David Davies - The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - The Veiled Detective

Holmes had begun speaking in a hushed staccato fashion and his face was slightly flushed. His cool reserve was evaporating as the excitement and potential danger we were about to face began to take hold. Nervously, he snatched a book up from the mantelpiece. ‘This is a queer old tome I picked up at a stall yesterday — De Jure inter Gentes — published in Latin at Liege in the Lowlands in 1642. Charles’s head was still firm on his shoulders when this little brown-backed volume was struck off.”

I nodded politely. I knew he was attempting to divert his mind with idle intellectual conversation, but the tone of his voice clearly indicated that he was failing.

“On the flyleaf, in very faded ink, is written ex libris Gulielmi Whyte . See?”

He held the book out for me to see, and his hand was shaking.

“I wonder who William Whyte was,” he continued, returning the book to the mantelpiece. “Some pragmatical seventeenth-century lawyer, I suppose. His writing has a legal twist about it.”

He was interrupted by a sudden jangling of our doorbell downstairs.

“I’ve instructed Mrs Hudson to send all callers up,” he whispered, moving to the door.

“Does Doctor Watson live here?” asked a clear voice from below.

We heard Mrs Hudson’s injunction to the stranger to come up to our rooms, and then heard his heavy tread upon the stair. Shortly after, there was a knock at our door.

“Come in,” I called.

At my summons, our visitor entered. I had to steel myself from giving a cry of surprise, for here standing before us was the man whom Sherlock Holmes had described to us in detail that morning in Lauriston Gardens. Dressed in the shabby garb of a cab-driver, our visitor was over six feet tall, with a florid visage and wearing scuffed and muddy square-toed boots.

Holmes flashed me a look of triumph.

The stranger glanced between the two of us.

“Which one of you is Watson — the one who found the ring?”

I stepped forward. “I am Doctor Watson.”

The man stepped towards me and shook my hand warmly. “I can’t thank you enough, sir. That ring means the world to me.”

I was somewhat taken aback by his effusion, and momentarily felt lost for words, but Holmes intervened.

“My name is Holmes and I am acting in conjunction with my friend here. And you are...?”

“Hawkins... Edward Hawkins.”

“Really?” said Holmes. “Well, Mr Hawkins, you must realise that we cannot just hand the ring over to any Tom, Dick or Hawkins who comes along to claim that it is his. We must have some proof of ownership.”

Hawkins eyes narrowed. “Proof? And how may I provide that?”

Holmes smiled. “Come, come. We do not doubt you, Mr... Hawkins, but perhaps you could describe the circumstances concerning the loss and to whom the ring really belongs?”

“ Really belongs?”

“Well, it is a lady’s wedding-ring, after all... your wife’s?”

Hawkins nodded awkwardly. It was clear that he had not anticipated such an interrogation when retrieving the ring.

“Watson, be so good as to pour our visitor a sherry, and you, sir, take a seat by the fire while you tell us your tale.”

I did as I was bidden while Hawkins, with a shambling reluctance, sat where Holmes had indicated. Holmes passed the sherry to him, which he gulped down in one go.

“Now, sir, how did you come by your loss?”

“I don’t rightly know. I’d been drinking in the White Hart last night, and probably had too much for my own good, and I reckon as I was making my way home it must have fallen out of my pocket.”

“But why were you carrying your wife’s wedding-ring in the first place?” I asked, as Holmes manoeuvred his way behind our visitor’s chair.

Hawkins stared distractedly for a moment and then, heaving a sigh, he began to present his explanation.

“It is a keepsake, gentlemen. My wife is dead this many a year, and that ring is all I have to remind me of her.”

“Very good, very good!” crowed Holmes sarcastically. “Close to the truth — but I am afraid, not close enough.”

Hawkins began to rise from the chair, but Holmes came up behind him and clapped the pistol to the side of his head.

“Sit down, sir,” he said. “Now, let’s do away with all these fairy-stories, shall we? Watson, let me introduce you to Mr Jefferson Hope, the murderer of Enoch Drebber.”

Sixteen

FROM THE JOURNAL OF JOHN WALKER

“Who the devil are you?” Hope’s face was suffused with anger, but he remained seated, his hands grasping the edge of the chair until his knuckles shone white.

“My name is Sherlock Holmes. It will mean nothing to you.”

“Are you the police?”

“No. Iam an unofficial consulting detective. In this instance Iam working for the police, but above all Iam interested in justice.”

“Justice! Pah! There ain’t no justice in this world. If there was, I wouldn’t have had the need to come after Drebber and Stangerson.”

“You admit, then, that you murdered Enoch Drebber?” Iasked.

“I admit nothing. Fate saw to it that he died instead of me. That was a kind of justice, Isuppose.”

“Be so good as to tell us what happened last night,” said Holmes, moving around to face Hope, his gun still trained on him.

A strange smile lit upon our visitor’s face. There was no merriment in it, just a dark sardonic bitterness which unnerved me.

“It will be a pleasure,” he said. “I’ve kept so much pain bottled up inside me, gentlemen, it will do me good to spill some now. I’ve nothing to lose by it. I have been trailing Drebber and his associate, Stangerson, around this globe for many a year. They were rich, I was poor, so it was no easy matter for me to follow them. They always managed to keep one step ahead of me until they landed in London.”

“Why were you following them?” asked Holmes.

“I sought revenge, of course. It won’t matter much to you why I hated these men; it’s enough to say that they were guilty of the death of two fine human beings — a father and a daughter. She was the woman I loved and who loved me back. We were to be married, but they took her from me and forced her into a sham of a marriage; forced her to marry Drebber. Mormons! ”

He spat the single word out as though that alone would explain the cause of his pain and grievance. After a pause, he continued. “This broke poor Lucy’s heart, and she died. I took the marriage ring from her dead finger and I vowed that Drebber’s dying eyes should rest upon that very ring, and that his last thoughts should be of the crime for which he was being punished. I had no redress in the law, so I determined that I should be judge, jury and executioner, all rolled into one. If you have any drop of humanity in your souls, gentlemen, you would have done the same, if you’d been in my place.”

Holmes, his face an impenetrable mask, remained silent. I wondered if my companion sympathised with the plight of this wretch, as I did. My heart went out to him.

“When I got to London, my funds were almost exhausted and I had to take on work to survive. Driving and riding are as natural to me as walking so I applied at a cab-owner’s office, and got some employment. I was to bring a certain sum to the owner each week, and whatever was over I might keep for myself. There was seldom any excess, but I managed to scrape along somehow. The hardest job was to learn my way about, for I reckon of all the mazes that ever were contrived, this city is the most confusing. But I stuck at it with the help of a map, and I reckon I got on pretty well.