they say. And since you appear to know my name, sir, although we have never met, may I know yours?”
“Simon Greaves.”
“Then, Mr. Greaves, I will leave you and your friend now.” He turned to go, snapped his gloved fingers as though he had forgotten something, then turned back.
“Oh, yes… some rumors have reached me, Battle, that you have secured employment at one of our better small hotels. I do not know what the management could have been thinking, or to whom they applied for references, but I will speak to them personally in the morning, and see to it that they have a true accounting of your history. No establishment can afford to risk its patrons with someone like you beneath its roof.
“What a shame,” he said, “that you had to be here tonight. I had almost forgotten your existence. I am not likely to forget it again. Good night to you both.”
They watched him bob across the vestibule on thin legs incongruous to the bulk of his upper body.
“A dangerous man,” murmured Holmes.
“I will kill him.” Battle was shaking.
“No, I think not. You would be an immediate suspect, for one thing, although I can well imagine that there are many besides you who would like Mr. Chadwick dead. No, you must leave that task to another, Battle.
“Besides… ” Holmes said, continuing the conversation as the two men, having lost their taste for the opera, walked back to their hotel. An icy wind pushed them south down Broadway. “You do not want him dead before your name can be cleared and your reputation restored.”
Battle stopped still on the pavement. “By all that’s holy, Greaves, you heard him! What he’s done to me so far isn’t enough, he’s out to crush me utterly! Do you think he would ever be a party to my reclamation?”
Holmes only smiled and pulled Battle along. “Let’s discuss this over a hot supper when we get indoors. It’s beginning to snow, which will benefit us greatly. It is just possible that we may bring Mr. Chadwick around.”
The chimes of Trinity Church sounded half past nine on the following morning, as the card of Mr. Simon Greaves was handed in to Mr. Thaddeus Chadwick, Esq. Chadwick was a man of rigid habits, and the heavy snow that had fallen overnight had had no appreciable effect on his regular nine o’clock arrival, although the usual thunder of ironbound wheels and horses’ hooves outside his office on lower Broadway had been replaced by the pretty jingle of sleigh bells and harness in an otherwise silent world.
Chadwick’s office was large and comfortable, and a welcome fire crackled in the grate across from his desk. He kept his visitor standing before him for more than a full minute before deigning to look up from the brief he was reading.
“Well, Mr. Greaves,” he said, tossing the papers aside and folding his thick fingers on the desk before him. “Who would have thought that we would meet again so soon?” He gestured languidly to a chair. “Do sit down, and tell me the reason for this unexpected pleasure.”
Holmes complied. “I thank you for seeing me with no prior notice, Mr. Chadwick. I guessed that the snow would result in some gaps in your appointments, and I am glad to see that I guessed rightly.”
Chadwick grunted. “And what have you come to see me about?”
“Stopping your persecution of Robert Battle.”
Chadwick’s small, perennial smile broadened with incredulity, creasing his many chins.
“Mr. Greaves, I am a very busy man, and have neither the time nor the inclination to deal with fools. You surprise me, I must confess, because my first impression of you was that you were a man of some intelligence. I will have you escorted out very shortly, but before I do I should like to hear your rationale for such a remarkable request.”
“By all means.” Holmes pulled a sheet of paper from his breast pocket and unfolded it. “You are a very busy man, as you say, so I will be very brief. Last night, between two and three in the morning, someone entered your office and opened your safe. That one,” he said, gesturing across the room to a seemingly impregnable iron vault taking up half of the far wall.
Chadwick, startled, glanced involuntarily at it, then back at Holmes, chuckling.
“You amaze me! It occurs to me, Mr. Greaves, that you and Robert Battle are well-suited after all. Both of you are hopeless. That safe cannot be opened by anyone but myself.”
“Yet it was.”
“By whom?”
“By me.”
Chadwick still smiled, but the first hint of doubt had crept into his face. “You lie, sir.”
“Do I? By all means, please open it and see. And let me thank you for locating your chambers in a modern building, one that employs the latest in safety features, and has an iron fire-stair running down the back. Eight inches of snow have served to effectively obliterate any footprints I might have left. As for your locks, Mr. Chadwick… they were simplicity itself to open, and even your safe took me no more than five minutes to breach.
“I removed several papers from it, to wit… ” he consulted the sheet of paper in his hand, “deeds showing you to be the owner, of many years’ standing, of numerous pieces of property on Cherry, Baxter, Mulberry, and Water Streets. The unspeakable establishments at those addresses are well known to the police, although there are so many leases and subleases on the properties that it would be difficult, although not impossible, to trace you as their owner without the original deeds themselves.
“It was in one of those establishments, in fact, that Mr. Battle was found, ostensibly drunk, three years ago, as a result of which he was removed from the police force. That he was investigating it, and others like them, and had begun to follow the trail of ownership, was well known to many people, including his superiors and, through his superiors, to you. That, of course, was why you had to destroy him.”
Chadwick’s face had grown red, but he held out an imperious hand. “May I see that list?” he said. Holmes passed it to him, and sat silently while the attorney looked it over.
“There is no mistake, you see,” Holmes said, when Chadwick had finished, and flung the paper back across the desk with a murderous glance. “No one could know the full list of properties who had not actually seen the deeds. And I do promise you that when you open the safe, you will find them gone.”
“And just what do you propose to do with them?”
“Why, nothing whatsoever. No… no that is not quite true. What I propose to do with them-what I have, in fact, already done with them-is post them to England, to a trusted individual in the government, where they are beyond your reach forever. I have, however, no intention of extorting money from you, Mr. Chadwick, if that is what you fear. What I will do with your deeds is keep them safe. And I will require you to clear Mr. Battle’s name of the stain you have placed upon it.”
“And how am I to do that, Mr. Greaves?”
“That, Mr. Chadwick, is not my concern. You are, as I am certain you would be the first to acknowledge, connected to people in very high places in this city. What you caused you can no doubt remedy. I leave it to a man of your intelligence to determine a way.”
Chadwick leaned back in his chair. “And what if I were to call the police, Mr. Greaves, and tell them what you have just told me?”
“What have I told you?” Holmes picked up the sheet of paper that Chadwick had flung at him, stepped across to the grate, and dropped in the paper, watching as it caught, flared up, blackened, and shriveled in the flames.
“Other than that list, now gone, there is nothing to prove that I know anything about the theft of your deeds.”
Chadwick removed his spectacles and pressed his thick fingers to the bridge of his nose. His hands were shaking. It took him several moments to master himself, but he did, and replaced his glasses.
“And what do you get from all this, Mr. Greaves? Battle has nothing any longer. I saw to that when I had his house burned. What can he possibly pay you for what you have done for him?”
“Nothing whatever.”
“Then I repeat… what do you get from all this? You have said that it is not money that you want. But what matters, then, if not money? I, unlike Battle, can pay you a very great deal for the return of those papers. I see that I was mistaken, thinking you a fool. You and I are both intelligent men. What is it you want? Name your price.”
Holmes laughed and returned to his chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him, and knitting his fingers across his vest. “As I said, I have no intention of extorting money from you. Those papers are merely a pledge of
