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

‘It is possible, of course, that none of these keys will fit,’ said he as he paused for a moment. ‘The correct key may already have been removed. But, wait! Ah! There it is!’ There was a note of triumph in his voice, as one of the last remaining keys turned without difficulty in the lock. ‘Now to see what lies behind this old door!’

He took the lamp from my hand, and pulled at the door, which opened easily. There before us, rather than the shallow dusty cupboard I had expected to see, stretched a narrow corridor, which vanished into darkness. As my companion stepped forward with the lamp, however, and the darkness retreated before its light, I saw that at about a dozen feet from the door the corridor ended at a steep flight of stone steps which descended to a lower level. What might lie down these steps I could not imagine and I certainly could not see, for the foot of the stair was in utter blackness. In silence, and with every sense alert, I followed my companion down these steps to the bottom, which lay about fifteen feet below the level of the costume store. There, a passage went off to the left. This ran dead straight for nearly thirty feet and ended at the foot of another stone staircase, an exact duplicate of the one we had descended. Slowly, we mounted these steps, until, at the top, we found ourselves before an old and crumbling wooden door. For a moment, we stood and listened, but all about us was utter silence; then Holmes pushed open the door and we entered a bare chamber, festooned with dusty cobwebs. Directly opposite, another door stood ajar and, passing through it, we found ourselves in a long, narrow corridor, which stretched away into darkness in either direction.

‘We are now in the basement of the Southwark Palace,’ said my companion in a low voice. ‘The tunnel we have followed evidently passes deep beneath the narrow street which lies between the two theatres. It must have been constructed in Solomon Tanner’s day, to enable him to get quickly from the one theatre to the other, without having to go out into the street. Did you find any mention of it in that collection of historical cuttings you were reading?’

‘Not specifically. There were several references to the fact that Tanner was often on the stage of the Palace at the close of the programme there and on the stage of the Albion less than five minutes later, but no specific mention of the existence of a tunnel between the two theatres. But I had not finished reading through the scrapbook when I was interrupted. Perhaps it is mentioned on a page I have not yet read.’

‘Perhaps. But I observed that a leaf near the beginning of the scrapbook had been torn out. It is therefore possible that the tunnel was mentioned on that page, and that it was deliberately removed by our mystery villain to prevent anyone else learning the secret. He himself has evidently discovered it somehow, anyway. I think it is clear that he has used this tunnel to come and go whenever he wished, without being seen. You have done some fishing in your time, I believe, Watson?’

‘Fishing?’ I repeated, surprised at the question. ‘Certainly. When I was stationed with the Medical Department in Hampshire, some of my companions were keen anglers and we made many expeditions to the rivers there.’

‘And sometimes, perhaps, as you waded out into what appeared a shallow, rocky stream, you would find that the bottom was not as even as you had supposed and that the water was running over the top of your boots?’

‘What fisherman has not had that experience!’ I replied. ‘But why do you ask?’

‘Because that is the sensation I have with this case, Watson. I was asked to investigate a series of spiteful, but largely trivial, incidents. But as we have stepped into these muddy waters, they have revealed themselves to be considerably deeper than was at first apparent. Come! Let us return now to the Albion and see if we can determine what this villain was up to on his last visit there. Careful where you step! We must not leave any indication that we have been here, to warn him that we are on his trail!’

We retraced our steps, taking care to leave everything as we had found it, until we were once more in the basement corridor of the Albion, just outside the costume store.

‘You say that when you first saw the dark figure, he was twenty-odd feet this side of the room in which you were sitting?’ asked Holmes.

‘That’s right; making his way along in this direction, away from the room I was in.’

‘Could he have passed your door without your hearing?’

‘I doubt it. It was very quiet at the time and the door was not tightly closed.’

‘So, he was walking away from where you were, but had not passed your door. He must therefore have come from some point this side of Miss Ballantyne’s room.’

‘That must be so. Perhaps he had been in one of the other rooms. I had heard a door close, just before I looked out and saw him. It was that which first attracted my attention.’

We made our way along to Isabel Ballantyne’s dressing-room, then turned and surveyed the corridor from that standpoint, as I had done when I had first caught sight of the masked figure.

‘The place from which he had come must have been quite close to here,’ remarked Holmes. ‘But if he had been in the next dressing-room, that of Ludovic Xavier, I think you would have heard him in there. Perhaps the door he closed was one of the pair on the other side of the corridor, which, as Mr Hardy informed us, give access to the understage area.’

These doors were a dozen feet or so along the corridor from Miss Ballantyne’s room. Holmes opened one of them, then softly closed it again and looked at me enquiringly.

‘That certainly could have been what I heard,’ I remarked.

‘Then let us take a look inside!’

Behind the doors, a short flight of stone steps led downwards, for the floor of this chamber was at a lower level than the corridor. We descended the steps, lit a gas-jet on the wall, and looked about us. It was a very large chamber, which evidently extended the whole width of the stage above. The ceiling was much higher than those of the other rooms in the basement, and was composed of thick planks and sturdy crossbeams, which were supported upon stout wooden pillars, as broad as tree-trunks. Stacked about the flagstones of the floor, in between these pillars, were a great number of boxes, crates and wicker hampers.

‘We are now immediately beneath the stage,’ remarked my friend and, as if to confirm his words, the orchestra at that moment struck up a lively tune and dancing footsteps began tripping across the boards above us. ‘There is only one person dancing and it is evidently a woman,’ observed Holmes, ‘so it is probably Miss Ballantyne. The intention this afternoon, as I understand it, is to begin the rehearsals with the closing scene of the first act, during which Miss Ballantyne is alone on the stage.’ As he spoke, there came a pause in the tap-tap of the feet and we heard Miss Ballantyne’s voice, slightly muffled, but still distinct enough for us to make out the words of her song:

As she sang, Holmes walked quietly about, his keen eyes darting hither and thither, as he sought for some indication as to why the mystery figure might have been in this room. Presently, he stopped and examined some dust on the floor. Then, after a moment, he turned his gaze to the ceiling. It was dark, especially in the shadows of the crossbeams, but it appeared that directly above his head was a trap-door.

‘This is presumably how the genie is produced on stage, in Aladdin and similar exotic productions,’ said he to me in a low voice, as I joined him beneath the trap-door. ‘That equipment,’ he continued, indicating a disordered heap of pulleys and poles and ropes, some of which were attached to a wooden platform, ‘must be how the actor playing the genie is raised to the level of the stage, above. The actor stands on that platform, the pulleys are attached to those large hooks in the ceiling above us and the stage-hands pull him up, the ascent of the platform perhaps being guided by some structure made out of those poles. For that purpose, of course, the equipment would be positioned immediately beneath the trap-door, but at the moment it is dismantled and pushed to one side. Does anything strike you about the trap-door itself, Watson?’