George Mann - Associates of Sherlock Holmes

But my first job was to get Sleepy Jack upright. I should have torn his ear off and tossed him out, but we go back a long way, Jack and I, and if the job, even menial as it was, was taken from him, the bottle would have him within days. He was too good a man to lose like that. I walked him up and down Aldwych until he was nearly sober.

“Who gave you the gin, Jack?” I asked when he was able to talk clearly.

“Some posh lad,” Jack said. “A bottle if I looked the other way.”

I described the young duke, but Jack shook his head.

“No – this lad had blond hair. Blue eyes, big nose and an old scar – here,” he ran a finger from the corner of his left eye down his cheek.

I thanked Jack and sent him on his way. I had somewhere to start.

I headed east to try to find someone who could tell me more. I’d been in most of the public houses the length of the Strand and Fleet Street and was in the Black Friar at the north side of Blackfriars bridge before I got the first whiff of our man. It was Blackie Collins who put me on the right trail. Blackie is a pickpocket – one of the best. He can have your wallet away from an inside pocket as nice as ninepence and you’ll never be the wiser. He was working the taproom when he saw me, and came to join me in a corner when I bought two pints of porter. I saw him take a pocket watch and a purse on the way over – Blackie never stopped working and I made sure my own wallet was tucked well away before I let him close to me.

In the end it cost me eight pints – four each – but it was worth it, for I left Blackie with my wallet still in my pocket and a name.

“James Mackie, from Edinburgh,” I said to Mr Holmes. It was early morning but he did not look like he’d had any more sleep than I had. He was still in his eveningwear from the night before, even as his landlady arrived with a spot of breakfast that I took to most eagerly.

“Is the name all you have?” Holmes said. He did not so much as look at the toast and eggs, but instead lit up a pipe.

“That, and the fact he lives somewhere around Russell Square these days,” I replied. “I can do some more asking around this evening after the show if you’d like.”

Holmes smiled. “I think I can get an answer rather sooner.”

He opened the window and whistled loudly. Within a minute there came the sound of many footsteps clattering up and down the stairs, accompanied by Mrs Hudson’s shouting.

Half a dozen street urchins burst into the room and gathered around Holmes while more continued to cause havoc out on the landing. At least the ones gathered in our sitting room seemed able to behave themselves, although that probably had something to do with Holmes’s supply of small denomination coinage.

“Now lads, you know what to do? Russell Square. James Mackie.” Holmes said. “First one to find him gets a florin.”

The boys departed in a rush of thudding feet, leaving only a smell that even the open windows didn’t quite dispel. Holmes seemed quite satisfied.

“I have deployed my scouts, Shinwell. Those lads know the streets far better than any of Lestrade’s men and at least as well as your own contacts,” he said. “If our man surfaces, then they will find him.”

And with that, Holmes seemed to have satisfied himself that as much as could be done was being done, and now he joined me at the breakfast table. The doctor arrived as I was on my second round of toast, and made a bit of a fuss checking my teeth and gums before he too joined us. I knew any camaraderie was only momentary, but for that short time I quite felt that I had indeed risen above my station – and for that, too, I have Mr Holmes to thank.

It could not last of course, and just as we were finishing breakfast I heard a pounding at the front door. Mrs Hudson showed a red-faced boy upstairs and into the sitting room, where Holmes had him stand by the fireplace for questioning.

“I done found ’im, Mr Holmes,” the lad said, even before Holmes could speak. He was out of breath, and smelled rather ripe – so much so that Mrs Hudson made a point of opening all the windows before she retired swiftly to the cleaner air in her domain below us.

If Holmes noticed the smell, he did not show it – the lad had his full attention. He took a florin from his waistcoat pocket and showed it to the boy, who made a grab for it, but was too slow to beat Holmes’s reflexes as the coin was made to vanish again.

“The story first,” Holmes said.

“After you described the geezer you was after, George and Ratty and the others went off to the houses on the south of Russell Square, but me and Tom, we decided that we’d have more luck trying where they weren’t, if you catch my drift? So we went round to the big hotel. Nearly got pinched by the doormen a coupla times too. We had to do a bit of duckin’ and divin’, I can tell you – Tom was fed to the back teeth. And right then, right when Tom was ready to jack it all in – that’s when I saw ’im – your cove, Mr Holmes. Just sitting there in the reading room – white hair and a big scar down his cheek, just like you said.”

Holmes sighed and waved the florin in front of the lad’s nose again.

“Try to keep this as brief as possible, there’s a good boy. And where might this have been, Stevenson?”

“I done told you already, sir – the big old place on the square with the columns and statues and such like.”

“The Hotel Russell?”

“That’s the one. He were just sitting there reading. I left Tom watching ’im, and ran right back here.”

Holmes passed the lad the florin.

“Mind to share it with Tom – if you do not, I shall hear of it.”

“Will do, sir. I’ll head back there now – just to make sure your man’s still there.”

The boy left at as fast a run as he had arrived.

Holmes immediately made for his coat and walking stick. Watson rose to join him, but I was unsure whether I was invited. Holmes soon put me to rights.

“Do join us, Shinwell. He disrupted you at your place of work last night – perhaps you should return the favour today.”

Two minutes later the three of us were in a hansom on our way to Russell Square.

I know the Russell well from the old days. Toffs leave all kinds of things in hotel rooms that they would not leave lying around in their homes – don’t ask me why, that is just the way it is – and it is easy pickings for chaps like me, or it was, back then. Rory Calquoun on the desk raised an eyebrow when he saw me with Holmes and Watson – back in the day he would have taken a couple of shillings off me and looked the other way for an hour. Today he made half a crown vanish into his waistcoat pocket when Holmes passed it over the counter and asked where Mackie could be found.

“Top floor,” he said. “Room 414 – he went up just five minutes ago.”

Holmes thanked Calquoun and took the stairs two at a time. I was quite out of puff by the time we reached the top, having carried twice the weight of the other two all the way up, so I was a few yards behind Holmes when he rapped on the door. A thin, blond chap opened it, and I recognised him immediately even before I got close enough to see the scar – he had been the one sitting next to the duke in the box last night – and he did not seem in the least bit surprised to see Holmes.

“After last night’s performance I have been expecting you, gentlemen. Come in and let us have a drink like civilised chaps.”

“There is little that is civilised about your behaviour, sir,” Holmes said as he followed him into the suite. The man, Mackie, merely smiled and waved a hand around, as if showing off the opulence and splendour that his endeavours had brought him. As I looked around I realised I had been in these rooms before too – a Russian gentleman had them then, and I had relieved him of thirty pieces of gold coin. I also knew that my knowledge gave me an advantage here that Holmes did not have. I made a bit more of my condition than I needed to, making a great show of being breathless and in dire need of water. Mackie was taking little note of me anyway, having his full attention on Holmes.