Victorian Villainy by Michael Kurland

them. The same collection of Englanders who don’t know each other appearing at the same time every few months. Really!”
    “How many of them would you say there were?” I asked.
    “Perhaps two dozen,” he said. “Perhaps more.”
    I thought this over for a minute. “Is there anything else you can tell me about them?” I asked.
    He shrugged. “All ages, all sizes,” he said. “All men, as far as I know. Some of them speak perfect German. Some, I’ve been told, speak fluent French. They all speak English.”
    I stood up. “Thank you,” I said. “The Nachrichtendienst will not forget the help you have been.”
    I had dinner at a small waterfront restaurant, and watched the shadows grow across the lake as the sun sank behind the mountains. After dinner I returned to my room, where Holmes joined me about an hour later.
    I related my experiences of the day, and he nodded thoughtfully and went “hmmm” twice. “Englanders,” he said. “Interesting. I think the game’s afoot.”
    “What game are we stalking, Holmes?” I asked.
    “I have seen some of your ‘Englanders,’” he told me. “In the Ludwig Hof shortly after lunch. I was enjoying a cassis and being expansively French when three men walked in and sat near me. They tried to engage me in conversation in English and German and, when I effected not to understand, bad French. We exchanged a few pleasantries and they tipped their hats and began speaking among themselves in English, which, incidently, is not as good as their German.”
    “Ah!” I said.
    “They insulted me several times in English, commenting with little imagination on my appearance and my probable parentage, and when I didn’t respond they became convinced that I couldn’t understand and thereafter spoke freely.”
    “Saying?”
    “Well, one thing that will interest you, is that Holmes and Moriarty are dead.”
    “Really? And how did they die?”
    “There was this great fight at Reichenbach Falls, and they both plunged in. Their correspondent saw it happen himself. There could be no mistake.”
    I stared out the window at the snow covering a distant mountain peak. “Oscar Wilde says that people who are said to be dead often turn up later in San Francisco,” I said. “I’ve never been to San Francisco.”
    Holmes stared intently down his long nose at me. “I don’t know what to make of you,” he said. “I never have.”
    “So, now that we’re officially dead,” I said, “what do we do next?”
    “When the faux Englishmen left the room,” Holmes continued. “I followed them. They went to the waterfront.”
    “I trust you were not seen,” I said.
    Holmes fastened a withering glare on the painting of an alpine meadow on the far wall. “When I don’t wish to be seen,” he stated, ‘I am not seen.”
    “Silly of me,” I said. “What did you observe?”
    “They entered a large warehouse next to a pier jutting into the lake. Attached to a short line by the warehouse door—”
    “Three clothespins,” I ventured.
    “Three white clothespins,” he corrected.
    “Well,” I said. “Now we know where.”
    “Not quite,” Holmes said. “I observed several more people entering the warehouse over the next hour. And then a door opened on the water side of the building, and the men boarded a steam launch named the Isolde , which was tied up to the pier next to the building. It then chuffed out onto the lake and away. I investigated and discovered that now there was only one man, an old caretaker, left in the warehouse.”
    “Ah!” I said.
    “The boat returned about an hour ago. Some men got off. A few of them were the same men who had boarded earlier, but not all.” he tapped his long, thin forefinger on the table. “They’re doing something out there somewhere on the lake. But it’s a big lake.”
    “That presents an interesting problem,” I said. “How do we follow them over open water?”
    Holmes stared out the window. “A two-pipe problem,” he