Victorian Villainy Read online

  “What caused your companions to treat you in so unfriendly a manner?” I asked.

  “They were no companions of mine,” he replied. “I am the proprietor of the Hansel and Hansel Costume Company.” he tapped himself on the chest. “I am the second Hansel, you understand. The first Hansel, my father, retired from the business some years ago and devotes himself to apiculture.”

  “Really?” asked Holmes. “I would like to meet him.”

  “Certainly,” Hansel agreed. “I am sure he would like to thank the man who saved his son’s life.”

  “Yes, there is that,” Holmes agreed. “Go on with your story.”

  “Yes. I delivered yesterday a large order of costumes to a certain Count von Kramm at the Adlerhof.”

  “Hah!” Holmes interjected. We looked at him, but he merely leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed across his chest and murmured, “continue!”

  “Yes,” said Hansel. “Well, they were naval costumes. Officers and ordinary seamen’s uniforms. From shoes to caps, with insignia and ribbons and everything.”

  “Fascinating,” I said. “British Royal Navy uniforms, no doubt.”

  “Why, yes,” Hansel agreed. “And quite enough of them to have costumed the full cast of that Gilbert and Sullivan show—Pinafore.”

  “And the name you stitched on the caps,” Holmes interjected, “could it have been the Royal Edgar?”

  “Indeed it was,” Hansel said, looking startled. “How did you....”

  “Much like this one?” Holmes asked, pulling the cap we had found out of his pocket and placing it on the table.

  Hansel picked it up, examined it carefully, crumpled the cloth in his hands and sniffed at it. “Why, yes,” he agreed, “this is one of ours.”

  “Go on,” I said. “How did you get yourself tied up in that cabin?”

  “It was when I asked about the undergarments,” Hansel said. “Count von Kramm seemed to take offense.

  “Undergarments?”

  Hansel nodded and took a large bite of sausage. “We were asked to supply authentic undergarments, and I went to considerable trouble to comply with his request.”

  “Whatever for?” asked Holmes.

  Hansel shrugged a wide, expressive shrug. “I did not ask,” he said. “I assumed it was for whatever production he was planning to put on. I acquired the requested undergarments from the Naval Stores at Portsmouth, so their authenticity was assured.”

  “You thought it was for a play?” I asked. “Doesn’t that sound like excessive realism?”

  Another shrug. “I have heard that when Untermeyer produces a show at the Konigliche Theater he puts loose change in the corners of the couches and stuffed chairs, and all the doors and windows on the set must open and close even if they are not to be used during the performance.”

  “Who are we to question theatrical genius?” Holmes agreed. “If Count Kramm’s theatrical sailors are to wear sailors’ undergarments, why then so be it.”

  “Indeed,” said Hansel. “But why only five sets?”

  Holmes carefully put down his coffee cup. “Five sets only?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And how many sets of, ah, outer garments?”

  “Thirty five complete uniforms. Twelve officers and the rest common sailors.”

  “How strange,” I said.

  Hansel nodded. “That’s what I said. That’s why I ended up tied up on that chair, or so I suppose.”

  Holmes looked at me. “Count von Kramm,” he said, “or as I know him better, Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein and Hereditary King of Bohemia, dislikes being questioned.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “Von Kramm is one of his favorite aliases.”

  “That man is a king?” Hansel asked, a note of alarm in his voice. “There is no place where one can hide from a king.”

  “Do not be alarmed,” Holmes told him. “By now he has forgotten that you ever existed.”

  “Ah, yes,” Hansel said. “There is that about kings.”

  Holmes stood. “I think we must go to Trieste,” he said. “There is devil’s work afoot.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “I need to send a telegram. I’ll have the reply sent to Trieste.”

  “I, I think, must go home,” said Hansel.

  “Yes, of course,” Holmes agreed. He took Hansel’s hand. “You have earned the thanks of another royal person, and I shall see that, in the fullness of time, you are suitably rewarded.”

  “You are g-going to r-r-reward me?” Hansel stammered. “But your grace, your kingship, I had no idea. I mean....”

  Holmes barked out a short laugh. “No, my good man,” he said. “Not I. A gracious lady on whose shoulders rest the weight of the greatest empire in the world.”

  “Oh,” said Hansel. “Her.”

  * * * * * * *

  The city of Trieste rests on the Gulf of Trieste, which is the northern tip of the Adriatic Sea, and is surrounded by mountains where it isn’t fronting water. The city dates back to Roman times, and its architecture is a potpourri of every period from then to the present. Although it is putatively a part of the Austrian Empire, its citizens mostly speak Italian, and are more concerned with the happenings in Rome and Venice than those in Vienna and Budapest.

  The journey took us two days by the most direct route we could find. But we reconciled ourselves with the thought that von Ormstein and his band of pseudo-English sailors couldn’t have arrived much ahead of us.

  During the journey we discussed what we had found out and worked out a course of action. It was necessarily vague, as although we now had a pretty good idea of what von Ormstein was planning, we didn’t know what resources we would find available to us to stop him from carrying out his dastardly scheme.

  Before we left Lindau Holmes and I had sent a telegram to Mycroft:

  SEND NAMES AND LOCATIONS OF ALL DESTROYERS OF ROYAL HENRY CLASS REPLY GENERAL PO TRIESTE SHERLOCK

  A reply awaited us when we arrived. We retired to a nearby coffee house and perused it over steaming glasses of espresso:

  EIGHT SHIPS IN CLASS ROYAL HENRY ROYAL ELIZABETH AND ROYAL ROBERT WITH ATLANTIC FLEET AT PORTSMOUTH ROYAL STEPHEN IN DRYDOCK BEING REFITTED ROYAL WILLIAM IN BAY OF BENGAL ROYAL EDWARD AND ROYAL EDGAR ON WAY TO AUSTRALIA ROYAL MARY DECOMMISSIONED SOLD TO URUGUAY PRESUMABLY CROSSING ATLANTIC TO MONTEVIDEO WHAT NEWS MYCROFT

  I slapped my hand down on the coffee table. “Uruguay!”

  Holmes looked at me.

  “Uruguay is divided into nineteen departments,” I told him.

  “That is the sort of trivia with which I refuse to burden my mind,” he said. “The study of crime and criminals provides enough intellectual....”

  “Of which one,” I interrupted, “is Florida.”

  He stopped, his mouth open. “Florida?”

  “Just so.”

  “The letter.... ‘The Florida is now ours.’”

  “It is common practice to name warships after counties, states, departments, or other subdivisions of a country,” I said. “The British Navy has an Essex, a Sussex, a Kent, and several others, I believe.”

  Holmes thought this over. “The conclusion in inescapable,” he said. “The Florida....”

  “And the undergarments,” I said.

  Holmes nodded. “When you have eliminated the impossible,” he said, “whatever remains, however improbable, stands a good chance of being the truth.”

  I shook my head. “And you have called me the Napoleon of crime,” I said. “Compared to this....”

  “Ah!” said Holmes. “But this isn’t crime, this is politics. International intrigue. A much rougher game. There is no honor among politicians.”

  We walked hurriedly to the British consulate on Avenue San Lucia and identified ourselves to the Consul, a white-haired, impeccably dressed statesman named Aubrey, requesting that he send a coded message to Whitehall.

  He looked at us quizzically over his wire-rim g
lasses. “Certainly, gentlemen,” he said. “To what effect?”

  “We are going to ask Her Majesty’s government to supply us with a battleship,” Holmes said, and paused, waiting for the reaction.

  It was not what one might have expected. “There are no British battleships visiting the port right now,” Aubrey said, folding his hands over his ample stomach and leaning back in his chair. “Will a cruiser do?”

  Holmes leaned over the desk. “We are in earnest,” he said, his intense eyes glowering over his thin, ascetic nose, “and this is not a jest. To the contrairy, it is of the utmost importance and urgency.”

  “I have no doubt,” replied Aubrey, looking up mildly. “My offer was sincere. If a cruiser will suffice, I am ready to put one at your disposal. It’s all that’s available. There are some four or five Royal Navy torpedo gunboats working with the Italian Navy engaged in the suppression of smugglers and pirates in the Mediterranean, but I can’t predict when one of them will come to port.”

  “But you’re prepared to put a cruiser at, er, our disposal?” I asked

  “I am,” said Aubrey, nodding. “That is, I have no direct authority to do so, but the authority has been passed on to me from Whitehall. I received a cable this morning directing me to do all I could to assist you, were you to show up. I must say I’ve never been given an instruction like that before in eighteen years in the Foreign Service. From the P.M. himself, don’t you know. Along with a screed from the Admiralty”

  Holmes straightened up. “Mycroft!” he said.

  “Undoubtedly,” I agreed.

  “Her Majesty’s Ship Agamemnon is in port,” said Aubrey, “and I have passed on the request of the Admiralty to Captain Preisner that he keep steam up and to await further instructions. Now, if you could tell me what this is all about, perhaps I could be of some further assistance.”

  “Let us head to the docks immediately,” Holmes said. “We will explain on the way.”

  Aubrey reached for the bell pull behind his desk. “Call up my carriage,” he told the man who appeared in answer to his summons. “And fetch my greatcoat, there’s a chill in the air.”

  Consul Aubrey gave instructions, and soon we were racing through the streets of Trieste heading toward the municipal docks, where a waiting launch would take us to the Agamemnon. “In case something goes wrong,” Holmes told the Consul, “and there’s every chance it will, you’ll have to prepare.”

  “Prepare for what?” Aubrey asked. “In what way?”

  Holmes and I took it in turns to tell him what we knew and what we surmised. “We may not have all the details correct,” I said, “but if events do not unfold much as we have described, I will be greatly surprised.”

  “But this is incredible!” Aubrey said. “How did you figure all this out?”

  “No time now,” Holmes declared as the carriage pulled to a stop. “We must hurry.”

  “Good luck,” Aubrey said. “I shall return to the consulate and prepare for your success or failure, whichever comes from this madness.”

  “It must sound mad,” I agreed. “But it is not our madness, but that of our antagonist.”

  “Come,” said Holmes. “Let us board the launch.”

  We leapt aboard the steam launch. The boatswain saluted us as we raced past him down the gangway and then blew on his whistle twice, and we were off. The harbor was thick with shipping, and we weaved and dodged between vessels of all sorts and sizes, making our way to the great, looming bulk of the three-stack cruiser of modern design that was our destination.

  When we reached the Agamemnon a ladder was lowered from the deck of the cruiser to receive us. The sea was calm in the harbor, but transferring from the rolling deck of the steam launch to the pitching ladder at the cruiser’s side, even in those gentle swells, was more of an effort than a sedate unadventuresome man of my years found enjoyable.

  Captain Preisner’s flag officer met us as we stepped onto the deck, and led he way to the bridge of the Agammenon, where Preisner, a thin man with a bony face and a short, pointed gray beard, greeted us warily. “Mr. Holmes, he said, with a stiff nod of his head, “Professor Moriarty. Welcome, I think, to the Agamemnon.”

  “Captain,” I acknowledged.

  Preisner flapped a sheet of yellow paper at us. “I am requested and required by the Admiralty to give you whatever assistance you require, without asking questions. Or, at least, without demanding answers. Which, I must say are the oddest instructions I have ever received.”

  “This may be the oddest mission you will ever engage in,” Holmes told him.

  Captain Preisner sighed. “And somehow I have the feeling that it will not bring accolades to me or my crew,” he said.

  “You will probably be requested not to mention it in your official report,” I told him. “And, were I you, I would not enter the details in my log until I had time to think deeply on it.”

  “It was ever thus,” Preisner said. “What am I to do?”

  I pointed to the south. “Somewhere out there, not too far away, is a destroyer flying the Union Jack, or possibly the Red Ensign. We have to stop it and board it. Or, if that proves impossible, sink it.”

  Preisner looked at me, speechless. And then he looked at Holmes, who nodded. “Sink a British warship?” he asked incredulously.

  “Ah,” Holmes said, “but it isn’t. And if we do not succeed in stopping it, some major outrage will be committed in the harbor of Trieste or some nearby coastal city, and it will be blamed on the British Navy.”

  “A ruse of war?” Preisner asked. “But we aren’t at war, that I know of.”

  “We’d better consider it a ‘ruse of peace,’ then,” Holmes said. “Although the ultimate purpose of the exercise might well be to provoke a state of war between Britain and several continental powers.”

  “A Royal Navy destroyer,” Preisner mused, “that isn’t a Royal Navy destroyer.”

  “The name on her side will be Royal Edgar, I told him. “In reality she is the decommissioned Royal Mary, which has been sold to Uruguay. The Uruguayan government, we believe, renamed her the Florida.”

  “We’re going to war with Uruguay?”

  “She is now in the hands of a group of rogue European, ah, gentlemen, who plan to use her to provoke animosity and, perhaps, active hostilities against Great Britain. How the transfer was made from the Uruguayan authorities to the plotters remains to be seen. It could well be that the government of Uruguay knows nothing of the supposed sale.”

  “My god! How did you—never mind that now!” Preisner swung around and barked out a series of orders which got the great ship underway.

  While the Agamemnon made her way out into the Gulf of Trieste and headed down the Adriatic Sea, Captain Preisner concerned himself with the handling of his ship, but once we were in open water he turned the helm over to Lieutenant Willits, his bulldog-jawed, taciturn first officer, and called us to his side. “Now tell me what you know,” he said, “and what you surmise, so that we can plan a course of action.”

  As rapidly as possible, but leaving out nothing of consequence, we told him our story. Holmes took the lead, and in that nasal, high-pitched voice of his outlined what we knew and how we had learned it.

  Preisner rested his elbows on the ledge running around the front of the bridge, directly below the large glass windscreens, and stared out at the choppy blue-green sea. “And on these meager facts you have commandeered one of Her Majesty’s battle cruisers and set out in search of a destroyer that may or may not exist, and that, if it does exist, may or may not be planning some harm to British interests? And the Lords of the Admiralty have agreed with this, ah, unlikely interpretation?” he shook his head. “I will obey orders, even if it means obeying your orders and racing up and down the Adriatic, but frankly I don’t see it.”

  “You don’t agree that it is likely that this cabal has gotten possession of the Royal Mary and intends harm to Britain?” Holmes asked.

  Of what possible profit to them cou
ld such an action be?” Preisner asked. “I grant you your conclusion that these people were training a crew to operate a British warship, and the Royal Mary might well be the one. And if they were planning to come to Trieste, then they were probably picking up the ship somewhere around here. But is it not more likely that, having obtained the ship, they will take it to some distant port to commit their outrage, if indeed an outrage is planned?”

  “There are several reasons to believe that, whatever sort of attack they are planning, it will be nearby and soon,” I said.

  “For one thing,” said Holmes, “their men cannot be all that well trained in the handling of a modern destroyer.”

  “For another,” I added, “every extra hour they spend will increase the likelihood that they will be intercepted by some ship of Her Majesty’s Mediterranean Fleet. And one attempt to exchange signals would brand her as an imposter.”

  “For maximum effect,” Holmes said, ‘the outrage should be conducted close to a city or large town, so that it will be observed by as many people as possible.”

  “That makes sense,” Preisner agreed.

  “And then there are the undergarments,” I said.

  “Yes,” Holmes agreed. “That gives the whole game away.”

  “Captain Preisner looked from one to the other of us. “It does?” he asked.

  A mess steward came by with steaming mugs of tea for those on bridge, and he had thoughtfully included two for Holmes and me.

  I took the tea gratefully and sipped at it. Neither Holmes nor I were dressed for chill breeze that whipped through the open doors of the bridge. “The men in the Royal Navy uniforms are to be visible on deck during the event,” I told Captain Preisner, “so that watchers on shore will believe the masquerade. But why undergarments?”

  “And why only five?” Holmes added.

  Preisner looked thoughtful. “A good question,” he said.

  “The only reasonable answer is that those five men must pass close inspection when their bodies are examined.”

  “Their bodies?”

  “Consider,” said Holmes. “The undergarments only make sense if it is expected that the men will be examined.”