The Adventure of the Plated Spoon and Other Tales of Sherlock Holmes (6 page)

I stared hard at the body as it lay in the corridor, then said, “Let me through here, please.”

A ship's officer blocked the way. “Sorry, sir. You're too near the shaft.”

“I want to examine it.”

“Nothing to see in there, sir. Just the elevator cables.”

He was correct, of course. The top of the car had nothing on it. “Can you raise it up so I can see to the bottom of the shaft?” I asked.

Futrelle smiled at my request. “Are you searching for a murder weapon, Mr. Holmes?”

I did not answer, but merely stared at the bottom of the shaft as it came into view beneath the rising car. It was empty, as I suspected it would be. Some first-class passengers came in to use the elevator, but the officer directed them to the main staircase or the aft elevator. “Why is the ship listing?” one of the gentlemen asked.

“We're looking into it,” the officer said. For the first time I was aware that we were tilting forward, and I remembered the liquid in my glass. From far off came the sudden sound of a lively ragtime tune being played by the orchestra.

Franklin Baynes, the spiritualist, was coming down the stairs from the boat deck. “What's going on?” he asked. “The crew is uncovering the lifeboats.”

Captain Smith himself appeared on the stairs in time to hear the question. “It's just a precaution,” he told them. “The ship is taking on water.”

“From that iceberg?” Futrelle asked.

“Yes. Please gather your families and follow directions to your lifeboat stations.”

Margo Collier seemed dazed. “This ship is unsinkable! There are waterproof compartments. I read all the literature.”

“Please follow instructions,” the captain said, a bit more sharply. “Leave that body where it is.”

“I must get to May,” Futrelle said. I hurried after him. There would be time for the rest later.

Within minutes we were on the deck with May. She was clinging to her husband, unwilling to let go. “Aren't there enough lifeboats for everyone?” she asked. The answer was already plain. The
Titanic
was sinking and there was room enough for only half the passengers in the lifeboats. It was 12:25
A.M.
when the order came for women and children to abandon ship. We had scraped against the iceberg only forty-five minutes earlier.

“Jacques!” May Futrelle screamed, and he pushed her to safety in the nearest lifeboat. “Now what?” he asked me, as the half-f lifeboat was being lowered to the dark churning waters. “Do we go back for our murderer?”

“So you spotted it, too?” I asked, already leading the way.

“The missing cane. I only saw Glacet once, but he walked with the aid of a stout walking stick.”

“Exactly,” I agreed. “And I'm told he used it regularly. It wasn't on top of the elevator car and it hadn't slipped down to the bottom of the shaft. That meant he didn't step into that empty shaft accidentally. He had help.” We were on the Grand Staircase now, and spotted our quarry. “Didn't he, Mr. Baynes?”

He turned at the sound of his name, and drew a revolver from under his coat. “Damn you, Holmes! You'll go down with the ship.”

“We all will, Baynes. The women and children are leaving. The rest of us will stay. Glacet recognized you as a confidence man he'd once pursued, a man named Sanbey—a simple anagram for Baynes. Somehow you got him into your cabin tonight to stare at your electric crystal ball. When the bright light had temporarily blinded him, you helped him to the elevator, then sent the car down and pushed him after it. Only you forgot his walking stick. That probably went over the side when you discovered it.”

The great ship listed suddenly, throwing us against the staircase railing. “I'm getting out of here, Holmes! I'll find room in a lifeboat if I have to don women's clothes!” He raised the revolver and fired.

And in that instant, before I could move, Futrelle jumped between us. He took the bullet meant for me and collided with Baynes, sending them both over the railing of the Grand Staircase.

Somehow I made my way into the night air. It was just after one o'clock, and the orchestra had moved to the boat deck to continue playing. The remaining passengers were beginning to panic. Suddenly someone grabbed me and shoved me toward a lifeboat. “Only twelve aboard Starboard Number One, sir. Plenty of room for you.”

“I'll stay,” I said, but it was not to be. I was pushed bodily into the boat as it was being lowered.

It was from there, an hour later, that I saw the last of the great
Titanic
vanish beneath the waves, carrying a victim, a murderer, and a mystery writer with it. Two hours after that, a ship called the
Carpathia
plucked us from the water, amidst floating ice and debris. Margo Collier was among the survivors, but I never saw her again.

A final note by Dr. Watson:
It was not until 1918, at the close of the Great War, that my old friend Holmes entrusted this account to my care. By that time, my literary agent, Arthur Conan Doyle, had embraced spiritualism. He refused to handle a story in which a spiritualist was revealed to be a sham and a murderer. This most dramatic of adventures has remained unpublished.

H
istory doesn't tell us what Conan Doyle thought of Sax Rohmer's series about Dr. Fu-Manchu, an international supercriminal bent on conquering the western world; but the similarities between the pipe-smoking, blunt-spoken Denis Nayland-Smith and his amanuensis, Dr. Petrie, and Holmes and Watson certainly suggest Rohmer was more than familiar with Conan Doyle's adventures. There is a school of thought, too, that maintains the very concept of the underworld mastermind was first introduced in “The Final Problem,” in which Holmes did battle with Professor Moriarty. But just as Rohmer's predecessor built upon Poe's Dupin, this series brought intriguing twists to the fog-shrouded world known to Holmes and Watson. This excerpt is from
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu
(published previously in England as
The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu
), the first in the series, which stretched from 1913 to 1959 (with new material discovered and published in 1970 and 1973, decades after the author's death). It is reprinted by permission of the Sax Rohmer Estate
.

Sir Crichton Davey's study was a small one, and a glance sufficed to show that, as the secretary had said, it offered no hiding place. It was heavily carpeted, and overly full of Burmese and Chinese ornaments and curios, and upon the mantelpiece stood several framed photographs that showed this to be the sanctum of a wealthy bachelor who was no misogynist. A map of the Indian Empire occupied the larger part of one wall. The grate was empty, for the weather was extremely warm, and a green-shaded lamp on the littered writing-table afforded the only light. The air was stale, for both windows were closed and fastened.

Smith immediately pounced upon a large, square envelope that lay beside the blotting pad. Sir Crichton had not even troubled to open it, but my friend did so. It contained a blank sheet of paper!

“Smell!” he directed, handing the letter to me. I raised it to my nostrils. It was scented with some pungent perfume.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It is a rather rare essential oil,” was the reply, “which I have met with before, though never in Europe. I begin to understand, Petrie.”

He tilted the lampshade and made a close examination of the scraps of paper, matches, and other debris that lay in the grate and on the hearth. I took up a copper vase from the mantelpiece, and was examining it curiously when he turned, a strange expression upon his face.

“Put that back, old man,” he said quietly.

Much surprised, I did as he directed.

“Don't touch anything in the room. It may be dangerous.”

Something in the tone of his voice chilled me, and I hastily replaced the vase, and stood by the door of the study, watching him search, methodically, every inch of the room—behind the books, in all the ornaments, in table drawers, in cupboards, on shelves.

“That will do,” he said at last. “There is nothing here and I have no time to search further.”

We returned to the library.

“Inspector Weymouth,” said my friend, “I have a particular reason for asking that Sir Crichton's body be removed from this room at once and the library locked. Let no one be admitted on any pretense whatever until you hear from me.” It spoke volumes for the mysterious credentials borne by my friend that the man from Scotland Yard accepted his orders without demur, and, after a brief chat with Mr. Burboyne, Smith passed briskly downstairs. In the hall, a man who looked like a groom out of livery was waiting.

“Are you Wills?” asked Smith.

“Yes, sir.”

“It was you who heard a cry of some kind at the rear of the house about the time of Sir Crichton's death?”

“Yes, sir. I was locking the garage door, and, happening to look up at the window of Sir Crichton's study, I saw him jump out of his chair. Where he used to sit at his writing, sir, you could see his shadow on the blind. Next minute I heard a call out in the lane.”

“What kind of call?”

The man, whom the uncanny happening clearly had frightened, seemed puzzled for a suitable description.

“A sort of wail, sir,” he said at last. “I never heard anything like it before, and don't want to again.”

“Like this?” inquired Smith, and he uttered a low, wailing cry, impossible to describe. Wills perceptibly shuddered; and, indeed, it was an eerie sound.

“The same, sir, I think,” he said, “but much louder.”

“That will do,” said Smith, and I thought I detected a note of triumph in his voice. “But stay! Take us through to the back of the house.”

The man bowed and led the way, so that shortly we found ourselves in a small, paved courtyard. It was a perfect summer's night, and the deep blue vault above was jeweled with myriads of starry points. How impossible it seemed to reconcile that vast, eternal calm with the hideous passions and fiendish agencies, which that night had loosed a soul upon the infinite.

“Up yonder are the study windows, sir. Over that wall on your left is the back lane from which the cry came, and beyond is Regent's Park.”

“Are the study windows visible from there?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“Who occupies the adjoining house?”

“Major-General Platt-Houston, sir; but the family is out of town.”

“Those iron stairs are a means of communication between the domestic offices and the servants' quarters, I take it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then send someone to make my business known to the Major-General's housekeeper; I want to examine those stairs.”

Singular though my friend's proceedings appeared to me, I had ceased to wonder at anything. Since Nayland Smith's arrival at my rooms, I seemed to have been moving through the fitful phases of a nightmare. My friend's account of how he came by the wound in his arm; the scene on our arrival at the house of Sir Crichton Davey; the secretary's story of the dying man's cry, “The red hand!”; the hidden perils of the study; the wail in the lane—all were fitter incidents of delirium than of sane reality. So, when a white-faced butler made us known to a nervous old lady who proved to be the housekeeper of the next-door residence, I was not surprised at Smith's saying:

“Lounge up and down outside, Petrie. Everyone has cleared off now. It is getting late. Keep your eyes open and be on your guard. I thought I had the start, but he is here before me, and, what is worse, he probably knows by now that I am here, too.”

With which he entered the house and left me out in the square, with leisure to think, to try to understand.

The crowd that usually haunts the scene of a sensational crime had been cleared away, and it had been circulated that Sir Crichton had died from natural causes. The intense heat having driven most of the residents out of town, I practically had the square to myself, and I gave myself up to a brief consideration of the mystery in which I so suddenly had found myself involved.