Moriarty

Mrs Steiler returned with the main course, two plates of roast lamb. I picked up my knife and fork, this time determined to eat.

Jones nodded slowly. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I will send a telegram to Scotland Yard and we can leave tomorrow. If the trains are kind to us, we will just arrive in time.’

I raised my glass. ‘To the capture of Clarence Devereux,’ I said. ‘And — if I may — to the two of us, Scotland Yard and Pinkerton’s, working together.’

We drank and in this way our association began. And yet how bitter that wine might have tasted and how reluctant we might have been to continue if we had only known what lay ahead.

FIVE At the Café Royal

Not many Americans have the opportunity to travel across Europe and yet I cannot describe very much of what I saw. For much of the time I had my face pressed against the glass, gazing at the little farmhouses dotted over the hills, the rushing streams, the valleys with their early summer flowers, and yet I was ill at ease, unable to concentrate on what I saw. The train journey was a very slow business and, in our second-class carriage, an uncomfortable one. My constant fear was that we would arrive too late for, as Jones had told me, we had a distance of some five hundred miles to cover with four trains and the steam packet from Calais to London Bridge. We couldn’t afford to miss even one of our connections. From Meiringen we headed west, crossing Lake Brienz at Interlaken and then continuing up to Bern. It was from here that Jones sent the cable that we’d devised together, stating that Professor Moriarty had miraculously escaped from the catastrophe of the Reichenbach Falls and was believed to have returned to England. The post office was some distance from the station and almost cost us our next train as Jones was unable to walk for any great length of time. He was quite pale and clearly in discomfort as we took our seats in our carriage.

We sat in silence for the first hour or two, each of us absorbed in our own thoughts. However, as we approached the French border near Moutier, we became more talkative. I told Jones something of the history of the Pinkertons — he had a keen interest in the methods of investigation practised by foreign law enforcers, dull though they were compared to his own — and I gave him a detailed account of their involvement in the Burlington and Quincy Railroad strike which had taken place a few years before. The agency had been accused of inciting riots and even murdering strikers, although I assured him that their role had only been to protect property and to keep the peace. That was their story, anyway.

After that, Jones turned away, immersing himself in a printed pamphlet which he had brought with him and which turned out to be a monograph by Sherlock Holmes no less, this one on the subject of ash. Apparently — or so Jones assured me — Holmes was able to differentiate between one hundred and forty different types of ash, from cigars, cigarettes and pipes, although he himself had only mastered ninety of them. To humour him, I made my way to the salon dining room and took a pinch of five different samples from the mystified passengers. Jones was extremely grateful and spent the next hour examining them minutely with a magnifying glass he had extracted from his travelling bag.

‘How I would have liked to have encountered Sherlock Holmes!’ I exclaimed when he finally cast the ashes aside, dismissing them quite literally with a wave of his hand. ‘Did you ever meet him?’

‘Yes. I did.’ He fell silent and I saw, to my surprise, that my question had in some way offended him. This was strange as so much of what he had said in our brief acquaintance had led me to believe that he was an ardent, even a fanatical, admirer of the famous detective. ‘I actually met him on three occasions,’ he continued. He paused, as if unsure where to begin. ‘The first was not exactly a meeting as I was only there as part of a larger assembly. He gave a lecture to a number of us at Scotland Yard — it led directly to the arrest of the Bishopsgate jewel thief. To this day, I am inclined to think that Mr Holmes relied more on guesswork than strict logic. He could not possibly have known that the man was born with a club foot. The second occasion, however, was quite different and has been made public by Dr John Watson who actually mentions me by name. I cannot say it gives an account of me that is particularly kind.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ I said.

‘You have not read the investigation that came to be known as “The Sign of the Four”? It was a most unusual case.’ Jones took out a cigarette and lit it. I hadn’t seen him smoke before and he seemed to have forgotten the conversation we’d had when we first met. At the last moment, he remembered. ‘I’m sorry to inflict this on you a second time,’ he said. ‘I occasionally indulge. You don’t mind?’

‘Not at all.’