The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes (32 page)

all the daily newspapers, he threw the lot of them into the coal-scuttle and set himself to pacing

up and down with his hands clasped behind his back and his thin, eager face thrust out before

him. Then he came to the fireplace and, leaning his elbow on the mantelpiece, looked down at

me as I lounged in my chair.

"Are you game to commit a serious breach of the law, Watson?" he asked.

"Most certainly, Holmes, in an honourable cause."

"It is hardly fair on you, my dear fellow," he cried, "for it will go hard with us if we are

caught on that woman's premises."

"But what is the use?" I demurred. "We cannot conceal the truth."

"Admittedly. If this
is
the truth. I must see those original documents."

"Then there would appear to be no alternative," I observed.

"None that I can see," said he, thrusting his fingers into the Persian slipper and drawing

out a handful of black shag which he proceeded to stuff untidily into his pipe. "Well, Watson,

a lengthy sojourn in jail will enable me at least to catch up in my studies of Oriental plant

poisons in the organic blood-stream and for you to bring yourself up to date on these

inoculation theories of Louis Pasteur."

And there we left it, while the dusk deepened into night and Mrs. Hudson bustled in to

poke the fire and light the gas jets.

It was at Holmes's suggestion that we dined out. "The corner table at Fratti's, I think," he

chuckled, "and a bottle of Montrachet '67. If this should prove to be our last evening of

respectability, at least let us be comfortable."

My watch showed me that it was after eleven o'clock when our hansom deposited us at the

corner of Charles II Street. It was a moist, chill night with a hint of fog in the air that hung

round the street-lamps in dim yellow haloes and glistened on the cape of the policeman who

slowly passed us by, switching his bull's-eye lantern into the porticoes of the dark silent houses.

Entering St. James's Square, we had followed the pavement around to the western side when

Holmes laid his hand upon my arm and pointed to a lighted window in the façade of the great

house that reared above us.

"It is the light of the drawing-room," he murmured. "We have not a moment to lose."

With a swift glance along the empty pavement, he sprang for the top of the wall abutting

the mansion and, pulling himself up by his hands, he dropped out of sight while I followed

quickly at his heels. As far as I could judge through the darkness, we were standing in one of

those dreary plots of grass and grimy struggling laurels that form the garden of the average

"town house" and in consequence stood already on the wrong side of the law. Reminding

myself that our purpose was, at least, an honourable one, I followed Holmes's figure along

the flank of the house until he halted beneath a line of three tall windows. Then, in answer to

his whisper, I lent him a back and in an instant he was crouching on the sill with his pale face

outlined against the dark glass and his hands busy with the catch. A moment later, the window

swung silently open, I had caught his outstretched fingers and, with a heave, I found myself

in the room beside him.

"The library," Holmes breathed in my ear. "Keep behind the window-curtains."

Though we were enveloped in a darkness smelling faintly of calfskin and old leather, I

was conscious of a sense of space about me. The silence was profound, save for the measured

ticking of a grandfather clock in the depth of the room. Perhaps five minutes had dragged by

when there came a sound from somewhere within the house followed by steps and a soft

murmur of voices. A line of light gleamed for an instant beneath the edge of a door,

vanished and, after a pause of some moments; slowly reappeared. I caught the sound of swift

footfalls, the line of light grew brighter. Then the door was flung open and a woman, carrying

a lamp in her hand, entered the room.

Though time tends to erase the sharp outline of past events, I recall as though it were but

yesterday my first view of Edith von Lammerain.

Above the rays of an oil-lamp, I beheld an ivory-tinted face with dark, sombre eyes and a

beautiful, scarlet, remorseless mouth. Her hair, piled high upon her head and of a raven

blackness, was set with a spray of osprey plumes clasped with rubies and beneath her bare

neck and shoulders a magnificent gown of black sequins flashed and shimmered against the

darkness.

For a moment she stood as though listening and then, closing the door behind her, she

swept down the great room, her tall, slim shadow trailing behind her and the lamp in her hand

casting a dim, spectral glow along the book-lined walls.

I do not know whether it was the rustle of the curtain that reached her ears but, as Holmes

stepped out into the room, she was round in an instant and, holding the lamp above her head

so that the rays fell in our direction, she stood quite still and looked at us. There was not a

trace of fear upon her ivory face, but only fury and venom
in
the dark eyes that glared at us

across that great, silent chamber.

"Who are you?" she hissed. "What do you want?"

"Five minutes of your time, Madame von Lammerain," rejoined Holmes softly.

"So! You know my name. If you are not burglars, then what is it you seek? It would amuse

me to hear before I raise the house."

Holmes pointed to her left hand. "I am here to examine those papers," said he, "and I warn

you that I mean to do so. I beg that you will not make it necessary to prevent an outcry."

She thrust her hand behind her, her eyes blazing in her face.

"You ruffian!" she cried. "Now I understand! You are Her saintly Grace's hired

burglar." Then, with a swift movement, she craned forward, the lamp out-held before her

and, as she looked intently at my friend, I saw her expression of fury change into one of

incredulity. A smile, as exultant as it was menacing, dawned slowly in her eyes.

"Mr. Sherlock Holmes!" she breathed.

There was a touch of mortification in Holmes's manner as he turned away and lit the

candles on an ormolu side-table.

"The possibility of recognition had already occurred to me, madame," said he.

"This will earn you five years," she cried, with a flash of of her white teeth.

"Perhaps. In that case, I must have my money's worth. The documents!"

"Do you imagine that you will accomplish anything by stealing them? I have copies and a

dozen witnesses to their contents," she laughed throatily. "I had imagined you to be a clever

man," she went on. "Instead, I find a fool, a bungler, a common thief!"

"We shall see." He held out his hand and, with a sneer and a shrug, she resigned the

documents to him. "I rely on you, Watson," my friend remarked quietly, stepping across to

the side-table, "to prevent any collusion between Madame von Lammerain and the bell-rope."

Beneath the glow of the candles, he read through the documents and then, holding them up

against the light, he studied them intently, his lean, cadaverous profile cut in black silhouette

against the luminous yellow parchment. Then he looked at me and my heart sank at the

chagrin in his face.

"The watermark is English, Watson," he stated quietly. "But as paper of this make and

quality was imported into France on a large scale fifty years ago, this does not help us. Alas,

I fear the worst."

And I knew that he was thinking not of his own unenviable position but of the anxious,

courageous woman in whose cause he had risked his own liberty.

Madame von Lammerain indulged in a little peal of laughter.

"Too much success has gone to your head, Mr. Holmes," she jeered. "But this time

you have blundered, as you will find to your cost."

My friend had spread the papers immediately below the candle-flames and was bending

over them again when I saw that a sudden change had taken place in his expression. The

chagrin and annoyance that had clouded his face had gone, and in their place was a look of

intense concentration. His long nose seemed almost to smell the paper as he stooped over it.

When he straightened himself at last, I caught a gleam of excitement from his deep-set eyes.

"What do you make of this, Watson?" said he, as I hastened to his side. He pointed to the

writing that inscribed the details on both documents.

"It is a very legible hand," I said.

"The ink, man, the ink!" he cried impatiently.

"Well, it is black ink," I remarked, leaning over his shoulder. "But I fear that there is little to

help us in that. I can show you a dozen old letters from my father written in a similar medium."

Holmes chuckled and rubbed his hands together. "Excellent,'Watson, excellent!" he cried.

"Now, kindly examine the name and the signature of Henry Corwyn Gladsdale on the

marriage certificate. And now, look at the entry of his name in the page from the Valence

register."

"They appear to be perfectly in order, and the signature is the same in both cases."

"Quite so. But the ink?"

"There is a shade of blue in it. Yes, certainly it is ordinary blue-black indigo ink. What

then?"

"Every word in both documents is written in black ink, with the exception of the

bridegroom's name and signature. Does not this strike you as curious?"

"Curious, perhaps, but by no means inexplicable. Gladsdale was probably in the habit of

using his own waistcoat-inkpot."

Holmes rushed to a writing-desk in the window and, after rummaging for an instant,

returned with a quill and inkstand in his hand.

"Would you say that this is the same colour?" he asked, dipping the quill and making a mark

or two on the edge of the document.

"It is identical," I confirmed.

"Quite so. And the ink in this pot is blue-black indigo."

Madame von Lammerain, who had been standing ha the background darted suddenly for

the bell-rope but, before she had time to pull it, Holmes's voice rang through the room.

"You have my word for it that if you touch that bell, you are ruined," he said sternly.

She paused with her hand upon the rope.

"What mockery is this!" she sneered. "Are you suggesting that Henry Gladsdale signed his

marriage documents at my desk? Why, you fool, everybody uses ink of that description."

"Largely true. But these documents are dated June 12th, 1848."

"Well, what of that!"

"I fear that you have been guilty of a small error, Madame von Lammerain. The black ink

that contains indigo was not invented until 1856."

There was something terrible in the beautiful face that glared at us across the circle of

candlelight.

"You lie!" she hissed.

Holmes shrugged. "The veriest amateur chemist can prove it," said he, as he picked up the

papers and placed them carefully in his cape pocket. "These are, of course, the perfectly

genuine marriage documents of Françoise Pelletan," he continued. "But the real name of the

bridegroom has been erased both in the certificate and in the page from the Valence church

register and the name of Henry Corwyn Gladsdale substituted in its place. I have no doubt

that, should the need arise, an examination under the microscope would show traces of the

erasure.

"The ink itself is, however, conclusive proof and represents but another example that it

is on the small, easily committed error, rather than on any basic flaw in the conception, that

most intricate plans crash to their ruin as the mighty vessel on the small but fatal point of

rock. As for you, madame, when I consider the full implications of your scheme against a

defenceless woman, I am hard put to it to recall a more cold-blooded ruthlessness."

"What are you to insult a woman!"

"In scheming to destroy another should she refuse you her husband's secret

papers, you have surrendered the prerogatives of a woman," he replied bitterly.

She looked at us with an evil smile on her waxen face. "At least, you shall pay for it," she

promised. "You have broken the law."

"True, and by all means pull the bell," said Sherlock Holmes. "My poor defence will be

the provocation of forgery, attempted blackmail and—mark the word—espionage. Indeed,

as a measure of tribute to your gifts, I shall allow you exactly one week in which to leave

this country. After then, the authorities will be warned against you."

There was a moment of tense stillness, and then without a word Edith von Lammerain

raised her white, shapely arm and pointed silently towards the door.

It was past eleven o'clock next morning and the breakfast things had not yet been cleared

from the table. Sherlock Holmes, who had returned from an early excursion, had discarded

his frock-coat for an old smoking-jacket, and now lounged in front of the fire cleaning

the stems of his pipes with a long, thin bodkin that had originally come into his possession

under circumstances with which I do not propose to harrow my readers.

"You have seen the duchess?" I enquired.

"I have, and put her in possession of all the facts. Purely as a precautionary measure,

she is lodging the documents inscribed with her husband's forged signature, together with

my statement of the case, in the hands of the family lawyers. But she has nothing more to