Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures

"Metal?" said Traill, now still more puzzled. "I wear no rings."

"True enough. But your right hand contains a steel needle, inserted there by the false Dr James under the pretext of removing the poisoned mouth-parts of the red leech."

I was thunderstruck as I realized the fiendish ingenuity of the plot. Even the quill pen was part of the design, for a steel nib would instantly have given the game away. And of course that faint smell in the air was the sulphuric-acid reek of hidden wet-cell batteries. Meanwhile, Jarman uttered a forced laugh. He appeared to be sweating profusely. "What a farrago of nonsense! Such a thing would be impossible to prove."

"On the contrary, I have photographed it by means of X-radiation." Holmes drew something from one of his capacious pockets. "This shadowgraph shows the bone structure of Mr Traill's right hand. Bone, being less previous to the rays than flesh, appears as nearly white. Here is the solid white of the needle, lying between the metacarpal bones."

Traill shuddered again.

"No doubt we will find that Mr Jarman cannot account for his time on that Tuesday six months ago when you had your famous adventure on Hampstead Heath… ah, Mr Jarman, you are smiling. Therefore you have an alibi, and the deed was done by your good brother Basil, who likes to experiment with electricity. What, no smile now?"

I had belatedly trained my revolver on Jarman.

"What was the purpose of this terrible charade?" asked Traill.

"It is possible," said Holmes gently, "that you are no longer heir to a great estate. If the assets or a large part of them have somehow slipped through the fingers of Jarman, Fittlewell and Coggs, then it naturally became necessary to delay – by fair means or foul – your legal acquisition of Sir Maximilian's fortune. We shall find out when, as Mr Jarman very nearly put it, those who lived by the law shall perish by the law."

"Mr Sherlock Holmes, you are an officious meddler," stated Jarman, gazing intently at my friend. "And you over-reach.Your remarks are slanderous, sir. A true accounting of the estate's affairs lies here upon my desk, and will show no defalcation: perhaps you would care to glance through the record?" The lawyer tapped his scorched index finger upon the book in question, a heavy ledger with a tarnished brass clasp that lay askew upon a mound of papers near the desk's far edge. "Within, all your questions are answered."

For half a minute, Holmes's right hand had lain concealed within the folds of his bulky Inverness cape. Now he reached forward to the ledger, but did not flick open the clasp as I had anticipated. Instead he swiftly lifted the entire tome clear of the papers, and two oddities were made manifest. First, from the underside of the book's brass clasp there trailed a long, springy, shining copper wire which vanished into the artfully disarrayed papers. Second, Holmes's hand was seen to be sheathed in a heavy, rubber glove.

"How many volts, Mr Jarman?" he enquired pleasantly. "Hundreds? Thousands? I presume this jest was ultimately intended for Mr Traill, whose death would have bought you yet more time. My admiration for your ingenuity increases."

Wilfrid Jarman's composure was broken at last, and with an inarticulate cry of rage he stepped to one side, reaching into a drawer. Even as I realized that his hand now held an old-fashioned pistol, he had dextrously placed himself so that Holmes lay in my line of fire. I flung myself uselessly forward, to see Jarman aiming at point-blank range while Holmes flung the ledger in what seemed a futile shielding gesture. Blue-white sparks flew. The pistol's flash and bang echoed with dread authority in the musty room. Then a heavy body fell to the floor. There was a long silence.

"I suspect that our friend did not finish pulling the trigger," said Holmes, whose austere face was now very pale. "His infernal electricity exploded the shell in the breech, even as it struck him dead. Gun-barrels, as well as copper wires and brass clasps, are excellent conductors of electrical current. – Watson, I must trouble you to bind up my shoulder. The bullet did not

go entirely astray." He bent over to scrutinize the corpse more closely. "As he truly said, that ledger contained the answer to all questions. The rictus of his features is characteristic of electrically-induced spasms and convulsions. Best not to look, Mr Trail. Some things are even less pleasant to gaze upon than the red leech."

Some time afterward, at the trial which concluded with the sentencing of the co-conspirator Basil Jarman to a long term of hard labour, we learned that almost half of the Traill estate still remained. Thus our client continued his life of idle literary dabbling, while his blameless sister Selina presumably receives a sufficient allowance to fritter away on psychic mediums.

Besides his own substantial fee, Holmes somehow contrived to retain a small souvenir of the case. To this day, our untidy mantelpiece in 221b Baker Street boasts a matchbox best not opened by the unwary, for its coiled rubber occupant is repulsive to the eye. The box is labelled in Holmes's own neat hand: Sanguisuga rufa spuriosa. I have my doubts about the Latin.

"Watson," said Mr Sherlock Holmes from the bow-window, where he had stood for the past half-hour, gazing moodily down into the street, "if I mistake not, we have a client."

I was more than pleased to hear the excitement in his voice. Holmes had been restlessly unemployed for nearly a week, and neither his temper nor mine had been helped by the dull, leaden skies of March with their intermittent showers, which caused my old wound to ache abominably.

"A prosperous man," he continued. "Purposeful and not without self-esteem. Ah, he has paid off the cab and is approaching our door. Let us hope that he brings something of interest." He turned away from the window, and at that moment we heard a determined ring upon the front-door bell. Within a minute our good landlady had shown into the room a plump man with heavy jowls and thick grey hair.

"Gentlemen," said our visitor, as the door closed softly behind Mrs Hudson, "my name is Henry Staunton, and I am the victim of a most audacious theft!"

"Indeed?" replied Holmes, calmly. "Pray take the basket-chair, Mr Staunton. Your name is, of course, familiar to me as that of a connoisseur of objets d'art. Has some item from your collection been stolen?"

"It has, sir. It has! I shall come straight to the point, for I dislike circumlocution, as, I am sure, do you. Besides, I wish to have the matter settled without even the least delay. You must know, then, that I recently acquired from old Sir Cedric Grace the celebrated golden cup known as the Grace Chalice. I may say that it cost me a very considerable sum – a pretty penny,

sir! But I do not grudge it, for the chalice is unique, quite unique.

"Now, before depositing it with my bankers, I determined to retain the chalice at my house for a short while, so that I might study it thoroughly. I live at The Elms at Hampstead, a very desirable residence, near the Heath and somewhat away from the main thoroughfare. Ahem! I kept the chalice in a safe in my study, securely built into the wall, and hidden behind a looking-glass. You may imagine my distress – my utter distress, sir – when, this very morning I discovered the safe unlocked and the chalice gone!

"I am a man who values his privacy, Mr Holmes, and I have no desire to admit the official police to my property. Instead, I am resolved to rely upon your skill and discretion in the matter." He made a little flourish with his hand, and I remembered my friend's assessment of him as a man not lacking in self-importance.

Holmes himself sat quietly, his eyes closed and his long legs stretched out before him. "That is very good of you, Mr Staunton," he replied blandly. "You will appreciate, however, that I must have all the details, however trivial they may seem."