Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures

"At once he cried out for assistance. Two elderly men – these dressed for business, not begging – rushed toward me from the sides. I had seen them, but not suspected them of being involved because of their advanced age.

"We tussled for a moment, and then I knocked the beggar down, threw off one of my opponents, and seized the other by his collar. I might have done him some injury had he not shouted that I was under arrest."

Holmes smiled faintly at my surprise.

"Arrest!" I cried, unable to contain myself. "How was this possible?"

"It made me pause, too," Holmes went on. "He might have been bluffing, but I knew I lacked a few key pieces of the puzzle, and this one seemed to fit. I told him, 'Very well, Sir, if you will call off your men and explain yourselves to my satisfaction, I shall gladly accompany you to police headquarters."

"When he nodded, I released him. He straightened his coat as his two fellows collected themselves. Frowning at me, he seemed to be thinking ahead. He had to be sixty-five or seventy years old, I decided.

" 'I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr Holmes,' he finally said. 'I believe we may have business to discuss. But not at the police station.'

" 'Exactly so,' I told him. 'Are you at liberty to speak for the whole Society, or must we report to your superiors?'

" 'Come with me.' He dismissed the other two with a nod, turned, and led me to a quiet building on Harley Street. I had been there once before on business with the Foreign Office, but I showed no sign of surprise; indeed, this piece of the puzzle seemed to fit admirably well.

"He took me upstairs to see a rear admiral whose name I agreed not to divulge, and there the whole truth of the Secret Mendicant Society became apparent to me."

I said, "They no longer work for Rome. They work for us." "Quite right, Watson," Holmes said. "This rear admiral took me into their confidence, since they have a file on me and know

I can be trusted. The organization of the Secret Mendicant Society was once quite remarkable, though it seems near its end. Their membership is small and, as far as I can tell, consists largely of septuagenarians or older. The times have changed so much that beggary is dying out; modern spies have much more efficient means of political espionage… for that is the current goal of the Secret Mendicant Society."

"But what about the murders!" I exclaimed. "Surely not even the Foreign Office would – "

"Not only would they, they did. Politics is becoming less and less a gentleman's game, my dear Watson. For the security of our great country, nothing is above the law for them – laws that must govern the common man, such as you or I – or even poor Pendleton-Smythe."

"So there is nothing you can do to help the colonel," I said bitterly.

"The admiral and I rapidly reached an arrangement," Holmes said, "when I explained what I had done with you and Lestrade. With Scotland Yard about to close in on the headquarters of the Amateur Mendicant Society, there was nothing he could do but agree with me that the Amateurs must be exposed. The publicity surrounding them will camouflage the activities of the real Secret Mendicant Society and allow Pendleton-Smythe the luxury of living out the rest of his days in peace. He, for one, never for an instant suspected the Secret Mendicant Society actually existed. That is his salvation."

"But what of the new Amateur Mendicant Society? Surely they did not agree to surrender so blithely!"

"Indeed, they offered no objection, since with the exception of our client, they are all dead." Holmes paused a second. "After I left Harley Street, I proceeded at once to the warehouse.There I found the proper building, knocked twice sharply, and pushed my way inside when the door opened a crack by a man dressed as a beggar.

" 'Here now – ' he began. He pulled out a knife and pointed it at me. In earlier days he might have hurt or even killed me, but his reflexes had dulled with age. I caught his wrist, bent it back until he gave a moan of pain, and the knife fell to the floor with a clatter.

" 'We have no time for that,' I told him. 'The police have been summoned. You have ten minutes to gather your organization's papers and vacate the building, or you will be captured and implicated in murder.'

" 'Who are you?' he demanded, rubbing his arm.

" 'A friend. Now hurry!'

"He hesitated, looking to the two other men in the room: both were elderly, and both were dressed as gentlemen. They had been going over papers spread out on a table halfway across the room.

" 'This must be Mr Sherlock Holmes,' one of them said.

" 'True,' I said. 'You now have nine minutes.'

"Without another word, he began to gather up papers and stuff them into a case. His assistant did likewise.

" 'Where are Attenborough's files?' I demanded.

" 'In the back room,' he said. 'They were useless to us. Most deal with murder and blackmail.'

" 'Do you object to the police obtaining them?'

" `No. You may do with them as you see fit.

" 'Thank you for the warning. It might have been embarrassing to be found here.'

"When they had gone, I checked the back room and found Attenborough's files. They seemed a complete record of his blackmail schemes. I also found Attenborough's body, tucked away behind a filing cabinet. He had clearly been dead for some months.

" 'I arranged the body to look as though an accident had occurred – a bookcase had fallen on him – then came out just as you and Lestrade arrived. To the untrained eyes of Lestrade and his men, it will look as though Attenborough suffered an unfortunate accident.' "

" 'What of Attenborough's files?' I asked. 'Surely they will ruin what remains of Colonel Pendleton-Smythe's reputation.'

" 'That will be handled by the foreign office. Lestrade will uncover the records of the Amateur Mendicant Society, which reveal their wrongdoings in excruciating detail. Their specialty was blackmail and extortion, as we had surmised. The records will be doctored to include, I dare say, the full catalog of murders by Dr Attenborough, as he desperately tried to maintain control of a crumbling criminal empire. The newspapers will, I am certain, find much scandalous material in it – and the colonel will have little choice but to deny his participation and suppress

that part of his memoirs, should he still choose to write them. All the Foreign Service wants, at this point, is to maintain the Secret Mendicant Society's anonymity while contributing whatever small gains it can to the war effort."

"It would seem, then," I said, "that everything has sorted itself out remarkably well. You're fortunate they didn't try to kill you," I commented.

"I believe the admiral considered it. However, I do make my own small contributions to the Foreign Office, as you well know. You might say we have friends in common."

"Your brother for one," I said.

"Just so," he said.

"Then we have reached a successful resolution to the case after a fashion."

"After a fashion," Holmes agreed with a half smile. "After a fashion."

Holmes continued to throw himself into his cases as 1887 progressed and they did not become any easier. There was the loss of the British barque the Sophy Anderson. I have the details of this case but they are not in a sufficient state yet to present to the reader, though they again indicate the intensity of Holmes's involvement. Soon after this he was involved in the case of the Davenoke family of Shoreswood Hall, a long-unknown case which was identified by the renowned Holmesian scholar Denis Smith, who also rescued the following story. After the Shoreswood Hall case, Holmes investigated the death of Mrs Stewart of Lauder. Although he resolved the murder to his own satisfaction he was not able to find the conclusive evidence needed to convict Sebastian Moran, whom Holmes was convinced was behind the plot. This frustration caused both Holmes's spirit and energy to flag and Watson again became concerned for his health. It was at this stage that the case of the Grice Petersons on the island of Uffa, referred to in "The Five Orange Pips" occurred. Its facts have been unearthed by Denis Smith, who has produced other stories based on his research which I list at the end of this book.