breath, I crossed to the settee, casting a nervous glance back at the window through which the whisper of death had entered our sitting room.
'Forgive me if I seem unduly concerned,' I began, and there was a liberal touch of irony in my voice.
'Reasonable, of course,' he stated with an airy wave of one hand. 'Old fellow, the shot was fired from a height. Note the point of entry through the window.'
'I'll take your word for it.'
'The bullet did not come from across the street or down the block, but from a more distant point. Despite the high-velocity weapon used, the marksman had to allow for a curvature of flight and yet he was able to hit the candle, a slight miscalculation on his part?'
'Miscalculation?' I echoed in an alarmed tone.
'He meant to hit the wick, you see. What a dramatic message that would have been.'
'Message? Now see here, Holmes . . .'
'The bullet was just that, Watson, and delivered with more speed and, indeed, impact that a cable or letter. 'See here, Sherlock Holmes, you are but mortal and can be snuffed out as easily as this candle.''
This gave me pause, for now I understood Holmes' line of thinking. Whilst I mused, the sleuth took the messages he had scrawled and went again to the landing to call Billy.
Upon his return, I took a stern stand. 'See here, Holmes, I can find no flaw in your reasoning.'
'I'm relieved about that,' was his dry reply. There was a twinkle in his eyes, but I did not allow it to deter me.
'You must have learned something today and I'm blessed if I can see what it was.'
'Because of the warning, you mean. Good thinking.'
The sleuth's eyes wandered to the window again and back to the floor from which he had extracted the spent slug. 'We must instigate some repairs, Watson, without Mrs. Hudson's knowledge. If the matter of the shot in the night ever becomes known to the dear woman, I fear her sleep will be disturbed for weeks to come.'
'The case, Holmes!' I sputtered with exasperation.
'Ledger showed us the special freight this morning. Did something strike you?'
I shook my head.
'It did me, but then I was looking for corroborative evidence for a theory I had already evolved. Let us accept two basic assumptions and progress from there. First, Ledger was not lying to us. Since we can so easily check his words, it would not seem reasonable for him to fabricate. Therefore, the robbers did not gain access to the train in the freight yards. Two, the guards on the freight were trustworthy. We shall certainly confirm this, but if they were involved in the theft, no mystery exists.'
As Holmes secured his clay pipe from the mantel, I muttered that his assumptions seemed, almost certainly, correct.
'All right,' he continued. 'The robbery occurred during the trip, in the area of the village of Brent. Considering the speed of the freight and the position of the riflemen guarding it, there was no way the thieves could have gotten on the train save from above.'
Holmes' careful investigation of the bridge outside of Brent had alerted me to this and I merely nodded.
'A simple arithmetic calculation proves it. We secured the distance from the parapet of the bridge to the top of the freight car.'
'You estimated that at twelve feet.'
Holmes continued through a cloud of smoke. 'Let us assume two men dropped from the bridge to the train top. It was a moving target and they had to land at just the right spot to shove the smoke bombs into the armored cubicle before the guards recovered their wits and started shooting. They couldn't just jump at the spot they hoped to land. They had to lead their target, as the expression goes.'
I must have been regarding Holmes blankly, for he explained further.
'Consider the shot just fired through the window, Watson. The marksman didn't aim at the candle, but above it—to allow for the effect of gravity on the bullet. In a similar manner, the train robbers had to anticipate their leap to the moving freight car.'
'A moment,' I said with a sudden thought. 'The white paint on the forward part of the railroad car.'
Holmes exhibited that small-boy look of delight that was reserved for those moments when I chimed in with his thinking. 'Exactly. Now we have a formula. The distance they dropped, the rate of descent of a falling object, the speed of the train. I paced off the distance from the paint mark to the rear of the freight car with due consideration for where I thought the robbers landed. My calculations are rough, but I am satisfied that the white line was their signal to leap from the bridge.'
'You were looking for something like that since you'd already decided that they had come from above.' I made haste to add what was for me a rather inspired bit of reasoning. 'Oft-times you have noted that whenever all else proves impossible, what remains must be true. They had to come from above, no other direction being possible.'
'Watson, you never fail to amaze me.' He was joshing, of course, but I was so enthused that I did not let it faze me until a second thought cast doubts, as second thoughts so often do.
'Your recreation is up to your highest standards, Holmes, but dashed if I see where it has been revealing.'
'Don't you? Give it a try, old fellow.'
I certainly did and suddenly, somewhat to my surprise, a thought struck me. 'Why, of course. Whoever robbed the train had to have access to the freight cars well in advance.'
'Right, Watson. Ledger said that Alvidon Chasseur was responsible for the paint mark and, in the rush, it was not completely removed. I inspected it rather closely and don't choose to agree with him.'
'One moment,' I exclaimed, trying to sort out my mixed up thoughts. 'Chasseur had a rectangle painted as a guide to the construction of the armored cubicle . . . then it was decided to alter its position and the mark was partially painted out.'
'That's what Ledger said. However, I scraped off some of the white paint. I think the marking was completely painted out.'
'Then someone renewed that particular portion to serve as an eye marker for the robbers,' I said breathlessly.
My friend nodded. 'Again we have evidence of meticulous planning. However, I dwell on the obvious. The robbery succeeded, which speaks well for the ingenuity of its architect if not for his moral code.'
Holmes rose from his armchair and walked toward the windows, his chin on his chest. He must have noted my instinctive reaction of alarm, for he reversed his direction and paced in a circle around the center of the room. He had once told me that a coffin would make a superior place to lie in silence and solitude and wrestle with a problem. That was but his mood of the moment, for I knew that many times he liked to think on his feet.
Events did not allow him to wear a furrow in our carpet as he pondered, nor did I expect them to. My friend, no doubt to calm my panic, had made light of our leaden intruder that had come at us from the darkness of the night, but I knew he took it as a personal affront. The thought of counterattack had to be in his mind and I was not surprised when there was the sound of footsteps on the seventeen steps leading to the landing and Billy ushered in the wise-eyed Slim Gilligan, select member of what I chose to call the inside group.
A cloth cap was at a jaunty angle on his head, and an unlit cigarette was tucked behind one ear. A heavy black sweater served as his coat, no surprise since Slim eschewed clothing of a bulky nature because getting in and out of places was his greatest talent. His attire always had a streamlined look, devoid of anything that might catch on a projection or slow him down. His movements had an oily grace and he never seemed rushed, though I knew of only one man who could, when necessary, move faster and that man was not Holmes.
'Evenin', guv. What's on the slate tonight?'
Holmes gestured toward the particles of glass still on the rug by the window. Slim's lips pursed for a brief moment. From him, that was akin to a broad gesture of astonishment from someone else. He cat-footed his way to the window, peering at the shattered pane briefly from the side of the drape as though he knew what he'd find.
