Victorian Villainy Read online

  “Up onto the deck, find a blunt object or two to use as weapons, and get below, or at least inside, as quickly as possible,” Holmes said.

  “Forward or aft?” I asked.

  “We are aft,” Holmes said, “so let us not waste time by going forward.”

  I agreed. We moved the rowboat around to the side of the barge as far as we could without untying it and I felt about for a hand hold. “Well!” I whispered. “Piety and good works are indeed rewarded in this life.”

  “What?” Holmes murmured.

  “There’s a ladder fixed to the side here,” I told him. I took hold with both hands and started up, with Holmes right behind me. Once on deck we moved toward the rear cabin, feeling our way along the railing. I reached some impediment; a large metal object covered with a canvas and gutta-percha weather shield, and paused to feel my way around it and to determine what it was—like the blind man trying to describe an elephant. But after a few moments of grasping and groping the outline of the elephant became clear.

  “Well I’ll be!” I said, or perhaps it was something stronger.

  “What is it?” asked Holmes, who was right behind me.

  “It is a three-inch naval gun, probably a Hoskins and Reed. It will fire a nine-pound projectile something over three miles accurately. It’s the latest thing in gunnery. Royal Navy destroyers are being outfitted with them even now.”

  “I didn’t know you were so well acquainted with naval ballistics,” Holmes said. His voice sounded vaguely accusatory, but then it often does when he speaks to me.

  “I am well acquainted with a wide range of things,” I told him.

  We continued our progress toward the aft deckhouse. I was hoping to come across a belaying pin, or a length of iron pipe, or anything that could be worked loose and used as a weapon, but nothing came to hand.

  We reached the deckhouse door and Holmes pulled it open. It was as dark inside as out. We entered. By creeping ahead silently and feeling along the wall we were able to ascertain that we were in a corridor of unknown length, with doors on each side.

  Light suddenly cascaded into the corridor as a door further down was opened. A man stood in the doorway talking to someone inside the room, but in another second he would surely come into the corridor. I tugged at Holmes’s sleeve and pointed to what the light had just revealed: a stairs, or as they call anything with steps on a ship a ladder, going up. By mounting quickly we could avoid being seen. We did so. There was a door at the head of the ladder, which I opened and we went through. The door made a loud “click” on closing, and we paused, waiting to see whether this would alert those below. Holmes assumed the “Standing Locust” Baritsu posture to the left of the door, ready in mind and body for whoever might come through. I grabbed a spanner from a nearby shelf and stood, poised, on the right side.

  There were no hurried footsteps up the ladder, no whispered voices from downstairs, so after a few moments we relaxed and looked around. An oil lamp on gimbals mounted to the ceiling cast a dull light around the room. It appeared to be the wheelhouse of a large vessel, with the forward windows covered with heavy drapes. There was an oversized ship’s wheel in the center, with calling pipes, and a ship’s telegraph, a chart cabinet and chart table to the rear, and various bits of nautical equipment affixed here and there throughout the room. A captain’s chair was bolted to the deck on the left, excuse me, port side, and a ship’s compass squatted alongside. A metal-strapped leather chest big enough to hold a fair sized man doubled over sat on the other side of the chair.

  “A wheelhouse for a barge,” Holmes whispered. “How odd.”

  “It does have an engine,” I said.

  “Yes, but I doubt if it can attain a speed of greater than three or four knots. One would think that a tiller would suffice.” He took the oil lamp off its mount and began a slow inspection of the room, bending, sniffing, peering and probing at the walls, floor, and bits of apparatus scattered about. The chest was securely locked, and there seemed to be nothing else of interest in the room. After a few minutes he stood erect and put the lantern on the chart table. “This is very peculiar,” he said.

  “It is indeed,” I agreed. “This is not the wheelhouse of a scow—this is the command bridge of a naval ship.”

  “Say, rather, a mockup or model of it,” Holmes said. “The chart cabinet is devoid of charts, and the chart that’s pinned to this table is a Royal Navy chart of the Bay of Naples.

  “Perhaps,” I suggested, “we have found the fabled Swiss navy.”

  “I think not,” Holmes said. “I found this.” He held out a blue cap for my perusal. It was a British Navy seaman’s cap, and on the side the words “H.M.S. Royal Edgar” were embroidered in gold thread.

  “The Royal Edgar is a destroyer,” I told Holmes. “Royal Henry class. Four funnels. Six torpedo tubes. Two four-inch and eight two-inch guns. Top speed a hair under thirty knots.”

  “How do you happen to know that?” Holmes asked, an undercurrent of suspicion creeping into his voice.

  “I have recently done some work for the admiralty,” I explained. “I, of course, made it a point to learn the names and ratings of all of Her Majesty’s ships currently in service.”

  He shook the cap in my face. “You mean they trust you to—” he paused and took a deep breath. “Never mind,” he finished. He pointed across the room. “That chest may hold something of import, but the rest of the room is devoid of interest.

  “Except for the hat,” I said.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “That is very interesting.”

  “I didn’t bring my lockpicks,” I said, “and if we break the chest open, we will be announcing our presence.”

  “Interesting conundrum,” Holmes allowed.

  It was one we never got the chance to resolve. There was a rumbling and a thudding and a screeching and the sound of voices from below. No—from the deck outside. Holmes closed the lantern and we pulled one of the curtains aside to see what was happening.

  The steam launch had returned and was now tied up alongside. If the men now embarking from it saw our rowboat tied up at the stern life would get interesting over the next few minutes. But the rowboat had swung back around out of sight, and it would be an unlucky accident if they were to see it.

  There was a barking of orders—in German, I noted—and the eight or ten men who had come aboard scurried about to do whatever they had come aboard to do. Three of them headed to the door in the aft deckhouse below us, and the two men inside had opened the door to greet them.

  “If they come up here...,” Holmes said.

  “Yes,” I said, remembering the layout of the darkened room. “There is no place to conceal ourselves.”

  “Behind these curtains is the only possibility,” Holmes whispered. “And that’s not a good one.”

  “Well,” I said, hearing the tramp of boots on the ladder,” it will have to do.”

  We retreated to the far side of the curtains and twitched them closed scant seconds before I heard the door being opened and two—no, three—sets of footsteps entering the room.

  “The lamp must have gone out,” one of them said in German. “I’ll light it.”

  “No need,” another replied in the same language, the sound of authority in his voice. “All we need from here is the chest. Shine your light over there—there. Yes, there it is. You two, pick it up.”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “Take it down and onto the launch right away,” the imperious voice said. “This must accompany us on the train to Trieste.”

  “Right away, Your Grace.” And, with a minor cacophony of thumps, bumps and groans, the chest was lifted and carried out the door. After a few seconds it was clear that His Grace had left with the chest, and we were once again alone in the room.

  “Well,” I said, stepping out from behind the curtain. “Trieste. Now if we only knew—”

  Holmes held his hand up to silence me. He was peering out of the window with a concentrated fury, glaring
down at our recent guests as they went on deck through the downstairs door.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “One moment,” he said.

  For a second “his grace” turned his head, and his profile was illuminated by the lantern carried by one of the crew. Holmes staggered backward and clapped his hand to his forehead. “I was not wrong!” he said. “I knew I recognized that voice!”

  “Who, His Grace?” I asked.

  “He!” he said. “It is he!”

  “Whom?”

  “His name is Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein,” Holmes told me. “Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein and Hereditary King of Bohemia.”

  “Is he indeed?” I asked. “And how do you know His Grace?”

  “He employed me once,” Holmes said. “I will not speak of it further.”

  “The case had nothing to do with our current, er, problem?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he assured me.

  “Then I, also, shall not speak of it again.” Whatever it was, it must have affected Holmes greatly, but now was not the time to pick at old wounds. “I take it he has little use for the English?” I asked.

  “He has little regard for anything British,” Holmes affirmed. “And I believe that he has no fondness for anyone except himself, and possibly members of his immediate family.”

  “Truly a prince,” I said.

  The last of our visitors boarded the steam launch, and it cast off and pulled away from the barge. “I wonder what prompted the midnight visit,” I said.

  “Nothing good,” Holmes opined.

  There was a crumping sound, as of a distant belching beneath the water, and then another, and the barge listed toward the starboard side with a great creaking and a series of snaps.

  “There’s your answer,” Holmes said, as we both grabbed for the nearest support in order to remain upright. “Those were explosions. They’re scuttling this craft. She’ll be under in ten minutes, unless she breaks apart first, and then it will be faster. Much faster.”

  “Perhaps we should make our exit,” I suggested.

  “Perhaps,” he agreed.

  We hurried down the ladder and onto the deck.

  “Hilfe! Hilfen sie mir, bitte!”

  The faint cry for help came from somewhere forward. “We’re coming!” I called into the dark. “Wir kommen! Wo sind Sie?”

  “Ich weiss nicht. In einem dunklen Raum,” came the reply.

  “‘In a dark room’ doesn’t help,” Holmes groused. “It couldn’t be any darker than it is out here.”

  The barge picked that moment to lurch and sag further to starboard.

  “Hilfe!”

  We struggled our way to the forward deckhouse. The cry for help was coming from somewhere to the left of the door. I felt my way along the wall until I came to a porthole. “Hello!” I called inside, knocking on the glass.

  “Oh, thank God,” cried the man in German. “You have found me! You must, for the love of God, untie me before this wretched vessel sinks.”

  Holmes and I went in through the door and down a short length of corridor until we came to a left-hand turn.

  “Ow!” said Holmes.

  “What?”

  I heard a scraping sound. “Wait a second,” Holmes said. “I’ve just banged my head.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “No need,” he told me. “I’ve just banged my head on a lantern hanging from the ceiling. Give me a second and I’ll have it lit.”

  He took a small waterproof case of wax matches from his pocket, and in a few seconds had the lantern glowing. “Onward!” he said.

  Opening the third door along the corridor revealed a short, portly man in a white shirt and dark, striped trousers and vest, tied to a large wooden chair. His exertions in trying to escape had covered his face with bands of sweat and pulled much of his shirt loose from his waistband, but his thin black tie was still properly and severely in place. “Light!” the man said. “Oh, bless you my friends, whoever you are.”

  We worked at untying him as quickly as possible as the barge gave a series of alarming jerks and kicks under us and tilted ever more drastically. Now, in addition to its list to the starboard, there was a decided tilt aft.

  “Thank you, thank you,” said the plump man as the rope came off his legs. “They left me here to die. And for what?”

  “For what, indeed?” I replied.

  “It all started....”

  “Let’s wait until we’re off this vessel,” Holmes interjected, “or in a very few moments we’ll be talking under water.”

  We helped our rotund comrade up, although our feet were not much steadier than his, and with much slipping and sliding we made our way along the deck. An alarming shudder ran through the vessel as we reached the stern, and we quickly lowered our new friend into the rowboat and followed him down. Holmes and I manned the oars and energetically propelled ourselves away from the sinking barge, but we had gone no more than fifteen or twenty yards when the craft gave a mighty gurgle and descended beneath the water, creating a wave that pulled us back to the center of a great vortex, and then threw us up into the air like a chip of wood in a waterfall. In a trice we were drenched and our flimsy craft was waterlogged, but by some miracle we were still in the rowboat and it was still afloat. Holmes began bailing with his cap, and our guest with his right shoe, while I continued the effort to propel us away from the area.

  I oriented myself by the ever-dependable North Star, and headed toward the south east. In a little while Holmes added his efforts to my own, and we were rowing across the dark waters with reasonable speed despite our craft still being half-full of water. Our plump shipmate kept bailing until he was exhausted, then spent a few minutes panting, and commenced bailing again.

  It was perhaps half an hour before we spied lights in the distance indicating that the shore was somewhere ahead of us. Half an hour more and we had nosed into a beach. A small, steep, rocky beach, but nonetheless a bit of dry land, and we were grateful. The three of us climbed out of the rowboat and fell as one onto the rough sand, where we lay exhausted and immobile. I must have slept, but I have no idea of how long. When next I opened my eyes dawn had risen, and Holmes was up and doing exercises by the water’s edge.

  “Come, arise my friend,” he said—he must have been drunk with exercise to address me thus—“we must make our preparations and be on our way.”

  I sat up. “Where are we off to?” I asked.

  “Surely it should be obvious,” Holmes replied.

  “Humor me,” I said.

  “Trieste,” said Holmes. “Wherever Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein goes, there we shall go. For whatever is happening, he is the leader or one of the leaders.”

  “Is it your dislike of him that speaks?” I asked. “For you have often said the same of me, and seldom was it so.”

  “Ah, but on occasion...,” Holmes said. “But in this case it is my knowledge of the man. He would not be a member of any organization that did not let him be its leader, or at least believe that he is the leader, for he is vain and would be easily led himself.”

  Our rotund friend sat up. “Is that English which you speak?” he asked in German.

  “Ja,” I said, switching to that language. “It is of no importance.”

  “That is what those swine that abducted me spoke when they did not want me to understand,” he said, laboriously raising himself to his knees and then to his feet. “But they kept forgetting—and I understood much.”

  “Good!” I said. “We will all find dry clothing for ourselves, and you shall tell us all about it.”

  He stood up and offered me his hand. “I am Herr Paulus Hansel, and I thank you and your companion for saving my life.”

  “On behalf of Mr. Sherlock Holmes and myself, Professor James Moriarty, I accept your thanks,” I told him, taking the offered hand and giving it a firm shake.

  “I have clothing at my—oh—I don’t dare go back to my hotel.” our friend’s
hands flew to his mouth. “Supposing they are there waiting for me?”

  “Come now,” Holmes said. “They believe you are dead.”

  “I would not disabuse them of this notion,” he said.

  We walked the three or so miles back to our hotel, booked a room for Herr Hansel, and set about our ablutions and a change of clothes. We gave the concierge the task of supplying suitable garb for our rotund friend, and he treated it as though guests of the Hotel Athènes returned water soaked and bedraggled every day of the year. Perhaps they did.

  It was a little after 8:00 when we met at the hotel’s restaurant for breakfast. “Now,” Holmes said, spreading orange marmalade on his croissant and turning to Herr Hansel, “I have restrained my curiosity long enough, and you may well be possessed of information useful to us. Start with what you were doing on that barge, if you don’t mind.”

  Herr Hansel drained his oversized cup of hot chocolate, put the cup down with a satisfied sigh, and wiped his mustache. “That is simple,” he said, refilling the cup from the large pitcher on the table. “I was preparing to die. And were you gentlemen not on board, I most assuredly would have done so.”