The Best of Sisters, Part Five (final)
“Oh, I do so love an excuse for getting to the city!” Mrs. Combe exclaimed happily, as we settled ourselves in an empty compartment. “Country life is so dull. Of course, I really can’t complain this time that I don’t get to London often enough. I was just there yesterday, after all.”
“So that’s where you went,” replied Raffles. “You were seeing your bankers, I suppose. Really, Sophy: Twenty pounds is too much. Let me give you back my ten. Ten pounds for Bunny and me both is plenty.” And he reached for his wallet.
“Nonsense,” his sister said reprovingly. “I know you, Arthur: When you have no money you get up to things. -Anyway, I didn’t have to go to the bank to get twenty pounds- only as far as the biscuit-barrel. I put something by from the housekeeping every month, as a matter of fact. Edwin has no idea in the world what things cost, and he gives me whatever I ask. -No; yesterday I went to see a friend of mine. Someone you know, I believe.”
“Who?” Raffles asked, smiling.
“Mr. Holmes,” replied his sister; and the smiles abruptly deserted Raffles’ mouth.
“Mr. Holmes?” A. J. asked warily. “What Mr. Holmes?”
“Mr. Sherlock Holmes, of Baker Street,” said Mrs. Combe. “Didn’t I say before that we were acquainted?”
Though neither of us had ever met the self-styled “consulting detective” to whom she referred, Raffles and I nevertheless both regarded him as an enemy- even, potentially, a nemesis. Though Mr. Holmes appeared to be angling for a knighthood, involving himself professionally only in solving crimes in which the public evinced a considerable interest, or which in some way embarrassed the authorities, it was always our fear that he might one day deign to turn his considerable powers (which I cannot deny he has) to investigating something tawdry- as a jewel-theft, for example. Indeed, it was rumored at the club that the Dowager Marchioness of Melrose had once attempted to engage him to recover a necklace of hers, most regrettably purloined while she was visiting at a country house. Thankfully, Mr. Holmes had declared that business too commonplace to interest him; but Raffles asserted to me privately that it was, in fact, only the fee Lady Melrose had offered that was commonplace- and we couldn’t depend upon that being always the case, of course.
-And as for me, I also despised (on professional grounds) his associate Dr. Watson, whose inferior literary efforts were continually securing an undue proportion of the covers and two-color plates of the very periodicals to which I also contributed.
Before we could inquire any further of Mrs. Combe regarding Mr. Holmes, however, there was a rattle at the door of our compartment and a stout man with absolutely enormous side-whiskers stuck in his head.
Raffles and I glanced at each other with alarm. In front of a stranger, Sophronia Combe would be able to tell us nothing.
Before the man could ask - as the ingratiating smile he flashed upon us suggested that he would - whether he might be so bold as to make himself comfortable in the still-unoccupied place beside Raffles, Mrs. Combe suddenly half-reclined against her seat-back, allowed her eyelashes to flutter dramatically, and, with a gesture straight out of a melodrama, put the back of her hand feebly to her forehead.
“These country doctors know nothing,” she announced then, her voice wan, but carrying. “I simply won’t believe it’s cholera until a good London doctor tells me it is!”
The stout man retreated as though he’d been shot backward out of a cannon; while, when he was safely gone, Mrs. Combe and Raffles laughed merrily together until the tears ran down their faces. (As for me, I was stunned to silence by such a performance on the part of an English vicar’s wife.)
“Oh, isn’t life jolly fun?” Mrs. Combe cried. “I think it is. -But back to what I was saying, Darlings: I didn’t tell you? Well, about a year ago, I had occasion to lend Mr. Holmes a bit of a hand in a case he was trying to solve. You may have read something about it: The man in the north, who went about harpooning people.”
Said Raffles, becoming cagey again, “I- may heard about the case.”
“Oh, good,” said Sophronia. “I won’t have the trouble of repeating all the trying little details of the story, then. Well, amongst the victims in the case was a parson, if you’ll remember, who was handled quite roughly. An older man, not really a friend of Edwin’s; but still, one does want to help in such cases. After all, if people are allowed to wander about the countryside attacking vicars, who’s to say it might not come one day to me finding my husband actually harpooned to the wall of his study?”
“Dreadful,” Raffles rather weakly agreed.
“And then afterward,” his sister continued, “when Mr. Holmes had closed the case, the two of us discovered that we had a common interest in codes and ciphers and mathematical puzzles and so forth - you know the sort of thing I like, Arthur - and we’ve kept up a little correspondence ever since. Well, it came to me all at once when we were talking the other night that, though you didn’t know who ‘Moriarty’ was, Mr. Holmes certainly would. I believe he knows every criminal in Britain. He keeps a sort of register of them.”
I wondered grimly what he had filed there under the letter, “R”.
Raffles, meanwhile, could not meet his sister’s eyes, I noticed.
After studying him in silence for some time, Mrs. Combe said, “You have so many talents and abilities, Arthur. I wonder why you neglect the best of them in favor of- less worthy pursuits.”
Making an effort to appear not to understand her, Raffles said, “You’re right, Sophy. I can’t do nothing but play cricket forever. Give me another year or two and I promise I’ll settle down to some other work.”
“I could help you,” Mrs. Combe offered. “You needn’t wait a year. I could help you today, if you’d let me.”
“No, no. My pride wouldn’t stand it,” A. J. cried, trying to say it gaily. “Don’t worry about me. I know what I must do, and I’ll do it. -And soon, too. Be patient with me just a little longer, Sophy.”
We were all briefly silent. I more than half-wished that my friend would take his sister’s offer. It seemed to me that if we continued in our present line of work, it soon wouldn’t be only Mr. Holmes of Baker Street that we had to fear. Time itself was our enemy. With every passing year the leaps that kept us ahead of the authorities were bound to become less nimble.
After an uncomfortable moment, Raffles said in something more like his usual voice, “Tell me about this Mr. Moriarty. What does he want with another man’s wallet?”
“Ah, now that’s a mystery even to Mr. Holmes,” said Sophronia, apparently relinquishing her effort to reform her brother. “Mr. Moriarty- Professor Moriarty, Mr. Holmes calls him. . .”
Put in Raffles, ruefully, “Yes, he’s certainly a professional.”
“He’s a very bad man, apparently,” Mrs. Combe continued. “He doesn’t dirty his own hands with crime, I was informed; but extorts vast sums from other criminals of every degree and class. He threatens them with nothing less than their utter destruction if they refuse to let him share in what they take.”
“But also promises them assistance against the forces of the law if they’re arrested,” Raffles soberly finished for her. “Yes, I know.”
“You know this Moriarty?” I exclaimed. “But, you said . . !”
“This is the first I’ve heard his name,” Raffles explained impatiently. “Prior to this, I merely knew that there was some puppet-master pulling a great many strings around London.” Then, after a glance at his sister’s face, he added quickly, “Go on, Sophy.”
“As I was saying,” she said, eyeing her brother disapprovingly, “even Mr. Holmes doesn’t know what the Professor wants with an albino’s wallet. Our best guess is that Moriarty believes that the results of poor Mr. Griffin’s researches, spelled out in his papers, might have some value in the market-place.”
“He wants to sell them?” Raffles asked, his brow furrowing.
“We suppose so,” Mrs. Combe said. “Because we know that only money, or money’s worth, interests Professor Moriarty.”
“Who would he sell them to?” I wondered. “They’re unintelligible.”
Raffles’ sister patted my hand indulgently. She had not found them unintelligible. “A foreign government, perhaps,” she suggested. “-The Professor must not obtain those papers, Arthur.”
“A foreign government?” I demanded hotly. “I should dashed well think not!”
Mrs. Combe seemed amused by my patriotic fervor.
“Don’t worry,” she said comfortingly. “Mr. Holmes and I will take care of everything. First, we’ll go to Mr. Griffin’s hotel and return his wallet to him, and then I’ll tell you the whole plan.”
As our train pulled into London, Mrs. Combe insisted upon replacing in the albino’s wallet the money that had been in it when - as she delicately phrased it - Raffles and I had “found” it.
“Poor fellow,” she said absently. “Only three pounds ten! Mr. Griffin’s certainly not a rich man, is he? -Why, gracious me, Arthur! Look over there! Isn’t that Lord Rosebery?”
Raffles and I turned to the window at once, of course.
But, as we did so, Mrs. Combe’s face fell. “Oh, no. . . It’s not him at all,” she admitted sadly. “Too bad! I’d love to have gone home and told Edwin I’d seen the prime minister at Victoria Station! -Here’s the wallet, Dear. Just put it in your back pocket. That’s the safest way to carry it, Mr. Holmes says.”
But though he didn’t openly disagree with this advice, I saw Raffles tuck the wallet into the inside breast-pocket of his coat instead- as soon as his sister’s back was to him.
As we made our way through the usual crush of travelers on the platform, Raffles asked worriedly, “Are you certain this is a good idea, Sophy? You remember that Mr. Griffin is being watched, don’t you? What’s to stop someone from taking the wallet from him as soon as he has it back?”
“Oh, he’s not being watched anymore,” Sophronia assured him. “-Or he won’t be by the time we get there, anyway.”
I knew from the way Raffles’ lips tightened that my friend intended to make very sure, before we set foot in the hotel, that his sister (and Mr. Holmes) were right about that.
Outside the establishment where Mr. Griffin was residing, there was no sign that I could see of anyone watching the place; and even Raffles, after circling the block twice, seemed satisfied.
“Let’s get this over with, then,” he then said, rather morosely. It was clear to me that A. J. was dreading (as was I) facing a man he had first robbed, and then spoken to under false pretenses, for the purpose of returning a wallet he was obliged for his sister’s sake to assert that he had “found” on the floor of a gallery in the Royal Academy.
As he spoke, Raffles put his hand into the breast of his coat- and his face paled. Feverishly, he felt in his other pockets, too. The only wallet he could produce from any of them was his own.
“My gods!” he gasped. “It’s gone!”
“Search again!” I cried. “Did you drop it on the train? Oh, what are we to do?”
Apparently unconcerned, Sophronia Combe inquired, “Are you looking for Mr. Griffin’s wallet, Arthur? Of course it’s gone. I knew it would be.”
Exclaimed Raffles and I together, “You knew it would be?”
“Oh, yes. Your pocket was picked. That was part of the plan,” she replied.
“Plan?”
“Yes. Remember? I said I would tell you all about it.”
As Raffles and I stood gaping at her, the lady announced firmly, “What Professor Moriarty means to have, he gets. Therefore, Mr. Holmes and I were agreed that it was essential for us to get that wallet out of your possession and into Moriarty’s before the professor advised his crew to secure it by any means available. That man we saw in the church-yard on Sunday was no choir-boy, you know. Last year, on two occasions, he was seen walking late with men whose bodies were recovered from the Thames shortly after. Nothing could be proved; but. . . ”
“How did Moriarty know we were coming back to London, though?” I interrupted her, confused. “Didn’t you say when we drove out of town that the man with the brown bowler was asleep at the inn?”
“Well, you could hardly have imagined that he’d sleep all day,” Mrs. Combe chided. “And nowadays there’s such a thing as a telephone. I imagine that as soon as the fellow woke up and found us gone, he employed the telephone at the inn to notify the professor to have men ready to meet our train at Victoria Station.”
In a lowered voice, she confided, “They did their job beautifully, by the way. The whole operation was a pleasure to watch. The first man tried your back pocket, Arthur, where you must have tucked Mr. Griffin’s wallet when you first took it-”
(She had known all along that we stole it, in other words.)
“-and when he didn’t find it there, he signaled with admirable subtlety to a second fellow, who secured it a moment later from your breast.”
“You saw him do it?” Raffles asked wonderingly. “I never felt a thing.”
“Of course you didn’t,” laughed his sister. “One never does, when a professional performs the work. -Let this be a lesson to you, by the way,” she admonished. “Don’t get involved in things for which you have not the requisite training. -Come on, now: Let’s go in,” she then urged, starting through the door of the albino’s hotel.
Raffles and I reached together to draw her gently back.
“Go in? What for?” I asked doubtfully. “To tell Mr. Griffin that his wallet and his papers are now in the hands of- of- Good God!” I cried out in sudden alarm. “I mean, Mercury! The albino’s papers! Mr. Holmes said Moriarty must not- ”
“Calm yourself, Mr. Manders,” Mrs. Combe soothed; “Mr. Griffin’s papers are right here.” And she produced them - minus the wallet that had formerly contained them, of course - from within her pocket-book. “The papers now in the wallet, that will eventually make their way into Professor Moriarty’s hands, were of my own devising,” she said. “If he should be so foolish as to make an attempt to understand what’s written in them, they’ll lead him around in mathematical circles until his brain aches.”
I saw Raffles out of the corner of my eye, smiling wryly at his sister. “I do believe you’re enjoying yourself, Sophy,” he said. “Have you ever considered a career as a criminal mastermind?”
“Oh, dear, no,” his sister replied, taking his arm and smiling in return. “-Or, not until the children are grown, anyway.”
At the hotel’s writing-table, Mrs. Combe penned a short note to the hapless Mr. Griffin, and enclosed it in an envelope together with the albino’s papers and the three pounds ten Raffles and I owed him for our festive dinner of the week before. This little packet she presented at the front desk, along with half-a-crown to the clerk for his trouble in taking it up immediately.
“We’ll go now,” she said, as soon as the desk-clerk had hurried away. “The two of you would be embarrassed, I suppose, if poor Mr. Griffin were to come down on purpose to thank you for your kindness. -And indeed you should be embarrassed! I hope you’ll never do such a thing again, Arthur.”
“I will not,” Raffles solemnly assured her. “So- You needn’t go back home immediately, I hope, Sophy. What do you want to do now?”
“Now, I want tea,” answered his sister decidedly. “Where do you recommend? Pick someplace nice.”
“Liberty, then,” A. J. told her; and I nodded assent.
To my surprise, Mrs. Combe seemed disappointed at the suggestion. “Oh, no: Not Liberty,” she sighed. “Everyone goes to Liberty. I meant someplace exciting. Someplace a little- louche.”
“Louche?” her brother repeated.
“Just a little,” she insisted. “You have no idea how dull it is to be a parson’s wife, Arthur darling. Year in and year out, always setting a good example. . . I daren’t so much as take a second piece of cake at tea most days- if the cake is even worth taking a second piece of, which it generally isn’t. I’m in London now, where no one knows me; and I want to do something new and stimulating. -I know! Take me to meet one of your friends!”
“My friends aren’t louche,” Raffles said severely. “They’re all perfectly respectable men.”
“Of course they are,” Mrs. Combe agreed at once. “Take me to meet some of them.”
I cleared my throat meaningly, intent on reminding her that I was Raffles’ friend, but Mrs. Combe ignored the hint. I had to suppose from this that I was not louche enough for her.
We walked along in silence for a moment. We happened, just then, to be passing the grand hotel in which Mr. Northern Industrialist was lodged, and I detected a certain well-known glint in Raffles’ gaze as he looked at it. Unless Mr. Industrialist had already gone home to Birmingham, I suspected we’d very soon be paying a visit- not to him personally, but to his room.
Returning his attention to his sister, Raffles said, “We’ll have tea at Liberty, then, just as I said, and you’ll meet Oscar. He’s sure to be there. He never takes tea anywhere else.”
“And is this ‘Oscar’ a dubious character?” Mrs. Combe asked, with an eagerness that shocked me.
“Completely,” Raffles assured her. “A theatrical man. You know the type.”
“Indeed I do!”
“And Irish, too. All the Irish are dubious by their natures. They’re either lovers or fighters to a man.”
“And which is this Oscar?”
“Most assuredly a lover,” A. J. promised, catching my eye and winking. “And I’m informed - by him, in fact - that he has exquisite taste, too. After we have a pot of tea, we’ll go shopping with him, and he’ll advise you on what to buy.”
“Oh, how lovely,” exclaimed Mrs. Combe. “Your other friend, that nice Mr. Tuke, was so good with colors!”
“Harry? Oh, yes. He’s a wonder with colors. Anyone will tell you that.”
Feeling - not jealous, of course - but perhaps a little resentful, I glanced at Raffles. He’d certainly never mentioned to me that he’d presented Henry Scott Tuke (a man I’d long wished to know myself) to his sister.
“Will this Oscar advise me on colors?” Mrs. Combe asked brightly.
Replied Raffles, frowning, “Well, if he does, he’ll likely advise you to buy nothing but mauve. -On the other hand, Mr. Wilde’s conversation is wonderful.”
“I like a man who can talk!”
“I know you do. -And that’s not even the best thing about him,” Raffles announced. “The best thing about him is that, doubtful though his character may be, almost no one knows it. He passes in the world generally for an upstanding citizen.”
I saw Mrs. Combe’s glance sharpen.
“Arthur,” she demanded ominously. “You’re not trying to put something over on me, are you?”
Cried he, “Would I do that? No, no. I’m merely implying that should you be so unlucky as to be seen by any of your village neighbors, come to the city for a day, they’ll never know how much they might have gossiped at home about their vicar’s wife’s promiscuous tea-taking habits.”
“That’s an advantage,” agreed his sister happily. “To Liberty, then. - But first, Darlings, we’re going to step in at the first shop we see to buy a couple of proper hats for the two of you!”
“So be it!” replied Raffles cheerfully; while I, who had felt absolutely naked from the moment we left the mover’s greasy caps in their van, cried with relief, “Thank Mercury!”
Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four