“Come now, A. J.,” I said bitterly. “You have done all the needed reconnoitering. Be honest! Tonight we suddenly find that the moment is propitious, and we strike? Right?”
I had always been somewhat piqued that Raffles chose to do all the preliminary work, the casing, as the underworld says, himself. For some reason, he did not trust me to scout the layout.
Raffles blew a huge and perfect smoke ring from his Sullivan, and he clapped me on the shoulder. “You see through me, Bunny! Yes, I’ve examined the grounds and checked out Mr. Phillimore’s schedule.”
I was unable to say anything to the most masterful man I have ever met. I meekly donned dark clothes, downed the rest of the whisky, and left with Raffles. We strolled for some distance, making sure that no policemen were shadowing us, though we had no reason to believe they would be. We then took the last train to Willesden at 11:21. On the way I said, “Does Phillimore live near old Baird’s house?”
I was referring to the money lender killed by Jack Rutter, the details of which case are written in Wilful Murder.
“As a matter of fact,” Raffles said, watching me with his keen steel-gray eyes, “it’s the same house. Phillimore took it when Baird’s estate was finally settled and it became available to renters. It’s a curious coincidence, Bunny, but then all coincidences are curious. To man, that is. Nature is indifferent.”
(Yes, I know I stated before that his eyes were blue. And so they were. I’ve been criticized for saying in one story that his eyes were blue and in another that they were gray. But he has, as any idiot should have guessed, gray-blue eyes which are one color in one light and another in another.)
“That was in January, 1895,” Raffles said. “We are in deep waters, Bunny. My investigations have unearthed no evidence that Mr. Phillimore existed before November, 1894. Until he took the lodgings in the East End, no one seems to have heard of or even seen him. He came out of nowhere, rented his third-story lodgings—a terrible place, Bunny—until January. Then he rented the house where bad old Baird gave up the ghost. Since then he’s been living a quiet-enough life, excepting the visits he makes once a month to several East End fences. He has a cook and a housekeeper, but these do not live in with him.”
At this late hour, the train went no farther than Willesden Junction. We walked from there toward Kensal Rise. Once more, I was dependent on Raffles to lead me through unfamiliar country. However, this time the moon was up, and the country was not quite as open as it had been the last time I was here. A number of cottages and small villas, some only partially built, occupied the empty fields I had passed through that fateful night. We walked down a footpath between a woods and a field, and we came out on the tarred woodblock road that had been laid only four years before. It now had the curb that had been lacking then, but there was still only one pale lamppost across the road from the house.
Before us rose the corner of a high wall with the moonlight shining on the broken glass on top of the wall. It also outlined the sharp spikes on top of the tall green gate. We slipped on our masks. As before, Raffles reached up and placed champagne corks on the spikes. He then put his covert-coat over the corks. We slipped over quietly, Raffles removed the corks, and we stood by the wall in a bed of laurels. I admit I felt apprehensive, even more so than the last time. Old Baird’s ghost seemed to hover about the place. The shadows were thicker than they should have been.
I started toward the gravel path leading to the house, which was unlit. Raffles seized my coattails. “Quiet!” he said. “I see somebody—something, anyway—in the bushes at the far end of the garden. Down there, at the angle of the wall.”
I could see nothing, but I trusted Raffles, whose eyesight was as keen as a Red Indian’s. We moved slowly alongside the wall, stopping frequently to peer into the darkness of the bushes at the angle of the wall. About twenty yards from it, I saw something shapeless move in the shrubbery. I was all for clearing out then, but Raffles fiercely whispered that we could not permit a competitor to scare us away. After a quick conference, we moved in very slowly but surely, slightly more solid shadows in the shadow of the wall. And in a few very long and perspiration-drenched minutes, the stranger fell with one blow from Raffles’ fist upon his jaw.
Raffles dragged the snoring man out from the bushes so we could get a look at him by moonlight. “What have we here, Bunny?” he said. “Those long curly locks, that high arching nose, the overly thick eyebrows, and the odor of expensive Parisian perfume? Don’t you recognize him?”
I had to confess that I did not.
“What, that is the famous journalist and infamous duelist, lsadora Persano!” he said. “Now tell me you have never heard of him, or her, as the case may be?”
“Of course!” I said. “The reporter for the Daily Telegraph!”
“No more,” Raffles said, “He’s a freelancer now. But what the devil is he doing here?”
“Do you suppose,” I said slowly, “that he, too, is one thing by day and quite another at night?”
“Perhaps,” Raffles said. “But he may be here in his capacity of journalist. He’s also heard things about Mr. James Phillimore. The devil take it! If the press is here, you may be sure that the Yard is not far behind!”
Mr. Persano’s features curiously combined a rugged masculinity with an offensive effeminacy. Yet the latter characteristic was not really his fault. His father, an Italian diplomat, had died before he was born. His English mother had longed for a girl, been bitterly disappointed when her only-born was a boy, and, unhindered by a husband or conscience, had named him Isadora and raised him as a girl. Until he entered a public school, he wore dresses. In school, his long hair and certain feminine actions made him the object of an especially vicious persecution by the boys. It was there that he developed his abilities to defend himself with his fists. When he became an adult, he lived on the continent for several years. During this time, he earned a reputation as a dangerous man to insult. It was said that he had wounded half a dozen men with sword or pistol.
From the little bag in which he carried the tools of the trade, Raffles brought a length of rope and a gag. After tying and gagging Persano, Raffles went through his pockets. The only object that aroused his curiosity was a very large matchbox in an inner pocket of his cloak. Opening this, he brought out something that shone in the moonlight.
“By all that’s holy!” he said. “It’s one of the sapphires!”
“Is Persano a rich man?” I said.
“He doesn’t have to work for a living, Bunny. And since he hasn’t been in the house yet, I assume he got this from a fence. I also assume that he put the sapphire in the matchbox because a pickpocket isn’t likely to steal a box of matches. As it was, I was about to ignore it!”
“Let’s get out of here,” I said. But he crouched staring down at the journalist with an occasional glance at the jewel. This, by the way, was only about a quarter of the size of a hen’s egg. Presently, Persano stirred, and he moaned under the gag. Raffles whispered into his ear, and he nodded. Raffles, saying to me, “Cosh him if he looks like he’s going to tell,” undid the gag.
Persano, as requested, kept his voice low. He confessed that he had heard rumors from his underworld contacts about the precious stones. Having tracked down our fence, he had contrived easily enough to buy one of Mr. Phillimore’s jewels. In fact, he said, it was the first one that Mr. Phillimore had brought in to fence. Curious, wondering where the stones came from, since there were no reported thefts of these, he had come here to spy on Phillimore.
“There’s a great story here,” he said. “But just what, I haven’t the foggiest. However, I must warn you that...”
His warning was not heeded. Both Raffles and I heard the low voices outside the gate and the scraping of shoes against gravel.
“Don’t leave me tied up here, boys,” Persano said. “I might have a little trouble explaining satisfactorily just what I’m doing here. And then there’s the jewel...”
Raffles slipped th
e stone back into the matchbox and put it into Persano’s pocket. If we were to be caught, we would not have the gem on us. He untied the journalist’s wrists and ankles and said, “Good luck!”
A moment later, after throwing our coats over the broken glass, Raffles and I went over the rear rail. We ran crouching into a dense woods about twenty yards back of the house. At the other side at some distance was a newly built house and a newly laid road. A moment later, we saw Persano come over the wall. He ran by, not seeing us, and disappeared down the road, trailing a heavy cloud of perfume.
“We must visit him at his quarters,” said Raffles. He put his hand on my shoulder to warn me, but there was no need. I too had seen the three men come around the corner of the wall. One took a position at the angle of the wall; the other two started toward our woods. We retreated as quietly as possible. Since there was no train available at this late hour, we walked to Maida Vale and took a hansom from there to home. Raffles went to his rooms at the Albany and I to mine on Mount Street.
3
When we saw the evening papers, we knew that the affair had taken on even more bizarre aspects. But we still had no inkling of the horrifying metamorphosis yet to come.
I doubt if there is a literate person in the West—or in the Orient, for that matter—who has not read about the strange case of Mr. James Phillimore. At eight in the morning, a hansom cab from Maida Vale pulled up before the gates of his estate. The housekeeper and the cook and Mr. Phillimore were the only occupants of the house. The area outside the walls was being surveilled by eight men from the Metropolitan Police Department. The cab driver rang the electrically operated bell at the gate. Mr. Phillimore walked out of the house and down the gravel path to the gate. Here he was observed by the cab driver, a policeman near the gate, and another in a tree. The latter could see clearly the entire front yard and house, and another man in a tree could clearly see the entire back yard and the back of the house.
Mr. Phillimore opened the gate but did not step through it. Commenting to the cabbie that it looked like rain, he added that he would return to the house to get his umbrella. The cabbie, the policemen, and the housekeeper saw him reenter the house. The housekeeper was at that moment in the room which occupied the front part of the ground floor of the house. She went into the kitchen as Mr. Phillimore entered the house. She did, however, hear his footsteps on the stairs from the hallway which led up to the first floor.
She was the last one to see Mr. Phillimore. He did not come back out of the house. After half an hour Mr. Mackenzie, the Scotland Yard inspector in charge, decided that Mr. Phillimore had somehow become aware that he was under surveillance. Mackenzie gave the signal, and he with three men entered the gate, another four retaining their positions outside. At no time was any part of the area outside the walls unobserved. Nor was the area inside the walls unscrutinized at any time.
The warrant duly shown to the housekeeper, the policemen entered the house and made a thorough search. To their astonishment, they could find no trace of Mr. Phillimore. The six-foot-six, twenty-stone1 gentleman had utterly disappeared.
For the next two days, the house—and the yard around it—was the subject of the most intense investigation. This established that the house contained no secret tunnels or hideaways. Every cubic inch was accounted for. It was impossible for him not to have left the house; yet he clearly had not done so.
“Another minute’s delay, and we would have beencornered,” Raffles said, taking another Sullivan from his silver cigarette case. “But, Lord, what’s going on there, what mysterious forces are working there? Notice that no jewels were found in the house. At least, the police reported none. Now, did Phillimore actually go back to get his umbrella? Of course not. The umbrella was in the stand by the entrance; yet he went right by it and on upstairs. So, he observed the foxes outside the gate and bolted into his briar bush like the good little rabbit he was.”
“And where is the briar bush?” I said.
“Ah! That’s the question,” Raffles breathed. “What kind of a rabbit is it which pulls the briar bush in after it? That is the sort of mystery which has attracted even the Great Detective himself. He has condescended to look into it.”
“Then let us stay away from the whole affair!” I cried. “We have been singularly fortunate that none of our victims have called in your relative!”
Raffles was a third or fourth cousin to Holmes, though neither had, to my knowledge, even seen the other. I doubt that the sleuth had even gone to Lord’s, or anywhere else, to see a cricket match.
“I wouldn’t mind matching wits with him,” Raffles said. “Perhaps he might then change his mind about who’s the most dangerous man in London.”
“We have more than enough money,” I said. “Let’s drop the whole business.”
“It was only yesterday that you were complaining of boredom, Bunny,” he said. “No, I think we should pay a visit to our journalist. He may know something that we, and possibly the police, don’t know. However, if you prefer,” he added contemptuously, “you may stay home.”
That stung me, of course, and I insisted that I accompany him. A few minutes later, we got into a hansom, and Raffles told the driver to take us to Praed Street.
* * *
1 Two hundred and eighty pounds.
4
Persano’s apartment was at the end of two flights of Carrara marble steps and a carved mahogany banister. The porter conducted us to 10-C but left when Raffles tipped him handsomely. Raffles knocked on the door. After receiving no answer within a minute, he picked the lock. A moment later, we were inside a suite of extravagantly furnished rooms. A heavy odor of incense hung in the air.
I entered the bedroom and halted aghast. Persano, clad only in underwear, lay on the floor. The underwear, I regret to say, was the sheer black lace of the demimondaine. I suppose that if brassieres had existed at that time he would have been wearing one. I did not pay his dress much attention, however, because of his horrible expression. His face was cast into a mask of unutterable terror.
Near the tips of his outstretched fingers lay the large matchbox. It was open, and in it writhed something.
I drew back, but Raffles, after one soughing of intaken breath, felt the man’s forehead and pulse and looked into the rigid eyes.
“Stark staring mad,” he said. “Frozen with the horror that comes from the deepest of abysses.”
Emboldened by his example, I drew near the box. Its contents looked somewhat like a worm, a thick tubular worm, with a dozen slim tentacles projecting from one end. This could be presumed to be its head, since the area just above the roots of the tentacles was ringed with small pale-blue eyes. These had pupils like a cat’s. There was no nose or nasal openings or mouth.
“God!” I said shuddering. “What is it?”
“Only God knows,” Raffles said. He lifted Persano’s right hand and looked at the tips of the fingers. “Note the fleck of blood on each,” he said. “They look as if pins have been stuck into them.”
He bent over closer to the thing in the box and said, “The tips of the tentacles bear needlelike points, Bunny. Perhaps Persano is not so much paralyzed from horror as from venom.”
“Don’t get any closer, for heaven’s sake!” I said.
“Look, Bunny!” he said. “Doesn’t that thing have a tiny shining object in one of its tentacles?”
Despite my nausea, I got down by him and looked straight at the monster. “It seems to be a very thin and slightly curving piece of glass,” I said. “What of it?”
Even as I spoke, the end of the tentacle which held the object opened, and the object disappeared within it.
“That glass,” Raffles said, “is what’s left of the sapphire. It’s eaten it. That piece seems to have been the last of it.”
“Eaten a sapphire?” I said, stunned. “Hard metal, blue corundum?”
“I think, Bunny,” he said slowly, “the sapphire may only have looked like a sapphire. Perhaps it was not aluminu
m oxide but something hard enough to fool an expert. The interior may have been filled with something softer than the shell. Perhaps the shell held an embryo.”
“What?” I said.
“I mean, Bunny, is it inconceivable, but nevertheless true, that that thing might have hatched from the jewel?”
5
We left hurriedly a moment later. Raffles had decided against taking the monster—for which I was very grateful—because he wanted the police to have all the clues available.
“There’s something very wrong here, Bunny,” he said. “Very sinister.” He lit a Sullivan and added in a drawl, “Very alien!”
“You mean un-British?” I said.
“I mean... un-Earthly.”
A little later, we got out of the cab at St. James’ Park and walked across it to the Albany. In Raffles’ room, smoking cigars and drinking Scotch whisky and soda, we discussed the significance of all we had seen but could come to no explanation, reasonable or otherwise. The next morning, reading the Times, the Pall Mall Gazette, and the Daily Telegraph, we learned how narrowly we had escaped. According to the papers, Inspectors Hopkins and Mackenzie and the private detective Holmes had entered Persano’s rooms two minutes after we had left. Persano had died while on the way to the hospital.
“Not a word about the worm in the box,” Raffles said. “The police are keeping it a secret. No doubt, they fear to alarm the public.”
There would be, in fact, no official reference to the creature. Nor was it until 1922 that Dr. Watson made a passing reference to it in a published adventure of his colleague. I do not know what happened to the thing, but I suppose that it must have been placed in a jar of alcohol. There it must have quickly perished. No doubt the jar is collecting dust on some shelf in the backroom of some police museum. Whatever happened to it, it must have been disposed of. Otherwise, the world would not be what it is today.