The Mammoth Book of Short Spy Novels (Mammoth Books) Page 3

  “We have quite a little round of afternoon calls to make,” said he. “I think that Sir James Walter claims our first attention.”

  The house of the famous official was a fine villa with green lawns stretching down to the Thames. As we reached it the fog was lifting, and a thin, watery sunshine was breaking through. A butler answered our ring.

  “Sir James, sir?” said he with a solemn face. “Sir James died this morning.”

  “Good heavens!” cried Holmes in amazement. “How did he die?”

  “Perhaps you would care to step in, sir, and see his brother, Colonel Valentine?”

  “Yes, we had best do so.”

  We were ushered into a dim-lit drawing room, where an instant later we were joined by a very tall, handsome, light-bearded man of fifty, the younger brother of the dead scientist. His wild eyes, stained cheeks, and unkempt hair all spoke of the sudden blow which had fallen upon the household. He was hardly articulate as he spoke of it.

  “It was this horrible scandal,” said he. “My brother, Sir James, was a man of very sensitive honor, and he could not survive such an affair. It broke his heart. He was always so proud of the efficiency of his department, and this was a crushing blow.”

  “We had hoped that he might have given us some indications which would have helped us to clear the matter up.”

  “I assure you that it was all a mystery to him as it is to you and to all of us. He had already put all his knowledge at the disposal of the police. Naturally he had no doubt that Cadogan West was guilty. But all the rest was inconceivable.”

  “You cannot throw any new light upon the affair?”

  “I know nothing myself save what I have read or heard. I have no desire to be discourteous, but you can understand, Mr. Holmes that we are much disturbed at present, and I must ask you to hasten this interview to an end.”

  “This is indeed an unexpected development,” said my friend when we had regained the cab. “I wonder if the death was natural, or whether the poor old fellow killed himself! If the latter, may it be taken as some sign of self-reproach for duty neglected? We must leave that question to the future. Now we shall turn to the Cadogan Wests.”

  A small but well-kept house in the outskirts of the town sheltered the bereaved mother. The old lady was too dazed with grief to be of any use to us, but at her side was a white-faced young lady, who introduced herself as Miss Violet Westbury, the fiancée of the dead man, and the last to see him upon that fatal night.

  “I cannot explain it, Mr. Holmes,” she said. “I have not shut an eye since the tragedy, thinking, thinking, thinking, night and day, what the true meaning of it can be. Arthur was the most single-minded, chivalrous, patriotic man upon earth. He would have cut his right hand off before he would sell a State secret confided to his keeping. It is absurd, impossible, preposterous to anyone who knew him.”

  “But the facts, Miss Westbury?”

  “Yes, yes; I admit I cannot explain them.”

  “Was he in any want of money?”

  “No; his needs were very simple and his salary ample. He had saved a few hundreds, and we were to marry at the New Year.”

  “No signs of any mental excitement? Come, Miss Westbury, be absolutely frank with us.”

  The quick eye of my companion had noted some change in her manner. She colored and hesitated.

  “Yes,” she said at last. “I had a feeling that there was something on his mind.”

  “For long?”

  “Only for the last week or so. He was thoughtful and worried. Once I pressed him about it. He admitted that there was something, and that it was concerned with his official life. ‘It is too serious for me to speak about, even to you,’ said he. I could get nothing more.”

  Holmes looked grave.

  “Go on, Miss Westbury. Even if it seems to tell against him, go on. We cannot say what it may lead to.”

  “Indeed, I have nothing more to tell. Once or twice it seemed to me that he was on the point of telling me something. He spoke one evening of the importance of the secret, and I have some recollection that he said that no doubt foreign spies would pay a great deal to have it.”

  My friend’s face grew graver still.

  “Anything else?”

  “He said that we were slack about such matters – that it would be easy for a traitor to get the plans.”

  “Was it only recently that he made such remarks?”

  “Yes, quite recently.”

  “Now tell us of that last evening.”

  “We were to go to the theater. The fog was so thick that a cab was useless. We walked, and our way took us close to the office. Suddenly he darted away into the fog.”

  “Without a word?”

  “He gave an exclamation; that was all. I waited but he never returned. Then I walked home. Next morning, after the office opened, they came to inquire. About twelve o’clock we heard the terrible news. Oh, Mr. Holmes, if you could only, only save his honor! It was so much to him.”

  Holmes shook his head sadly.

  “Come, Watson,” said he, “our ways lie elsewhere. Our next station must be the office from which the papers were taken.

  “It was black enough before against this young man, but our inquiries make it blacker,” he remarked as the cab lumbered off. “His coming marriage gives a motive for the crime. He naturally wanted money. The idea was in his head, since he spoke about it. He nearly made the girl an accomplice in the treason by telling her his plans. It is all very bad.”

  “But surely, Holmes, character goes for something? Then again, why should he leave the girl in the street and dart away to commit a felony?”

  “Exactly! There are certainly objections. But it is a formidable case which they have to meet.”

  Mr. Sidney Johnson, the senior clerk, met us at the office and received us with that respect which my companion’s card always commanded. He was a thin, gruff, bespectacled man of middle age, his cheeks haggard, and his hands twitching from the nervous strain to which he had been subjected.

  “It is bad, Mr. Holmes, very bad! Have you heard of the death of the chief?”

  “We have just come from his house.”

  “The place is disorganized. The chief dead, Cadogan West dead, our papers stolen. And yet, when we closed our door on Monday evening, we were as efficient an office as any in the government service. Good God, it’s dreadful to think of! That West, of all men, should have done such a thing!”

  “You are sure of his guilt, then?”

  “I can see no other way out of it. And yet I would have trusted him as I trust myself.”

  “At what hour was the office closed on Monday?”

  “At five.”

  “Did you close it?”

  “I am always the last man out.”

  “Where were the plans?”

  “In that safe. I put them there myself.”

  “Is there no watchman to the building?”

  “There is, but he has other departments to look after as well. He is an old soldier and a most trustworthy man. He saw nothing that evening. Of course the fog was very thick.”

  “Suppose that Cadogan West wished to make his way into the building after hours; he would need three keys, would he not, before he could reach the papers?”

  “Yes, he would. The key of the outer door, the key of the office, and the key of the safe.”

  “Only Sir James Walter and you had those keys?”

  “I had no keys of the room – only of the safe.”

  “Was Sir James a man who was orderly in his habits?”

  “Yes, I think he was. I know that so far as those three keys are concerned he kept them on the same ring. I have often seen them there.”

  “And that ring went with him to London?”

  “He said so.”

  “And your key never left your possession?”

  “Never.”

  “Then West, if he is the culprit, must have had a duplicate. And yet none was found upon his body. On
e other point: if a clerk in this office desired to sell the plans, would it not be simpler to copy the plans for himself than to take the originals, as was actually done?”

  “It would take considerable technical knowledge to copy the plans in an effective way.”

  “But I suppose either Sir James, or you, or West had that technical knowledge?”

  “No doubt we had, but I beg you won’t try to drag me into the matter, Mr. Holmes. What is the use of our speculating in this way when the original plans were actually found on West?”

  “Well, it is certainly singular that he should run the risk of taking originals if he could safely have taken copies, which would have equally served his turn.”

  “Singular, no doubt – and yet he did so.”

  “Every inquiry in this case reveals something inexplicable. Now there are three papers still missing. They are, as I understand, the vital ones.”

  “Yes, that is so.”

  “Do you mean to say that anyone holding these three papers, and without the seven others, could construct a Bruce-Partington submarine?”

  “I reported to that effect to the Admiralty. But today I have been over the drawings again, and I am not so sure of it. The double valves with the automatic self-adjusting slots are drawn in one of the papers which have been returned. Until the foreigners had invented that for themselves they could not make the boat. Of course they might soon get over the difficulty.”

  “But the three missing drawings are the most important?”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “I think, with your permission, I will now take a stroll round the premises. I do not recall any other question which I desired to ask.”

  He examined the lock of the safe, the door of the room, and finally the iron shutters of the window. It was only when we were on the lawn outside that his interest was strongly excited. There was a laurel bush outside the window, and several of the branches bore signs of having been twisted or snapped. He examined them carefully with his lens, and then some dim and vague marks upon the earth beneath. Finally he asked the chief clerk to close the iron shutters, and he pointed out to me that they hardly met in the center, and that it would be possible for anyone outside to see what was going on within the room.

  “The indications are ruined by the three days’ delay. They may mean something or nothing. Well, Watson, I do not think that Woolwich can help us further. It is a small crop which we have gathered. Let us see if we can do better in London.”

  Yet we added one more sheaf to our harvest before we left Woolwich Station. The clerk in the ticket office was able to say with confidence that he saw Cadogan West – whom he knew well by sight – upon the Monday night, and that he went to London by the 8.15 to London Bridge. He was alone and took a single third-class ticket. The clerk was struck at the time by his excited and nervous manner. So shaky was he that he could hardly pick up his change, and the clerk had helped him with it. A reference to the timetable showed that the 8.15 was the first train which it was possible for West to take after he had left the lady about 7.30.

  “Let us reconstruct, Watson,” said Holmes after half an hour of silence. “I am not aware that in all our joint researches we have ever had a case which was more difticult to get at. Every fresh advance which we make only reveals a fresh ridge beyond. And yet we have surely made some appreciable progress.

  “The effect of our inquiries at Woolwich has in the main been against young Cadogan West; but the indications at the window would lend themselves to a more favorable hypothesis. Let us suppose, for example, that he had been approached by some foreign agent. It might have been done under such pledges as would have prevented him from speaking of it, and yet would have affected his thoughts in the direction indicated by his remarks to his fiancée. Very good. We will now suppose that as he went to the theater with the young lady he suddenly, in the fog, caught a glimpse of this same agent going in the direction of the office. He was an impetuous man, quick in his decisions. Everything gave way to his duty. He followed the man, reached the window, saw the abstraction of the documents, and pursued the thief. In this way we get over the objection that no one would take originals when he could make copies. This outsider had to take originals. So far it holds together.”

  “What is the next step?”

  “Then we come into difficulties. One would imagine that under such circumstances the first act of young Cadogan West would be to seize the villain and raise the alarm. Why did he not do so? Could it have been an official superior who took the papers? That would explain West’s conduct. Or could the chief have given West the slip in the fog, and West started at once to London to head him off from his own rooms, presuming that he knew where the rooms were? The call must have been very pressing, since he left his girl standing in the fog, and made no effort to communicate with her. Our scent runs cold here, and there is a vast gap between either hypothesis and the laying of West’s body, with seven papers in his pocket, on the roof of a Metropolitan train. My instinct now is to work from the other end. If Mycroft has given us the list of addresses we may be able to pick our man and follow two tracks instead of one.”

  Sure enough, a note awaited us at Baker Street. A government messenger had brought it post-haste. Holmes glanced at it and threw it over to me.

  There are numerous small fry, but few who would handle so big an affair. The only men worth considering are Adolph Meyer, of 13 Great George Street, Westminster; Louis La Rothière, of Campden Mansions, Notting Hill; and Hugo Oberstein, 13 Caulfield Gardens, Kensington. The latter was known to be in town on Monday and is now reported as having left. Glad to hear you have seen some light. The Cabinet awaits your final report with the utmost anxiety. Urgent representations have arrived from the very highest quarter. The whole force of the State is at your back if you should need it.

  MYCROFT

  “I’m afraid,” said Holmes, smiling, “that all the queen’s horses and all the queen’s men cannot avail in this matter.” He had spread out his big map of London and leaned eagerly over it. “Well, well,” said he presently with an exclamation of satisfaction, “things are turning a little in our direction at last. Why, Watson, I do honestly believe that we are going to pull it off, after all.” He slapped me on the shoulder with a sudden burst of hilarity. “I am going out now. It is only a reconnaissance. I will do nothing serious without my trusted comrade and biographer at my elbow. Do stay here, and the odds are that you will see me again in an hour or two. If time hangs heavy get foolscap and a pen, and begin your narrative of how we saved the State.”

  I felt some reflection of his elation in my own mind, for I knew well that he would not depart so far from his usual austerity of demeanor unless there was good cause for exultation. All the long November evening I waited, filled with impatience for his return. At last, shortly after nine o’clock, there arrived a messenger with a note:

  Am dining at Goldini’s Restaurant, Gloucester Road, Kensington. Please come at once and join me there. Bring with you a jemmy, a dark lantern, a chisel, and a revolver.

  S.H.

  It was nice equipment for a respectable citizen to carry through the dim, fog-draped streets. I stowed them all discreetly away in my overcoat and drove straight to the address given. There sat my friend at a little round table near the door of the garish Italian restaurant.

  “Have you had something to eat? Then join me in a coffee and curaçao. Try one of the proprietor’s cigars. They are less poisonous than one would expect. Have you the tools?”

  “They are here, in my overcoat.”

  “Excellent. Let me give you a short sketch of what I have done, with some indication of what we are about to do. Now it must be evident to you, Watson, that this young man’s body was placed on the roof of the train. That was clear from the instant that I determined the fact that it was from the roof, and not from a carriage, that he had fallen.”

  “Could it not have been dropped from a bridge?”

  “I should say it was impos
sible. If you examine the roofs you will find that they are slightly rounded, and there is no railing round them. Therefore, we can say for certain that young Cadogan West was placed on it.”

  “How could he be placed there?”

  “That was the question which we had to answer. There is only one possible way. You are aware that the Underground runs clear of tunnels at some points in the West End. I had a vague memory that as I have traveled by it I have occasionally seen windows just above my head. Now, suppose that a train halted under such a window, would there be any difficulty in laying a body upon the roof?”

  “It seems most improbable.”

  “We must fall back upon the old axiom that when all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Here all other contingencies have failed. When I found that the leading international agent, who had just left London, lived in a row of houses which abutted upon the Underground, I was so pleased that you were a little astonished at my sudden frivolity.”

  “Oh, that was it, was it?”

  “Yes, that was it. Mr. Hugo Oberstein, of 13 Caulfield Gardens, had become my objective. I began my operations at Gloucester Road Station, where a very helpful official walked with me along the track and allowed me to satisfy myself not only that the back-stair windows of Caulfield Gardens open on the line but the even more essential fact that, owing to the intersection of one of the larger railways, the Underground trains are frequently held motionless for some minutes at that very spot.”

  “Splendid, Holmes! You have got it!”

  “So far – so far, Watson. We advance, but the goal is afar. Well, having seen the back of Caulfield Gardens, I visited the front and satisfied myself that the bird was indeed flown. It is a considerable house, unfurnished, so far as I could judge, in the upper rooms. Oberstein lived there with a single valet, who was probably a confederate entirely in his confidence. We must bear in mind that Oberstein has gone to the Continent to dispose of his booty, but not with any idea of flight; for he had no reason to fear a warrant, and the idea of an amateur domiciliary visit would certainly never occur to him. Yet that is precisely what we are about to make.”