He is a doctor himself—I think you have heard me say before that when a doctor does go bad, he has the nerve and the knowledge to make him the worst of criminals. I should not be at all surprised to find a medical man at the very bottom of this evil tangle.'
'But not, in this case, a killer.'
'In that I think you and Lestrade are wrong. The constable was shot, remember. Fitzroy fled through the trapdoor to the roof just ahead of the man from the docks, and I rather doubt whether my look-alike was carrying firearms, or would have used them.'
'Why on earth not, seeing that he killed so savagely before?'
Again Holmes bestowed a long, speculative look upon me before he answered. 'I think you may take my word for it, that pistols would not be consistent with his—peculiar madness.'
I did not understand, but neither did I wish to concentrate my friend's attention any further upon that individual whose exploits seemed to disturb him so. 'Are the two men somehow in league, then? I wonder what the connection can be between them?'
We were at the sideboard now, and. Holmes poured each of us a glass of wine. 'For one thing, Watson: rats. Fitzroy wanted—I think he wanted desperately, for some reason—to purchase a thousand or more of them, and soon. He said he intended using them in some kind of show, similar to Barley's—all purely a blind, of course, though in my guise as fellow entrepreneur I pretended to believe him, and expressed a wish to sell him some.'
Holmes moved to take down the Medical Directory from my shelf, and opened it. 'Aha. We see here, that as late as two years ago, Dr. David Fitzroy was one of the young physicians working with Sir Jasper Meek himself, in precisely the same field of research as that which sent John Scott off to Sumatra. Fitzroy has accompanied Sir Jasper on at least one expedition to that area.'
'The connections grow, then.'
'They do indeed.'
I picked at the food upon my plate. 'Is it possible, I wonder, that Lestrade is right? That the madman who killed Frau Grafenstein is Dr. Fitzroy's escaped patient?'
Holmes, I was glad to see, was attacking his own food with determination if not actually relish. He did not answer me directly, but asked: 'Have you ever wondered, Watson, just what the lady was doing in such a place at midnight?'
'I have wondered, but could think of no good reason for her presence.'
'You should endeavor, then, to think of a possible bad one. According to my informants, the Grafenstein woman was considered, some ten years ago, to be one of the most brilliant young biologists on the Continent. She was forced to resign her university position, under a cloud whose exact nature I have as yet been unable to discover, but which seems to have had some substance. I have as yet no clue as to just what she was doing here in London—aha.'
As he spoke, Holmes had moved near the window. The drizzle continued, with fog, and traffic was light in Baker Street. At such a late hour, it was evident that only business of some terrible urgency could bring us visitors. Yet, as I saw when I moved closer to the window myself, an unmarked carriage had certainly just stopped before our door.
Mindful of earlier days when assassins had watched us from below, I moved to draw Holmes farther from the window. He allowed himself to be turned away. But at the same time remarked in a tired voice: 'I don't think these visitors have come to shoot at me, old fellow. If my conjecture regarding their purpose is correct, they mean us no harm; but still I ask very earnestly that you do not retire just yet.'
'Of course. But whatever they want, you had better send them away; we are both of us already exhausted.'
'I shall, if such a course is possible. I fear it may not be.' With these words, Holmes seemed to shake off in a moment all his fatigue and dullness. With the air of a man plunging into cold water, he went out our door and down the stairs, so quickly and lightly that when he pulled open the street door he surprised a distinguished-looking old gentleman in the very act of reaching for the bell. Another man, younger and even more elegantly attired, stood beside the first visitor on the steps, and both gazed with some amazement at our two dressing-gowned figures that had so suddenly appeared.
'Come in, gentlemen, come in,' Holmes invited, his tone completely business-like. New energies had been mobilized from somewhere in his great reserves, and he might just have risen from a refreshing sleep.
One of the men who now ascended to our rooms was Sir Jasper Meek himself, the elderly and very eminent physician whose name had come up in our talk only minutes before. However striking this coincidence might have seemed ordinarily, at the time it was all but lost upon me, in the great wonder that I felt upon recognizing our second visitor. Although I am writing for posterity and not for immediate publication, I fear that prudence prohibits my naming him, or even describing his person in any detail. Nor shall I recount the first introductory remarks that passed among us.
Suffice it to say, that when we were all of us settled round a replenished fire, this younger of our visitors wasted not a moment in getting down to business. 'Mr. Holmes, I need not tell you that only a matter of an importance impossible to exaggerate has brought us to your door, without notice and at this late hour.'
'No, you need not tell me that,' Holmes answered quietly. 'Pray continue. You may speak as freely before Dr. Watson as before me.'
'Very well. It is a crime of attempted blackmail with which we are concerned.'
'I am not surprised.'
'Not blackmail such as you must have dealt with in the past, Mr. Holmes. No affair of the heart. And this case is not confined to any single personage, however-eminent.' The speaker gestured with a practiced flourish. 'This great city about us, the heart of empire, is itself being held for ransom.'
I actually sprang to my feet with an exclamation, but the effect upon Holmes was nothing like so strong. His gray eyes had taken on a hard, penetrating stare, but he merely nodded, as if receiving confirmation of an idea already held in private.
The two men on our settee exchanged glances. 'You will understand, Mr. Holmes, and you, Dr. Watson,' the speaker continued, 'why no public announcement of the peril has yet been made, and why in fact none is contemplated. Even the official police have not been notified, though our full appreciation of the danger is now some hours old. The city is bursting with visitors from every corner of the Empire, nay, of the world, come to do Her Majesty honor. Any mass panic under these conditions would…' Here our exalted visitor had to pause, to try to master his emotions.
Sir Jasper Meek cleared his throat, and passed a hand over his high, pale forehead, so in contrast with the tanned parchment of his cheeks. 'Gentlemen, the thing is this. There have already been several cases in the metropolis of London… of a most contagious and most terrible disease.' Now he, too, hesitated.
'These cases you mention,' Holmes snapped, 'are of course meant as proof of the blackmailers' power to accomplish what they threaten, which is to loose an epidemic among us. And the disease is plague. Well, how much do the villains demand, and how and where is it to be delivered?'
Had Holmes presented a revolver and ordered our visitors to hand over their purses, their astonishment could scarcely have been greater. Both of them, faces frozen, stared at him in silence for the space of several breaths. Then the man I have not named pulled from a pocket a small piece of paper, which he handed over to Holmes. My friend took it eagerly. Looking over his shoulder, I read part of the note, which had been composed by pasting onto a sheet of white paper printed letters and words evidently clipped from one or more newspapers. The closing words of the message were:
UNLESS OUR DEMANDS ARE GRANTED, GOD SAVE THE QUEEN INDEED AND THE EMPIRE TOO. LET THERE BE NO TRICKERY OR A MILLION WILL DEE AS THIS MAN DIED.
The speaker continued, in a voice that came near breaking: 'No instructions have as yet been given us for the delivery of the ransom. But what is demanded—in an earlier note, that we at first dismissed as the work of a mere crank—is nothing less than a million pounds.'
I burst out again with some exclamation, at which, I think, no one bothered to look up. Our eminent visitor went on: 'The note you hold, Mr. Holmes, was found pinned to the garment of the third and latest victim, an elderly man still unidentified. His body was dropped from a vehicle of some sort, earlier this evening, directly in front of the house of Sir Jasper in Harley Street. Sir Jasper had earlier received a message warning him to expect something of the sort.'
