In a lower voice, as if fearing that his friends would hear his admission of fright, he added, "He was a bad man, Mrs. W. I couldn"t see much of his face, but there was somethin" about him, about the way he moved, like he"d as soon hit you as not ... . I seen men like that afore. The way he handled her, like as if she was a dead cat, not a woman at all. And I durstn"t laugh. I don"t know what he wanted with Mrs. Wolff, but for a minute I was afraid ... ."
He shook his head, not saying what he was afraid he would see.
"I"m glad she was all right. That all he wanted was a look at her." Then, "You won"t tell Mrs. Wolff it was me as pinched "er box? It"s a crackerjack box."
"It is indeed, Ginger," I said. "And you know how badly she needs the money she"ll make selling it. It will make her very happy to have it returned, for she put many hours" work into it, and it may make a difference between her having a little coal to burn at night, or going cold. I"ll tell her I found it by the dustbins behind the Fish and Ring."
"Narh," protested Ginger indignantly. "Wot"d you be doin" by the Fish an" Ring, Mrs. W.? Tell her I found it, an" gave it to you."
Like Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Ginger had a feeling for the likeliness of a story.
So troubled was I by this bizarre tale that when the cab came for me, I went, not to Kensington, but to Baker Street. As I gazed at the raveled blobs of yellow gaslights through the thickening fog I could not say what it was about Ginger"s tale that frightened me, for no harm to anyone had actually been done, but frighten me it did. Martha must have seen it in my face when she opened the door for me-either that, or simply the fact that I seldom came calling unannounced by letter at that hour-because she asked at once, "What is it?"
I said, "Is Mr. Holmes in?"
She shook her head, and repeated, "What"s happened, dear? Your hands are frozen," and led me back to the kitchen for some tea. "Mr. Holmes is out," she continued, as she sat me down in the kitchen by the stove. My hands were indeed frozen, and I had begun to cough. "He"s been coming and going at odder and odder hours, slipping out through the kitchen as often as not. He startled that pea-brained Alice nearly out of her shoes the other night, creeping in dressed as the vilest old Chinese scoundrel. I told him he was lucky I hadn"t set a dog on him."
But she smiled as she said it. In his tales John generally underrated Martha"s intelligence, even as he was completely oblivious to her beauty, and to the fact that she was barely a year older than myself. I don"t think he ever did realize that the reason Mr. Holmes never looked at other women was because Holmes and Martha had been lovers for years.
"So you have no idea when he"ll be back?"
"No. He didn"t come in last night ... ." Her face clouded with the worry that she was able, most of the time, to push aside. "I suspect someone has been watching the house-watching his movements. So there is no telling." She brought the honey pot to the table to spoon some into my tea, and as she did so I moved my bag aside. It tilted over, the shift in its position causing the little Columbine doll to poke her head out over the rim. Martha startled, nearly spilling the tea, and asked, "Where had you that?"
"Columbine?" I took her out of the bag and set her against the sugar bowl, then looked up into Martha"s face. "What is it?"
She signed me to remain where I was and left the kitchen; I heard her footsteps on the seventeen steps up to the floor above. In a few moments she was back, carrying Columbine"s twin sister. Round-faced, enigmatically smiling, silk-floss hair braided in an elaborate chignon of the sort that had been popular about ten years ago ...
"One of Mr. Holmes"s clients brought this here this afternoon," she said. "Her mother made it, her mother who disappeared six years ago ... ."
"Mrs. Thorne? John told me." I set the two dolls side by side on the table. The older twin"s clothes were brighter, the laces new and the beads and b.u.t.tons more expensive, but the same hand had beyond any shadow of doubt wrought both. We looked at each other, baffled and shaken. It was Martha who said, "He"s looking for her."
"Her husband?" Into my mind sprang the image of a big bespectacled man "with a beard like a holly bush," bending over a helpless woman in an alley, holding a candle to her face.
He was a bad man, Ginger had said. Like he"d as soon hit you as not. I was afraid ... .
Martha jerked the bell to summon Billy from his room in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and went to get her cloak.
We did not have as complete a case as Mr. Holmes might have required, to leap into a cab and take action-but both of us knew that something unwholesome and dangerous was going on.
As the cab rattled through the pitch-dark streets in choking fog, I related to Martha what Ginger had told me. "It sounds as if Mr. Thorne has been roving the streets in disguise for weeks, approaching any woman selling dolls-and goodness knows there are many-to get a close look at her. Though how he"d know his wife was selling dolls about the East End, and why she would be doing such a thing ... Unless she really is insane, as he claims."
"Mr. Holmes guessed she was still in London," said Martha. "How, I do not know. It may be Thorne who has been following him, or trying to. His efforts to come and go in secret began soon after Mr. Thorne first came with Miss Thorne to "help with the case.""
"Or it could be Thorne"s confederate," I said. And I told her about the hook-nosed market woman, who had watched me so closely when I spoke to Queenie at Covent Garden that afternoon. "If she saw me speaking with Queenie-and Mr. Thorne could easily have seen me here, that day I came to visit-his confederate will have told him of it."
The jarvey shook his head over leaving us in Marigold Walk, which is one of those dreary, narrow alleys leading away from the docks, where the houses lean against one another like the wounded of some endless war and the shadows seem to eat the feeble glim of the gaslights. But we could not be sure when Queenie would return. A public house on the corner spilled ochre blotches of glare on the wet pavement, and though Martha and I agreed that, at last resort, we would take refuge there, we both resolved to wait in the dark doorway of Queenie"s dirty lodging for a time. Not even the usual complement of drunken sailors, ragpickers, coal heavers, and costers roved the chilly streets; only one old woman staggered along the opposite pavement, singing of Anne Boleyn"s ghost in a thin, scratchy wail. It was past eleven, and only the occasional wet clop of hooves from the Dock Road, and the dim musical clank of rigging blocks in the docks themselves, carried to us through the murk.
I coughed, and drew my cloak more tightly about me. John would never let me hear the end of it, if I came down sick again from this. "Mrs. Thorne has been missing for six years now," I said after a time. "Why would her husband only begin to seek her now?"
"He made inquiries for her in Europe before this," returned Martha quietly. "But her daughter was fifteen when Julietta Thorne fled ... ."
I shivered, remembering my one fleet glimpse of Lionel Thorne"s harsh face. I remembered, too, the fear in Ginger"s eyes when he spoke of the bearded man bending over the unconscious woman in the alley. "Do you think she is in fact insane, as he says?"
"When a man says a woman is insane," said Martha, her soft alto voice dry, "what he often means is that she will not do as he bids. It is fatally easy for a husband to have a wife declared insane on no other word than his own, particularly if she has any other eccentricity of manner, which, as you say, Queenie does. Then any provisions her father made for her control of her property would be voided, and her husband would become conservator. I may be wrong, and Julietta Thorne may in fact be mad as a hatter, but living apart from her husband may be the only way she could think of to preserve her liberty until her daughter comes of age. Hark!"
For we both heard now the m.u.f.fled leaden click of a woman"s step on the pavement. Peering hard through the gloom I saw nothing, save the blurry smear of the public-house lights. Then a shadow pa.s.sed them, stooped and small, hurrying.
I sprang down the steps from the sheltering doorway, quickened my stride to meet her. I coughed again, and the little figure stopped, but I could see now that it was Queenie. I called out, "Julietta," and she turned her head sharply, startled, and started to flee- And before her, out of the fog, loomed suddenly the dark shape that I knew was Lionel Thorne.
"Julietta, run!" I shouted, but Thorne was too quick for her. He reached her in a stride, caught her arm, spilling her basket of dolls on the pavement, and in the gaslight from the pub I saw the flash of steel in his hand. I was running, too, by this time and threw myself on the man, shoving against him with all my strength.
He staggered, stumbled off the curb. He lost his grip on the woman and grabbed me instead. I saw the flash of his knife and dodged, felt the steel tangle in my cloak and grate on my corset stays. Then the next second Martha was on him, dragging at his knife hand, and an instant after that the old woman across the street, suddenly six feet tall and shedding shawl, bonnet, and ident.i.ty in a welter of old rags, landed Mr. Thorne such a blow on the chin with doubled-up fist that Mr. Thorne"s feet left the pavement, and only connected with it again after the back of his head did. I heard Mr. Holmes"s unmistakable light voice cry, "Martha!"
"I"m all right ... ."
Then Holmes was on his knees beside me on the pavement-I had no recollection of falling, but I was sitting on the wet flagstones trying to get my breath, with Thorne"s knife beside me, glittering evilly in the greasy light. "My dear Mrs. Watson, are you all right?"
I managed to nod-I actually felt quite dizzy-and he felt my hands and my face.
"Is she all right?" asked Queenie"s voice-Mrs. Thorne"s voice-and I blinked at Holmes, with the long gray wig of the evil Covent Garden market woman hanging in unraveled mare"s tails about his face and the breath rolling in steam from his lips. Around us men were shouting as they came out of the pub: "Look at this "ere pigsticker, then!"
"By G.o.d, it"s Jolly Jack at "is tricks again, I bet!"
"You all right, mum?" (This to Holmes) "This lady all right?"
"This man tried to stab me," I said, keeping my voice steady with an effort, and pointing to Mr. Thorne, still unconscious in the muck of the road. I unfurled the side of my cloak to show the horrible rent. "Me, and this lady ..."
But Julietta Thorne was gone.
It wasn"t until after the Court of a.s.sizes had remanded her husband to custody-upon my testimony and that of Tzivia Wolff, Gordon "Ginger" Robinson, and two or three other peripatetic hawkers of dolls-that Julietta Thorne came to the Settlement House, and asked me to take her to Baker Street to meet Mr. Holmes.
"Of course I was mad," she said, quite calmly, once we were seated in Mr. Holmes"s cozy sitting room: myself, Mr. Holmes, John (who had been spending the evening with his friend while I was at the Settlement House), and Martha. "What other word would you use of a girl who insisted upon marrying a man whom everyone-including her dying father-recognized as a fortune hunter, selfish, calculating, brutal, and cold? My father begged me to wait, did everything in his power to get me to swear on the Testament that I would not marry for five years-for he knew my impulsiveness well, and knew that in a very few years my obsession would pa.s.s and I would no more consider wedding Lionel Thorne that I would consider throwing myself off London Bridge. But I would not wait."
She shook her head. She did not look so very unlike Mrs. Wolff, being roughly the same height, and like her a brunette. Not until I attended the Court of a.s.sizes did I realize that all the women whom Lionel Thorne had accosted and drugged bore at least that superficial resemblance to one another. Six years of hardship and poverty had taken their toll on Julietta Thorne, as they take it upon all women who must struggle to make their living. But I could see that she had once been quite a handsome girl.
"Within a few years I knew better," she continued. "My dear father, thank G.o.d, if he could not dissuade me, at least tied up the money and the property so that Lionel could not touch it, this being some years before pa.s.sage of the Married Womens Property Act. This-and what he called my "ungenerosity" to his little whims and wants concerning railroad shares and slum property-was what quickly brought out the beast in my husband. It was my money, to invest and to manage and to save as I pleased. Rather than seek out a profession of his own-he had been a member of the Life Guards when we wed, but sold his commission almost at once-he plotted ceaselessly how to gain the use of my property, after having wasted his own in quite foolish speculations that always failed, he said, through someone else"s fault and malice.
"Within a few years of the marriage I better knew the man I had wed. And as the years went by, my disgust and regret turned first to suspicion, then to fear. I remained with him to protect our daughter as long as I could, but when I found in his desk correspondence with various doctors concerning an effort to have me declared mad-and Lionel made conservator of the property-I knew I must flee."
"I confess that I have not had much time to observe you, Madam," said John diffidently, from where he sat beside me on the settee. "Yet what little experience I have had with the mad inclines me to question whether such a judgment could be implemented."
"You see me now, Doctor," smiled Mrs. Thorne. "Had you seen me in the years immediately following my dear father"s death, when I went from Spiritualist to Spiritualist seeking contact with him, seeking absolution and advice-when I spent hours and days locked in my room, making doll after doll as a way of removing my mind from the ruin I had wrought of my life-you might have said otherwise. Even in this country it is easy enough for a husband to have his wife declared a lunatic, particularly if she happens to believe-as I do-that the dead continue to take an active interest in those they loved in life."
"And so you fled," said Holmes. There was no trace left of the evil-looking gray-haired market woman who had stared at me so sharply in Covent Garden-no wonder he had stared, seeing me, of all people, speaking to the woman he had gone to observe as a possible candidate for the missing Mrs. Thorne. Had he been home that day when Miss Viola Thorne brought to his rooms the doll her mother had made, it would have been he and not I who first made the connections between Julietta Thorne and Queenie the Dollmaker.
But perhaps, not having heard some of the tales going around the Settlement House about the Friendly Gentleman, he would have delayed in seeking her out.
Mrs. Thorne nodded. "Among the Spiritualists I had met people who would help me, though they had no idea who I was. And after I came to dwell in Whitechapel I came to know a few seafaring men willing to carry letters abroad, to post them from Europe to make it seem that I had left the country. I could not have kept an eye on the estates through the newspapers, had I actually gone abroad. And it was absolutely necessary to let the family man of business-and my dear child-know that I was not dead. How clever it was of you to trace me, Mr. Holmes," she added, shaking a finger at the detective. "Lionel was a sly one, and he never managed that."
"Your husband-and the foreign police he contacted over the years-paid far too much attention to the country of origin of the stamps, and far too little to that of the paper," replied Holmes with a smile. "Paper and ink were definitely of British manufacture. Moreover, they were always cheap, nothing that a woman living the peripatetic life of the usual fashionable Continental traveler-which your husband supposed you to be-would use. Further, such a woman would not be sending letters from such ports as Ma.r.s.eilles and Hamburg. So from the first my attention was drawn to the East End. Though it was some weeks before your daughter could return to Norfolk to find one of your dolls to show me-as I had asked her to do from the first-she had mentioned at the start of my investigation that you made them. That-and your refusal to have money sent to you, by which you could be traced-immediately suggested to me a means by which a woman might make at least a bare living in hiding."
"And yet you told my husband nothing of this?"
Holmes was silent for a moment, gazing into the fire. Mrs. Thorne had only come to the Settlement House as the first shadows of evening had begun to fall, so John and Mr. Holmes had been just finishing their dinner together-preparatory to a long promised evening of talk about certain of Mr. Holmes"s early cases which John hoped to write accounts of-when Martha had shown Mrs. Thorne and me up the stairs.
"Were I the perfectly a.n.a.lytical reasoner Watson likes to make of me," said Holmes slowly, "I suppose there would be no reason for me not to keep Lionel Thorne absolutely apprised of the progress of my search. One can tell a seamstress by her left sleeve and a cobbler by his thumb, but the marks that evil character leaves upon a man are less easily cla.s.sified-perhaps because, as Milton so brilliantly points out in the first cantos of Paradise Lost, wickedness takes on manifold forms, though myself I have found that goodness bears as many shapes in the world."
"Yet even a little street Arab like Ginger Robinson," I said softly, "guessed his intent was evil, without knowing how he guessed."
"I must improve my acquaintance," murmured Holmes, "with young Mr. Robinson. Had I been the perfectly cold-blooded and a.n.a.lytical reasoner that the Mr. Sherlock Holmes of the tales appears to be, I would not have allowed mere prejudice to influence me against the way the man looked aside when he spoke of his wife, or the too-smooth accounts of her disappearance-unblemished by the smallest hesitations of doubt as to its motives. For your husband, Mrs. Thorne, is very good at appearing to act from the best of motives."
"As I know," said Mrs. Thorne, "to my grief."
"And yet these things, like the weaver"s tooth or the hostler"s right shoulder, are clues too, to which my mind reacted. Very shortly after I began my researches in the East End I became aware that I was being watched when I emerged from the house. There are a number of criminals in London"s underworld who might have reason to do that. But the next time Mr. Thorne came I noticed the reddening on his cheeks and lips left by spirit gum where he fastened his borrowed whiskers. As he did not mention the use of disguise to me I guessed that my pursuer was he. After that I did what I could to shake him from the scent, but I fear that he, too, was doing exactly as I was: searching for you among the thronging humanity of those wretched streets. He showed quite clearly what he meant to do with you when he found you at last, trusting-quite accurately, I regret to surmise-that your death would be put down to the return of Jack the Ripper, or to some other criminal of that ilk. Unless they are particularly heinous, or attended by some sensational circ.u.mstance, few spend much time investigating the deaths of the poor."
"He stopped me that very evening in the Commercial Road, and had I not been warned by my dear Mrs. W.-Mrs. Watson, that is," she amended hastily, "I don"t know but what I might have gone with him for a drink. For in that great beard and those spectacles I did not recognize him, and he kept his voice low and husky, and his words short. He knew he had little time. Our daughter turns twenty one this month, and he must have guessed-seeing how she spoke against him in the court today-that his chance of controlling any portion of the family money would be done when she reached her majority."
"The importance of Miss Thorne"s impending birthday did not escape me," said Holmes. "What did you intend to do, when she came of age?"
"I intended to die," said Julietta Thorne, quite calmly. "Oh, not actually die," she added, when both I and John cried out in horror. "I had made my will, leaving everything to Viola absolutely and without reference to her father. I planned to stage-manage an "accident" in Brussels or Hamburg, with some of my seafaring friends, with sufficient proof that Julietta Thorne was no more. Only in that way could I be sure of freeing myself, and my poor child, from the scoundrel I married. It broke my heart to know that I could never see my child again ... ."
Her voice wavered, and she forced a smile. "I saw her at the a.s.sizes today," she said. "I was in the courtroom-Did she not look beautiful, as she stood up and told her own tale of the wrongs she witnessed that he did to me, the abuses she herself had endured at his hands? There is a girl who will never know her mother"s foolish belief in a man"s lies."
She broke off, and pressed her hands to her lips, her dark eyes flooding with tears. "My poor Viola," she whispered. "What she must have gone through, after I fled-thinking that I would leave her, merely to save myself from unpleasantness. Now that Lionel is where he cannot get at me, I shall inst.i.tute divorce proceedings, which I am sure will be granted given his attempt at murdering poor Mrs. Watson ... ."
She held out her hand to me, and clasped my fingers in her strong, work-roughened grip. "But I fear that I shall never be able to look my daughter in the face again."
While Mrs. Thorne had been speaking, I saw Mr. Holmes turn his head, listening to sounds in the street. Listening myself, I heard a cab outside, and Martha"s sister-in-law, Jenny Turner, opening the street door. Moments later the parlor door opened to reveal the tall slim dark-haired girl I had glimpsed only once on the doorstep. Mrs. Thorne gave a little cry, but her daughter only crossed the room in a stride or two, and took her mother in her arms.
As the two women held each other close John put a gentle arm around my waist, and led me from the room.
MR. JAMES PHILLIMORE.
Somewhere in the vaults of the bank of c.o.x & Co., at Charing Cross, there is a travel worn and battered tin dispatch box with my name, John H. Watson, M.D., Late Indian Army, painted upon the lid. It is crammed with papers, nearly all of which are records of cases to ill.u.s.trate the curious problems which Mr. Sherlock Holmes had at various times to examine. Some, and not the least interesting, were complete failures, and as such will hardly bear narrating, since no final explanation is forthcoming. A problem without a solution may interest the student, but can hardly fail to annoy the casual reader. Among these unfinished tales is that of Mr. James Phillimore, who, stepping back into his own house to get his umbrella, was never more seen in this world.
-"The Problem of Thor Bridge"
by MEL GILDEN.
The Aventure of the Forgotten Umbrella.
In "The Problem of Thor Bridge," Dr. Watson mentions several cases which "will hardly bear narrating, since no final explanation is forthcoming." He goes on to say that "Among these unfinished tales is that of Mr. James Phillimore, who, stepping back into his own house to get his umbrella, was never more seen in this world."
I, Mr. James Phillimore, still being very much in this world, take the liberty of explaining myself what happened on that chilly April morning-believing that the true and correct details of the case should be preserved. The facts are both less mysterious and more dramatic than some of the fantastic suppositions that have been put forward in the more sensational stories of the daily press-having to do with neither black magic nor abduction by Mr. Wells"s Martians, but only with human greed.
I begin:.
Five years ago I met a young lady who called herself Alice Madison. She was a substantial woman with rosy cheeks and a pleasant disposition. I liked her immediately, and, it would seem, my warm feelings were reciprocated. Over a period of months our mutual respect and enjoyment of each other"s company bloomed into love. She seemed unenc.u.mbered by personal affiliations, and I made a good living as a vice president at Morehouse & Co., so there was no reason we should not plan to be married.
Early in our marriage Alice took up the habit of stopping at my offices in Throgmorton Street so that we might take our midday meal together. We both enjoyed the diversion, and we saw no harm in it so we continued to meet in this way once or twice a week. At the time it did not seem important that a large safe stood in one corner of my office. The safe contained money, as well as stocks, bonds, contracts, and other important papers that our investors might require, and having these doc.u.ments near at hand saved us the trouble of sending a messenger to the bank time and again throughout the business day. Only Mr. Morehouse and I knew the combination to the safe.
My life continued without unpleasant incident until one evening when I arrived home from work to find my dear wife in serious conversation with a short round man who had a face that was florid and large-featured, if unshaven, under thick beetling brows. He was dressed as a moderately successful tradesman on holiday might be-in a suit that was slightly out of style, a little tight under the arms, and frayed at the cuffs. His hat had seen better days, and no one had thought to brush his shoes recently.
He looked at me as if appraising an animal. ""Is lordship"s a likely lad, ain" "e?" he remarked in an insulting tone.
My wife said nothing but only continued to stare at him in horror.
"Don"t forget," this unpleasant man said and shook his finger at her.
"What is the meaning of this intrusion?" I cried. "Why are you pestering my wife?"
The man sneered. "Your wife, indeed," he said as he tipped his hat to me and sauntered out, closing the door behind himself. I threw it open and watched him strut along the street past a brace of waiting cabs. I closed the door and turned to my wife, intending to get to the bottom of this situation. But she paced up and down before me and wrung her hands in the most dreadful manner. Obviously, I could not interrogate her while she was in such a state. I called for water, then encouraged her to calm herself, and to sit down. After the maid had brought an ewer of water and a gla.s.s, Alice took a few sips and then buried her head in her hands, sobbing.
"Certainly," I said, "as long as I"m here you have nothing to fear from that man."
"On the contrary," she said. "I fear he can ruin our lives."
"Our lives?" I asked with astonishment. "Are we in danger? I will call the police immediately."
She lifted her head and dabbed with a handkerchief at her red rimmed eyes. "I am afraid," she said, "that the police cannot help."
"My dear, you are not making sense." For many years, my only contact with members of the constabulary was to exchange nods if we happened to pa.s.s on the street. I had never needed their help, but had always a.s.sumed that if I requested it, it would be forthcoming.
She answered by taking a ragged breath.
"Perhaps you"d better explain," I said.
She nodded. "I must begin," she said, "by admitting something so horrible that I have been keeping it from you, fearing what you might do."
"I love you, my dear," I said, quite bewildered by her warning. "There is nothing you might have done that can be so horrible I would harm you in any way."
"I love you, too, James," she said. "And I ask only that you not think too harshly of me."
"Done!" I cried rather more loudly than I"d intended. "Only what is your admission?"
"I was married before we met."
Her words were a great shock to me, but still not so bad as I had feared. While I was still absorbing her information, she went on. "And I am afraid that I am still married."
Her second admission proved that I was still not impervious to surprise. And I found it difficult to keep the promise I had so recently made. Harsh thoughts filled my brain. "Go on," was all I trusted myself to say.
It was then that Alice told a story I would not have credited had I not known her so well, and seen the sincerity on her face. As it happened, my trust in her was not ill-placed because events later proved her out.
She had been (she explained) little more than a child when she met and somehow fell in love with the unpleasant man I had just met, a certain Mr. Harvey Maynard. Shortly, she and Mr. Maynard were married.
"He was kind at first, but it was not very many days later that Harvey proved to be a most disreputable and violent person," my Alice went on. "He beat me only when he drank, but he drank constantly. It soon became obvious that his love for me was just as surely an artifact of his alcoholism as was his enthusiasm for striking me with his hand. I would even have divorced him, if I could, the shame of divorce being no greater than the suffering I endured while married to the brute. When I went to visit my sister in Kent, he came and dragged me back to London.
"Then, one morning I awoke to find he had not returned from the carousing and revelry in which he nightly indulged. I cannot say that I was unhappy with the turn of events, but I admit to a certain morbid curiosity about what had happened to him. It was only some weeks later that I learned he had been arrested for a most brutal robbery and eventually taken to Dartmoor prison. Some years later I was notified that he had died crossing the moors during an escape attempt. A great weight seemed lifted from my shoulders. Shortly after that I met you, my dear, and I thought my life had turned around for good."