the loose iron snapped back over the toe of my riding boot and I had the support of two legs, which allowed me to regain a portion of my balance.
As though in relief at clearing the obstacle, Fandango slackened her headlong rush and I was able to loosen my death-hold on the saddle and snatch at her flying reins. Leaning back in the saddle with the reins as support, I succeeded in slowing my mount and Mystique as well even further, and it was then that I heard the call. 'Watson! Over here!'
I saw Holmes in the semidarkness waving a white handkerchief by the side of the road. I was so startled at hearing his voice, so amazed at even being alive, that a surge of unknown strength welled up within me. My left arm, which a moment ago had threatened to fall off, swung the reins to the right and I leaned in that direction as well, throwing the head, neck, and withers of Fandango against Mystique and somehow bringing both animals to a skidding, sliding halt right where Sherlock Holmes stood.
The great sleuth grabbed Mystique's reins as I let them drop. Securing the animal by the bit, he anchored Fandango in the same manner, all the time looking upward at me in complete amazement. The horses were sucking in air in great breaths and their forequarters were lathered a foamy white. Somehow my riding bowler was still on my head, though askew. I was as drenched and as breathless as the steeds but managed to keep my backbone straight. Had I sagged a smidgen, I would have fallen headlong from the saddle like a sack of grain. The moment was tense and the situation critical, but Holmes stole time to gaze at me as though unsuspected vistas had suddenly been revealed to him. I have always contended that my intimate friend had the rare ability to seize a situation at a glance, to read the book of a happening in a fleeting second, but this time his instant appraisal deserted him.
'Watson, good fellow, were it possible for me to be rendered speechless, I'd be as mute as an oyster! That gate is fully five pegs high and I could but think, as you came upon it, of a Cossack in full flight. And to clear it with not one horse but with two, in perfect form! If Deets were to give you a mount, I'd place my wager on your colors, dear friend.'
I was goggle-eyed, but the sincere conviction of Holmes's words and the light in his eyes kept me from swaying. I could not and would not destroy an image nurtured, however incorrectly, in the mind of the kindest man I have ever known. I made a weak half-gesture towards the breeding farm in the distance. 'Holmes, Mayswood is afire.'
'Naught but haystacks, ol' chap,' replied Holmes, swinging into Mystique's saddle. 'Sufficiently close to the stabled thoroughbreds to create a menace, but something that Deets and his crew can handle. Come, let us observe the follow-up of this diversionary tactic.'
The sleuth reined Mystique from the road into the line of trees, and I had little choice but to follow in his wake.
Brushing through branches and bending low in the saddle to clear outstretched boughs, we made our way through the trees to a point at the end of the timberline that I assumed Holmes had scouted and chosen in advance. From there, we commanded a fine view of the front of the mansion. The flames were dimly visible around the side of the residence, and the firefighters were still intent on their task. We were at our station but a moment when I spied at least four men who seemed to materialize from the ground before the house. There was a flash of metal in the air, and objects flew into the night sky to descend on the stone balustrade of the balcony.
'My thought of using grappling hooks was not amiss, Watson,' whispered Holmes as the shadowy figures tested their lines and then swarmed up them hand over hand.
'What are they after, Holmes?'
'Regard the balcony. What do you see?'
'Five French windows . . . then there—'
'Enough. It is so true that one looks but does not see. That American, Poe's, concept of the purloined letter was accurate.'
'Holmes, what are you—?'
'Think back to when we were within the gallery before walking out on the balcony. What is the picture that comes to your mind's eye, Watson?'
'Well, we walked towards the four French windows and made our way—' I stopped abruptly, shafted by a thought 'Four windows! But five are staring me in the face.'
'The fifth is a dummy. Look, they are making for it even now. In but a moment they will have the aperture open.'
The figures that had gained the balcony were doing as my friend said. Huddled round the fifth opening, there was a pause in their feverish activity, which allowed me to protest, to give vent to my mental rebellion.
'I assume it is a door to a secret chamber, Holmes, but why not have it concealed?'
'Because someone's eye wandering over the face of the building would note an unusual distance from the real window on the end to the windows of adjacent rooms. They would wonder where all that space was, how it was used. As it is, you see a charming exterior in proportion and note the openings but do not count them. From the inside, things have a different perspective. You cannot consider a room you occupy in conjunction with adjacent ones.'
'But when we went out on the balcony?'
'Did you notice anything unusual? Your eye was captured by the view. There were windows behind you, how many you did not count. You walked right past the false one, never conscious of the fact that you were passing an entry to a vault, a hiding place for whatever treasures Captain Spaulding brought back from his expeditions.'
'You noticed it, of course.'
'Ah, Watson, I have trained myself to look and to see as well. Ah ha! They've forced the door.'
Two of the figures on the balcony suddenly disappeared within the house. The third posted himself by the real windows. The remaining one went to the edge of the area at the side of the building nearest the fire as a lookout should anyone note something amiss. Apparently confident that their arrival was undiscovered, as it certainly was, both men on the balcony then moved to the balustrade. Loosening the grappling hooks, they passed each one over the railing and dropped it to the ground. It was a re-creation of Holmes's suppositions several days before.
Suddenly I tightened my hold on the reins, lifting Fandango's head as though in preparation for a charge.
'This, then, is what Deets feared. That his uninvited visitor would suspect the location of the family vault. We must stop them, Holmes.'
My friend's lean and sinewy arm reached out to grasp me by the shoulder and pull me back in my saddle.
'Hold tight, Watson. We have not planned this so carefully to stop them. We want to see what they do.'
'Do? They're after that sword. You were right about that, of course. If left to their devices, they will spirit it away.'
'Not so easily, good chap.'
I noted flashes of light from the interior of what we assumed was the Deets' family vault.
'Gilligan and Styles are waiting on the Follonsbee Road, which is the only direct thoroughfare back to London.'
Holmes gestured to our left. 'Now there's a path in that direction, is there not? For I think the Chinese came from there.'
'Oh, they are Chinese, are they? Let me see.' My mind raced back over my journeys round Mayswood, and fortunately the mental pictures meshed in my mind.
'Yes, there is a good-sized lane running in a half-moon direction that way,' I stated, pointing towards our left and rear. 'It splits at a fork; one branch continues round by a bluff and curves back to the road to Litchfield, the other terminates at a railway assembly point down in a valley. Actually, there's a path down the bluff that reaches the same point much quicker. I chanced upon it.'
'Good show, Watson! In former times that Confederate cavalry genius, Jeb Stuart, might have grown fond of you. The junction you mention must be for making up freight trains for the run into the city. I suspect that is the key to the Chinaman's plan.'
His musings were interrupted by the reappearance of the men on the balcony of the Deets mansion. They were carrying something with them, though I could not make out its form. Had I to hazard a guess, I would have said it was a crated object. Holmes suddenly lost interest in the nocturnal attack squad. I noted they were securing
