I finally gained control over the weapon and terminated this needless firing, which the pasty-faced man found hard to believe. He was moaning, his hands pressed tightly over both eyes.
"My God, guv, no more. Mother in heaven, I gives up!"
His compatriot had already done so, and the upper part of his body was stretched out on the workbench, pinned down by the chandelier that had rendered him unconscious.
Suddenly the comforting presence of Wakefield Orloff was on the scene.
"I just circled the house, and I saw it through the open door. Where did you ever learn to shoot like that, Doctor?"
"Watson is a man of many talents," said Holmes. "The gunfire has stirred things up, of course."
Orloff reassured him. "No fear. We've bagged the servants. The ground floor is secured. As for the master of the house, I assume he is on the first story."
"Then we'd best confront him," said Holmes, "before Watson reloads and decides to recreate the famous battle of the O.K. Corral."
I gave Holmes a disapproving look as I scooped up my bullet-nicked Smith-Webley. Orloff dragged the pasty-faced man, still pleading for his life, from the floor and marched with us toward the lair of Burton Hananish, west coast banker, among other things.
Chapter 18
The Roar of Sound
THE MAIN hall of the Elizabethan mansion was a scene of quiet disorder. The butler, who had greeted us on our previous visit, was seated, as were two housemaids. This breach of decorum was explained by the watchful presence of one of Orloff's men. The servants shared a stolid resignation. Orloff had words with his assistant, no doubt relative to the disposition of the pasty-faced captive he had in tow. Holmes and I made for the grand staircase and the first floor.
In an upstairs drawing room that evidently served as an office, we found Hananish going through the drawers of a varqeano chest, which had been altered to serve as a desk. I judged the piece to be of the time of Phillip the Second, for there was the San Juan Campostella shell design in the pulls and intricate carvings made by use of gold leaf. Moorish cabinetmakers were famous for their excellent seventeenth-century work and for their tendency to incorporate secret drawers, a practice well known to Holmes.
The banker was not unattended, for standing behind his wheelchair was a rather loutish-looking fellow, powerful enough to have served as a bouncer at Sydney Sid's beer and gin hall in Limehouse. Hananish attempted to preserve his saintly façade when we burst in upon him, but it was a struggle, for the ends of his mouth were seized by an uncontrollable twitch.
"Mr. Holmes, though chained to this chair, it is obvious that my home has been invaded by a veritable army. This is contrary to every . . ."
His voice dwindled out, for Holmes had waved away his protestations with a gesture indicating that they were but verbal fluff. The sleuth seated himself in a Renaissance leather chair, also Spanish I judged, and proceeded to cut to the bone and then the marrow of the matter.
"We waste time," he stated, and there was that grim note of finality in his voice that I knew well. "Not only ours, but the Crown's."
He indicated the mass of papers on the mitred drop door over which Hananish's beautiful fingers were fluttering as though to wish them away.
"We shall not tamper with those papers, please, for now they are the property of the English court."
"This invasion of privacy . . ."
It was as though the man had not spoken, for Holmes continued in his flat, factual manner, which defied both interruption and contention.
"My eye has not played me false, and in that area you find usable for carpentry are scales, remains of packing cases—sufficient evidence to support the chain of events I have linked together, so let us not bandy about the word circumstantial. The dirty tricks brigade you dispatched to Essex are no more. The mine has been opened and the spurious gold shipment revealed. It was an involved scheme, which added to the risk, but you played for high stakes.* It's all over, you know."
*High stakes? Four hundred thousand pounds alone converts into two million dollars, and this before the turn of the century and the degeneration of both currencies. Holmes may have been guilty of understatement here.
The man's parchment-like complexion was tinged by a sickly yellow cast, like something disinterred. His eyes flicked to a portion of the disarray in front of him, an instinctive and revealing movement that I knew Holmes had not missed.
"The gold came to you for transshipment to London from the west coast banks. You had the ingots removed from the packing cases, which you filled with brass, plus some lead I judge, to conform with the weight of the gold. The precious metal was re-crated and sent to the Bank of England, with the false shipment made at a later date. You had already arranged the insurance with Inter-Ocean. The wooden cases, with authentic freight markings from their points of origin, were placed aboard the B & N flyer, and there was no cause for alarm. All seemed as it should be. If the shipment reached the Credit Lyonnais, you would have been exposed. So it was hijacked. A pretty plan. Once the hirelings separated the boxcar from the treasure train, they had no great problem as to the disposal of the loot, for they merely dumped it in the abandoned mine and took to their heels. The wagon and its worthless cargo might have rotted there for centuries had I not taken on the case."
"But you did, Mr. Holmes." There was a flicker in what had been lackluster eyes. This surprised me. Holmes might well have been cast in the role of the Archangel Gabriel at Jericho, for the banker's walls were tumbling down.
"I said it was a pretty plan. The west coast banks would be paid. The Credit Lyonnais would receive the insurance, and the French, persistent when faced with a loss, would have been satisfied and merely looked elsewhere for their needs. Only to find you waiting for them with the gold they wished. It was a circuitous arrangement, with sales percentages at each way stop, but it finally led to you."
"You know of that?" There was another flicker in the tired eyes of that statuesque face, and a sardonic twist came to Hananish's cruel lips.
"I know everything." From Holmes' tone, I deduced that he believed his statement. A suspicion was forming in my mind that Hananish did not.
The sleuth had been leaning forward, and suddenly he was on his feet, his long arm snaking out to pluck a cable from under the banker's nervous hands.
"Ah-hah." There was satisfaction in his manner as his eyes flashed over the message then stabbed at the banker for a moment before returning to the words, which he read aloud. "'The meddler knows all. Get out.'" Holmes dropped the cable on the desk surface and resumed his seat. "That warning came late."
"I am ill-suited to flight in any case," replied Hananish.
The flicker in his eyes had grown to a flare, and there was a look about him that raised the short hairs on the back of my neck. Then a shadow was cast by the morning sun through the door behind us. I knew Orloff was present and felt the better for it. An apparently unrelated thought sprang to mind. Holmes had discussed the Ripper matter, making it plain that his forte, reason and logic, was of scant use in tracking down one who was guided by neither. According to the rules of the game, Hananish had had it and could now only hope for aid from an astute solicitor and eloquent barrister. But there was about his patrician features a look that alerted one with medical training. He had set himself up as a rural despot and, with his mobility taken from him, had dreamed great dreams like Timur the Lame. With a treasure like Monte Cristo's at his fingertips, he might well have pictured himself as the second coming of Moriarty. Now, as with the professor, Sherlock Holmes was shoving him from the chessboard as he reached for the king piece.