He must have seen me come in. I cleared my throat.
Nothing.
‘Holmes.’
‘Yes?’
‘Why the fire?’
‘Is that the first question you have, Watson?’
‘Yes. Why the fire?’
‘I was cold.’
‘In this weather! Are you eating?’
‘Burning papers.’
A plate of sandwiches sat untouched next to his chair. His movements under the straitjacket now involved his legs, hanging in the air, jerking from side to side.
‘Who helped you into that?’ I asked.
‘Billy.’
The page. A predicament of Holmes’s own devising, then. A minute passed. It did not look like he was making headway. A bead of sweat ran down his forehead and into his eye. He shook it away. Smiled at me.
‘You won in Bath, then. A tidy sum,’ he said.
‘What? Oh, for heaven’s sake, Holmes.’
‘Tie pin. A handsome one from here. But it is not like you to purchase adornments.’
‘Stop this. No one likes to be scrutinized in this way.’
‘You are usually amused.’
‘Never mind! What the devil are you doing there?’
‘I am attempting to replicate The Great Borelli’s hanging escape trick. I have almost got it, I think.’
‘The Great Borelli?’
‘Travelling escape artist and magician. A wonder, at least in his own mind.’
Why Holmes felt the need to emulate some itinerant performer was a mystery. He flailed about a bit, and I could see that one arm had escaped its sleeve and was snaking underneath the canvas of the straitjacket. But the other remained pinioned.
A chair which had been placed underneath him had tipped over, and his legs now dangled limply in the air. I stood up, walked over and replaced it under his feet.
‘Don’t help me!’ he shouted. ‘I kicked it over for a reason.’
‘What reason?’
He did not answer but struggled a bit more. His pale face grew red with the exertion. Had this been staged for my benefit? Holmes did so enjoy an audience. But, of course, he had not known my return date from Bath, so … no. I moved the chair back away from him, then took a stack of papers piled on my usual armchair and dumped them on the floor. I espied today’s Times and freed it from the clutter.
On the way to my chair I noticed on his chemistry table a black cylinder, perhaps eighteen inches long and six inches in circumference, mounted on a brass and wood device. Connected by cables were two small poles with a strangely shaped glass tube suspended between them. It had a somewhat malevolent look to it.
‘What the devil is this thing?’ I asked.
‘A Ruhmkorff coil,’ said he. ‘It’s a kind of induction coil. I can make tiny bursts of lightning at my desk. No, no, don’t touch! And a Geissler tube.’
I was sorry I had asked. It reminded me of the various quack devices I was constantly solicited to buy for my non-existent medical practice. It looked dangerous.
I sat and opened up the newspaper. After a few moments I glanced surreptitiously at Holmes, whose eyes were now closed in concentration. His struggles were painful to watch. I looked about the room and debated tidying it but decided the task was beyond my reach.
As I flipped through the pages, a review of ‘The Great Borelli’s First London Appearance’ caught my eye. The magician was appearing at Wilton’s Music Hall. A lurid picture had the handsome, moustachioed Italian performer hanging from a similar contraption, but with many straps and padlocks all around, and a beautiful lady standing in attendance.
I heard a groan from across the room but ignored it.
‘This Borelli fellow has received an excellent review in The Times today. “Spectacular! Supernatural? How does he do it?”’ I read aloud. I tapped the advertisement. ‘Of course, Holmes, he is hanging upside down.’
‘That is the next phase.’
‘And there is a beautiful assistant standing by. I wonder what her role is?’
‘That is not his assistant. It is his wife,’ said Holmes, slightly out of breath. ‘And she designed the trick.’
‘Lucky man,’ I said.
A pause.
‘This is bit more difficult than I had imagined,’ he murmured.
‘Try harder,’ I said and returned to my paper. Utterly mad. If I had not been there, the room might have caught on fire and all my things would have burnt up. And oh, yes, Holmes would be dead. I wondered if I could entice Mrs Hudson to bring me a lemonade.
‘Watson, be a good fellow. Go over to the table and read me what’s in those pages spread open. Step three, if you would.’
‘I already was a good fellow and righted the chair. You didn’t like it.’
‘Watson!’
I complied none too graciously. On the table were three pages, spread open, typed with a faulty typewriter in uneven lettering, in Italian, with some diagrams and an English translation pencilled in. ‘Step three,’ I read aloud. ‘The left hand unlocks the lock which controls the sleeve of the right. Take pick and release, then with other arm which out the shoulder – shoulder is spelled wrong – with three fingers, find the fold where are hidden the ties—’
There was a faint metallic clatter. I looked over to see that Holmes had dropped something small onto the polished wood floor.
‘I dropped my lockpick. Hand me that, would you?’ said he.
‘What would you do if I were not here?’
‘But you are here. Hurry, now!’
‘No.’
I was being obstreperous, but a man can take only so much. Instead of retrieving his lockpick, I pocketed it, then picked up the chair and placed it under him again. He could give up this foolish nonsense and step down from there as a sane person might. I sat back in my old easy-chair and once again took up the newspaper. Silence.
He kicked the chair away and struggled on. A few minutes later, his face had grown redder and the struggling more pronounced.
‘You had no idea I would be returning,’ I said. ‘What was your plan, anyway, Holmes? It is clear that Mrs Hudson has given up on this room, the mess you’ve made! And that fire!’
No acknowledgement. I went back to my paper.
I heard the sounds of more struggling, a groan, some clicks, and I put down the paper just in time to see him slip free of the jacket and drop to the floor, landing almost soundlessly like a cat.
I will admit I was astonished. ‘Bravo, Holmes!’ I said.
He smiled in delight, then bowed with a flourish and a groan. He rubbed his shoulder. At thirty-four, Holmes was wiry and fit, far too thin by some accounts, but remarkably athletic in spite of never, to my knowledge, taking exercise for its own sake.
‘All right, how did you do that after dropping your lockpick?’ I asked.
‘The locks are the least of it. Preparation is all.’
He was paper-white, and his face was covered with a thin sheen of sweat.
‘What do you mean, “The locks are the least of it”?’ He was standing oddly, favouring one side. ‘And what is the matter with you?’
‘Well, some of the locks are left in place. One has to more or less dislocate one’s shoulder to escape that particular straitjacket. Borelli spent two years stretching his ligaments to accommodate it. I had only ten days.’
‘Oh, come Holmes! You haven’t dislocated your shoulder. You would be writhing in pain. And you would need me to yank it back in place for you.’
I glanced up at him. His dark hair, usually neatly groomed, was a mess and damply stuck to his skull. He inhaled shakily, then moved to a large bookcase and slammed himself against it. There was the sound of a loud pop.
‘Good God, Holmes!’
He carefully flexed his left arm. Back to normal. He smiled at me in amusement. ‘It worked, didn’t it?’
I threw the paper down. ‘What are you thinking, Holmes? You risk serious damage, dislocating a shoulder like that! How did you do it? And more to the point, how did you stand it?’
‘A touch of morphine, going in. Borelli uses it, I will wager, but he claims not. It does fog the thinking. I shall try to do without. And I’ve learned to pop it back myself.’
‘You have learned? How many times have you done this?’
‘This is the third.’
‘Idiotic, man! Of all your bad habits, this takes the prize. What of your violin playing? Boxing? You could do yourself permanent harm! Those ligaments don’t always return to their original length.’
‘Light me a cigarette, would you, Watson?’ Still rubbing his shoulder, he stepped out onto the landing outside the room. ‘Mrs Hudson! Some ice if you please!’
He came back in and sat before me.
‘There is no ice, Mr Holmes,’ came Mrs Hudson’s voice. I detected a note of irritation in it.
‘Send Billy,’ he shouted. Then as an afterthought, ‘Please!’
No reply. Manners had eroded in this terrible heat, I thought. Londoners were unaccustomed to tropical life. And Mrs Hudson’s new ice box, purchased for us all by Holmes, was often empty. Ice was very expensive, and income, of late, had been scarce. I felt a twinge of guilt about my recent holiday.
‘We really must clean this place up, Watson. Get back in her good graces.’
He picked up a cigarette and lit it with difficulty. I shook my head.
‘Foolish, Holmes. You forget that I am a doctor. I know more of injuries than you do.’
‘I am careful, Watson. One can train one’s muscles, extend the ligaments over time with repetition. How else might one dance the ballet?’ He waved his good arm in a dramatic arc.
‘Over time, perhaps some so built can do so. But with repetition, you can also have your arm hanging uselessly out of the socket, Holmes.’
‘Watson, you win the ill temperament sweepstakes today. And this, after a successful trip in which you won money, swam, ate well—’
‘Stop! I am not interested in hearing this!’
‘You have gained two – no, three pounds. And I see you have begun a diet, starting today. Failing, however.’
‘Holmes!’ He could not possibly know this. It had only been a thought that very morning.
He grinned at me. ‘You have celery in your waistcoat pocket. You hate celery. One cannot buy celery on the train, therefore you have brought it with you all the way from Bath. I wager you planned to eat the celery on the train instead of—’
‘Stop!’
‘But a sandwich must have won you over. Salmon, no doubt. Day One of your reducing plans, and already you have failed!’
I shook the newspaper roughly and returned to my article in a fury. I glanced down surreptitiously at my waistcoat. Indeed, a piece of celery poked out. He was right about it all. In a fit of pique, I tossed the celery to the floor.
It landed next to a plate of uneaten food, a collection of seashells, a revolver, a dog’s collar, and what might have been a piece of flesh-coloured rubber and was perhaps a false nose. Home.
I looked up at him. ‘The salmon, Holmes?’
‘I will admit that was a guess. But it is your favourite.’
‘You never guess!’
‘But of course I do. Watson, let us call a truce. No luck, then, with your secret box in Bath? You would be crowing over that, if so.’
I glowered at him. ‘Two locksmiths failed to open it.’
The sound of the doorbell interrupted us, and Mrs Hudson appeared, announcing ‘a lady who would not give her name but insists that you have some papers of hers.’ She glanced about with disdain. ‘If you can find them.’
Holmes glanced about, as if having forgotten the chaos with which he’d surrounded himself. ‘Give us a moment, please, Mrs Hudson. Watson, why don’t we quickly tidy up?’ He was on his feet, scooping up newspapers in a flash and, irritation notwithstanding, I took up a stack of papers near my chair and rose.
‘Not those, Watson!’ he cried, but I ignored him and threw them into the grate where the flames caught. ‘They are my laboratory notes!’ he cried.
Mrs Hudson shook her head and departed.
Holmes attempted to rescue the burning pages but failed.
‘Holmes!’ He would set us all alight some day!
We heard footsteps on the landing and he flung himself into his chair, instantly assuming a pose of casual interest.
Our client appeared on the threshold. She was a striking woman of perhaps thirty, in a long red dress and an enormous hat topped with a red plume. Her black hair was arranged in a voluminous pompadour, her high cheekbones and olive skin conveying a southern birth. A waft of Oriental perfume assailed my nostrils. She was stunning, forthright, and despite the heat seemed coolly impervious. She put me in mind of the bow of a mighty ship.
I rose politely but Holmes remained seated and smiled calmly at her, his hands steepled.
She paused at the doorway and waved a folded newspaper in one hand. ‘Mr Holmes, I did not know you were a famous detective!’ Her voice was a honeyed contralto, with the seductive lilt of an Italian accent. ‘You told me you write about science. But I read of you, in this paper—’
She stepped over the threshold, took in the junkyard that was our sitting-room and laughed. ‘Oh my!’ she exclaimed. But when her eyes alighted on the hanging straitjacket, the laughter caught in her throat, and she made a sudden guttural sound, like a tiger.
‘What! You liar!’ she roared, flinging the newspaper to the floor. ‘You are no scientist. No detective either. You steal our famous illusion!’ She grimaced. ‘I will kill you!’
‘Madame Ilaria Borelli,’ said Holmes cordially. ‘You are early.’
CHAPTER 5
Madame Borelli
Her face a mask of fury, the lady scanned the clutter, glancing past me as though I were something to be stepped over on the street.
Her eyes lit upon the papers mounded on the table. She rushed over to them, snatched them up and waved them at us, her face black with rage. Opening her reticule to receive them, she then thought better of it, and with a dramatic gesture stuffed the papers down the front of her dress.
She stared triumphantly at the two of us as though she had just thwarted a mad effort to stop her.
But neither of us had moved. Holmes remained seated. He smiled.
‘Forgive me if I don’t stand, Madame Borelli.’
‘You beast!’ she cried, facing Holmes. ‘You lie to me!’
Looking around, she seized upon a life-size plaster head of Goethe and hurled it at my friend, who leaped from his chair just in time to miss being concussed by the philosopher.
Goethe bounced off the chair and landed on a small Moroccan table, upending it, and sending a teacup and some books crashing to the floor to join in the general chaos there. The bust splintered into several pieces.
Given the state of disarray, this hardly worsened the room.
‘Pagan! Reprobate! Liar! Thief!’ she shouted, then lunged at him. I caught her mid-stride, grasping her by both arms. She appeared dainty but was muscled like an athlete.
‘Madame, please sit down,’ I said. ‘You are clearly distraught. Let us help you.’
‘Distraught! Help me?’ Her voice rose to a shout. ‘This man, he misrepresents himself. Says he is a scientist. But then I read in the newspaper he is famous detective. I ask Scotland Yard, one man there say amateur only.’
I laughed.
She turned to me. ‘But … what do you say? He is pastry chef? He is ironmonger? And who are you?’
‘I am Doctor John Watson, this man’s friend. Yes, he is a detective and a scientist. Please … calm down, dear lady.’
She took a deep breath and stopped struggling. I removed my hands from her arms. ‘Forgive me, Madame. May I pour you a brandy?’ I asked. ‘Please, do sit down.’
She ignored this and turned to Holmes.
‘The Great Borelli, he knows. Dario mio, he finds these pages missing, and he knows. Look!’
She undid a button at the cuff of her dress and rolled up the sleeve. A series of bruises was evident.
Holmes was instantly at her side. He gently took her arm and examined the injury. ‘Oh, Madame,’ he said. ‘I would never have – oh, not for the world—’
‘Let me have a look, would you?’ I brushed him aside. ‘I am a doctor.’
Mollified by the caring attention of two men, the woman seemed to calm herself into some semblance of normality as she let me examine her bruises.
‘It looks like someone grasped you hard enough to leave these marks,’ I said.
‘I never should give you the pages, Mr Holmes,’ said the lady.
She looked around her and took in the utter chaos that was our sitting-room. As she did so, a frown passed over her lovely features. Her skin was pale olive, her hair nearly black but burnished with red. She was indeed a fiery beauty.
‘And you lie to me,’ she said. ‘You told me you are scientist. I see no science, but only big mess.’
Her eyes fell on Holmes’s chemistry table.
‘Ah, science, yes, over there. But that is not the escape science, that is chemistry. No, it is physics. Who are you, Mr Holmes? You lied to me!’
‘By omission only, and I apologize. I shall indeed write a small monograph, Madame Borelli, but fear not, I will not reveal all,’ said Holmes. ‘Please do sit down.’ She did not. ‘Stage conjuring, and escapology in particular, has long been a topic of interest to me. Most people enjoy trickery, but it is particularly vexing that some illusions – your husband’s for example, are attributed to supernatural gifts. I wish to set the record straight.’
‘I forbid it! The illusion is the magic. It is part of the performance, Mr Holmes. Dario and I – we will not be happy if you choose to expose him. You promised me to write in such a way not do this. And to do this later, much later. But—’ She gestured angrily to the straitjacket, still hanging from the ceiling. ‘Then I see you trying to duplicate this trick. Traitor! But, of course you cannot. What you do not know is—’
She broke off, staring hard at Holmes. He seemed nonplussed, but I knew my friend well enough to recognize discomfort. She walked over to him. He stood his ground. She suddenly reached around with her right hand and punched him in the shoulder. The left shoulder. The hurting one.
He gasped. I was on her in an instant, taking her from behind with both arms. But she was not to be held back. She trod on my right instep with her sharp heel, and I cried out, releasing her.
She withdrew a tiny Beretta from her reticule, pointing it at Holmes. We both froze. She backed up so that neither of us could reach her in a single move. This was certainly a lady who could look after herself.
‘You are not the first to try this. I created this trick especially for Dario. He has – how you say? – the double joints. Over time, he developed, just like a strong man develops muscles. Which he also does. But he is special: a loose man. Bends like rubber. That is not in those pages. You cannot know this unless you are very smart, and you hurt your own shoulder trying this. Ha, ha, you lying man!’
‘Madame Borelli, one thing I am not is a performer.’
I stifled a laugh. He most certainly was, although perhaps not on the stage.
‘I am a scientist and repeating results of something another man has devised is exactly what scientists do.’
‘No!’ she cried. ‘What a woman has devised. I invent this trick! Not Dario!’
‘Nevertheless, repeating the results—’
‘Are you double jointed, also?’ I asked Madame, straining to picture it.
‘Watson, good grief! Forgive us, Madame. I can see how this might be construed.’
‘No performer, you say? Then what is this?’ Madame Borelli strode to my chair and scooped up something from the floor next to it.
It took a second for me to realize what it was. The false nose. A laugh escaped me. Holmes shook his head when she turned to stare at me.
‘Madame, I can explain all that you see here,’ said Holmes.
‘Explain quickly.’ She caught me shifting my weight as I stealthily attempted to draw nearer. ‘Stop there, you. Or I will shoot Mr Holmes.’
Just then Mrs Hudson appeared in the doorway, brandishing a tennis racquet as a weapon. I had wondered where my racquet had gone. She stared at the three of us.
‘Mr Holmes, I heard the commotion. Put that gun away, young lady, unless you plan to shoot all three of us. And sit down, all of you.’ She glanced at the clutter. ‘If you can find a seat.’
No one moved. Mrs Hudson was full of surprises today. She advanced into the room, tennis racquet raised.
‘Sit, or I shall knock sense into all three of you!’
Madame Borelli did not seem inclined to shoot the eminently reasonable Mrs Hudson in cold blood. She wavered, then replaced the gun into her reticule and looked round for a seat. I removed a large box of what appeared to be human bones from an armchair and brushed off its dusty wool surface. Madame Borelli glanced down, gave it one more furious brush and sat.
‘Tea, then, in a few minutes. Meanwhile, behave yourselves,’ said Mrs Hudson. She gave our visitor her sternest look. ‘This is a civilized house.’
Some minutes later, we sat facing hot tea and ginger biscuits, a veneer of respectability floating above the sea of clutter. Madame Borelli had calmed herself to some degree. The summer shower had dropped the temperature, and a tepid, damp breeze wafted into the room with salubrious effect.
‘Now, Madame Borelli, you have come here on another matter, I perceive, and not merely to retrieve the pages you so kindly lent me,’ said Holmes in the soothing manner, absent of any sarcasm, which he used at times to great effect.
‘Yes, I come. But I am not sure you are what I need. I am not sure—’
‘Tell me what is troubling you. You did not wish to open your reticule when you located your husband’s pages. And you have been keeping it close to you for your entire visit. But as you drew your gun, I glimpsed—’
‘Yes, yes. I brought something.’
My attention turned to the tapestry bag with gold fringe, on a braided golden cord which hung around the lady’s neck and was fastened with a small gold clasp to the sash of her dress. Even at this moment, one hand rested protectively upon it.
She glanced down at it nervously, then looked at Holmes from under her heavy fringe of dark eyelashes.
‘It is true. You said when we met that you … you write for science journals. But you solve crimes. Scotland Yard man says amateur. Are you any good at this?’
‘He is very good, Madame Borelli,’ I interjected. ‘Mr Holmes is the world’s first consulting detective. In fact, he invented the term. The police turn to him on cases they cannot solve. Some of the men are perhaps a little—’
‘Jealous,’ she said. ‘Yes, I see this.’
Holmes smiled. ‘What is troubling you?’
‘Well … Dario. He has a temper. What you see on my arm, it is not serious, it is him clutching my arm when he is too nervous or excited.’
‘What is he nervous and excited about?’ asked Holmes.
‘He received …’ She opened her small bag carefully and removed from underneath the Beretta a small oblong object wrapped in a handkerchief. She slowly unwrapped it. ‘This.’
It was a human finger.
PART TWO
ENTANGLEMENT
‘The moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.’
—Omar Khayyam
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
