SHERLOCK HOLMES IN NEW YORK (8 page)

"Describe what occurred, please."

"Three blocks from here, maybe four—we were
coming up Twentieth Street—a carriage drew up be
side us and stopped. A man was on top, driving a
horse. It was a closed carriage and all the shades were
down. A man leaped out of the inside . . ." She fal
tered in her speech.

"Yes? Go on, please!"

"He seized and kicked me!"

I was shocked.

"Good heavens! The brute!" said I.

"Watson, please! Seized and kicked you, Frau Reichenbach?"

The governess nodded vigorously.

"First by the hair, like this!" She tugged mightily at
the knot of it on top of her head, in demonstration.
"And then with the foot, like this!" She lashed out
with the pointed, polished toe of her shoe, and added
a comment which momentarily startled me: "In the
chin!"

It seemed a bizarre method of attack, but a sec
ond's thought gave me the probable solution.

"I expect she means the shin, Holmes. That would be—"

"
Do
you think so, Watson? Thank you so very
much."

The tone in which he said this, though of an al
most exaggerated politeness, left me in no doubt that,
as usual, he preferred to conduct his interrogation
without interpolations, however helpful.

Holmes turned back to the governess.

"What happened then?"

"He threw me into the gutter—
Gott im Himmel
,
was he strong!—then laid his hands on the boy and
dragged him into the carriage! Then away they raced
before it could be said
Donner und Blitzen!
"

"Did you mark which way they went? Do you re
call any particular features of the carriage?"

"
Nein
. I was in my head confused and also in the
gutter lying. When I stood and looked, there was noth
ing."

"And then?"

"I hurried here, in spite of my bruises and the pain
in my leg, the dreadful news to bring to Fr
ä
ulein Adler."

One or two more questions established that the gov
erness had no more to offer, and she was dismissed.

Holmes turned to Irene Adler.

"When you learned of this, did you inform the po
lice?" said he.

"I was on the point of doing so, when—"

She made as if to rise, and I frowned at her. With the strain she had been undergoing, the less activity
the better.

"When what?" asked Holmes.

"This telegram was delivered to me."

"
What
telegram?" Holmes inquired in a near-shout.

Miss Adler pushed herself up from the sofa and
walked to the writing-desk.

"I am about to show it to you, Sherlock. Try not
to be so impatient."

"I ask your pardon," said Holmes. "When a prob
lem absorbs me, I tend to neglect the formalities."

A hint of dryness revealed itself in Irene Adler's
voice as she said, "The problem absorbs me, too."

She removed a buff-colored sheet of paper from the
desk and handed it to him.
Holmes read the telegram aloud in a rapid mutter:
"'Do nothing, stop. Tell no one, stop. Further instruc
tions will be forthcoming, stop. Disobey these orders
and you face the direct consequences—'"

"Stop!" cried Irene Adler, with ghastly apposite
ness.

She wavered where she stood, and I moved quickly
to her side, supporting her with a hand under one el
bow and another on her back.

"Here, now!" I said. "Sit back down. Have some
more brandy."

Walking unsteadily, she allowed me to guide her to
the sofa and sank back on to its cushioned softness.
"I'm sorry," said she. "I thought I was stronger."
I added a small amount of brandy to her glass.
Her face, normally alert and vivacious, with a qual
ity that could convey an impression of supreme vitality
to the last row of a theater, now bore a pinched, drawn look. She gave a deep sigh, and spoke in a low, al
most resigned tone.

"There it is, Sherlock. I have been waiting, waiting,
waiting
for those 'further instructions' since four
o'clock this afternoon!" She glanced at the clock on
the mantelshelf. "And it is now nearly nine-thirty!
What has happened to my son?
"

The peal of the front-door bell came as if in answer to her cry. She gave a gasp of fear and half rose from
the sofa.

"It's the message!" she cried.

I sprang to the window, flung aside the curtain,
and stepped on to the balcony. I saw below me a car
riage and its driver, and, almost directly beneath my
feet, a foreshortened form on the steps of the house.
Running back into the drawing-room, I flung a quick report over my shoulder as I headed for the archway
leading to the stairs.

"Closed carriage, Holmes—one horse—man at the
reins—another at the door!"

A shouted "Wait!" from Holmes brought me to a
momentary halt. He dashed past me and down the
stairs. I paused at the top landing, and was aware that
Irene Adler had come up behind me.

I could see Heller in the doorway, just turning to
look at the fast-approaching Sherlock Holmes. The
butler was holding in his hand an envelope appar
ently just received from the man who had rung the
doorbell. Holmes brushed past him, and the sound of
his shoes clattering on the front steps mingled with the
rumble of a departing carriage and the swift tap of
shod hooves on the cobbles.

In a moment he re-entered the hallway, his face dark with anger. Evidently, like Frau Reichenbach,
he had been unable to gain any useful information
from his brief view of the carriage. His gaze fell upon
Heller, and, with an uncharacteristic show of temper,
he vented his ire upon the unfortunate man.

"What are you standing there for? What is it? De
liver the letter to your mistress at once!"

"But, sir," the butler said in an injured tone, "it's
not addressed to Miss Adler."

"Not? Not addressed to her? To whom is it ad
dressed, then?"

Heller held out the envelope.

"To you, sir."

"What? What? Here, hand it over, then!"

Holmes ripped it open savagely and snatched out
a sheet of heavy notepaper. As he read it, he stiff
ened, and the febrile irritation that had animated his
actions and speech for the last few moments seemed
to fall away from him. When he looked up to the head
of the stairs where Irene Adler and I stood, his face
was grave.

After a moment, he spoke, and there was a world
of weariness in his voice.

"I had better read this to you." He glanced down
at the note again. "'The life of Scott Adler depends
upon one thing alone, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, your re
fusal to cooperate with the police. You will refuse, and you will give no reason for your refusal or . . .
the boy . . . will die.'"

Holmes had managed to finished reading the note aloud only with difficulty, and seemed to dread look
ing once more at Irene Adler.

By the time he raised his eyes, he did not have to be concerned about meeting her gaze: upon hearing the contents of the letter, she had turned perfectly
white, and then fainted in my arms.

"Holmes!" I bellowed; and he rushed to help me
support her.

Together we carried her to the sofa and set her
down in as comfortable a position as possible. Though
she was pale, and her pulse was both light and rapid,
she seemed to be in no real trouble, and in fact might
take some benefit from her short period of uncon
sciousness. My greatest fear, in fact, was that, once
recovered, her concern and agitation—bound to be
increased by the contents of the letter—would pre
vent her from sleeping at all, thus putting a dangerous
strain on her nervous system.

I took one of my cards from my note-case, scrib
bled on it the ingredients of a mild sleeping-draught,
and handed it to Heller.

"Here, take this round to the nearest chemist's,
and—"

"A chemist, sir? Do you mean a scientist? I
don't—"

"A pharmacy, man! A drugstore," said Holmes
impatiently.

"Oh, yes, sir. There's one on Fourth Avenue."

"Whatever you call the place, give the man there
this card. I doubt you'll need a prescription; he's prob
ably got the powders made up under some trade name
I'm not familiar with. Be off with you, now!"

Though Irene Adler was stirring fretfully by the time Heller returned, a packet of the powders dissolved in water allowed her to sink into a calm drowsi
ness which, by the time we left, had not yet deepened
into sleep.

"If she's still awake in an hour's time," said I as
we took our leave of Heller on the front steps, "see
that she takes another packet of those powders."

The butler gave a slight bow.

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Good night, gentlemen,"
he said.

He closed the door, and Holmes and I made our
way down the steps to the street that fronted on the
small park.

"That ought to take care of matters until morning,
Holmes," said I. "Shall we look for a cab? We ought
to be able to find one on the next street over, I should
say."

"I should prefer to walk," said Sherlock Holmes in
a colorless tone.

I looked up and saw from a sign at a street corner
that we were at Twenty-first Street. I subtracted that
number from forty-four, the number of the street that
our hotel was in, and quickly enough saw that we had
some twenty-three streets to traverse in a northward
direction, plus one or more avenues to the west. I had
no notion, however, how far apart the streets were, so
was unable to estimate what sort of distance Holmes'
projected walk involved. It was a mild night, though,
and, after the stuffiness of the closed house and the
atmosphere of fear and depression that pervaded it,
I was glad of the fresh air and exercise.

"Whatever you say," said I cheerfully.

As we walked along, eventually turning to the north
on an avenue which, curiously enough, bore the name
of one Madison rather than a number, I looked about
me with interest. The area, with its shops and blocks
of flats and offices, was not unlike certain parts of
London, say the eastern end of Oxford Street, yet the
shapes of the buildings and their uniform modernity
never failed to make it clear that we were in a foreign
land.

I had hoped that the walk might enliven Holmes'
wits and encourage him to discuss with me his notions of the problems we faced, but he seemed sunk in mo
rose introspection, and strode heavily along with
bowed head, taking no notice of his surroundings. At
length, when the mounting value of the street numbers
told me we were not far from the Algonquin Hotel, I
ventured to speak.

"Can you make head or tail of it at all, Holmes?
I
can't."

In the same dead voice with which he had last
spoken, Sherlock Holmes answered, "I am being manipulated."

"Eh? What's that? Manipulated? How d'you
mean?"

"The chink in my armor, Watson. That weakness,
unknown to me, which Moriarty
must
have had in
mind in making his threat. It's been discovered."

This sort of morbid vaporing was quite unlike
Holmes, and I did not like the sound of it.

As heartily as I could, I said, "I'm sure I haven't
the slightest notion of what you're talking about."