Death on a Pale Horse

7





I explained everything to him. As usual, he ignored most of the evidence and seized on one item that was crucial to the entire narrative.

“The Comtesse de Flandre?”

“I fear she means nothing to me.”

“Indeed? Does she not? There are others, my dear fellow, to whom she means a great deal. But few people are party to the secret.”

He got up from his chair by the fireplace, where he had been listening in his usual attentive posture. His long legs had been stretched out, finger-tips touching in an attitude of payer, elbows resting on the arms of the chair, eyelids lightly closed. Now, turning up the ornamental gas-lamp below the picture rail, he crossed to the far wall of the room, whose long run of bookshelves made up his archive. The lowest shelf contained a run of large scrap-books, purchased at intervals from Appincourt, our Baker Street stationer. Other men might have filled the thick blank pages of these folio volumes with family mementoes or cuttings from favourite literature. In the case of Sherlock Holmes, hardly an evening passed without the appearance of a sturdy pair of tailor’s scissors as he set about the daily newspapers.

From the pages of the morning’s Times or the evening Globe, he would cut some item that had caught his eye. It might be the use of a refined form of strychnine by a French widow-robber, now making his last vain appeal to the Court de Cassation. Or perhaps there had been a sensation in the Place de Greve, after the desperate fellow had been strapped to the fatal plank and tilted forward under the hoisted blade of the guillotine. As his severed head fell into the basket, the felon’s eyes were distinctly seen to turn and glare at Sanson the executioner. Most often, however, these brief paragraphs followed the progress of some petty villain who had risen from trivial burglaries in the slums of Whitechapel to the Olympian heights of homicide or extortion.

With a brush of his left arm, Holmes swept clear a space in the rubble of his chemical table. He lugged out from the shelves a tall volume in marbled boards. Spreading it open, his long agile fingers turned the crackling pages, stiffened by the newsprint with which they had been pasted. He stopped at a panorama of cuttings, annotated heavily in rusty ink. I caught the word “Reichsanzeiger” and knew only enough German to tell me that this was an official compilation of confidential memoranda. Thanks to his elder brother, Holmes acquired occasional documents and reports that were not yet for public inspection. He traced a line across a column and rested it under the words “Comtesse de Flandre, Marie Louise Alexandrine Karoline, Princess of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.”

I looked over his shoulder and said, I fear rather foolishly, “Holmes, you have the advantage of me.”

He chuckled and again flattened the surface of the broad page with his hand. “Happily for the good people of England, Watson, they sleep soundly in their beds. They are oblivious to those darkling plains of Europe where Mr. Mathew Arnold’s ignorant armies clash by night. They do not yet know how close the powers of Europe came to a major war a matter of months ago. We owed that crisis to Rawdon Moran and his masters, for there are even mightier villains than he. Such men have come close to accomplishing the greatest criminal conspiracies of modern times. The damage is still far from being undone. To this point, they appear to have been merely flexing their muscles for the grand assault that will one day come. These are the documents that prove the case.”

“But why should they want a war?”

He looked at me with unfathomable sympathy.

“My dear Watson, why should a grocer want his customers to grow hungry—or a tailor to see his clients grow ragged? Who will profit from a modern war in Europe? Not the poor young heroes who will be slaughtered in their thousands by the devices of an industrial age. Not the householders who, with their wives and children, will be bombarded from the land, from the sea, and very probably in future from the air. But who else?”

“The merchants of murder!” I took up a phrase he had used earlier when talking of Moran or his kind and tossed it back at him. He nodded slowly.

“Very good, Watson. And whom do we know whose litany is a hymn of homage to the houses of Krupp and Maxim-Nordenfelt, Creuzot and Howitzer, Colt and Armstrong, Enfield and Webley? Why be content with the Congo and the Transvaal if all Europe is hungry for weapons?”

“But there has been no European war. What was their plot?”

He turned to another page.

“A few months ago, they decided to see what they could do, by forged despatches, to strike up the diplomats’ dance of death. To bring two great power blocs of Europe to war, Austria and Germany on one side, France and Russia on the other, the old Turkish Empire and the straits of the Dardanelles with access to the Mediterranean to be the prize. The gateway to the East. If there were war, well and good. If not, the world would see how far a criminal clique could push the nations towards one. The war was to be precipitated by a German prince claiming the throne of Bulgaria, Ferdinand of Coburg, kinsman of the Comtesse de Flandre. She is also sister to his closest ally, the King of Rumania.”

“And her part in all this?”

“The Comtesse was the innocent recipient of forged letters purporting to be written by Prince Ferdinand. They were intercepted, as the authors intended, by secret agents of Tsar Alexander. Their contents were forwarded to St. Petersburg. Ferdinand appeared to promise his kinswoman that he had a secret treaty with Count Bismarck to defeat the Russian army in the provinces of the Black Sea. With perfect truth, the despatches pointed out that Russia could not sustain the cost of an all-out war longer than a few weeks. The so-called Prince Ferdinand therefore asked the Comtesse de Flandre to act as a loyal German princess and sister-in-law of King Leopold of Belgium. France would be quick to seek revenge for her defeat of 1870 by joining Russia against Austria and Germany. A Belgian army need only hamper a French advance in the Vosges for a few days. Only for as long as it took Germany and Austria to knock out Russia. A victorious Bismarck would impose terms. Belgium would never again have cause to fear her powerful French neighbour. That was the scheme outlined in the forged diplomatic papers by Moran and his associates. There was not a word of truth in this concoction, but it was so plausible that it nearly did the trick.”

“It was close to the truth of what might happen in any case!”

“Precisely. The entire continent was set to go up in flames. There were also forged letters between Count Bismarck in Berlin and the German ambassador in Vienna, Prince Reuss, confirming the tale.”

“And how was a war averted?”

Sherlock Holmes became modesty itself.

“At the eleventh hour, Brother Mycroft was kind enough to think that my own modest talents might be of some little use in saving the peace of Europe. What did I find? Our rulers are profoundly neurotic. Our adversaries must have been gratified at the mischief they were able to make with so little effort. Do not underestimate them, Watson! The forged letters from Prince Reuss to his master Count Bismarck were almost perfect. Those from Prince Ferdinand to the Comtesse de Flandre approached perfection.”

“Yet they failed?”

“Only because of the suspicious ease with which they had fallen into the hands of the Tsar’s agents. That should have alerted all the great powers. Conflict was avoided, but distrust between nations has immeasurably increased. The name of the innocent and admirable Comtesse de Flandre was cynically exploited. Next time—and there will be a next time—our enemies will have learnt by their mistakes.”

“But there was no war this time.”

He shook his head.

“It was close, Watson. The Russian High Command issued secret orders to its forward units to advance within sight of the Hungarian frontier. The Hungarian ministry replied with a confidential warning to St. Petersburg: ‘If war should be forced upon us, Hungary will do her duty.’ St. Petersburg at length offered promises of peace to the Austrian Emperor, but Vienna refused to suspend its military preparations in return for promises alone. It called up all reservists for ten days’ training in the use of the new repeating rifle. Mycroft tells me that Lord Salisbury summoned the Turkish Ambassador privately to Downing Street. The Prime Minister promised that England would never consent to an alteration in the balance of power in the Mediterranean. The Royal Navy put to sea. It was nearly a bonfire of all the treaties and all the hopes.”

He slid the weighty scrapbook back into its place on the bottom shelf. I stood there, trying to remember how it was that I had not noticed his preoccupation with a great diplomatic crisis at the time. Of course! It had come and gone during that summer fortnight of my visit to the Devonshire cousins. I had lost myself in the pleasures of fishing for trout on Exmoor, among the steep rocky falls of Heddon’s Mouth by the Bristol Channel, or facing the breeze on the links of Woolacombe golf club above the sandhills and the Atlantic surges. Now that seemed like another world. Over all my thoughts lay a sense of awe that this brotherhood of political gangsters had brought millions of their fellow human beings to the brink of destruction in the name of financial profit.

Holmes lay back luxuriously in his chair and sent up several blue-grey wreaths of smoke from his pipe.

“The Comtesse de Flandre,” I said hopefully.

He stood up abruptly, his back to the fireplace, and frowned at the carpet. “Why not try the new moon?”

“I don’t think I follow you, Holmes.”

“Do you not? Consider the message that was waiting for you this morning. I believe that the last two words, concerning the moon, may be more important than the esteemed Comtesse de Flandre. They specify a time. In doing so they eliminate at least twenty-seven of twenty-eight possible dates in the month ahead.”

“It would be dark at the new moon.”

“Indeed it would. Perhaps we are to meet our foe during the hours of darkness, that is to say approximately between seven o’clock at night and seven o’clock in the morning.”

He turned again to the bookshelves and took out a familiar cheaply bound volume. It was the current issue of Old Moore’s Almanac, sold by the street vendors of Piccadilly. Flipping through it, he came to the tides and phases of the moon.

“For what it matters, Watson, the new moon is on 29 March, just a couple of weeks away. We may suppose that it is the next new moon which is indicated. If not, then this message would have very little value as information or as an ultimatum.”

“And the Comtesse de Flandre? Why should the phases of the moon matter to her? At this time of year, she is probably on her way to the Swiss lakes or the Venice Lido.”

He struck a match and furrowed his brow. Something was going on in his mind, but for the life of me I could not tell what. He shook out the match, drew on his pipe, and his brow was clear again.

“Riva,” he said presently. “It is a picturesque little town at the Austrian end of Lake Garda. There was a brief notice not long ago in the Court Circular of The Times. If memory serves, the Comtesse and her children were to be guests of her Sigmaringen cousins at their lakeside villa there during the early spring.”

“What can the new moon mean to her out there? Or anywhere, come to that?”

He walked across to the window and stood staring out across the reflected sunset of the foggy London sky. I knew better than to disturb him in such a mood.

“Fool!” he said softly, a moment later, and I knew he did not mean me.

He turned to the bookshelves again and drew out another flimsily bound handbook. It had the familiar livery of Bradshaw’s railway timetable, but he did not turn to the usual pages. I could tell from their colour that he had found an appendix detailing international rail services to Paris, Brussels, or Berlin and the steamer times for the Continental ferries. He stood motionless and performed a little mental arithmetic.

“I believe, Watson, I owe you a very great apology for wasting your time over the identity of the Comtesse de Flandre.”

“But not for revealing the activities of such political scoundrels as Rawdon Moran.”

His face brightened a little and he looked up from the columns of figures.

“You are correct. I believe, however, that our Comtesse de Flandre is not the sister of the King of Rumania, nor the wife of Philippe, Comte de Flandre, nor the mother of his five children. To be sure, she is a creature of the greatest elegance; but she has a heart of steel. She is also the property of a good many admirers.”

He chuckled and I knew what was coming next.

“She also has two paddle-wheels, two funnels, and a two-compound diagonal engine capable of driving her at sixteen knots.”

For the first time in the course of this case, he put back his head and laughed with all the power of his lungs. As for the ship, I had little difficulty in imagining her. In my Scottish childhood, the Clyde and the other rivers, as well as the islands and coastal waters, depended for their transport and supplies on these trim well-balanced paddle steamers. Named after nobility and heroes of legend, they plied from pier to pier among the little harbours of the western coast. They were about two hundred feet long and some thirty feet in the beam. At a speed between twelve and twenty knots, they could carry as many as four or five hundred passengers. Their build made them exceptionally manoeuvrable and, being flat-bottomed, they could work in as little as six or eight feet of water. Under the top deck, there were saloons and a bar, providing cover in wet weather.

He glanced at the timetable again.

“It appears that the ship is owned by the Belgian government and works the Ostend-to-Dover crossing with another paddler, the Princesse Henriette. Strange, is it not, that the ships are named after the chaste and worthy Comtesse de Flandre and her daughter? It is one more indication of the public distaste felt for the libidinous and cruel King Leopold of the Belgians.”

“But suppose the message is an enemy’s challenge rather than a friend’s warning. After all, what can a passenger ferry matter to men whose ambition is to precipitate war between major European powers? Is it not far more likely that their target is again the Comtesse de Flandre herself, rather than a cross-channel ferry which happens to be named after her?”

He thought about this briefly and shook his head.

“Watson, your taste for writing up our modest investigations as a romance of crime is, as you know, a matter of indifference to me. But I remain a simple soul. Common sense tells me that a new moon is less likely to be of consequence to a royal lady than to a passenger ship, its captain, and its crew. The state of the sky, the position of the stars, and the phases of the moon are the rulers of their lives. I daresay you are right and I am wrong, but that is how I see it. Moreover, I prefer the promise of skulduggery on the high seas to an invitation from the Italian lakes.”

“But have we not been given a time and place where we are challenged to go and settle accounts? Are we not invited to ride from a view to a death by a man who is master of the kill?”

“I believe you will find, Watson, that this is a message from a friend.”

“And if you are wrong?”

He winced, as if at a spasm of pain.

“My dear fellow, I am not in the habit of being wrong.”

He knew more than he was telling me, but his expression was as innocent as a sleeping child’s. I tried again.

“Holmes, if what you say is true, the last thing we should do is to go anywhere near this ship or the new moon!”

His fingers beat a slow but impatient tattoo on the arm of his chair.

“You think not?”

“Suppose you are right and suppose this reference is to the ship. Our adversaries will watch us every moment from now on, as I am sure they have already done. If there are enough of them, the most amateur villains could accomplish that—and these are no amateurs. When the time comes, they need only lie in wait, as professional hunters do. For us, a ship is a natural trap if ever there was one. This may not even be the work of Rawdon Moran.”

He raised his forefinger an inch from his chair-arm and spoke quietly.

“I think you are wrong there, Watson. This little matter has become personal between us.”

“Well, then, he will have an alibi and half a dozen hired footpads whom we shall not know from Adam. On a ship of any kind, they have only to choose a convenient moment, shoot us through the head or hit us across it, and throw us overboard.”

“They will most certainly have us in their sights,” he said thoughtfully; “I assume that they will know our every movement. They will also choose a time and place to their own advantage. And in that lies the greatest danger to them.”