“Jamison has excelled himself. At least one drugs rings has been smashed and a stop put to the traffic in that quarter. Belding himself led to some of those higher up. It was more than might have been hoped for.”
“Thanks to you, Pons.”
Solar Pons smiled wryly.
“Ah, Parker, you were ever generous in your evaluation of my work. In my humble way I seek to alleviate some of the ills of mankind.”
“You have certainly done a good deal here, Pons,” I said.
Solar Pons shook his head.
“It is just plugging holes in the dyke, Parker. There is such great profit in this foul trade that it is almost impossible to stamp out. One does what one can. My major satisfaction in this particular case is that Baron Ennesford Kroll has been robbed of considerable profit in the matter. You will see that Heathfleld, through Jamison, has made a clean sweep of the Limehouse area, and now that Gantley, Belding and the Chinese are going for trial, this will mean a considerable, if temporary setback, in the baron’s plans.”
“I do not see how you can be so sure about the baron’s part in this, Pons?”
“One develops a sixth sense, Parker. Hullo. Here is something interesting. Postmarked Switzerland, I see.”
He tore open the thin blue envelope which Mrs Johnson had just brought up with the other letters. He studied it in silence, his eyes narrowed. Then he put it down with a low chuckle.
“Talk of the Devil, Parker.”
“What is it, Pons?”
By way of an answer he passed the single sheet of paper the envelope contained across to me. It bore just two lines, written in block capitals with a thin-nibbed pen.
MR PONS — YOUR ROUND,
I THINK. WE SHALL MEET AGAIN.
K.
Solar Pons sat back at the table and lit his pipe.
“He is the most dangerous man in Europe, Parker. I would give a great deal to have netted him.”
And his eyes looked beyond the homely commons of our room and gazed bleakly into the void.
The Adventure of the Anguished Actor
1
“You cannot mean it, Pons!”
“I was never more serious in my life, Parker.”
Solar Pons looked at me with tightly compressed lips. We were sitting by ourselves in a first-class railway carriage passing through the rolling countryside beyond Dorking. It was a cold winter’s day and frost sparkled in the tangled grass of the fields, yielding diamonds in the hard light of the pale, wintry sun.
“Cedric Carstairs is in mortal danger, unless I seriously miss my guess.”
“Not the famous actor?”
Pons nodded, blowing out plumes of fragrant blue smoke from his pipe. He looked moodily at the landscape noiselessly passing the window, the telegraph wires making a jerky background pattern to our conversation.
“What do you make of that?”
He handed me the crumpled telegram form. The message was succinct and baffling.
THE FOURTH PARCEL HAS COME.
IMPLORE YOUR PRESENCE HERE IMMEDIATELY.
CARSTAIRS.
I glanced at the date. It had been handed in at Dorking the previous night.
“I do not understand, Pons.”
Solar Pons looked at me sympathetically, the cold winter light making rapid patterns across his lean, feral features.
“Forgive me, Parker. When I asked you to come with me to Surrey it was in the nature of an emergency and there was little time for explanation. There are a few minutes left before we arrive at our destination and I shall endeavour to put you in possession of the salient points.
“As you have already stated, Cedric Carstairs is the well-known stage and cinema actor. He first wrote me at Praed Street some three weeks ago, when he was on tour in the West Country. The tenor of his letter impressed me as being that of a man at the end of his tether. In short, he was in fear of his life.”
I must confess I looked with astonishment at my friend sitting in the far corner of the carriage, his luggage and overcoat thrown carelessly about him. He fixed his eyes on a coloured lithograph of Broadstairs above my head and blew out another plume of aromatic smoke.
“Surely, Pons, that it one of the penalties of the actor’s life,” I began. “They are either idolised or loathed. And when a man like Carstairs spreads his talents so widely, on both stage and screen, there are bound to be adherents in both camps.”
Solar Pons shook his head with a somewhat mocking smile.
“It is something a little more than that, my dear fellow. And if you would just have the patience to hear me out…”
I mumbled an apology and sank back into my comer, watching the sun sparkle on the frozen surface of a stream we were passing.
“It is a bizarre business and one that intrigues me considerably.”
Solar Pons leaned forward and tented his thin fingers before him.
“When he was appearing at Edinburgh in Othello, he received a small parcel, posted from London. It contained a skilfully crafted effigy of himself, in Shakespearean costume, lying dead with a phial of poison in his hand.”
I shook my head.
“Lamentable lack of taste, Pons.”
My companion inclined his head.
“You have got the heart of the matter with your usual unfailing perspicacity, Parker.”
Pons was silent for a moment and then continued.
“The first parcel, which arrived some months ago, was in the nature of a warning, he felt. Nothing happened and he quite forgot the incident. But in October, you may recall, he appeared with some success at Drury Lane in a revival of The Hound of the Baskervilles.”
“As Sir Henry Baskerville, Pons. It was an excellent performance. I saw it myself.”
“Did you indeed?” said Pons with a thin smile. “About a week before the play opened he received another parcel. This time it contained a cunningly fashioned model, in coloured wax, of himself as Sir Henry. He was lying on the ground, his throat torn out. with the gigantic Baskerville hound standing over him.”
“Good heavens, Pons!”
“You may well raise your eyebrows, Parker. The case presents a number of points of interest. This second parcel was also posted from London but despite all inquiries he was unable to discover anything about it, though he contacted the postal authorities. I have gathered all this from Carstairs himself in a series of telephone conversations during his tours.”
“Nothing happened on this second occasion, Pons?”
Solar Pons sat back in his seat and looked reflectively at the passing telegraph wires.
“There was an accident on the opening night. A chandelier which was part of the Baskerville Hall set in the prologue collapsed on to the stage. It narrowly missed Carstairs and did in fact slightly injure the actor who played Dr Watson. The chandelier was not a stage property, but one of the original massive fittings of the theatre, which is often used in opera.”
“So that Carstairs could have been killed?”
“Very easily. The police were called and found that the cable holding the chandelier had been eaten through with a powerful corrosive that would have taken about ten minutes to do its work.”
“You were not called in, Pons?”
My companion shook his head.
“My services were only solicited more recently. But that is the story I had from Carstairs. He was in a considerable state of nerves by this time.”
Pons tapped thoughtfully with the bowl of his pipe on the brass door-fitting of the carriage, tipping fragments of tobacco into the metal ash-tray.