Then we borrowed a third from the next-door neighbor and set that at the bottom of the stairs, reflecting up so that Holmes and I might look in from the street—and our convenient wheelbarrow parking area—and get a roundabout view.

  Molly brought the lodger’s meal upstairs on a serving tray, carefully dodging mirrors all the way. She knocked at the door and retreated down the stairs. No sooner had she reached the bottom than the door opened and two bare white arms reached out to retrieve the food. Though my view was somewhat compromised by our less-thanideal arrangement, I could nonetheless see that they were slender and delicate and certainly not well matched to the bearded brute Mrs. Warren had described. Between those arms, I could just make out a feminine face. Though it was hard to tell for sure, it seemed as if the face’s owner might have been somewhat surprised to see a mirror outside her room.

  Then, more surprised to discover that she could see a second mirror, reflected in the first.

  Then even more surprised to catch sight of a third, reflected in the second.

  And finally, just a bit put out to see two weirdos slumped over a wheelbarrow, staring at her, reflected in the third.

  To say she closed her door with some alacrity might be an understatement.

  “Definitely not the original lodger,” Holmes noted. “I don’t care if he did shave; that’s not him.”

  “No,” I agreed.

  “What do we do now, Watson?”

  “Well, that must be her window, up there, eh? Let’s see if we can spot the house described in the Gazette. I believe it said: ‘High red house with white stone facings. Third floor. Sec
ond window on our left.’”

  Indeed, I had no trouble identifying the window in question. The front of the building was on Howe Street and thus obscured from our view, but the window described was plain.

  “Very good, Watson,” said Holmes, “but we’ve still got over two hours until nine o’clock. What shall we do?”

  “Food?” I suggested.

  “Oh, yes! Oh, by the twelve gods, food!”

  Just around the corner, we found an unimpressive eatery which—and this speaks well of the proprietor’s better sense—absolutely refused to seat us. One look at us was enough to convince him that we were drunk, suffering from some horrible form of plague or—most likely—both. I convinced the man to at least sell us some food we could enjoy outside. I had to pay him enough to cover the loss of his crockery (and then promise to return the plates anyway) but at last Holmes and I found ourselves outfitted with victuals. For Holmes, a few slices of bread toasted golden-brown and a bowl of chicken soup. For myself I got the biggest jug of water the kitchen could provide and a sandwich of wilted vegetables and… well… the fact that the waiter called it “beef” proved nothing aside from the fact that the waiter was a baldfaced liar. To this day, I cannot tell you what unfortunate animal provided the gristly scraps I swallowed as I sat on the pavement, leaning back against Holmes’s wheelbarrow. I earnestly hoped it was not one of the street urchins whose numerous comrades still stared at us from the nearby alleys.