The old man nodded again. ‘What has he done wrong?’ he asked.
‘I do not know that he has done anything wrong,’ said Holmes, ‘but our friend Kyriloff at the embassy seems to be afraid of him for some reason.’
‘Kyriloff? Afraid? Never! Kyriloff is not a man, he is a golem, made of clockwork and moved by the Devil. He cannot be afraid.’
‘Then let us say that this man worries Kyriloff in some way. Kyriloff accuses this man of things which he did not do,’ said Holmes and tapped a fingertip on the photographs.
‘Then we must help him, Mr Holmes, we must help him. More than one that Kyriloff lies about has ended in prison and some have ended worse than that. This man,’ and he tapped the picture in turn, ‘is not a bomb-maker. He goes to the Social Democratic Federation meetings and he argues in their debates, but he is a voice of reason. Always he argues for democratic methods, not for revolution, not for the bomb and the gun.’
‘Do you know his name and what he does for a living?’ asked Holmes.
‘He is called Gregori Gregorieff, so far as I know. He is a scholar who writes many languages and he used to make a small living from writing letters for people and helping them with documents. I know him because he sometimes brings people here to change their cheques or to pawn something. Then he started to work for an English lady.’
‘Miss Wortley-Swan?’ queried Holmes.
‘That is the lady. He has brought her to my shop as well. They have come to redeem things for people that she was helping, or to buy clothing for them.’
‘Do you know anything else about him?’ pressed Holmes.
‘Only what I have picked up from talking to Gregori himself and to his sister. Like so many hereabouts they were forced to leave Mother Russia because of something that happened to their family.’
‘Have you any idea what that was?’
The old man lifted up both hands and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Take your pick, Mr Holmes, take your pick. Flogging, imprisonment, rape, murder - these things have happened to many people here who come from Russia.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘No, I do not know what particular tragedy drove the Gregorieffs from home.’
‘And where does he live?’ asked my friend.
‘There I can help you, Mr Holmes. In Barrow Street there is a lodging house. It has an old sign on the front saying “Murdock’s Rents”, but the man who keeps it is called Green. Gregorieff and his sister have lived there for some time now.’
Holmes stood up. ‘I am grateful, Mr Goldstein, and I shall be more grateful if you will let me know of anything more you hear about the Gregorieffs, Kyriloff or Miss Wortley-Swan.’
‘It is always a pleasure to see you, Mr Holmes, and a greater pleasure to assist you in your work.’
Holmes paused at the door. ‘One more point,’ he said. ‘Have you ever heard of Count Stepan
Skovinski-Rimkoff?’
‘Ha!’ snorted the pawnbroker. ‘Have I heard of him? I tell you, Mr Holmes, if Kyriloff is a machine driven by the Devil, the count is one of the Devil’s own beasts!’
‘You have heard of him?’ said Holmes.
‘Nothing but evil I have heard. He is a cousin of the Tzar and he has great wealth and miles and miles of lands. There are many people here in London who have lived on his lands and who tell stories of him. He is a beast, Mr Holmes, a creature whose whole being is given to lust and cruelty!’
Twelve
An Encounter with the Tiger
‘How long have you known the old man?’ I asked Holmes as we made our way to Gregorieff’s address.
‘I have known Abram Goldstein more than twenty years,’ replied Holmes. ‘I met him when I was first setting up my practice in Montague Street. Even in those days, enquiries brought me quite often into these parts. I soon discovered that Mr Goldstein knew everything about his customers, his customers’
neighbours, and their neighbours’ neighbours. In addition, I was able to do him a favour or two and he did me one great one.’
‘What was that?’
‘He told me one day that he had seen a violin in a shop window near here that would be only a few shillings to buy. He also told me that he thought it was a Stradivarius, and he was right.’
Another question had puzzled me. ‘Where,’ I asked, ‘did you come by the photographs of Gregorieff?’
He smiled. ‘I simply asked Henry Cloke, the postcard photographer, to be near Miss Wortley-Swan’s home yesterday morning. Equipped with all his paraphernalia he set himself up to make a view of that pretty lane where the lady lives. By chance, as it seemed, a small ragged boy accosted Gregorieff as he came out of the gate and kept him engaged long enough for Henry to obtain the photograph from which the portrait is an enlargement.’
I laughed. ‘And of course the providential small boy will have been one of your Irregulars?’
‘Of course,’ he said.
We walked silently for a while and then Holmes pointed his stick across the street. ‘There,’ he said, and indicated a faded board with the words ‘Murdock’s Rents’.
It was one of those buildings of several storeys which may have been impressive when they were first built but which now are smoke-darkened and grim. Their tall, dark faces shadow the streets, so that the sun is only seen in the afternoon. Many of them have cheap shops on the ground floor and dozens of rooms above, let to as many lodgers as the owner can cram in. This one had the shop windows on its ground floor covered with boards, suggesting that the ground, too, was used for residence.
As we crossed the street towards our destination, I noticed that we had taken the attention of a man who was seated on the front steps of the house. Even at a little distance, there was no mistaking the great bulk and height, the wide beard and the fierce moustaches of the man Poliakoff whom we had seen in Goldstein’s pawnshop. As soon as he had recognized us, he stood up and disappeared inside the building.
We made our way up the steps and into what was not, properly, an entry to the house. It was a narrow and unlit passageway that led from the street through to a fenced rear yard, but a side door in the passage gave access to the building’s ground floor.
The grim building’s dark interior spoke plainly of generations of poverty. The tall stairway was lit by one meagre gas jet, whose pale flame revealed worn boards underfoot and stair rails polished with the grease of dirty hands. The air was thick with the smell of stale cookery and unwashed bodies. Nobody was about as we entered, though sounds of movement could be heard above. It seemed our friend Poliakoff had disappeared somewhere within.
‘Which floor?’ I asked Holmes.
He shrugged his shoulders and stepped away into a corridor which seemed to run from front to back of the house. A couple of doors along it, a scrap of paper was pinned to a doorjamb. It turned out to be a business card which advertised:
Prof. GREGORIEFF, of the University
of St Petersburg,
TRANSLATOR & INTERPRETER
from and to
English, Russian, Polish, German,
French, Italian, Spanish and the
Scandinavian tongues.
Holmes knocked on the door and waited. While we waited, Holmes pointed with his stick at the crack beneath the door’s edge, where what seemed to be the light of a candle flame flickered against the floor as though it was being moved about the room. There was no response and he knocked again. When there was still no answer, he tried the doorknob. It yielded and he stepped in. I followed him closely.
Although it was not one of the rooms whose windows were boarded, it was extremely dark inside, for the curtains were closed. Before my eyes could accustom themselves to the gloom, I was struck across the back of my head and flung across the room.
I awoke from unconsciousness to find myself huddled in a corner. Holmes stood beside me. The room was lit
