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

“I won’t bore you with how I came to trace my two gentlemen, or how I bided my time, because I know you are eager to learn about last night.” The strange dark grin came again. “They had got wind of me, knew I was close behind them, and so were about to leave London, but they missed their train. Stangerson beached up at Halliday’s Private Hotel, near Euston, while Drebber was entertaining himself. I managed to pick him up as my fare. He was drunk. He had a craze for drink — and women. In the end, they were his downfall. I took him to the empty house in Lauriston Gardens. I’d managed to get a key for the place after one of my clients dropped it in my cab.”

“How did you poison him?” I asked.

Hope shook his head. “Don’t imagine I killed him in cold blood. That would be a bleak kind of justice indeed. Oh, no, I had long determined that he should have a chance in the matter, limited though it might be. Among the many billets that I have filled in America during my wandering life, I was once a janitor and sweeper-out of a laboratory at York College. One day the professor was lecturing on poisons, and he showed his students an alkaloid, as he called it, which he had extracted from a certain South American arrow poison. According to him, it was so powerful that a mere grain of the stuff meant death. I spotted the bottle in which this preparation was kept, and when they were all gone, I helped myself to a little of it. I was a fairly good dispenser, so I worked this alkaloid into little soluble pills. Each of the deadly pills I placed in a small box. I also had an identical box containing similar pills made without the poison. I determined that at the time when I had my chance my gentlemen should each have a draw out of one of the boxes, while I took a pull from the other. As I did not know which box contained the poisoned pills, our fates were in the lap of the gods. From that day I always had my pill-boxes with me, and last night the time had finally arrived when I could use them.

“If either of you two gentlemen has longed and pined for something to come about, so much so that your insides ache with the need of it, you will have some idea of how I felt when I took Enoch Drebber into that empty house. Twenty years I had waited, and now...” Hope leaned forward in the chair, his eyes glazing over as he slipped back in time to that fateful evening. “I lit a candle to give us light, but my hands were trembling and my temples throbbing with excitement. In that terrible gloom I sensed the presence of my sweet Lucy and her father. They were with me there, with me at the end. I held the candle close to my face. ‘Now, Enoch Drebber,’ I said. ‘Who am I?’

“He gazed at me for a moment with bleared drunken eyes, and then I saw horror spring up in them, convulsing his whole face. He knew me all right. I was the dreaded demon from his past. He staggered back with livid features, and I saw perspiration break out on his brow. I could not help but laugh, and I did, loud and long. He must have thought he was trapped with a madman.

“‘What do you want with me?’ he asked, in a pathethic, child-like voice.

“‘You dog!’ I cried. ‘I have hunted you from Salt Lake City to St Petersburg, and you have always escaped me. Now, at last, your wanderings have come to an end, for either you or I shall never see tomorrow’s sun rise.’ He shrunk further back as I spoke, and I could see on his face that he thought I was in some sort of mad fit. I reckon that I was for a time. The pulses in my temples pounded like sledgehammers, and I believe I would have had a fit of some kind if the blood had not gushed from my nose and relieved me.

“‘I come to take revenge on my dear Lucy. Lucy Ferrier, the woman you killed,’ I cried, locking the door and shaking the key in his face. “Punishment has been slow in coming, but it has overtaken you at last.’ I saw his coward’s lip tremble as I spoke. He would have begged for his life, but he knew well that it was useless.

“‘Would you murder me?’ he whimpered.

“‘There is no murder,’ I replied. ‘Who talks of murdering a diseased dog? What mercy had you upon my poor darling, when you dragged her from her slaughtered father and bore her away to your accursed and shameless harem?’

“‘It was not I who killed her father. It was Stangerson. He’s the one you want,’ he cried.

“‘But it was you who broke her innocent heart,’ I roared, thrusting the box of pills before him. ‘Let the high God judge between us. Choose and eat. There is death in one and life in the other. I shall take what you leave. Let us see if there is justice upon earth, or if we are indeed ruled by cruel chance.’

“He cowered away with wild cries and prayers for mercy, but I drew my knife and held it to his throat until he obeyed me. With trembling fingers he took one of the pills and swallowed it. I took the other and then we waited, facing each other in the dim light, to discover which one of us was to live and which one was to die. I shall never forget the look that came over his face when the first warning pangs told him that the poison was in his system. I smiled when I saw it. No, gentlemen, I grinned ; grinned from ear to ear, and my heart sang. I held Lucy’s wedding-ring before his eyes. But the action of the alkaloid is rapid. A spasm of pain contorted his features; he threw his hands out in front of him, staggered, his body rippling with fear, and then, with a hoarse cry, he fell heavily on the floor. I turned him over with my foot and placed my hand upon his heart. There was no movement. He was dead!

“The blood had been streaming down my nose, but I had taken no notice of it. I don’t know what put it into my head to write upon the wall with it. Perhaps it was some mischievous idea of setting the police upon the wrong track, for I felt light-hearted and cheerful. And I needed to buy myself sufficient time to deal with Stangerson. I remembered a German being found dead in a hotel bedroom in New York, with the word RACHE scrawled on the wall. The police reckoned it was the work of some secret society, and the murderer was never caught. I reckoned what puzzled the New York cops would puzzle the London crew as well, so I dipped my finger in my own blood and scratched out the word. Then I left. It was still a wild night, but I didn’t mind the wind and the rain; I was content. That was until I had driven some distance and I put my hand in my pocket and discovered that Lucy’s ring was missing.

“I was thunderstruck. You must realise that the ring was the only memento that I had of her. Thinking that I had dropped it when I stooped over Drebber’s body, I drove back and, leaving my cab in a side street, I went boldly up towards the house — for I was ready to dare anything rather than lose that ring. As Fate would have it, when I arrived there, I walked right into the arms of a police officer who was coming out, and only managed to disarm his suspicions by pretending to be hopelessly drunk.”

“And then you saw the advertisement in this evening’s paper,” said Holmes.

Hope nodded. “As I said, I was ready to dare anything to retrieve that ring, but I have to admit I never suspected a trap. The whole thing seemed innocent.”

“As I intended it to be.”

Suddenly Hope frowned as though some unpleasant thought had flashed across his mind. “I hope it is not in your mind to detain me now, gentlemen. Not when half my task has yet to be completed.”

“At Halliday’s Hotel?”

Hope nodded. “Not murder, you see. Merely justice — but I have to carry it out myself.”

“I am afraid I cannot allow that to happen,” said Holmes softly. “However much I may sympathise with your—”

That was as far as Holmes got before Hope leapt from his chair, his face ablaze with frustrated anger, and snatched the large metal poker from the hearth. With a snarl, he brought it down on Holmes’ wrist in an attempt at disarming him. Holmes gave a yelp of pain, but retained his grip on the revolver.