Sherlock Holmes (2 page)

“Hm. Even were Li so inscrutable as to
display his kidnapping before three hundred and eighty-seven people
whom he
knew
– being a native of this country – would not
hesitate to lynch him, he would naturally hesitate about caching
the girl in the false bottom of his own trunk.” Holmes looked
around him at the vast, dim-lit cavern of the backstage, with its
flickering globes of gas-light. “Mr. Rosales, is there any
electricity laid on back here? I’m going to need to make a thorough
search of the room, and in this light it is virtually impossible to
distinguish details—”

The stage-hand shook his head. “The only
electric is on the stage—”

“Nonsense, man, where’s your imagination?”
demanded Diggs briskly. “I’m sure Benny Park – excuse me, Count
Paracelsus – won’t grudge us a little flash-powder in a good
cause…” So saying, he dug a couple of lengths of wire and a little
tool like a flattened-out salt-spoon from his vest pocket, and
proceeded to open the Count’s trunk. From a paper twist abstracted
therefrom, he shook a few grains of gray powder onto a saucer,
spread them out thin with one of his picklocks, and lighted them,
resulting in a white glare so brilliant as to be impossible to look
at directly.

Diaz and O’Day squinted and covered their
eyes; Rosales shook his head, muttered, “You gonna burn the theater
down, señor—”

“Nonsense,” retorted Diggs. “A few grains at
a time should give us all the illumination required.”

The two stage-hands were relegated to the
front of the house, while the police-captain and I retreated to the
corner by the door and Holmes – with Diggs following behind as
lamp-bearer – made his usual thorough investigation of the whole of
the backstage, including both “magical cabinets” and the three
dressing-rooms which opened from the backstage area. These last
were so crammed with filmy costumes, wigs, and yet more trunks that
I feared that between them, Holmes and the Great Oz would indeed
set fire to the theater.

This investigation concluded– the cessation
of the magnesium-white light made the ensuing gloom almost like
blindness – Holmes wrapped his findings, which seemed to me to
consist entirely of dust and cigarette-ends, in brightly-colored
silk handkerchiefs likewise abstracted from Count Paracelcus’s
trunk, and called the stage-hands back. “Is it certain that nothing
was touched here since the girl’s disappearance?”

“Nothing,” said Rosales. “Have you found
anything, señor? If you have, tell us, man! When I think of that
poor little girl—”

“I know nothing,” murmured Holmes. “Yet. When
is the floor swept here backstage? I observe it’s fairly free of
accumulated dust—”

“I go over it good, about three in the
afternoon,” said Diaz, “so it’s clean for the evening show.”

“And you did not do so this afternoon, on
account of the police?”

“That’s right, señor.”

“Thank you,” said Holmes, and handed each of
them a half-dollar. “Captain O’Day, might it be possible – without
going into any specific names—” He touched his breast-pocket where
the letter of introduction from Connington resided, “—to keep the
theater closed down for yet another day? Thank you. I will relay an
account of your obligingness to…
whosoever
I feel would be
interested to hear it.” He smiled a secretive smile. “Now perhaps
we could speak with Mr. Li?”

*

Julian Li was tall for a Chinese, in his late
twenties, and wore his hair in the traditional queue. He spoke
perfect English with the usual flat American vowels, and though
when first we entered his cell – it was now about ten o’clock at
night – he started up in wary alarm, when he saw Diggs with us he
relaxed at little. In the dim gas-light I saw that one of his eyes
had been blacked, and his face bore other bruises; his friends at
the boarding-house had not been far amiss in their fears of a
lynching.

“And I’m afraid it won’t stop with me,” he
said, almost whispering, when I exclaimed at his hurts. “My parents
have already left town, but if a mob formed, I know they wouldn’t
leave Chinatown just because my family isn’t there. They wouldn’t
know what my family looks like,” he added bitterly, “or care.”

“I am assuming,” said Holmes, “that anyone
who wished to kidnap a child wouldn’t do so in so public a venue as
the Californian theater—”

“Good God, no!” cried the young man, truly
distressed. “When I opened the cabinet and saw nothing there but
her shoe, it was like someone had rammed me in the wind with the
end of a pole. I was too shocked to speak, and stood there like a
fool until her mother screamed—What did they expect I would have
done? Shouted,
Ha-ha, I have spirited away your child
?” He
clasped his hands, which shook at the memory of the shock.

“Precisely,” said Holmes. “Therefore this is
an attack upon the child herself – and twenty years in my business
has shown me that one cannot discount the possibility of an
obsessed madman – upon the child’s family, upon yourself, or upon
the Chinese community here as a whole. Which do you yourself think
it might be?”

Li’s eyes shifted. He looked aside; for a
long time he sat silent, his hands pressed together. Then he said,
“There is always hatred for my people, since the time my
grandparents came to this country.”

“A rather elaborate way of stirring it up, I
should think,” said Holmes, watching the young man’s face intently.
“As far as Captain O’Day could tell me – and so far as any
newspaper knows – John Redwalls and his wife are completely
unremarkable people without enemies. How did you happen to choose
Miss Redwalls to assist you in your act?”

“Well,” said Li, and his gaze returned to
Holmes’s face, “I generally pick a child – you’ve seen the
apparatus of the cabinets, and a small opening in the backdrop can
be concealed much more easily with mirrors and lighting than a
larger one. And people pay more attention when it’s a child. They
keep their eyes on the first cabinet while she’s being slipped into
the second. I watch their faces as the audience comes in, and look
for one who’s bright and who… who looks outward, who’ll go along
with it when I whisper—” His voice shifted into the accents of
melodramatic stage-pidgin, “—
Honorable Miss will not split on
insignificant Li, will she
? It makes them laugh,” he added,
with a faint smile. “You can tell looking at them, who might think
it’s funny to come out of the cabinet and shout to the audience,
It’s all a trick
. Miss Redwalls wasn’t that sort. She was a
perfect accomplice.”

He pressed his hand suddenly to his mouth,
his face working with horror and shock.

Holmes asked, “Was the shoe fastened or
unfastened?”

Li raised his head, his eyes haunted. “The
laces had been cut with a knife.”

“But there was really no way of telling in
advance,” Holmes went on, “which child in the audience you would
choose for your act?”

“No.”

“Only that it would be a child.”

Li nodded. “Did you find anything at the
theater? Was Rosales able to tell you anything?”

“One or two items of interest,” said Holmes.
“Would Rosales himself have had any reason to take the child?”

“I can think of none. He came to the theater
well-recommended; I think he’s had experience as an illusionist
himself, so he needed very little coaching in his duties.”

“Yes, I thought he had,” said Holmes. “When
the Great Oz lit up some flash-powder to aid in my investigation of
the scratches on the floor, I noticed he turned away and shaded his
eyes beforehand. Do you think he is a man who could be bribed?”

“By whom?” asked Diggs in surprise, and
Holmes turned back to Li, and raised his brows.

The prisoner whispered, “Any man can be
bribed.”

“Surely in so horrible a crime,” I objected,
“the man behind a bribe places himself in the hands of his
accomplice. And putting the matter at one remove clarifies nothing,
does it?”

“Does it?” Holmes kept his gaze on Li, who
continued to look down at his own hands, and for a long while did
not reply. “Is this all you have to tell us?”

After several more minutes’ silence, Li
whispered, “It is.”

*

“The man is screening someone!” murmured
Diggs, as a police-officer showed us out of the cells and along the
corridor to the watchroom. “With his life – and the lives of
hundreds of people, perhaps, in Chinatown – hanging in the
balance—”

“Obviously,” returned Holmes, in an
undervoice barely louder than breath, “someone of critical
importance to him.”

It was now close to midnight, the fog outside
the station-house a black wall only dimly pierced by far-spaced
street-lamps. As there was now no question of me or Diggs being
able to cross the Bay back to Berkeley, Holmes inquired of the
nearest hotel, which was on Union Square, a few blocks along. I
admit I was not sorry about this, for the day had been an extremely
tiring one and my own constitution had not recovered from my
illness of the spring. We had gone but a half-block, when I touched
Holmes’s arm, holding him back; the three of us halted, and for an
instant, I heard the moist tap of feet behind us in the fog before
they, too, stopped.

Holmes’ hand touched mine, signalling that he
had heard, and we walked on, then stopped again. Again the
following footsteps silenced. Holmes said – for the benefit of our
unseen friend – “Damn this fog! We shall be lost like Hansel and
Gretel in the woods.”

“The Great Oz knows all things,” chipped in
Diggs serenely. “This way… Do you call this fog, man?” He led on,
and Holmes slipped away into an alley between two buildings. “Why,
when I went into battle against the Wicked Witch of the East and
her evil minions, she called darkness a thousand times more
dreadful than this, just by pouring ink onto her mirror—”

His voice must have successfully lured our
following footpad past Holmes’s hiding-place, for the next thing we
knew, I heard a sharp scuffle behind us, and a voice gasp “Oh! Let
me go!”

Diggs and I doubled back at once, groping our
way along the wet brick wall in the darkness – away from the blurry
glow of the few street-lamps it was like being at the bottom of a
cavern – until we reached Holmes and his captive. “You have trailed
us from the police-station, Madame,” Holmes said, “yet had your
intentions been honest, I think you would have screamed to find
yourself seized—”

“I will scream,” threatened the young woman’s
voice, as Diggs and I came up.

“My dear young lady, there is absolutely no
need to do so,” said Diggs. “You obviously wanted to follow us, out
of all the middle-aged gentlemen in the city, so here we are at
your service… Are you a friend of Mr. Li?”

She whispered in a small voice, “I am.”

“Then come with us to the parlor of what I
hope is to be our hotel for the night,” he said, “and tell us all
about it.”

*

Her name was Diana Prince, and she worked as
a typist for a firm of importers on Grant Avenue, near the wharves.
In the better light of the parlor of the Kearney Hotel, I took note
of the worn and slightly faded condition of the neat jacket, skirt,
and shirtwaist she wore, and of their exquisite neatness. The cameo
at her throat was no piece of costume jewelry, but a simple and
expensive piece that precisely matched her ladylike, well-educated
manners and speech. In her hazel eyes was the calm strength of a
woman who, though young, has had to make her own way in the world;
in the firmness of her mouth, the determination of a woman who
knows her mind… and her heart.

“I didn’t dare go to the station myself to
ask to see Julian,” she told us, with a glance across the parlor at
the desk where the night-porter dozed. “I knew it would only make
matters the worse for him, if the men there suspected he was
engaged to a white woman. Yet he’s told me about you, Professor
Diggs—” She smiled at the wizard, “—and I’ve seen you on stage,
when you and Julian were on the same bill. I hoped to speak with
you alone, not knowing who your friends were.”

“Is it only the opinion of the police, and
the public, that you fear?” inquired Holmes. “Or is there
opposition from another quarter as well?”

Miss Prince raised her chin. “If you mean my
family,” she said, “I have had no contact with my father for three
years now. I was of age when I left his house, and will need no
permission of his to wed. Still, Julian and I have been deeply
discreet. I doubt my father even knows where I am living. But you
see what this country is, Mr. Holmes. I’m sure you can guess at the
kind of violence that would be unleashed against a man of Julian’s
race, should he take unto himself a bride of mine. Now that you
have found my secret, I can only beg of you to keep it – and to
tell me, is there any hope of finding the true kidnapper of that
poor child? For only in recovering her unhurt – and that, quickly –
will there be any salvation for the man I love.”

“It’s true,” I said, for Holmes’s interest in
sensational crime had given me, over the past twenty years, a great
knowledge of the darker paths of human conduct. “God save him if
the child is found dead.”

“Three hours ago, Miss Prince,” said Holmes,
“I would have said your fiancé’s fate hung in the balance. Yet I
begin to see a glimmer of light, and I hope, by tomorrow evening,
to have better news to tell you, if, as Watson points out, the
child is not found dead in the meantime. Do not wait up for me,
Watson,” he said, fetching his own greatcoat and our guest’s
well-worn cloak from the rack beside the porter’s desk. “I shall
return to the Palace, once I have seen Miss Prince to her lodgings,
and shall probably be abroad as soon as it grows light enough for
the ferries to run. But please tell Mrs. Carey that I shall come to
the boarding-house for dinner tomorrow evening – this evening, I
should say rather, for it is all of three o’clock! And then, if you
aren’t knocked entirely into horse-nails by tonight’s adventures,
perhaps we three can pay a call to-night.”