walk away towards Vine Street police station.
‘That is your brother.’ I noticed that the loiterer near St. James’s Square gave one more look at his watch, for the sake of verisimilitude no doubt, and then walked away in the other direction.
‘My brother? Sherlock? That beggar?’
I nodded. The shock of the past ten minutes after weeks of terrible anxiety had drawn the energy from me.
‘That is your brother.’
‘Masquerading as a beggar in Pall Mall? But why? Does he not see how he might embarrass me?’
‘You shall hear everything, so far as I know it.’
Mycroft Holmes was not mollified by this. He looked down at me from his considerable height. There was a mixture of incomprehension and reproof in his expression, which now gave him something of a sulky air. He shook his head slowly.
‘I have tolerated his frolics and farces, goodness knows,’ he said plaintively, ‘but this is quite beyond everything. On my way here I stopped and heard the story of his dreadful injury. I was so taken by it that I gave the fellow half a sovereign. I do call that the limit!’
THE HOMECOMING
1
It was enough for the time being that I had seen him alive. I still could not say he was safe if the stranger who stood across the street from the Diogenes Club was what I suspected. Yet I knew that if Holmes were to survive, he must be left to his own devices. When the mysterious beggar was led away by a police constable, the watcher on the opposite pavement ended his vigil, and I believed Holmes had won the first hand in the game. Had I embraced the vagrant as my friend, we might both be floating in the river with our throats cut by now.
Communication between us appeared to be impossible. How easy it would be for our opponents to intercept a letter addressed to me by bribing a dishonest postal sorter or, more likely, by planting their own man to work at the sorting office by means of a forged reference. A message scrawled on the morning newspaper pushed through our letter box, or slipped inside its pages, would also be read.
My thoughts ran upon a message added to a newspaper or a letter. No doubt the thoughts of our enemies followed the same path. Only one who knew the workings of that indomitable intelligence would understand that Holmes might transmit the most detailed and vital messages invisibly, by means of what was missing rather than by what was added. I recalled the mysterious incident of what the dog did in the nighttime. But the dog did nothing in the nighttime, I protested. Precisely, said Holmes, that was the mystery.
The morning after the Pall Mall encounter, I unfolded the newspaper which awaited me on the breakfast table and saw that there had been a mistake. It was not the Morning Post but the Times , and it was dated the day before yesterday. Looking at the front page, it was distinctly marked in pencil ‘221b Baker Street.’ It had frequently happened that the wrong paper was delivered by a careless newsboy. That it should be two days out of date was no mere error.
Those who have read our Lauriston Gardens mystery in A Study in Scarlet or The Sign of Four, may recall the ‘unofficial force’ always at the disposal of Sherlock Holmes, his Baker Street Irregulars. He need only send Mrs. Hudson’s Billy for them. Ten minutes later, accompanied by a wail of dismay from our landlady, naked feet would patter on the stairs as with a loud clatter of voices a dozen dirty and ragged little street arabs burst in on us. Yet in the presence of Sherlock Holmes they were as smart and obedient to command as they had just been ragged and disrespectful.
These young scamps had often been our eyes and ears, once showing themselves better able to keep a log of Thames river traffic than any division of Scotland Yard. How easily might one of them insinuate himself into Baker Street newspaper delivery. How easily might a villain who tracked Sherlock Holmes be tracked in turn by twenty pairs of eyes following every movement
‘That is your brother.’ I noticed that the loiterer near St. James’s Square gave one more look at his watch, for the sake of verisimilitude no doubt, and then walked away in the other direction.
‘My brother? Sherlock? That beggar?’
I nodded. The shock of the past ten minutes after weeks of terrible anxiety had drawn the energy from me.
‘That is your brother.’
‘Masquerading as a beggar in Pall Mall? But why? Does he not see how he might embarrass me?’
‘You shall hear everything, so far as I know it.’
Mycroft Holmes was not mollified by this. He looked down at me from his considerable height. There was a mixture of incomprehension and reproof in his expression, which now gave him something of a sulky air. He shook his head slowly.
‘I have tolerated his frolics and farces, goodness knows,’ he said plaintively, ‘but this is quite beyond everything. On my way here I stopped and heard the story of his dreadful injury. I was so taken by it that I gave the fellow half a sovereign. I do call that the limit!’
THE HOMECOMING
1
It was enough for the time being that I had seen him alive. I still could not say he was safe if the stranger who stood across the street from the Diogenes Club was what I suspected. Yet I knew that if Holmes were to survive, he must be left to his own devices. When the mysterious beggar was led away by a police constable, the watcher on the opposite pavement ended his vigil, and I believed Holmes had won the first hand in the game. Had I embraced the vagrant as my friend, we might both be floating in the river with our throats cut by now.
Communication between us appeared to be impossible. How easy it would be for our opponents to intercept a letter addressed to me by bribing a dishonest postal sorter or, more likely, by planting their own man to work at the sorting office by means of a forged reference. A message scrawled on the morning newspaper pushed through our letter box, or slipped inside its pages, would also be read.
My thoughts ran upon a message added to a newspaper or a letter. No doubt the thoughts of our enemies followed the same path. Only one who knew the workings of that indomitable intelligence would understand that Holmes might transmit the most detailed and vital messages invisibly, by means of what was missing rather than by what was added. I recalled the mysterious incident of what the dog did in the nighttime. But the dog did nothing in the nighttime, I protested. Precisely, said Holmes, that was the mystery.
The morning after the Pall Mall encounter, I unfolded the newspaper which awaited me on the breakfast table and saw that there had been a mistake. It was not the Morning Post but the Times , and it was dated the day before yesterday. Looking at the front page, it was distinctly marked in pencil ‘221b Baker Street.’ It had frequently happened that the wrong paper was delivered by a careless newsboy. That it should be two days out of date was no mere error.
Those who have read our Lauriston Gardens mystery in A Study in Scarlet or The Sign of Four, may recall the ‘unofficial force’ always at the disposal of Sherlock Holmes, his Baker Street Irregulars. He need only send Mrs. Hudson’s Billy for them. Ten minutes later, accompanied by a wail of dismay from our landlady, naked feet would patter on the stairs as with a loud clatter of voices a dozen dirty and ragged little street arabs burst in on us. Yet in the presence of Sherlock Holmes they were as smart and obedient to command as they had just been ragged and disrespectful.
These young scamps had often been our eyes and ears, once showing themselves better able to keep a log of Thames river traffic than any division of Scotland Yard. How easily might one of them insinuate himself into Baker Street newspaper delivery. How easily might a villain who tracked Sherlock Holmes be tracked in turn by twenty pairs of eyes following every movement
Similar Books
