"There are incompetents in every line of work," Barnett told him. "Even in yours."
Trepoff turned to him. "A shame you won't be able to write this up in your best humorous style, Mr. Barnett," he said. "A companion piece to your miraculous escape from the Turkish prison."
"You are going to kill us!" the girl cried, twisting in her bonds to face Trepoff. "Why? What have I ever done to you?"
"You were born," Trepoff said. "Think of it this way, woman: your death is to be useful in a great cause. How many people go through their entire dull, drab lives and die meaningless deaths without ever having been useful to anything beyond themselves? But you, mademoiselle—" There was an impatient rapping from below, and Trepoff broke off to bend down and grasp two wires that had appeared in the newly drilled hole. He pulled the wires up through the hole and attached them to two brass screws that had recently been screwed into the wood of the musical box.
"You are about to participate in a great experiment," Trepoff said. "When I start the musical box, the little pianist on top will turn to his piano and play sixteen tunes, each one precisely three minutes and forty-five seconds long. Thus, in exactly one hour he will be finished, the machine will turn itself off, and the pianist will once again turn away from the piano. In doing so, he will complete an electrical connection between these two wires, and a current will pass from the galvanic batteries in the room below through a voltaic arc apparatus inserted into a tube of compressed guncotton. This will serve to detonate the explosive mass. At that moment the two of you will cease to exist. Have you any last words?"
"It does seem a shame, Mr. Trepoff," Barnett said, "to destroy that beautiful musical box."
"Ah, yes," Trepoff said. "But let us console ourselves with the thought that art must die so that ideals may live." He thumped his cane on the floor three times and received a three-thump reply from below. "It is time to leave you now," he said, turning back to the musical box and releasing a catch on the side. The metallic notes of J. S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier wove a pattern of sound around him as he left.
"He's gone," Barnett said.
The girl did not reply. Barnett turned to her and saw that she had her face turned away and was crying softly into the pillow.
Bach faded away, to be replaced by Handel, and the girl screamed, putting into that one sound all the fear, frustration, and anguish of six weeks of imprisonment ending in an afternoon of death.
"Here, now!" Barnett cried, hopping his chair closer to the bed by jerking his body forward. "You mustn't—" Suddenly he realized what he had just done. He had moved the chair! If he could do it to go three inches closer to the bed, then, with work, he could do it across eight feet of floor to get to the two wires.
Very slowly he hopped the chair around to face the wires. He had to be extremely careful not to tip over; if he fell on his face he might not be able to get up again.
Slowly he hopped his way across the floor. Handel gave way to Couperin, and he had gone almost two feet. Couperin was replaced by Liszt, and he had gone four feet. His shoulders and pelvis ached from the strain.
There was a banging from below, and the sound of running on the stairs, and Trepoff reappeared in the doorway. "Something was nagging at my mind," he said. "And I see that I was right! Inexcusable carelessness on my part."
He stepped aside and two men entered the room and dragged Barnett back to the bed. Using a length of thick rope, they tied him and his chair securely to the heavy post at the foot of the bed. Then they left.
Trepoff stood in the doorway for a second, surveying the room. He nodded. "Adieu," he said. And then he was gone.
The miniature pianist atop the musical box continued running his doll-fingers over the keys, and composition after composition was rendered in tinny tones. Barnett lost count. The girl was now silent. Perhaps she had fainted. It would be a good thing, Barnett thought, if she had; he would have made no attempt to revive her even if he could. He twisted and struggled until his arms were raw under the jacket, but the ropes held.
Suddenly, as a Rossini overture began either the fourteenth or fifteenth piece, a pounding noise sounded faintly and far-off from below. Someone was at the front door.
Barnett yelled, but to no effect. Nobody outside on the street could hear him from upstairs. Shortly the pounding stopped.
Rossini ended with a click and whirr, and Scarlatti began the fifteenth — or sixteenth — selection.
The pounding at the front door began again. It was too late now. Even if someone did get in, they would never make it upstairs in time if this were the sixteenth selection.
But if it were only the fifteenth, there might be time. "Help!" Barnett yelled. "Help! Upstairs!"
The door flew open and Sherlock Holmes strode into the room, a great revolver in his hand. "Well," he said. "What have we here?"
"Quick, man!" Barnett screamed. "There are two wires affixed to that musical box. Unfasten one of them immediately. And, for the love of God, don't let it touch the other wire!"
Holmes raced over to the box and pulled one of the wires from its screw. As he did so, the Scarlatti drew to a close and, with a whirr and click, the little doll-figure turned away from the piano. Silence.
Barnett looked from the musical box to Holmes and, for once, words failed him. His lips moved but no words came out.
"You have just saved all pur lives, Mr. Holmes," Barnett managed to say at last. "I don't know how to thank you."
"If that young lady on the bed is Lady Catherine," Holmes said, "I am sufficiently recompensed."
"She is," Barnett said.
"Is she all right?"
"I believe she has just fainted."
Holmes took a clasp-knife from his pocket and severed their bonds. "Wasn't that Scarlatti?" he asked.
"I believe so," Barnett said. "I was rather preoccupied."
Holmes nodded. "Scarlatti." He eyed the musical box. "An exquisite thing, that."
The banging on the front door began again, and Holmes looked up. "If you'll excuse me for a second," he said, "I will go downstairs and admit my colleague, Dr. Watson. While he revives Lady Catherine, we can talk."
TWENTY — ELEMENTARY
My friend, judge not me, Thou seest I judge not thee.
— William Comden
Two days passed before Sherlock Holmes came to Moriarty's front door and demanded entrance. Mr. Maws showed him into the study. "You're to wait," he said. "The professor is expecting you."
Ten minutes later Moriarty entered the study and crossed to his desk. "Good afternoon, Sherlock," he said.
"You expected me?" Holmes demanded, turning from the cabinet he was examining.
Moriarty glanced up at the complex face of the brass chronometer which hung over the door. It was six twenty-nine. "Not quite so soon," he said. "I apologize for leaving you in here alone, and thus putting temptation across your path. The drawers and cabinets, as I'm sure you found, are all locked."
"I had never imagined anything else, my dear Moriarty," Holmes said, moving over to the high-back chair and sitting down. "Still, one can always hope."
Moriarty leaned forward over his desk, his deepset gray eyes contemplating Sherlock Holmes unblinkingly for many seconds. Then he shrugged slightly and leaned back in his black leather chair. "The girl is all right?" he asked.
"The duke had two of Harley Street's most lettered specialists to examine her," Holmes said. "She didn't seem to need them. An amazingly resilient creature."
"You spoke to her?"
"A bit. Not as much as I would have liked. It is clear that you had nothing to do with the abduction."