Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Volume 15 Read online

  I pushed cruets and the saltcellar closer to him. “After you’ve had your fill, we’ll go straight-away.”

  With a raised a hand, he said, “I’ve already been there to meet the owner, Laszlo Lazar. His story is this: while away to negotiate for sawdust, his daughter minded the store. Possibly she was in the alley behind the store, getting rid of the animals’ daily waste when the thief entered. Or perhaps she was in a back room and didn’t hear the door open. At least, this is what he claims to be true.”

  “Do you have reason to believe otherwise?”

  Holmes rocked his head back and forth to express uncertainty. “I suspect it was someone who had already been in the store that day.”

  I lifted slices of toast off the rack and dropped them onto his plate, then he proceeded to slather them with orange marmalade.

  “Who else entered the shop?” I asked.

  “Lazar said that while he was away, his daughter spoke with a customer who bought a Chinese gold-fish and the deliveryman brought fresh fruit for the animals.”

  “Have you questioned these people?”

  “Not yet, but I will. I’ve arranged to meet them back at the shop later today with you, I hope.”

  I brightened at his remark. “Most certainly! Have you found any clues?”

  “I pulled this from the chimneypiece,” he said, drawing his hand out of a pocket and clutching a scrap of paper.

  I took it and examined the shred. Charred black and singed brown in several places, it was decorated with a double-headed eagle and the number 10 stamped in ink on one side. “As if this was torn instead of cut, some edges not touched by fire are rough. But what does the bird signify?”

  “The double-headed eagle is a historic symbol of the Hapsburgs. You may recall it from our experience which you described as ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’?” With an empty plate, he crossed his silverware and sighed contentedly.

  “Is this another case of foreign intrigue?”

  Holmes smiled. “I would tell you my theory, but I pray you keep an open mind and follow my lead. Laszlo Lazar is from Budapest, a fact not to be forgotten. Many of his customers are immigrants, I imagine.”

  “If not a foreign intrigue, then simply finding a missing beast would be a trifle. Nevertheless, it’s in the slightest cases where you find the most ingeniously crafted challenges.”

  After swallowing, his smile widened and he nodded. “Indeed!”

  “Still, an albino python is expensive, isn’t it?” I said.

  Holmes said, “The creature is not cheap, but the greater cost is Lazar’s peace of mind. When a thief can enter once, a thief may enter again. Or other thieves will follow.”

  “So he’s paying you not just to catch a thief, but to deter others from following an example?”

  “Yes,” he said, “Admirable and wise, yet his anger blinds him to the simple clues of the case. This is a slight mystery, however it requires special delicacy. I’d return to Baker Street for supplies, but I need items readily in use by a medico.”

  I nodded. “What do you need?”

  “Three vials with stoppers, some chalk dust, foolscap and gauze, and equipment for a blood stain—a needle and three slides.”

  I hurried to my study and gathered the items into a satchel, then kissed Mary good-bye.

  It felt like old times again and stepping into the roadway, we were off in pursuit of new adventure.

  * * * *

  The pet shop was located near the far side of Paddington Station. Its door swung outward, releasing a crowd of smells of sawdust, damp fur, and excrement. I stepped inside following Holmes’s lean frame.

  The walls were lined with shelves and on each shelf sat large brass cages containing olingoes, cacomistles, nigalya, civets, pangolins, and enough other exotic animals to rival Noah’s ark. Frozen in mid-gesture, a stuffed and mounted monkey welcomed us inside.

  “Ahoy!” Holmes called out.

  The shop was one giant room with gaslight dimly accompanying bright sunshine from the plate glass windows.

  “Cute little devils,” I said, peering into a cage. Inside it, two kinkajou ceased their wrestling. The brown, four-footed tiny beasts looked at Holmes and me with shiny black eyes. Their foreheads were low and ears sprouted from the sides of their heads.

  “You are Herr Doktor, John Vatson?” asked a man with a heavy accent. His head was bald, but a well-groomed beard and bushy eyebrows decorated his face with fiery red hair.

  “Watson, may I present the proprietor, Laszlo Lazar?” Holmes said, waving his arm toward the man. “Doctor Watson is my companion on many cases, and his medical background is indispensable to the scientific inquiry of this matter.”

  After we shook hands, Lazar said, “I kept Ghost in the vindow.”

  “Ghost?” I said.

  “Da, the albino snake. He draws a crowd at feeding time.”

  Along the storefront window, a wide ledge spanned the sill. On it were cages of lapdogs, various breeds of canaries, and other creatures. Interspersed between them silver stands tipped by glass globes holding Paradise Fish, swordtails, and rosy barbs. The largest cage was empty.

  Pointing to the gap in the menagerie, I asked, “This is where Ghost was?”

  “Papa?” A voice interrupted us. A girl no more than ten years old stepped through a back doorway wearing a scarlet frock coat with velvet sleeves and gold embroidery. Hair the colour of winter sunlight curled out from under a mobcap. Her eyes were ice blue and her skin so pale, traces of blood vessels were visible.

  “Here is my daughter, Anna. I tank Gott that she was out while the thief vas here.”

  “Now that we’ve made our introductions, the vial if you please, Watson?” Holmes said.

  I opened my satchel, unwrapped a glass tube, and passed it to him.

  Holmes held it in one hand and gripped the stopper in his other hand. “With a sample of air, I can extract different breaths. Once I separate out the breaths through scientific means, I’ll determine how many people entered the store.” He held the vial high in front of him, and he wafted air over its mouth. After a dramatic flourish, he corked and handed it back to me. “Store this, but make sure the stopper doesn’t come undone.”

  I examined the plug, re-wrapped the glass in cloth, and returned it to my satchel.

  “How will you tell the breath of animals from the breath of people?” Anna asked.

  Holmes raised a finger to his lips and hummed. “It will be difficult, but if I can’t do it on my own, I’ll ask the kind ladies of Bedford College for help. Like you, they’re a clever lot—and I’m sure together we can interpret the matter.”

  “I see,” she said.

  “Of course, a confession might make things easier, especially if it were an accident or unintentional.” He looked squarely at Laszlo. “Surely, it is better to forgive than to seek revenge.”

  While Lazar sputtered to respond, Holmes signaled with his eyes down toward Anna.

  “Da, Anna, forgiveness is better,” Lazar admitted.

  “Now, we turn to the next scientific test. Watson, the chalk dust?”

  We stepped over to the empty cage in the large front window. Holmes sprinkled chalk dust on the glass and gently whisked it with a new shaving brush. Spots appeared—the prints and pads of fingers. “Do you see, Watson? The ghosts of fingers.”

  “Due for a washing,” I said.

  “On the contrary, washing would remove evidence. Every fingerprint is different, and the swirls and bends of skin are like the grains of woods. Each is as unique as the signature scrawled by those very fingers.”

  Laszlo asked, “Once you find the thief, can you prove by his breath and his fingers that he was here?”

  “There will be no room for an alibi. May I have the foolscap?” Holmes asked.

  I gave him the paper.

  Holmes sketched the prints. Meanwhile, the door pushed open with the jingle of bells. Into the shop walked a deep brown greatcoat housing a small man, the thick wool pract
ically hiding his entire body. The tips of his Wellingtons poked out from under the hem and his small head stretched out above the lapels.

  “Benjamin Kincaid, the last customer, I presume?” Holmes asked.

  “Fellmonger and wool-stapler extraordinaire, at your service,” he said.

  Another man entered the shop sporting a bowler and a careworn Raglan coat. “The deliveryman, Aloysius Robinson,” Lazar said. The figure tipped his hat with a wink and a grin.

  As Lazar explained matters to the gentlemen, Holmes set about his preparations. He tipped an inkpot into a wad of gauze, then smeared and squeezed the fabric until it was fully saturated with ink. Next he unfurled a roll of foolscap and pressed both men’s fingertips against the gauze. Then on the foolscap, fingers left a trail of black splotches.

  Our silence was interrupted by random chirps and chitters punctuating the air. A macaw doused in sky blue flapped up to a high perch.

  “You saw what happened,” I addressed the bird. “Who abducted the white snake?”

  Cocking its head, it stared through one eye. “God save the Queen,” it replied.

  Holmes blinked at the inkblots for several long moments then glanced between the finger-prints on the glass, Lazar, and his daughter.

  An African porcupine stirred in a corner. The dark creature’s white wisps of quills rustled as it walked, shaking against each other and gently scraping the side of the cage.

  “Well, Holmes?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid the analysis of fingerprints will require several hours of study. Even then, the results may be inconclusive. We must attempt the blood test,” he said.

  “Blood test?” Kincaid said. His expression puckered into a grimacing frown.

  Holmes said, “This last test comes directly from medicine. As you know, when people lie, they become anxious and even agitated. Cheeks become flushed and heartbeats race. Skilled criminals calm themselves, slow their hearts and mask the clues. The body can’t be silenced, however, and if a person lies, the truth can be found in a few drops of blood. If I collect a drop of blood from the thief, then I will have proof.” He turned to Kincaid and asked, “Did you steal the python?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you know who took it?”

  Kincaid laid a hand over his heart. “On my mother’s grave, Mister Holmes, I do not know.”

  I pricked Kincaid’s finger and drew a slide.

  “You may go, Mister Kincaid,” Holmes said. “If you are caught in a lie, I assure you that Watson and I will crush you with the full extent of the law.”

  Over a serpent, however rare? I thought to myself.

  When Anna looked up with widened eyes, Holmes added, “Clemency spares only those who tell the truth forthrightly. Now, to Mister Robinson.”

  Robinson made a sour face and held out his palm. “First you soil my fingers, now you intend to prick them?”

  Holmes ignored the question. “Do you know what happened to the white snake?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” he answered.

  “Do you know who took it?”

  Shaking his head, rolling his eyes, he said, “No.”

  I pricked his finger and smeared the blood on the glass.

  “You may go,” Holmes said.

  “You expect me to wear my glove like this?” he said with a sneer, splaying his five blackened fingers, one growing a bead of crimson.

  “There’s a vashbasin in the back room,” Lazar said.

  When Robinson left, only Holmes and me, the shopkeeper and his daughter remained. In one cage, two coatimundi broke into a fight. The smaller one pounced on the larger one who in turn boxed its snout.

  “Is it in our animal nature to cause each other problems?” I asked as we watched the tiny beasts.

  “They’re funny little fellows.” Lazar picked up the smaller coatimundi and it looked down its snout at me through his black eye mask. “They can unscrew lids and untie knots.”

  “We have our own knot to untie with this theft,” Holmes said. “There is just one other person left to question.”

  “Who’s that?” Lazar asked.

  Holmes’s gaze fell to Anna. “The only other person in the shop.”

  “Me?” Anna said, startled.

  Holmes said, “Granted, the needle is long and painful, but you want to help your father, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but…” She looked away and her lip trembled.

  Holmes knelt on one knee so he was at eye-level with her. “Yes, Anna? What is it?”

  She rubbed a tear out of her eye. “The snake is gone. It’s my fault.”

  Putting a hand on her shoulder, Holmes said, “I don’t understand…what do you mean?”

  Her voice broke and she turned her back to us. “A man came, asking about it, so I showed it to him. He paid me, and I let him walk away with it.”

  “Who was this person?”

  “I don’t know. He said he knew you, papa, so I trusted him…but then I wondered if he deceived me.”

  Holmes stood up, and fished around in his pocket. “Did he pay with this?” Carefully, he lifted the shred of burnt bill. It showed the ten and double-headed eagle.

  The girl nodded. “Fake money. Poppa takes in money from the old country from time to time but that is not Hungarian. It’s not even Austrian or Croat.”

  “You thought the man tricked you, so you burned the money and tried to hide your mistake?”

  The girl exclaimed, “He did trick me!”

  Holmes sighed. “This is the newly minted Dalmatian ten-dinar note.”

  She gasped. “I’m so sorry, papa. This man gave me these paper notes and I didn’t know what to do. I just took them, but I felt tricked and ashamed, so I threw them into the fire and I lied.” Hiding her face, she choked back her cries.

  Lazar wrapped an arm around her. “There, there now. The albino vas hardly worth a thing. It cost us dearly just to feed it and keep it alive.”

  Holmes smiled at the girl, then he looked at Lazar. “Don’t let her marry poorly. She’s intelligent enough to manage this store when she gets older—let her work and learn. This isn’t a mistake, it’s a lesson.”

  “A lesson for me, too, Mister Holmes,” Lazar said. Then he laughed. “Ve are back to normal, it seems, very much tanks to you and your scientific methods.”

  * * * *

  As the setting sun poured golden light through the window, we enjoyed cigars at Baker Street. Holmes reclined in his easy chair while I nestled into the wicker basket chair. His new companion, a kinkajou from the pet shop, sat in its cage, gripping half an orange with its front paws.

  “Have you ever thought about acquiring a pet, Watson?” Holmes asked.

  I smiled. “I’d love a dog, but I would want an estate to hunt with it.”

  “Not a caged songbird or a South American parrot?” Holmes asked.

  “Mary’s the only company I need, and my patients require all the care and attention I can spare.”

  The kinkajou bit into the bowl of the half-cut orange, flashing a pink tongue. As its jaws flashed open and shut, bits of pulp dropped to the cage floor.

  “It’s remarkable what you did, Holmes,” I said. “I didn’t know that you could extract a man’s breath from the air that he breathed.”

  He grinned. “Yes, isn’t it?”

  “In your other cases, I’ve never seen you put it to use.”

  With a wink, he said, “Well…it’s more of a theoretical possibility than an everyday practice.”

  “And the whole study of finger-prints? Same ‘theoretical possibility’?”

  “Yes,” Holmes said. “Although I didn’t make that up. I attended Galton’s lecture on personal identification, but have not had an opportunity to calibrate my skills to his studies.”

  Indeed, in a few short years, the work of William Herschel, Henry Faulds, and Francis Galton grew into a science. After his resurrection from Reichenbach Falls, he ably noted that no two thumbprints are alike in “The Adventure of th
e Norwood Builder.”

  “The blood test, though, I could almost believe, if I weren’t a practicing doctor.”

  He nodded. “Don’t mention it to the British Medical Society.”

  “It was all a game.”

  Shaking his head, he asked, “Would you rather I pointed a finger and accuse the daughter while her father boiled with anger at a thief?”

  I thought while the pendulum of the clock ticked back and forth. Finally, I said, “No, but if the daughter had kept mum, your methods would have been revealed as so much quackery, and your reputation would have been ruined.”

  “The illusion of the science convinced her that the truth would out.”

  “You mentioned the women of Bedford College and warned Robinson would be ‘crushed by the full extent of the law’ for the girl’s sake?”

  He waved a hand. “Naturally.”

  “If the snake’s purchaser knew Laszlo personally—which we can deduce, since he knew he could pay with foreign currency—then wouldn’t the truth have come out over time, one way or another?”

  “Yes, Watson, but we were lucky to help the daughter admit her mistake and also to make sure the father forgave her.”

  “How did you know it was the daughter?” I asked.

  “Elementary, my dear Watson. The remains in the fireplace were the biggest clue.”

  I agreed. “Of course.”

  “Also, no cages were opened, no animals had escaped, so this concerned someone whose time wasn’t devoted to fleeing, but rather someone concerned with the look of the shop.”

  A muffled scream erupted through the floorboards and under the hearth rug. The nearby cage was empty. “Speaking of escape, Holmes. I believe Mrs Hudson has met your new roommate.”

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR HOLMES! by Gary Lovisi

  It was in late 1903 after the affair I would eventually chronicle as “The Adventure of the Creeping Man” for The Strand magazine, when my friend Sherlock Holmes seemed to be in an unusual mood of dark disturbance. I could only assume that it was the Abercrombie situation that was playing upon his mind—a dangerous escaped convict who was said to be on his way to London. Holmes would not speak of it and even the press was sparse regarding details, so I put the matter aside for the time being. I had concerns of my own just then causing me considerable consternation.