are he will fail and make the Inspector look foolish. But if this minor were to solve the crime out here in front of others, then that would be even worse. Everyone would know. It just wouldn’t be right. London cannot have the sense that its safety, the solution to any of it serious crimes, is in the hands and minds of children. Again, one must sometimes use questionable methods to achieve good ends.
“Come with me,” says Lestrade, nodding to both Sherlock and his son. He motions to a policeman standing at the vault room door, who opens it and lets them in.
The young guard is sitting on a thick wooden chair, the only piece of furniture in the room. A curtain is drawn in front of the wall to his left, obviously where the vault is built into it. There is a string looping across his chest and attached to a whistle, the top of which can be detected sticking up from his right breast pocket. No one would be able to enter this room without being seen and the alarm being given; the guard could not be attacked from behind; and a Bobbie is always stationed outside the door.
Sherlock looks up. The glass ceiling of the Palace is visible above this room. He notices where the tops of the walls end, a good twenty-five feet below the ceiling. For an instant he glances toward the performance area down the nave. He thought he might be able to see the summits of the Mercures’ towers, but can’t. The perches must be just below.
Lestrade makes sure the door is closed behind them before he speaks.
“This is Master Sherlock Holmes,” he says to the guard. “He has a few questions for you. Anything that is said at this time inside this room is strictly police business and cannot be revealed to anyone at any time in the future. Do you understand?”
“I do,” says the young man quietly. Sherlock observes him. A youth of about nineteen or twenty years of age, with sandy hair, the beginnings of a mustache, and bags under his eyes from recent sleeplessness – obviously upset about what has transpired. But his look isn’t one of guilt. That worries Sherlock, though he commences his interrogation anyway. His plan is to startle his interviewee and bring him quickly to heel.
“You keep the combination to this vault in your left breast pocket, do you not?” Holmes had seen the whistle in the right pocket.
The young guard is startled by this remarkable opening comment. “Did the police tell –” he begins.
Sherlock cuts him off.
“I have it on good authority that you were in conversation with disreputable individuals in this building on the very day before the robbery and that you told them where the combination is kept.”
“I –”
“Do not lie to me. Lying will put you into a deeper hole than you are in now.”
The guard hesitates.
“Yes. Yes, I told a couple of people.”
Lestrade had been leaning against the vault wall as if bored. He takes a step forward.
“Do you know that I can prove that those strangers were members of the Brixton Gang?”
The guard’s eyes bulge. Lestrade steps even closer. His son had been nearer to the action, standing close to Sherlock. His father gently brushes him aside, staring at the young guard.
“Now you must come clean,” stresses Sherlock, going for the jugular. “What happened on the day of robbery? Did you let someone in here? Otherwise, how could they enter without being seen?” He pauses dramatically. “Or, did they force their way in, assault you and get away, your shame afterwards preventing you from telling the authorities that it was your loose lips that caused this terrible theft of one hundred thousand pounds?”
Sherlock doesn’t know exactly what happened. But he is speaking aggressively, sure that this will shake the young man and cause him to reveal what he knows. And what he knows will unlock everything. The details of the daring robbery are about to be heard.
But the guard surprises him.
“No!” he asserts with confidence. “No one came in here. I will swear to it on a Bible. There was no robbery! I don’t know why money is missing from the vault. I was here the entire time. Nothing happened!”
“Are you quite finished?” asks Lestrade glaring at Holmes and stepping between the two.
“No … I –” stumbles Sherlock.
“I think you are,” shoots back the Inspector. “This young man,” he points at the guard, “has told us everything we have asked of him. And everything he has said turns out to be the gospel truth. We knew he bragged a bit too much about his job to others – he is hiding nothing from us. He comes from a respectable family with money invested in the Palace, a place from which he will one day profit. He certainly wishes it no harm. His home has been searched and so has his bank account. You are dead wrong about everything, Master Holmes. I suggest you leave and don’t come back. If I see you on these grounds, I shall have you forcibly removed … or perhaps horsewhipped!”
“There was robbery here,” sputters Sherlock. “It commenced at 1:05 on the first instant of July. It was committed by the Brixton Gang. And it is connected to the murder of Monsieur Mercure.”
“How?” demands Lestrade, holding back a smile.
“I … I don’t know that part yet.”
“I see.”
“But, if you allow me, I can make it so you can lay your hands on both the murderer and every member of the Brixton Gang.”
“The idea that this apparent robbery” spits the detective, “was committed unseen by the most notorious gang in London and that a flying trapeze accident nearly a fifth of a mile away is somehow connected is a fantasy: the fantasy of a child involved in something well beyond his powers to comprehend!”
Lestrade glowers at him.
“You are wasting my valuable time. If you do not leave this second, boy, I will lay the hands of the Force
Sherlock’s face is burning. He has made a terrible mistake. He has gotten ahead of himself, grown too excited, believed he had the facts when he didn’t, depended on another to reveal things about which he was not absolutely certain. There is no substitute for cold, dispassionate reasoning, and in the excitement that had followed his last interview with The Swallow, he had forgotten that.
“Twenty pounds!” mutters Lestrade, stalking away.
Sherlock’s head and leaves droops as a Bobbie escorts him down the nave, depositing him near the front entrance with explicit instructions to leave the premises, along with a promise of what will be done to him if he does not. The sun is setting, darkness is descending. The fireworks will begin soon.
The moment the policeman leaves him, the boy darts back from the entrance, disappears into the crowd, and reenters the Palace. He is
The Swallow and his two colleagues don’t know that Sherlock has just been thrown out by the police. They are still wary of him and what he might be able to do to them: The Swallow because of what the young detective has demonstrated he knows and the others, because they are all too aware that they may still be looked upon as suspects by the police. If they have indeed escaped the clutches of the law, they want it to be permanent. Sherlock can still make those three do his bidding. That is a card he can continue to play But what can he do with it? He may only have a few hours left: the apparatus must be taken down soon and the Mercures may be allowed to leave London in the very near future. All evidence, already gathered and yet to be found, may soon be gone.
He makes himself invisible as he moves through the crowd back to the central transept. From his spot behind a big white statue of Prince Albert near the amphitheater, he can see that the police are still hovering near the vault room.
His mind is searching desperately, going back over what he knows, examining where he made mistakes, what he has missed.
What has he observed today that he hasn’t thought through yet? Often commonplace things, little details assumed not to be important at first, are the most valuable of all. Any scientist will tell you that. Have there been any recurring facts, observations he’s made more than once?
Something occurs to him.
Several times today, he’s noticed the strange fact that the vault-room walls do not reach the ceiling; and when he was inside that room with the Lestrades, he had observed it again and looked up to see if he could spot
