Thirty-Nine Steps from Baker Street Read online

  THIRTY-NINE STEPS

  FROM

  BAKER STREET

  J. R. TRTEK

  By the same author: The Hapsburg Falcon

  Copyright © 2015 J. R. Trtek

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 151715300X

  ISBN 13: 9781517153007

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015919017

  CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform: North Charleston, SC

  Cover Image: Statue of Eros, Picadilly Circus, London c. 1914-18.

  (Courtesy Kodak Collection / Science & Society Picture Library)

  But there can be no grave for Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson…Will they not always live in Baker Street? Are they not there this moment, as one writes? Outside, the hansoms rattle through the rain, and Moriarty plans his latest devilry. Within, the sea-coal flames upon the hearth and Holmes and Watson take their well-won case…So they still live for all that love them well; in a romantic chamber of the heart, in a nostalgic country of the mind, where it is always 1895.

  —Vincent Starrett

  Editor’s Note:

  Those who uncompromisingly take to heart the sentiment expressed on the previous page may perhaps do well to read no further. Several events contained in the following narrative have been told or alluded to elsewhere—and sometimes quite differently—in the novels The Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, and Mr. Standfast by John Buchan, as well as the Sherlock Holmes short story “His Last Bow.” The tale fully revealed in this book, rather than gleaned piecemeal through those episodes just mentioned, most definitely does not transpire in 1895. Its way stations do not encompass the sitting room of 221B Baker Street, and while horses’ hooves are heard on occasion, those claps are but muted echoes from a landscape where Queen Victoria is a fading memory.

  Thirty-Nine Steps from Baker Street is not a typical Sherlock Holmes story. Taking place before, during, and after the First World War, it is not so much a mystery tale as it is a saga of espionage. Holmes and John H. Watson, real people rather than the timeless literary creations some believe them to be, are seen at a point in their lives much later than portrayed in almost the entire accepted Sherlockian canon, during years when their everyday partnership had become a thing of the past and the personal relationship between the two men accordingly altered.

  Those wishing to understand the provenance of the following text before starting it may read Appendix A without fear of learning too much too soon. The other addenda that close this book contain detailed references to events in the narrative, however, and the reader is advised to peruse them only after completing the story itself. Comments on the aforementioned novels and short story will also be found in many of the attached and probably far too numerous footnotes, which are also intended to clarify some terms and references for the modern American reader and those not familiar with Holmesian lore.

  And to address in advance the likely discontents of those self-styled and often self-important keepers of the flame who may recoil at what follows, please remember that you have been warned.

  CONTENTS

  BOOK ONE: CERBERUS

  CHAPTER ONE: BOOTS FOR A CORPSE

  CHAPTER TWO: HEADS OF CERBERUS

  CHAPTER THREE: THE MAN WHO FLED

  CHAPTER FOUR: COUNCILS OF WAR

  CHAPTER FIVE: THE AIRMAN & THE CONSTABLE

  CHAPTER SIX: THE SPEAKER & THE INNKEEPER

  CHAPTER SEVEN: FISHING IN BERKSHIRE

  CHAPTER EIGHT: GANG AFT AGLEY

  CHAPTER NINE: THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

  CHAPTER TEN: ANOTHER BOW

  INTERLUDE: BIGGLESWICK

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE OLD GAME AGAIN

  CHAPTER TWELVE: MY DINNER WITH HOLMES

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: A STUDY IN SUBVERSION

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: ENLIGHTENING EXCHANGES

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: TO GAIN & TO LOSE

  BOOK TWO: THE WILD BIRDS

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: CHANGING THE GUARD

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: A DEAD MAN’S FIST

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: TERROR & FLIGHT

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: A SPURNED WATCHMAN

  CHAPTER TWENTY: THE TRANSPORT LEAGUE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: CERBERUS ROUSED

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: RETURN & REVELATION

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: THE CALCULUS OF HELL

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: HADES UNVEILED

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: BOWING TO TIME

  APPENDIX A: A GIFT IN THE MAIL

  APPENDIX B: AN ALTERED CHRONOLOGY

  APPENDIX C: TANGLED TALES

  BOOK ONE: CERBERUS

  CHAPTER ONE: BOOTS FOR A CORPSE

  In the period immediately following Sherlock Holmes’s retirement to the South Downs, I continued to enjoy his company with regular, if decreasing, frequency. By the turn of a new decade, however, my habitual pilgrimages to the former detective’s cottage in Sussex had dwindled to but yearly events, as had his own excursions into greater London. And though our correspondence enjoyed a more respectable pace through the spring of 1912, thereafter I found myself waiting an increasingly longer time to receive his replies to my letters before they stopped altogether toward the end of the following year. In the meanwhile, though Holmes was rumoured to often hike the seaside cliffs of his district, he did not seek close contact with any of his neighbours, nor did he invite old acquaintances to share the comforts of his modest home.

  It was a situation I began to find altogether unsettling.

  Had these misanthropic habits expressed themselves a quarter century earlier, I should have felt but minor concern, surmising that the detective was engaged in some urgent investigation requiring he remain incommunicado. My attentions would then have gravitated back to the demands of medical practice or to the joys of recounting Holmes’s previous adventures to the reading public while I waited for him to re-enter the commonplace world. As it was, throughout that last peaceful winter and early spring preceding the Great War, I used composition to divert my thoughts from concern for Holmes’s reclusive behaviour, an anxiety that at times dulled my concentration when occupied as an occasional physician.

  I had recently ended my own practice in Queen Anne Street but continued to reside there, remaining active from time to time as an alternate for Dr. Henry Blanding, the son of an old associate who had followed his father into the profession. The young man’s offices were also in Marylebone,1 not far from Portland Place, and for several days in the early summer of 1914, I found myself serving as replacement for Blanding fils, seeing to regular clients and treating those new patients who entered his consulting room in need.

  These supplicants impressed me as a diverse and rather interesting set—among their number were an Italian opera singer bothered by inflamed tonsils, a young American plagued with migraines, and a society matron whose ailments, I suspected, were actually those of her Pekinese, which she sought to comfort with benefit of more than veterinary advice. Then, during the penultimate morning of my duty, I received perhaps the most curious visitor of the lot.

  He was a tall, gaunt fellow about my age, clothed in a long dark coat topped by a shovel hat. His angular chin sported a small goatee beard, and spectacles tinted faint blue sat astride the man’s hawkish nose. One might have thought him to be in some religious order but for the aroma of stale cigars that clung to his thin figure and the expression his eyes cast through those thick lenses, a look such that I initially thought him to be in the throes of an alcoholic stupor.

  “I must apologise for interrupting your afternoon,” he said with an obvious American accent, a characteristic of speech that caused me to perceive in him a certain resemblance to the iconic figure of that nation’s mythology, Uncle Sam. Yet some
thing else about the voice struck a different chord within me, and as we both took to chairs facing one another, my heart skipped as I silently realised that the stranger before me was none other than Sherlock Holmes himself, in disguise.

  I leaned back, at first averting my gaze from him, pleased at having seen through the impersonation, yet curious as to why he should approach me in this furtive manner at all.

  “In truth,” I remarked with a nonchalant air, “it is not yet midday.”

  “Oh,” said he, putting a hand to his mouth—and I could now clearly discern my friend through the affectation he presented—“I’ve no timepiece. Earlier than I believe, you say?”

  I motioned upward. The man cocked his head, apparently at last heard ticking from above, and beheld the clock upon Blanding’s consulting room wall.

  “Ah, indeed!” he said, squinting at the numbered face. “It’s still morning—unless it’s the evening, in which case I’ve gone without my dinner, you know. But my stomach doesn’t feel empty, and I remember the sun has not yet set. Oh, forgive my confusion. I’m so harried, and I am so troubled.”

  “No matter. You are not a regular patient here, I understand.”

  “That’s correct, sir. Stricken as I am and passing by these offices, I thought to seek help, no matter who might provide the physic.”

  Still wondering why my friend insisted on this farce after so many months of silence, I continued to assume the role of one deceived, even as my mind sought to formulate a hypothesis. “And would you describe your symptoms, please?”

  “They’re all here!” the man said, eyes widening behind the spectacles as he sprang forward and pointed to his right temple. “In here. The mee-graines.” He leaned back in his chair, drew himself up as if he were a scrawny cat defending its prey, and nodded. “They’re fierce, I tell you.”

  “Migraines, yes.”

  “Have you treated such before?”

  “Of course,” I replied, feeling the first twinges of annoyance at my friend’s continued ruse.

  “Recently?” he asked. “Have you kept apace of the newest developments and research? What’s your opinion on the use of ergot?”

  “Once you have recounted your experiences in more detail,” I said calmly, “I may perhaps prescribe a treatment. Is the pain accompanied by—?”

  “Have you read the works of Thornberg or Powers?” the disguised Holmes asked. “Possibly Osland’s many papers?”

  “Please,” I insisted, “if you will simply tell me—”

  “You’re not one for trepanning, are you?” he enquired warily.

  “Certainly not!”

  “Have you treated anyone else for them recently?”

  I paused and took a deep breath, finding it increasingly difficult to continue this absurd charade.

  “Tell me,” he persisted, “have you lately received a sufferer with complaints similar to mine?”

  With patience now at an end, I suddenly reached out with devilish purpose, intending to burst my friend’s bubble and rip the false goatee from his face.

  “Ouch!” came a pitiful shout in Holmes’s familiar voice. “For God’s sake, man, let it go!”

  I released my hold on what I now recognised as a natural growth of beard and lurched back in my chair, embarrassed and contrite.

  “Holmes, I apologise most sincerely!” I stammered. “I could not help myself in exposing your disguise. I say, you are you, are you not, Holmes?”

  “That is a supposition you have proved true in a most forceful manner, Watson,” he replied while caressing his chin. “Though, if I may say, it would have been preferred that your excellent perception had extended to the goatee as well.”

  “I believed it merely glued to your chin, an adjunct to the impersonation. I could not imagine—”

  “Nor could I some months ago, but the business at hand requires all this to be genuine, other than my change in hair colour.”

  “Yes, I was going to remark that it does not become you, either.” I looked sheepishly at my friend. “That is, if you do not take offense at the comment.”

  “If anything, Watson, I endorse your sentiment.”

  Holmes removed his spectacles and smiled once more. “It was a complete surprise to find you here, and without a bit of putty about the face and perhaps false brows, I thought it quite likely that you would see through this disguise in which I am cloaked, but my own imp of the perverse compelled me to proceed nonetheless.”

  He sighed. “I confess that, a tender chin aside, I am rather glad that it all transpired as it did—fortunately, without you swooning over me this time2—and I congratulate you on a still-discerning eye.”

  I shrugged. “No doubt, it still cannot compete with yours.”

  “Well, I admit it is evident that you have now become a frequent passenger in motorcars, an invention that you have traditionally despised. The faint differentiation of skin around your eyes, where goggles would be fitted while riding through the country, testifies to that.”

  “Yes, I have—”

  “Then, too, you remain clean-shaven, other than your moustache, but both sides of your face have now been scraped with equal precision, suggesting that you are no longer the one applying the razor. You always had difficulty in achieving perfection with regard to the left cheek, you know.”

  “I recall previous comments to that effect, but as for the issue of motors—”

  “That someone else shaves you suggests your personal accounts are much healthier than they were before I set up camp in Sussex.”

  “Yes, that is why I was able to—”

  “It cannot be due to your practice, from which you have presumably retired,” Holmes said, glancing about the room, “though you obviously step in for Dr. Blanding for days at a time—these are his offices, yet you have made them somewhat your own, with that tobacco jar and various other personal possessions I recall from our Baker Street days. No, I believe you and your literary agent have recently extracted money from one more sad, unsuspecting publisher in return for the right to print yet another of your fantasies based upon our past work together.”

  “The Birlstone affair,” I replied cautiously.

  Holmes sighed. “I shudder to think what misconceptions the public will draw from that account.” He smiled sardonically as he raised a brow. “Do you include mention of Professor Moriarty?”

  “Yes, of course I do.”

  “You should reconsider that, old fellow—it will only serve to baffle your readers.3 But, such matters aside, you remain active, and that is to be admired. Your retirement is certainly not complete, is it?”

  I studied my friend. “Evidently, the same may be said of you.”

  Holmes regarded me with an expression of whimsy. “Indeed, Watson. I have cast aside all the trappings of leisure.”

  “You term it leisure now? In the old days, I believe you employed words such as inactivity, boredom, and ennui in its stead.”

  “Yes, so I did. Well, no matter what turns my vocabulary may have taken since, when the nation’s premier comes to my sitting room and insists that I answer his call to play the game of espionage, who am I to contradict him?”

  I sat up abruptly. “What—”

  “I will provide explanation in time,” Holmes said thoughtfully, leaning back in his chair. “You know, when I realised you were here rather than Dr. Blanding, it was all I could do to restrain my excitement—as well as my embarrassment. I must apologise for the very long period of silence, Watson.”

  “It does not signify. You have been pursuing an investigation at the behest of the premier, you say. But you indicated you came here to talk to Blanding.”

  “I did. I wish to discover what additional insight may be gained concerning one of his patients: Franklin P. Scudder.”

  “Scudder? Oh yes, the American with migraines. I treated him just a week ago, I believe.”

  “I was attempting to elicit more about him when you initiated that vicious assault upon my facial hai
r. Some shreds of information about Scudder have already been passed on to me, most of them apparently originating with his valet. It was he who discovered the body, you see.”

  “What?” I cried. “The man is murdered?”

  “That is not certain,” said Holmes, raising his hand. “What I have been told is that Scudder lies dead in his flat. Perhaps if someone else had given you that news,” he added with mild amusement, “your thoughts would not have turned so rapidly to those of homicide.”

  “And what is your own assessment of that possibility? Of homicide, that is.”

  Holmes shrugged. “You know my methods, Watson, as well as their limitations. I have not yet had opportunity to examine either the body or its resting place, and so speculation would be meaningless at this time. Even so, I have no intellectual stake in the manner of death as such, other than how it may serve my particular purpose.”

  “What is that purpose?” I asked. “And how did the Yard contact you? I and all your friends have found that an impossible task of late.”

  The detective smiled. “It was not Scotland Yard that summoned me in this instance, Watson, though their Inspector Magillivray is expecting me shortly at Scudder’s flat. No, this particular investigation is a corollary, shall we say, of my enterprise on behalf of the government.”

  “Ah.”

  “And now that we speak to one another as our true selves, I do hope you may be forthcoming about Scudder.”

  “Of course. Ask me what you like, with the understanding that he is—was not a regular patient of young Dr. Blanding. I saw him but once, when he came in from the street complaining of headaches, as you did moments ago. You desire his medical details?”

  “Those are not now of primary concern, though they may become relevant in future,” replied my friend. “Rather, I wish to know all you can relate about the character of the man himself.”

  “Gladly,” I said, rising to fetch the slim file on Mr. Scudder that, during the previous week, I had deposited in a cabinet on the far side of the consulting room.