Denis Smith - The Mammoth Book of the New Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes

‘Really? That is excellent news!’ cried the newcomer, as he took off his hat and tipped a rivulet of water from the brim. ‘I’ve just come from my club and I’ve been doing my best to drum up a bit of interest there, telling all the fellows that if they don’t get along to The Lavender Girl they’ll miss the best thing in London.’

Hardy chuckled. ‘That is good of you, Captain Trent, but I am not expecting a very large proportion of our audience to come from the clubs of Pall Mall!’

‘Perhaps not, but every little helps, y’know, Hardy. Is my wife anywhere about?’

‘No. She has not yet arrived. No doubt she will be here shortly.’

‘In that case I shall find myself a cup of tea. Is there a pot on the go anywhere?’

‘Mrs Abbott was boiling the kettle, the last time I saw her,’ returned Hardy. ‘If you look into the kitchen, I think you will find a fresh pot there.’

‘Excellent!’ cried Trent with feeling. ‘Perhaps I will find Count Laszlo there, too!’

‘No, he is not here yet. You will have the teapot to yourself!’

‘Really? I thought I saw his carriage outside. Well, I’ll see you in a minute, Hardy!’

The theatre manager turned in our direction as the other man disappeared through a doorway on the other side of the lobby. ‘Please excuse me for neglecting you, gentlemen,’ said he, as he entered the room. ‘There are always people coming and going in a place like this, I’m afraid, and every one of them invariably wants to speak to me. Ah! Good! I see you have found the keys!’

‘Indeed,’ said Holmes, ‘and we are now going to take another look in the basement.’

‘Very well. You will find me here, should you want me for any reason. And don’t forget,’ he added, putting his finger to his lips: ‘not a word to anyone!’

We descended to the basement corridor once more, and made our way along towards the other end. Holmes lit a lantern he had with him, and at the place where the corridor turned sharp right, he paused, and peered closely at the wall.

‘This is where you held your hands out in front of you until you felt the wall, I take it,’ said he, producing his lens from his pocket and squinting through it at a faint mark. ‘It is more than likely that our mystery man did the same, as he was fleeing ahead of you in the dark. Yes! See, Watson! Here are the two smudges you made on this dusty wall, and here is another, a little to the side. Hum! Let us proceed, then!’

We followed the corridor round the first corner and the second, and past the closed door of Webster’s dressing-room. A little further along, at the first of the two entrances to the costume-rooms, Holmes stopped and held up his hand. Within the dark chamber, a faint light was moving silently behind the rows of clothes. As we watched, a slim young woman emerged all at once from behind a row of dresses, a lantern in her hand. She stopped abruptly when she saw us and cried out, an expression of apprehension on her features.

‘Who are you?’ she asked, breathing heavily. ‘You made me jump!’

‘Miss Summers?’ enquired Holmes, at which the girl nodded her head. ‘I’m sorry if we startled you. We are friends of Mr Hardy’s. He said we might have a look round. It is fascinating to see all these different costumes, I must say.’

‘It might be fascinating, if you could find one to fit you,’ she returned in an ill-natured tone, as she pushed past us and made her way down the corridor. Holmes waited until her footsteps had quite faded away, then turned his lantern up and led the way into the costume store. We had gone scarcely three paces, however, when he stopped again. He handed the lantern to me, stooped down and picked up a scrap of black cloth, about a foot square, which lay at his feet. As he held it up, I saw with a thrill that it had had two small eye-holes cut into it, and short pieces of tape tied through holes at either side.

‘It is a mask!’ I cried.

‘It must be the mask of your assailant,’ said Holmes. ‘It confirms that this was the way he came. It is probable that in his headlong flight in the dark, the mask slipped and he could not see where he was going. He would therefore have pulled it off as he ran in here. No doubt it was knocked from his grasp as he pushed his way between these rows of costumes and, in the dark, he could not see where it had gone. Before we proceed any further, let us see if Hardy’s seamstresses can shed any light upon it.’

In the sewing-room, Holmes spread out our prize upon the cutting-table.

‘Have you ever seen this mask before?’ he asked.

The women gathered round to look, but they all shook their heads.

‘I should like to know who was behind that mask,’ said the small, dark-haired girl, Katharine, dabbing at the eye-holes with her needle.

‘It’s a very wide mask,’ observed Kathleen. ‘Even with a head as big as Jeanie’s, which is as big as you could want, you’d find it a bit on the large side.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Holmes with a chuckle; ‘but the spacing of the eye-holes is quite normal, as you see. Evidently, the mask has been made as wide as it has so that it will cover not merely the front of the face, but the sides, too.’

‘Well, you can see it’s nothing we’ve made, sir, anyway. It’s not been finished off properly. The edges are all fraying!’

‘Never mind “finished off”, Kathy,’ interjected the blonde-haired girl in a soft voice; ‘it’s not even been started properly. See how badly it’s been cut out! It’s all crooked and the eye-holes aren’t even level!’

‘It was made, then, I take it, by someone with little sewing skill,’ said Holmes.

‘None at all, sir, I should say.’

‘Do you recognise the material? It is some kind of velvet fabric, is it not?’

Kathleen stooped and looked under the table, where numerous rolls of cloth were stacked. After a moment, she pulled one out and unrolled it on the table-top.

‘It is this sort of thing,’ said she. ‘Yes, see!’ she cried, pointing to the uneven edge of the material. ‘Someone has cut the end off crookedly with a pair of scissors!’

‘I suppose it would have been a simple enough task for someone to come in here when you had all gone home and take a piece of this material?’ queried Holmes.

‘It would, sir. We might have noticed, if it was material we were using; but we haven’t used this black velvet for a little while now.’

Holmes thanked the needlewomen for their assistance, folded up the mask and put it in his pocket, and we returned to the costume store. ‘Still only five black robes here,’ he remarked, as we paused at the rail on which the monks’ robes were hanging. ‘The width of that roll of velvet, incidentally, was a yard, only about a third of which has been used to make the mask. Your assailant therefore retains his robe, and has ample material left to make a replacement mask. Somehow, I do not think we have yet seen the last of him!’

‘But where has he gone to?’

‘We may be able to shed some light on that question if we take another look at the disused cupboards at the back of the next room,’ returned my companion.

As he had done earlier, he subjected the floor in front of the middle cupboard to a close examination. When he rose to his feet again, there was a glint of excitement in his eye.

‘There are fresh marks here,’ said he, ‘marks which were certainly not here earlier. They were therefore made in the past hour and indubitably by your assailant. Now,’ he continued, taking out the large rusty-looking bunch of keys from his pocket, ‘let us try these, and hope for success!’

I held the lamp up by the door, as, for several minutes, my companion tried each of his keys in turn in the keyhole of the middle door.