Donald Thomas - Sherlock Holmes and the King’s Evil

“He is our man, Watson, and you have tracked him down. Single-handed, last night and today, you have put Piatkoff within our reach.”

“Then had Scotland Yard better not arrest him while he remains within your reach?”

Lestrade had been bursting to say something important and now took his chance.

“Watch him, doctor! Shadow him. Those are the orders. Not just orders from the higher ranks in Scotland Yard. Not even from Mr Mycroft Holmes. They come from the Home Office and the Home Secretary himself-Mr Winston Churchill.”

I needed no account of this Home Secretary in Mr Asquith’s government. At the Colonial Office and the Board of Trade he had already shown a refusal to let problems stand in his way. “Do not argue that there are difficulties,” he told his protesting subordinates, “the difficulties will argue for themselves.”

“The duel between Churchill and Piatkoff is something of a personal matter,” Holmes remarked, “but Winston, as his minions call him when he is not present, is determined to have the entire bunch of Anarchists in his bag. His instructions are that nothing is to be done to alert them until we can get them all. Anarchism is what he describes as the hydra of revolution. If you merely cut the head from it, it will sprout twenty more.”

“Then what has happened?” I asked.

Lestrade gave a satisfied smile.

“Sergeant Wiley had a chat, as you might call it, with the manager of E. M. Reilly. Their customer did not call himself Piatkoff but Schtern. Despite that name, he claimed to be a Frenchman. According to the Home Office files, over which Mr Churchill has given us free range, Piatkoff sometimes uses the name Schtern in Paris and is known to most of the underworld simply as The Frenchman.”

“More to the point,” said Holmes impatiently, “their customer purchased three Enfield rifles, muzzle loading but deadly accurate, to be delivered as a parcel in the name of Schtern to 133 Jubilee Street, Stepney.”

“But that is the same street as the so-called Anarchist Club!” I said.

“It is better than that-it is the Anarchist Club. If we can keep absolute surveillance there, we may have them all before any harm can be done.”

Lestrade knocked his pipe out and looked up.

“With revolvers or handguns, they can only be sure of hitting their targets at close range. With rifles, a first-class marksman can hit a target a hundred yards off. Rifles, gentlemen, are the stuff of assassination. Mr Churchill has now taken measures over the Prime Minister’s movements between Downing Street and the House of Commons, as well as the appearance of the King and Queen at the opening of parliament in the New Year. We know that Gardstein and his friends already had ammunition for rifles. Now, it seems, they also have the weapons.”

“Only because you allow them to buy rifles from a gunsmith!” I said with some little indignation.”

To my astonishment, Lestrade tapped the side of his nose, though he did not exactly give me a wink.

“As to that, doctor, this is one occasion when you really must allow us to know our own business best.”

Holmes said nothing and at last Lestrade, standing up, wished us good night. At the door, however, he turned back.

“When you read the paper tomorrow morning, doctor, you will see the face of your Peter the Painter from last night, as our plain-clothes men saw him close up this afternoon. You must let me know what you think of it-as a work of art.”

I could hear him chuckling all the way to the foot of the stairs. I tucked The Heart of Midlothian under my arm and stumped off to bed, muttering, “Blasted impertinence!” or something of the kind. Holmes made no reply but continued to gaze in deep thought at the dying fire.

I felt, as I believed I was entitled to, that I had been treated with something less than the consideration I deserved. Next morning I found that, once again, Holmes was at breakfast before me. I was about to make a protest of some kind when I looked at him and saw how ragged his face appeared. I swear that he had not been to bed all night. All the same there was no sign of nocturnal activity in the sitting-room. Thinking about it afterwards, I thought I had smelt something like the hot acrid and metallic smell of a soldering iron in a workshop.

All this was put out of my mind as I laid down my knife and fork for a moment and took up the Morning Post. There, on an inner page, a face stared out at me. It was the twin of the one I had seen two nights earlier, shouting abuse across Baker Street as a tin-can and a stone hit the house. Above the sketch, in bold type, was the inscription, “Peter the Painter.”

“That is he!” I exclaimed.

“Is it?” said Holmes listlessly. “Only you can tell, my dear fellow, you and your two plain-clothes men.”

“They have got him to a tee!” I insisted, “He will hardly be able to stir out of doors in London without being recognised! ”

His fork was idle and he showed none of his usual morning appetite.

“One thing of which you may be certain, Watson, is that as soon as our artist’s drawing appeared in the newspaper, the fugitive changed his appearance beyond recognition.”

He was right, of course.

“Far better,” Holmes added, “had Lestrade and his boobies kept this to themselves for the time being.” At the word “this” he stabbed the face in the newspaper with his finger. Then he left his breakfast unfinished and went to the window, watching the street below. I thought it best to let the matter drop. With a show of great attention to the day’s news, I finished my toast and marmalade and drank my coffee.

Ten minutes passed in silence. Then he turned from the window and reached for his waterproof, drawing it on and buttoning it.

“I shall be with Mycroft today,” he said, crossing to the door, “We are required to give an account of ourselves to Mr Churchill and his advisers. I see that you and I have no immediate engagements of any other kind. However, it is possible that you may receive a call from Mr Chung Ling Soo. If so, be good enough to ask him to leave a card with his present address and assure him that I will communicate with him forthwith.”

Mr Chung Ling Soo! What madness or nonsense this might be I could not tell and Holmes did not say. It was evidently some case that he had picked up and neglected to mention. It hardly seemed worth bothering about by comparison with the threat from the Revolutionary Anarchists.

As Holmes went down the stairs, I stood up and replaced him at the window. There was a cab waiting outside and he was about to step into it. I now saw that he was in the company of two Army officers. I recognised from my own military service that their lapels and hat-bands proclaimed one to be a colonel and the other a brigadier. Whatever game Holmes and his associates were playing seemed too rich for my blood, as the saying goes.

I kept an appointment for lunch in the refectory of the London Hospital with my friend and colleague Alfred Jenkins, who had been a lieutenant with me in Afghanistan-and who had pursued his military career as surgeon major for several years after I was invalided out after Maiwand. When his time was up and he returned to civilian life, he had been offered a senior post as surgeon at the London Hospital.

As we were eating our steak and kidney pie, a colleague of Jenkins came up and sat down beside us.

“We’ve got him!” he said excitedly, “There was great competition and he’s as handsome as Adonis-a very beautiful corpse.” The acquisition, I discovered, was the body of Poloski Morountzeff, who had gone by the name of George Gardstein. His corpse was of great importance, because few people had met him or had any idea what he looked like. In order that he might now be identified it was necessary for his remains to be preserved intact for a further three months. The task of accomplishing this had been awarded to the London Hospital, who had arranged to keep him in a formaldehyde-fume preservation-chamber with glass windows. His eyes had been carefully opened, while a policeman photographed his face for a life-like poster which soon appeared on public display.