Death on a Pale Horse

8





Not long ago, I should have regarded the glance of a passing stranger as accidental. I should have supposed that the attitude of some lounger against a pillar of the Lyceum Theatre was habitual sloth. Now, I looked twice to see how such people reacted as I passed them. Did they communicate by a furtive signal to a confederate behind me? My apprehensions could never prove anything of the sort, but that left me all the more uneasy.

I had gone to an exhibition in Kensington Gallery. I stood with my back to the door, studying a watercolour of a spirited young lady, “The Milkmaid of Cowes,” braving a stiff breeze to catch the attention of a Royal Yachtsman. The disadvantage of a picture hung to face doors and windows is that it also mirrors the interior of the room and the admirer. I did not at first catch a reflection of the person behind me until he began to turn away. Seen in the glass, it was the build of Moran seen from the rear, down to the whiskers and the cut of the hair.

I swung round, hoping and believing I should confront a complete stranger. I was even prepared to find that it was Moran. Worst of all, this onlooker had vanished. In the time it took me to turn, it would have been easy for the image in the picture-glass to move deftly through half a dozen steps and disappear among the display-boards.

There were two or three other incidents of a similar kind. In none of them could I be sure of anything. I was walking home from Maida Vale by lamplight. I turned into Clifton Gardens, where the Regents Park Canal runs down the centre of this leafy avenue. The cream-painted Regency terraces rose on either side and a broad pavement extended before them. There was no immediate means of access to the other side of the water from where I was walking. Suddenly he was standing there. Was it “he,” or not? The man wore a swell’s costume of silk hat and crimson-lined black cape with a silver-knobbed stick in his hand. He was stationary, staring across the dark water in the lamplight—either at me or through me.

I hurried on to see if he would follow parallel. Half a minute later, I turned quickly and looked back. He had gone. I could see all the way to Warwick Avenue. But the broad walks on either side were suddenly empty. His only refuge would have been in one of the cream-terraced houses. But which one, if any? And was it he?

The following day, with no such thoughts in mind, I was passing a newly refurbished apartment block in a busy stretch of the Marylebone Road. If ever I saw the outline of Moran, it was the foreman on the flat roof, giving orders to a workman with a wheelbarrow. The odds were a thousand to one against it being so. Yet how easily a tile or a brick from the piles of material on that roof might slip off and brain a passer-by in the street below!

I came down to breakfast the next morning. Sherlock Holmes almost always rose late. Though he was apt to say that an exception disproves the rule, there were some occasions during a case when I would come down at my usual time and find him gone out on an errand of his own. So it was today. His plates were cleared away, but the Morning Post was smooth and unread.

All the same, I was not prepared to look across the room and find our Scotland Yard friend, Lestrade, sitting in my fireside armchair and reading my copy of The Times. He had the grace to get up as I came in.

“Good morning, doctor; I trust I find you well. Mr. Holmes and I met on the doorstep. I was arriving as he was leaving to keep an appointment with his brother, Sir Mycroft, at Lancaster Gate, or so he said. He was kind enough to suggest that I might sit here quietly and wait for him.”

“Have you nothing else to do?”

The question sounded more discourteous than I had intended. I was not best pleased to find Lestrade in occupation of our sitting-room at such an hour. The inspector chuckled at my question and settled his jacket more comfortably upon his shoulders. I noticed that, unusually for him, he was wearing semi-official tweeds. I wondered where he might have been—or where he was going to. He sounded full of himself.

“We all have a good deal to do this morning, doctor, but my visit here is a great part of it. Now do not allow me to stand between you and your breakfast.”

He made a gesture of invitation towards the table, for all the world as though he were the host and I a guest in his house. I had no intention of eating my breakfast as a performance where he was to be the audience.

“What brings you here so early?”

He sat down again without invitation, as if to establish an indefinite tenancy. I noticed that Mrs. Hudson’s Molly had provided him with a cup of coffee.

“What brings me here, sir, is much the same thing as takes Mr. Holmes and Sir Mycroft to Lancaster Gate.”

I had no idea why my colleague and Brother Mycroft had gone to the Bayswater Road. All the same, I was damned if I would beg an explanation. Something like an evil smile of triumph lightened the inspector’s face. He almost wagged his finger at me.

“Ah,” he said quietly, “I daresay Mr. Holmes has not told you about Lancaster Gate. Then I shall do so. I’m sure Mr. Holmes and I have no secrets from you.”

The man was quite insufferable. Had I been fortified by a good breakfast, I should no doubt have dealt with him more robustly. As it was, I said grimly, “I shall be content to discuss the matter with Mr. Holmes on his return.”

But there was no stopping him.

“Your channel crossing on Friday week, sir. The Comtesse de Flandre.”

It shook me a little that he should know of it already.

“What of it?”

He looked surprised.

“Well, naturally it has taken Mr. Holmes to Lancaster Gate. To discuss the arrangements with Prince Napoleon-Jerome’s chiefof-staff. General Boulanger, I believe.”

I was lost. Like anyone who had read the newspapers, I knew that since the assassination of the Prince Imperial, his stout and elderly cousin Prince Napoleon-Jerome, known to all the world as “Plon Plon,” had become the claimant to the French throne. But I should have thought he was as far from being Emperor of the French as the poor young man had been, after two decades of the Republic. Of course the novelty of that Republic was more than a little tarnished. There had been a tumultuous movement in France in favour of the maverick General Georges Boulanger, winner of elections in that country. His great and popular promises even extended to restoring the Empire, in the person of Plon Plon as Napoleon IV, upon democratic principles.

Lestrade spoke quietly and confidentially.

“First thing this morning, Mr. Holmes took it upon himself to send one of his little ragamuffins to Leadenhall Street, to the shipping agents. Such firms open their doors almost as early as the railway stations. This little shaver was to engage accommodation for the two of you in the first-class saloon of the Comtesse de Flandre on Friday week. Back comes the message that the entire saloon is already taken by a certain party. So you’ll be travelling second class.”

Having savoured the pleasure of our discomfiture, Lestrade continued.

“Mr. Holmes’s budding spy kept his little ears open, asked a few questions of the messenger boys round those offices, and found out who that certain party is.”

“Who?”

“Well, naturally, Prince Napoleon-Jerome and his suite, coming back to London from exile in Switzerland. As soon as Mr. Holmes hears this, a message goes to your colleague’s noble brother. Sir Mycroft is to meet your friend at once. At the prince’s town house in Lancaster Gate.”

Lestrade beamed and chuckled, just as though this were the best thing he had heard in years.

“After all,” he said at last, “you’ll be crossing on the steamer anyway. Same crossing as Prince Napoleon. He’s an exile and there’s a law says he can’t set foot on the soil of France. There’s no way he can get between his estate in Switzerland and his mansion in London except by going through Belgium—and that means Ostend.”

“Why should he need us?”

Lestrade looked very uncomfortable, as if he ought to say nothing.

“Put it this way, doctor. What’s boiling up in France? General Bou-lon-geur hoping to be president next month and the monarchy brought back. That can’t be done for nothing.”

He illustrated the impossibility by a sucking sound and rubbing the tips of his thumb and forefinger together knowingly.

“Where’s the spondoolicks to be found?” he went on; “where’s the royal sparklers? They’ll be needed down the pawn shop in England, because that’s where the whole thing’s got to be launched from. But suppose this restoration was all to go smooth as goose grease, then your friend’s noble brother—and his friends—would be truly in the gravy for the help they’d given. I don’t somehow think he’d mind being Lord Mycroft Holmes of Mayfair, with a Légion d’Honneur medal into the bargain, would he?”

He paused and put down his coffee cup.

“Still, I’m sure you know about this already, sir. Otherwise I should never have dreamt of raising the subject.”

I left my breakfast aside but I sat down at the table. It had all come upon me too suddenly and too early in the day.

“Then Prince Napoleon-Jerome is our client.” It was a bewildered statement, but it sounded like a question. Lestrade inclined his head and spoke consolingly.

“Only for a bit, doctor. Just from Ostend to Dover. Even if he was to come to the throne now, he wouldn’t last long. For one thing, he’s too old. And as for his health, it don’t bear mentioning. What matters to him is getting his royal backside on the throne for a year or two, if you’ll pardon the expression. After that they’d get some young princeling to follow after him. Someone that’s every mother’s dream and every girl’s ambition. He could take his pick.”

He chortled again.

“Not like the girl he’s been keeping at Lancaster Gate—heard of her, have you? Cora Pearl? The Pearl from Plymouth, as she calls herself. The Pearl from Plymouth? She’s named as Emma Crouch in our Special Branch dossier. Cautioned for a bit of naughtiness in the Haymarket with a gentleman of importance a few years ago. Pearl from Plymouth! I’d give the baggage ‘Pearl from Plymouth,’ if she belonged to me.”

How I endured the next half-hour of these whimsies until Sherlock Holmes returned from Bayswater, I shall never know. Nor how I weathered a further half-hour before the inspector condescended to leave us and attend to his “busy” morning.

“Nothing is decided,” said Sherlock Holmes reassuringly, as soon as we were alone together. “I raised the matter in a telegram to Brother Mycroft first thing this morning. Something had to be done.”

“About the message at the Army and Navy club?”

“Just so. The Comtesse de Flandre. The period of new moon touches her steamer timetables on Friday week. I arranged for one of our little friends to slip away early this morning when no one was likely to notice him. I deduce that someone of importance is aimed at in this plot—but who? Our infant Mercury was to find out who had booked the first-class accommodation on the day in question. He informs me that the so-called royal saloon of the Comtesse de Flandre, which is in truth merely the first-class saloon on the after-deck, has been engaged for the Prince Napoleon-Jerome and his party.”

“To what purpose?”

“Plon Plon, as they call him, is leaving his exile at Prangins in Switzerland by rail and steamer for his London house in Lancaster Gate. From there, he will underwrite the coming election campaign to put General Boulanger in the Elysée Palace and himself in the Tuileries, wearing the crown of France. He is shipping to England a significant election war-chest, which I believe is the term used for the finances of a coup d’état.”

“What war-chest? Gold? Currency? Precious stones?”

“Not currency, I think. Other considerations apart, it would be too bulky. Also it would have to be in francs; and once this campaign to restore him begins in earnest, the franc will be destabilised. Gold bars to a sufficient value would be cumbersome. Whereas selected precious stones, packed in something no larger than a suitcase, might amount to a king’s ransom. To judge from movements on the commodities exchange over the past few weeks, that is where the money has gone. We must remember that in its recent history, the imperial family of France has sometimes had to escape its enemies at a moment’s notice. Even this prince once did so with the Queen of the Night in one pocket and a constellation of Mogul diamonds in his dressing case.”

I had had enough of this.

“What about the meeting at Lancaster Gate with Mycroft and Boulanger? What are we supposed to do? Are we to guard this trumpery during the channel dash while Moran or some brother villain tries to steal it?”

He looked at me as if I should have known better.

“We shall be responsible for both, my dear fellow. I propose that the war-chest shall act as bait to our enemies. But the most valuable item on the ship will be the person of Plon Plon himself. His supporters, including some in the British government and a good many in Parliament, intend him to be the new Emperor of France before the season is over. One bullet put into him now would alter the course of history. Mycroft assures me that there will already be three armed guards in the mailroom to protect the treasure. That is normal. That mailroom is in the after part of the vessel, behind a locked steel grille. The Ostend steamers are operated by the Belgium government. They are designed and constructed to be secure.”

“What about the French?”

“The prince will have with him Baron Brunet, his chief of staff, who carries a useful revolver. There is also His Highness’s servant, Theodore Cabell. It will not surprise you to know that Cabell is a marksman and is also a captain in the royal bodyguard. His present name may be something of a nom de guerre. The principal danger would be from a sudden ambush carefully laid. Our task is to frustrate any such attempt. All in all, Napoleon-Jerome is thought to be safe enough at close quarters.”

“As I recall, Holmes, the Prince Imperial was murdered in circumstances where he was thought to be safe enough.”

He sat down, crossed his legs, and lounged.

“The very point I made to Mycroft. However, our government does not intend to lose its distinguished guest on a channel crossing. He is far less protected on a steamer than on an express train. His chief of staff and his bodyguard will sit with him in a locked and guarded first-class saloon until he is safely in Dover. One or two of our Scotland Yard friends will come aboard there. You and I will merely have a roving brief, keeping our wits and our noses alert for any whiff of danger during the voyage.”

As international law then stood, Plon Plon would come under the protection of the British crown as soon as the Comtesse de Flandre entered British territorial waters. Thanks to Mycroft’s discussions at Lancaster Gate that morning, such protection was to be represented solely by Sherlock Holmes, with my assistance, until we reached Dover. If the note waiting for me at my club was indeed a challenge, it was plain that his enemies as well as his friends knew well in advance of the prince’s plans. In that case, I drew an uncomfortable conclusion. Either we should discharge our duty to the prince successfully, or we should probably all be dead before the Comtesse de Flandre docked at Dover.