can.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?” demanded Inspector Fry.
“It must be photographed!” Detective Halse shouted. “And the City Police given an opportunity to examine it.”
“I have my orders from Sir Charles, sir,” said the infuriatingly dignified Inspector Fry.
“Instead, the message might be covered over with a piece of dark cloth,” remarked a constable.
“An excellent notion”—Lestrade nodded—“permitting us to preserve a clue.”
“Respectfully, I do not think that would be in accordance with Sir Charles’s wishes.”
“You could take a sponge to the top line only, with no one the wiser for it,” said Miss Monk.
“What if,” I suggested, “the oddly spelled word ‘Juwes’ only be erased, and the rest remain?”
“By Jove, the very thing!” cried Lestrade. “Better and better—no danger, then, of the sense of it being glimpsed.”
“What if,” replied Inspector Fry in the same maddeningly courteous tone, “we were all to construct daisy chains and drape them so as to shield the words from public view?”
“With all respect, sir,” snarled Detective Halse, “in another hour it will be light enough to photograph. The sun will begin to rise at any moment. We can cover the bloody thing with whatever you like until then, but I beg of you not to throw such a clue as this away.”
“This difficult decision is not mine to make.”
“No indeed, it is mine,” called a forceful, ringing baritone, and there to my astonishment stood Sir Charles Warren himself, the decorated war veteran of the Royal Engineers and the Colonial Office, who had once attempted to relieve a hero of mine, the matchless General Gordon, when he had been hopelessly outnumbered at Khartoum. He was as methodically dressed as if he had not been awoken in the middle of the night with bitter news, and the determined curve of his high, rounded forehead, the authority of his impeccably combed walrus moustache, and the obdurate resolve behind his monocle led me to believe we were in for trouble.
“I have come from Leman Street police station,” he declared, “and I am displeased with the news I have had from that quarter. You are under orders to destroy this monstrous blot of anti-Semitism before the traffic to Petticoat Lane Market is disturbed by it.”
“If you’ll pardon my saying so, sir,” interjected Inspector Lestrade, whose presence I was beginning to welcome with enthusiastic gratitude, “there are, perhaps, less radical possibilities open to us.”
“Less
“This detective, sir, has sent for a photographer—”
“To what purpose?”
“That the message might be made available also to the City force, sir.”
“I do not care two figs for the photographers of the City of London Police. They do not answer to the Home Office over riots, as I undoubtedly will should that absurd phrase remain.”
“Perhaps if we were to cover it, Sir Charles, only for half an hour—”
“I will not be coddled, nor will I be bargained with,” the former military commander averred. “What is your name?”
“Detective Inspector Lestrade, Sir Charles.”
“Well, Inspector Lestrade, you show an admirable passion for police work. You seem to me to have the very best interests of the populace at heart. You will therefore now take this sponge from your colleague and erase that vile scribbling so that we may return to real detective work.”
Inspector Lestrade’s lips set into a forbidding line while Detective Halse, rage twisting his knotted brows, slammed his palm against the wall and stepped aside. Lestrade took the damp sponge from Inspector Fry and approached the writing, stopping to shoot me a significant glance.
“No fear, Doctor,” Miss Monk whispered, “I’ve copied it down during all that racket.”
I nodded to Lestrade, who then proceeded to erase the curious clue. When finished, he shoved the damp sponge against Inspector Fry’s chest and turned to his Commissioner.
“It has been done, as you ordered, Sir Charles.”
“You have averted what could have been a powerful spark to the kindling of social unrest. I’ve business elsewhere. My thanks, gentlemen. As you were.” With that, Sir Charles Warren strode off in the direction of the station and the men began to disperse.
Lestrade regarded the blank wall with pained disquiet. “Dr. Watson, Detective Halse, a word with you please.”
The three of us strolled toward the waiting cab, Miss Monk trailing three or four feet behind.
“I’m not ashamed to say that was a bad business,” began Lestrade, with a dignity I had never before observed in the quick-tempered, rat-like investigator. “Dr. Watson, I expect you to forward copies of that message to both the Metropolitan and the City of London Police.”
“It shall be done immediately.”
“I had never met Sir Charles, you know,” he reflected. “I’m not anxious to repeat the experience—though he is right in that little good it would do us to plunge the entire district into chaos.”
“Surely that is not the point,” I began angrily, but Lestrade held up a hand.
“I’m no spinner of fanciful theories, Dr. Watson, and there are times when, sharp as he is, I think Mr. Holmes would be as well off in Bedlam as in Baker Street. But I am a believer in facts, and that chalked writing was as sound a fact as I’ve ever seen. Good night to you, Detective Halse. You’ll tell your superiors, no doubt, that we were given no choice.”
The City detective, still visibly suppressing his fury, bowed to us and left.
“Lestrade,” I ventured, “I cannot tell you how glad I have been of your presence, but I’m afraid we must leave at once. We have a great deal to report to Holmes, and I fear very much for the condition in which we are likely to find him.”
“Believe me, Dr. Watson, it has been heavy on my mind. I must return to Dutfield’s Yard, but I’ll leave you the cab. This night would have gone a sight differently had Mr. Holmes been here to the end. Next time our police commissioner takes it into his head to expunge a clue, I’d give fifty pounds to have Sherlock Holmes in my corner. I should be grateful if you would tell him so.” Lestrade tipped his hat to us both and strode off into the first brightening light of dawn.
It was then I noted that Miss Monk had grown singularly pale and drawn. I took her arm.
“Miss Monk, are you quite well?”
“It ain’t nothing to speak of, Doctor,” she replied. “Queer stroke of luck that led us to be so in the thick of it, but oh, Dr. Watson—did you ever in all your life even think on a deed so horrible as what he’s done?” She quickly hid her face in her hands.
“No, I have not,” I said quietly. “I feel just as you do, my dear. Get into the cab with me and I shall return you to your lodgings at once. You’ve found better ones, is that not so?”
“If you could drop me at Great Garden Street, Doctor, I’d be grateful. I’ve taken rooms there. Mr. Holmes will want to know everything, and make no mistake we’ll tell him plain what we saw, but not now. I couldn’t rightly bear it now.”
I shook my head as I helped her into the four-wheeler, searching for words of comfort, which rose to my lips and died there in mute sympathy. Miss Monk had been out all night in the cold, pursuing a creature whose great impulse was to brutally slay women exactly like her. She buried her head in the lapel of my greatcoat and we spent the short journey in silence. We soon reached her street, and I saw her to the door.
“You require complete rest for the remainder of the day. Come to Baker Street when you are able. I haven’t words to express my admiration for your courage, Miss Monk, and I know Holmes would say the same.” I left her, returning to the hansom heartsick and defeated as the first true rays of sunlight stole along the cracks of the paving stones.
I had hardly crossed the three shallow steps leading to our front door, nor breathlessly turned my key in the lock, when the door flew open to reveal Mrs. Hudson’s kind, familiar face, spectacles perched upon her head, and oddly done buttons upon her left sleeve.
“Oh, Dr. Watson!” she cried, grasping me by the shoulders. “When I think of what you must have been through! And Mr. Holmes! Seeing him as he was a few hours ago when he arrived here—oh, Dr. Watson, who has
