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

‘So I judged.’

‘Nevertheless, Watson, it bears upon the case.’

‘You think so?’

‘I know so. You remarked the contents of his pockets? “Very little was found in the dead man’s pockets by which his identity might be established, although he does not appear to have been robbed: three bank notes in a clip and a small amount of loose change, six whiffs in a pigskin case, a box of wax vestas and a bottle of ink being the sum total; in addition, the cork from a wine-bottle was discovered in the lining of his jacket.” Now, why should a man carry a bottle of ink, who does not also carry a pen of any sort?’

‘The purple hand!’

‘Precisely! Listen: “All labels and marks appear to have been removed from his clothing, as if to prevent any discovery of his antecedents, but inside one pocket of his waistcoat was found a small tag bearing a single word – believed to be the maker’s name – in the Cyrillic script in use in parts of Eastern Europe. The possibility that the murdered man was from those parts is given some support by the evidence of the knife that killed him. This is a narrow fixed-blade type, with an elaborately carved bone handle, which is stamped on the blade with the word ‘Belgrade’.”’

‘What does it mean, Holmes?’

‘It means that events have moved faster than I expected. If we are to prevent another death we must act at once. Will you come with me?’

‘Most certainly. We are going to Crutched Friars?’

‘No; to Low Meadow.’

He donned his outer clothes as quickly as he had thrown them off, and in a minute we were in a hansom and driving furiously through the traffic to Waterloo station.

‘No doubt you have by now formed an opinion upon the matter,’ said Holmes as our railway carriage rattled along the viaduct and through Vauxhall station.

I shook my head. ‘I should be very much interested to hear your own conclusions,’ I replied.

‘You will recall,’ said he, after a moment, ‘that my client felt confident of only two facts about his nocturnal visitor: that he had a deformed hand and that he was unusually small in his overall figure. But in both these opinions he was mistaken. The hand, as we saw, is in reality quite unexceptional; and it seemed likely, once we had heard that the hand-print was made approximately five feet from the ground, that his figure was unexceptional, too.’

‘Why so?’

‘Because it would be the natural tendency of anyone making such a print to do it at shoulder height – try it for yourself some time and you will see – and anyone who is five feet to the shoulders is obviously of a fairly normal build. So the intruder ceases to be inhuman and freakish, and becomes instead a perfectly ordinary specimen of humanity.’

‘I can see that that would make the matter yet more baffling and difficult of discovery,’ I remarked.

‘On the contrary, it admits a tiny ray of light into the mystery for the first time.’

‘I do not follow you.’

‘Consider: if the intruder is not equipped by nature with six digits upon his right hand, then the fact that he prints it in that bizarre fashion is evidently a matter of deliberate choice upon his part. Clearly the print has some very definite significance for him and he must expect that it will have the same significance for others, otherwise there would be little point to the exercise. Thus the print as an unfathomable, purely personal thing quite disappears and in its place we see an item of public communication, which is far more amenable to investigation.’

‘And yet I am not convinced,’ said I. ‘For what possible significance could be possessed by such a grotesque daub?’

‘You have not heard anyone speak of the Seven-Fingered Hand?’ said Holmes in a quiet voice.

‘Never!’

‘I must admit that that does not surprise me; there is really no reason why you should; for its activities receive little enough publicity in this country. Indeed, until today my own knowledge of it was exceedingly sketchy and yet it almost comes within my field of speciality. It is a secret society, Watson – that most vile excrescence of civilisation. It sits like a vile beast upon the Balkans, its evil tentacles stretched out to every remote corner, so that there is scarcely a town or village there where it cannot command the allegiance of at least one person; and that allegiance is rarely commanded but for terrorism and murder.’

‘It sounds monstrous, Holmes! Whatever is the purpose of such an organisation?’

‘Ah! The answer to that question illustrates rather nicely the divergence between theory and practice in human endeavours; for the surprising thing is that the society of which I speak was originally formed of principled, high-minded men, who would never have chosen to meet in secret conclave had they not felt driven to it. Their purposes originally were quite altruistic, their only aim being to petition the authorities on behalf of those of their fellow countrymen whose lot they considered a woeful one. But the society was soon taken over – some would say inevitably so – by those whose very delight it is to be secret, to pass unseen in the night-time with the knife beneath the cloak, to feel a sense of power in the anonymous assassination of the innocent. Soon all pretence of altruism was as good as abandoned and the sole raison d’être of the society became its own continued existence, an existence which is sustained and nourished on the terror of the very people in whose name it was originally founded.

‘The society’s somewhat fanciful name derives partly from the fact that it was constituted originally of groups from seven different provinces, and also from an initiation ceremony in which the new recruit is obliged to make a hand-print upon a document of allegiance to the society. This hand-print, embellished with the addition of two extra fingers, eventually became the symbol of the society. It is used to strike terror into the hearts of its enemies – and this it will surely do, for the society has the deserved reputation of being both implacable and ruthless. I tell you, Watson, a man had rather be in a cage of ravenous tigers than have these gentlemen upon his trail.

‘So much I managed to glean this morning, from long hours among the files of old newspapers – steep, steep work, Watson! I also learnt a further fact there, which brings the history of this unholy gang up to date: the Eastern Roumelian section, having evidently transgressed some rule or other, was last year expelled from the society, amid considerable blood-letting. One finger was accordingly removed from the society’s symbol, leaving just six – as in the letter my unfortunate client received yesterday morning at his breakfast table.’

‘But why?’ I cried. ‘What possible business can this abominable society have in England? And why do they seek to terrorise Mark Pringle?’

Holmes did not reply at once, but leaned back in his seat and surveyed the tranquil countryside through which our train was now speeding. On either side of the track, a broad expanse of heath-land stretched far away, all dotted over with bright patches of poppies and buttercups. It seemed to me incredible that upon such a day, and in such a spot, these desperate men from across the seas could be pursuing their evil ends.

‘Mark Pringle is not their primary quarry,’ said my companion at length. ‘You will recall that our first surmise upon seeing the envelope with the misspelt name was that Pringle was not personally known to the sender. This suggests as a possibility that it was only because he had been seen in the garden on Sunday night that they had gone to the trouble of learning his name – no doubt from a neighbour – in order to send him a specific warning that he should not interfere in their business. The fact that they were evidently not previously aware of his identity further suggests, of course, that the first two hand-prints were not in fact made for his benefit at all.’