found.
“I observe this bedroom is on the fourth floor of your house. How tiresome!”
Once again, he wandered around the bedroom, paying particular attention to the carpeting, exclaiming once or twice as he did so.
“Seven days. I suppose it would have been an impossibility to think anything would have remained undisturbed.”
The note of accusation caused Detective Inspector Gallagher to flush in annoyance. “We did our best to secure the evidence, Mr. Holmes,” he began.
“And your best was to destroy whatever evidence there was,” snapped Holmes conceitedly.
He then led the way outside the house and stood peering around as if searching for something. But he seemed to give up with a shake of his head. He was turning away when his eyes alighted on two men on the opposite side of the road who were peering down an open manhole. From the steps of the house, an elderly woman, clutching a Pekingese dog in her arms, was observing their toil, or rather lack of it, with disapproval.
An expression of interest crossed Holmes’s features, and he went over to them. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he greeted the workmen. “I observe by your expression that something appears amiss here.”
The workmen gaped at him, unused to being addressed as gentlemen.
“Naw, guvnor,” replied one, shaking his head. “We do reckon ain’t naw’fing wrong ‘ere.” He glanced at the elderly lady and said in an aggrieved voice. “But seems we’ve gotta check, ain’t we?”
The elderly lady was peering shortsightedly at Holmes. “Young man!” She accosted him in an imperial tone. “I don’t suppose you are an employee of the local sewerage works?”
Holmes swung round, leaving the two workmen still gazing morbidly down the hole in the road, and he smiled thinly. “Is there some way I can be of assistance, madam?”
“I have not seen eye to eye with your workmen there. They assure me that I have been imagining excavations near my house by the sewerage company. I do not imagine things. However, since these excavations have ceased, or rather the sounds of them, which have been so oppressive to my obtaining a decent night’s repose, I presume that we will no longer be bothered by these nightly disturbances?”
“Nightly disturbances?” Holmes asked with quickening interest.
When she confirmed that she had complained a fortnight prior to the sewerage company of nightly disturbances caused by vibration and muffled banging under the street, causing her house to shake, one of the workmen summoned courage to come forward.
He raised a finger to his cap. “Beggin yer pardon, lady, but wiv all due respect an’ that, ain’t bin none of our lads a digging dahn ‘ere. No work bin done in this ‘ere areafer months naw.”
Holmes stood regarding the old woman and the workmen for a moment, and then with a cry of “Of course!” he bounded back to Glassford’s house, and his knocking brought Hogan, the butler, to the door again.
“Show me your cellar,” he ordered the startled man.
Sir Gibson emerged from his study, disturbed by the noise of Holmes’s reentry into the house, and looked astounded. “Why, what is it, Mr. Holmes?”
“The cellar, man,” snapped Holmes dictatorially, totally disregarding the fact that Glassford was a member of the government.
In a body, they trooped down into the cellar. In fact, several cellars ran under the big house, and Hogan, who had now brought a lamp, was ordered to precede them through the wine racks, a coal storage area, a boiler room, and areas filled with bric-a-brac and assorted discarded furniture along one wall.
“Have any underground excavations disturbed you of late? These would have been during the night,” Holmes asked as he examined the cellar walls. Glassford looked perplexed.
“Not at all,” he replied, and then turned to his butler. ‘Your room is above here at the back of the house, isn’t it, Hogan? Have you been disturbed?”
The butler shook his head.
“Does the Underground railway run in this vicinity?” Holmes pressed.
“We are not disturbed by the Underground here,” replied Sir Gibson. “The Circle Line, which was completed six years ago, is quite a distance to the north of here.”
“That wall would be to the north,” Holmes muttered, and turning to Hogan ordered the man to bring the lamp close while he began examining the wall. He was there fully fifteen minutes before he gave up in irritation. Inspector Gallagher was smiling to himself and could not help making the thrust: “Your theory not turning out as you would hope, Mr. Holmes?”
Holmes scowled at him. “We will return to Father Michaels,” he almost snarled.
At the presbytery, he demanded to see the priest, and being shown into the study asked without preamble: “Do you have a cellar?”
Father Michael nodded.
“Pray precede me to it,” demanded Holmes arrogantly.
The priest did so, with Holmes behind him and Watson and Gallagher trailing in the rear. It was an ordinary cellar, mostly used for the storage of coal and with wine racks along one side. Holmes moved hither and thither through it like a ferret until he came to a rusting iron door.
“Where does this lead?” he demanded.
Father Michael shrugged. “It leads into the new crypt. As you know, we are rebuilding the church and creating a crypt. The door used to lead into another cell, but it has not been opened ever since I have been here.”
“Which is how long?” asked Holmes, examining it carefully.
“Ten years.”
“I see,” muttered the Great Detective. Then he smiled broadly. “I see.” He said it again almost as if to impress everyone that he had spotted some solution to the mystery.
“And does an Underground railway run near here?”
Father Michael shook his head. “Our architect ascertained that before we began to rebuild the church. We needed to ensure strong foundations.”
Gallagher felt he could have done a dance at the crestfallen expression on Holmes’s face. It lasted only a moment, and then Holmes had swung round on him.
“I want to see the Metropolitan Commissioner of Sewers and maps of the system under London.”
Gallagher felt he was dealing with a maniac now. It seemed that Holmes had devised some theory that he was determined to prove at all cost.
Mr. Bert Small, manager of the sewerage system, agreed to see Holmes and provide plans of the area at the company’s Canon Row offices, just opposite the Palace of Westminster on the corner of Parliament Street.
“I cannot see the connection I wish to make,” Holmes said in resignation, pushing the plans away from him in disgust. “There seems no way that one could negotiate the sewers from Soho Square to Gay fere Street, at least not directly in a short space of time. And the Underground railway does not run anywhere near Father Michael’s nor Glassford’s houses.”
It was then that Bert Small came to the rescue of Holmes, demonstrating that it was not intellect alone that helped him solve his cases but good fortune and coincidence.
“Maybe you are looking at the wrong underground system, Mr. Holmes,” he suggested. “There are many other underground systems under London apart from sewers and the new railway system.”
Holmes regarded him with raised eyebrows. “There is another system of tunnels that runs
