Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures

We were standing outside a greystone edifice at Number 1789, Broadway. A brass plate near the entrance informed us that this was the home of something called "The Cosmopolitan. A Hearst Publication". Sherlock Holmes tapped his fore-finger alongside his nose, as if taking me into a confidence. "Ignore the newsboy, Watson, and humour me in a charade."

Holmes strode purposefully to the exact spot where the Vitascope apparatus had stood. "This is a good place to start Watson," said my friend in a loud voice, "if we intend to collect the reward."

I did not take his meaning, but I played along: "Yes! Certainly! A good deal of money is at stake."

Sherlock Holmes now took out a tape-measure, and began making precise measurements of the kerb and the pavement, all the while muttering about a large reward. He seemed wholly unaware of the newsboy, who was observing Holmes's every movement with the keenest attention. When he was unable to contain his curiosity any longer, the urchin spoke in thick American tones: "Wutcha lookin' fer, cul?"

"Go away, lad," said Holmes. "Can't you see that we're busy? The officers of the Edison Film Company have engaged us to investigate a serious incident of vandalism, and…"

"I know wutcher aftuh," said the boy conspiratorially. His mouth was crammed full of some glutinous substance which he chewed furiously whilst he spoke, thus obscuring his diction all the more. "You're lookin' for the jasper who jiggered that camera, ain'tcher?"

Holmes looked up from his measurements. "The Edison Film Company have offered a substantial reward for information leading to the arrest of the man who damaged one of their kinetographic…"

"How much?" said the boy. "That reward, I mean."

"We have no intention of paying good money for idle rumours," said Holmes. "Since you clearly did not witness the incident…"

"I seen him!" boasted the newsboy. "I seen the whole thing!" Now he began to re-enact the whole affair, in broad movements, taking by turns the roles of James Phillimore, the Edison cameraman, and even the camera itself. "There was one o' them camera fellers here, takin' pitchers. A dude came along, swingin' his umbreller, see? He looked like the kind of a guy who would make trouble just fer the sport of it. Sure enough, I seen him poke his umbrelly into that camera there. He pulled it out again, and then he walked away laughin'. The umbrella weren't damaged, but the camera started racketin' loud enough to wake yer dead granny. The cameraman started cussin', and he had to stop the camera. I seen him fiddle it fer a coupla minutes, and then he started it up again." The boy's face split into a broad grin. "Do I get the reward?"

"Not unless you can tell me the culprit's name and address," said Sherlock Holmes, pocketing his tape-measure and drawing forth his jotting-book. Somehow a five-dollar banknote had gone astray from Holmes's note-case and was now protruding – by accident, surely – from the leaves of his jotter. "If you can offer us some useful information…"

"That's them!" said the boy, stabbing a grimy finger towards the book as Holmes opened it.

I looked over his shoulder, and was amused to see what my friend had been sketching so industriously during our cab-journey. In the pages of his jotting-book, Holmes had drawn two large portraits that I recognized as likenesses of our adversaries from bygone adventures: Professor Moriarty and Colonel Moran. Between these two, scarcely more than an afterthought, was a small and hastily scribbled rendition of James Phillimore. Yet the newsboy now ignored the large conspicuous drawings of Moriarty and Moran, and pointed unerringly at the tiny likeness of Phillimore. "That's them!" he said triumphantly. "That's both o' them!"

For once, Sherlock Holmes seemed confused… but he regained his composure swiftly enough to withdraw the jotting-book an instant before the freckled urchin tried to snatch the banknote within. "Both of them, you say?" asked Holmes.

The newsboy nodded. "You heard me, boss.That guy wit' the umbreller: after he wrecked the camera, I seen him walk into that buildin' over there." The newsboy nodded towards the offices of the Cosmopolitan. "The cameraman left, an' I kept peddlin' my papers, see? Then, mebbe half an hour later, the umbrella man comes out again. Only this time there's two of him."

Holmes and I exchanged glances. "Can it be that there are two James Phillimores?" I wondered aloud.

"There were, 'coz I seen 'em," the newsboy replied. "Like they could o' been twins… an' that there's pitcher o' both o' them." The boy tapped his hand against the jotting-book, leaving ink-stained finger-prints upon the drawing of James Phillimore. "Same suit, same hat, same lip-spinach, the works. Only difference was, one twin had an umbreller and one twin didn't." As he spoke, the newsboy's fingers gravitated towards the stray banknote, but Holmes kept this just out of reach.

"And did you see where he… where they went, lad?" Holmes enquired.

The newsboy's eyes gleamed greedily. "What's it worth t'yuh?" he asked.

"Five dollars," said Holmes. "But I want the truth, mind!" He brandished the sketch of James Phillimore again. "Where did this man go?"

"There was two of him, I tol' yuh… so y'ought to pay double," said the newsboy.

Holmes sighed, and pressed two fivers into the newsboy's eager hands. "Now, then!"

"I seen 'em get into a cab," the boy reported. "Just b'fore the door closed, I heard one o' the twins – the one `thout an umbreller – tell the driver to take 'em both to Madison Square."

Thus it chanced that, five minutes later, Sherlock Holmes and I were in another cab hastening towards Madison Square: a place unknown to us, yet which the cab-driver assured us he knew intimately.

" 'Pon my word, Watson," Holmes declared, as our cab went south on Broadway, "but this mystery gets stranger every moment. Thirty-one years ago, James Phillimore stepped through a doorway and ceased to exist. This morning he returned from the void: not a day older, and none the worse for his absence. And now it seems that he has become identical twins."

"Do you suppose the newsboy told the truth, Holmes?" I pondered. "He might have lied to us, just to claim a reward."

“I think not, Watson." Once more Holmes produced his jotter, revealing the thumb-nail portrait of James Phillimore flanked either side by the two colossi of Moriarty and Moran. "A liar posing as an eyewitness would have claimed to recognize the first likeness he saw. Our newspaper johnny went right past the two largest and most obvious portraits in my impromptu rogues' gallery – he did not recognize them, Watson – and he seized upon the smaller study that he did recognize: our quarry James Phillimore… who now appears to have borrowed a trick from the amoeba and split himself into identical twins."

The southward traffic along Broadway was more congenial than its northbound counterpart had been, and soon we turned eastward and arrived at the crossroads of Madison Avenue and East Twenty-Seventh Street. Here awaited us a green

quadrangle of parkland which, of a certainty, must be Madison Square. I paid the cabman, and I had no sooner alighted on the kerb than the hand of Sherlock Holmes was at my shoulder: "Watson! Look!"

I turned, and looked… and thought I must be seeing double.

At the far end of the park stood two identical men. Both were dressed in pin-striped suiting, of an outmoded cut. Both wore moustaches and dundreary whiskers.

Both of them were James Phillimore.

In swift movements of his lithe muscular limbs, Sherlock Holmes crossed the quad. In consequence of my Jezail wound, I was unable to keep pace with him. Thus I was still several yards from our quarry when Holmes approached them and asked: "Have I the honour of addressing Mr James Phillimore and Mr James Phillimore?"