Authors: Braven
When I mounted Fandango,
the tenseness of the moment lent springs to my legs. With the
other animal in tow, I urged the mare into motion. The moment we
cleared the barn door, Fandango spied the not-so-distant flames. I
was urging her in a direction that would take us around the country
mansion, and she cooperated in a manner that jarred my back teeth. We
swept by the house at a full gallop and thundered down the main
road leading from Mayswood. I had all I could do to hang onto the
reins of our companion animal, who was in just as much of a hurry as
my mount.
I dropped my curb and
was riding to the snaffle, and that was not true in a moment, for in
desperation I dropped my bridle entirely and gripped the pommel of
the saddle with one hand. For no reason, the name of the other horse
flashed through my mind. "Mystique" she had been referred
to. A suitable mount for Holmes, but Mother of Heaven, would I ever
reach him!
Out of the night loomed
a complication. The white-picket horse-gate was closed across the
driveway to Mayswood as it would be in the night hours. The gallant
Fandango, flanked by Mystique, was bearing down on the obstacle
at a speed that defied stopping in time, nor were there reins in my
hand to try it or the strength in my arms to do it if they had been
there.
The gate, a low affair,
assumed the proportions of a Grand National hurdle as we thundered
towards it. Its white planking, touched by a spring moon that
suddenly sailed free of high clouds, assumed a ghostly glow. To think
that I, dedicated to the saving of life, was to end my days with a
snapped neck or speared by a broken plank! Little did my dear,
departed mother picture my emulating one of the ill-fated riders of
that desperate charge in the Crimea!
The gate was upon us.
Still gripping the saddle with one hand and Mystique's reins with the
other, I instinctively leaned forward as I had seen huntsmen do
when clearing a stone wall in pursuit of the elusive fox. Then the
thunder of hoofs ceased, and for a glorious moment I had the feeling
of flying, soaring through the air as if in fulfillment of man's
age-old dream. I was suspended in a nothingness as those two
splendid horses with their muscles uncoiled, their legs
outstretched, cleared the barrier in unison. Oh, it must have made a
wondrous sightâwhich I never saw, for my eyes were screwed
tightly shut and I was just hanging on for dear life without even
time for a fervent prayer.
The moment of
weightlessness passed with a crash as we made contact with the road
beyond the gate. I was jarred to my heels and lost a stirrup, coming
within an ace of losing my seat as well. Then, by some miracle, the
loose iron snapped back over the toe of my riding boot and I had the
support of two legs, which allowed me to regain a portion of my
balance.
As though in relief at
clearing the obstacle, Fandango slackened her headlong rush and I was
able to loosen my death-hold on the saddle and snatch at her flying
reins. Leaning back in the saddle with the reins as support, I
succeeded in slowing my mount and Mystique as well even further, and
it was then that I heard the call. "Watson! Over here!"
I saw Holmes in the
semidarkness waving a white handkerchief by the side of the
road. I was so startled at hearing his voice, so amazed at even being
alive, that a surge of unknown strength welled up within me. My left
arm, which a moment ago had threatened to fall off, swung the reins
to the right and I leaned in that direction as well, throwing the
head, neck, and withers of Fandango against Mystique and somehow
bringing both animals to a skidding, sliding halt right where
Sherlock Holmes stood.
The great sleuth grabbed
Mystique's reins as I let them drop. Securing the animal by the bit,
he anchored Fandango in the same manner, all the time looking
upward at me in complete amazement. The horses were sucking in air in
great breaths and their forequarters were lathered a foamy white.
Somehow my riding bowler was still on my head, though askew. I was as
drenched and as breathless as the steeds but managed to keep my
backbone straight. Had I sagged a smidgen, I would have fallen
headlong from the saddle like a sack of grain. The moment was tense
and the situation critical, but Holmes stole time to gaze at me as
though unsuspected vistas had suddenly been revealed to him. I have
always contended that my intimate friend had the rare ability to
seize a situation at a glance, to read the book of a happening in a
fleeting second, but this time his instant appraisal deserted him.
"Watson, good
fellow, were it possible for me to be rendered speechless, I'd be as
mute as an oyster! That gate is fully five pegs high and I could but
think, as you came upon it, of a Cossack in full flight. And to clear
it with not one horse but with two, in perfect form! If Deets were to
give you a mount, I'd place my wager on your colors, dear friend."
I was goggle-eyed, but
the sincere conviction of Holmes's words and the light in his eyes
kept me from swaying. I could not and would not destroy an image
nurtured, however incorrectly, in the mind of the kindest man I have
ever known. I made a weak half-gesture towards the breeding farm
in the distance. "Holmes, Mayswood is afire."
"Naught but
haystacks, ol' chap," replied Holmes, swinging into Mystique's
saddle. "Sufficiently close to the stabled thoroughbreds to
create a menace, but something that Deets and his crew can handle.
Come, let us observe the follow-up of this diversionary tactic."
The sleuth reined
Mystique from the road into the line of trees, and I had little
choice but to follow in his wake.
Brushing through
branches and bending low in the saddle to clear outstretched boughs,
we made our way through the trees to a point at the end of the
timberline that I assumed Holmes had scouted and chosen in
advance. From there, we commanded a fine view of the front of the
mansion. The flames were dimly visible around the side of the
residence, and the firefighters were still intent on their task. We
were at our station but a moment when I spied at least four men who
seemed to materialize from the ground before the house. There was a
flash of metal in the air, and objects flew into the night sky to
descend on the stone balustrade of the balcony.
"My thought of
using grappling hooks was not amiss, Watson," whispered Holmes
as the shadowy figures tested their lines and then swarmed up them
hand over hand.
"What are they
after, Holmes?"
"Regard the
balcony. What do you see?"
"Five French
windows . . . then thereâ"
"Enough. It is so
true that one looks but does not see. That American, Poe's, concept
of the purloined letter was accurate."
"Holmes, what are
youâ?"
"Think back to when
we were within the gallery before walking out on the balcony. What is
the picture that comes to your mind's eye, Watson?"
"Well, we walked
towards the four French windows and made our wayâ" I
stopped abruptly, shafted by a thought "Four windows! But five
are staring me in the face."
"The fifth is a
dummy. Look, they are making for it even now. In but a moment they
will have the aperture open."
The figures that had
gained the balcony were doing as my friend said. Huddled round the
fifth opening, there was a pause in their feverish activity, which
allowed me to protest, to give vent to my mental rebellion.
"I assume it is a
door to a secret chamber, Holmes, but why not have it concealed?"
"Because someone's
eye wandering over the face of the building would note an unusual
distance from the real window on the end to the windows of
adjacent rooms. They would wonder where all that space was, how it
was used. As it is, you see a charming exterior in proportion and
note the openings but do not count them. From the inside, things
have a different perspective. You cannot consider a room you
occupy in conjunction with adjacent ones."
"But when we went
out on the balcony?"
"Did you notice
anything unusual? Your eye was captured by the view. There were
windows behind you, how many you did not count. You walked right past
the false one, never conscious of the fact that you were passing an
entry to a vault, a hiding place for whatever treasures Captain
Spaulding brought back from his expeditions."
"You noticed it, of
course."
"Ah, Watson, I have
trained myself to look and to see as well. Ah ha! They've forced the
door."
Two of the figures on
the balcony suddenly disappeared within the house. The third posted
himself by the real windows. The remaining one went to the edge of
the area at the side of the building nearest the fire as a lookout
should anyone note something amiss. Apparently confident that their
arrival was undiscovered, as it certainly was, both men on the
balcony then moved to the balustrade. Loosening the grappling
hooks, they passed each one over the railing and dropped it to the
ground. It was a re-creation of Holmes's suppositions several days
before.
Suddenly I tightened my
hold on the reins, lifting Fandango's head as though in
preparation for a charge.
"This, then, is
what Deets feared. That his uninvited visitor would suspect the
location of the family vault. We must stop them, Holmes."
My friend's lean and
sinewy arm reached out to grasp me by the shoulder and pull me back
in my saddle.
"Hold tight,
Watson. We have not planned this so carefully to stop them. We
want to see what they do."
"Do? They're after
that sword. You were right about that, of course. If left to their
devices, they will spirit it away."
"Not so easily,
good chap."
I noted flashes of light
from the interior of what we assumed was the Deets' family
vault.
"Gilligan and
Styles are waiting on the Follonsbee Road, which is the only direct
thoroughfare back to London."
Holmes gestured to our
left. "Now there's a path in that direction, is there not? For I
think the Chinese came from there."
"Oh, they are
Chinese, are they? Let me see." My mind raced back over my
journeys round Mayswood, and fortunately the mental pictures meshed
in my mind.
"Yes, there is a
good-sized lane running in a half-moon direction that way," I
stated, pointing towards our left and rear. "It splits at a
fork; one branch continues round by a bluff and curves back to the
road to Litchfield, the other terminates at a railway assembly point
down in a valley. Actually, there's a path down the bluff that
reaches the same point much quicker. I chanced upon it."
"Good show, Watson!
In former times that Confederate cavalry genius, Jeb Stuart, might
have grown fond of you. The junction you mention must be for making
up freight trains for the run into the city. I suspect that is the
key to the Chinaman's plan."
His musings were
interrupted by the reappearance of the men on the balcony of the
Deets mansion. They were carrying something with them, though I could
not make out its form. Had I to hazard a guess, I would have said it
was a crated object. Holmes suddenly lost interest in the nocturnal
attack squad. I noted they were securing the door they had forced, no
doubt seeking to delay the discovery of their thievery.
Holmes swung Mystique to
his left.
"Take my horse's
tail in your hand, Watson, and let us be as silent as possible."
With some reservations,
I secured the end of Mystique's tail in my right hand and, leaning
low in the saddle, let Holmes choose our route through the trees. The
arrangement was efficient since Holmes had uncanny night vision,
which served him well on this occasion as it had many times in the
past. My position was an uncomfortable one, but it saved me from
being brushed from my saddle by tree branches on at least two
occasions.
After a period of
swerving round trunks, Holmes drew to a stop. I heard a cautionary
"shush" from him, and then he was out of his saddle.
Passing Mystique's reins to me, he was gone into Stygian darkness,
for the trees blocked out the high-flying moon. My heart was
pounding, half in reaction to what had been and half
in
anticipation of what was to come, and I cannot say how long he was
gone. Suddenly I was conscious of another presence and felt Holmes
retrieve his horse's bridle. I could make out his form dimly now, and
he patted Mystique encouragingly on the muzzle, then took Fandango by
the bit and led both animals in what I assumed was the general
direction of Litchfleld, though my directional sense was nonexistent
at this point.
After another short
period, we came out of the woods. Standing by Fandango's
forequarters, my friend posed a question.