A Study in Crimson, page 22
Outside, air raid sirens maintained their warning wail, but this was no distraction from his plan. Now that the raids were so infrequent, in an area like this which had never been seriously targeted people tended to ignore the occasional howl of the sirens as they would a distant rumble of thunder.
Arriving at the door of his victim’s flat, he forced the lock with practised ease, making almost no sound as he did so. The sleeping woman inside would receive no warning of her fate until she felt the cord tightening around her throat, and then it would be too late.
He had reconnoitred the interior of the apartment on a previous visit while the girl was at work, and he knew his way around even in the dark. The bedroom door was slightly ajar and with a touch of his hand he gently pushed it wide. Padding stealthily to the bed, he stood over the huddled shape beneath the covers.
For an instant he experienced a triumphant exhilaration as he reached for the garrotte in his pocket, then all at once he knew something was wrong. He could hear the ticking of the bedside clock, but there was not the slightest whisper of breath from the misshapen figure in the bed. A tingle of danger electrified his nerves as he whipped the blankets aside to reveal, not a human body, but a heap of pillows.
Behind him someone switched on a lamp. Spinning about, he raised a hand against the glare and squinted at the figure rising from a chair with a pistol in her hand.
‘Hi there, Phil,’ said Gail Preston. ‘Bet you didn’t expect to find me here.’
33 JUDGEMENT IN CRIMSON
Rayner lowered his arm to stare hard at Gail Preston. He pursed his lips. ‘Hello, Gail. I see you got yourself a gun after all,’ he noted drily. ‘American military issue, isn’t it?’
‘I’ve got a pal in the forces who likes to do me favours,’ said Gail, shrugging one shoulder. ‘I told him I needed it to scare off an ugly creep who’s been following me around. Speaking of guns, I want you to take yours out by the left hand, thumb and forefinger only, like you see them do in the movies. Make it real slow.’
Rayner complied, reaching slowly under his jacket into his shoulder holster. He drew out the pistol and held it dangling before him from the two fingers pinched around the bottom of the handle.
‘That’s right,’ Gail approved, ‘keep it nice and easy. Now toss it over here, but don’t make me jump or I’m liable to shoot.’
Rayner crouched slightly and cast the gun away so that it slid across the floor, halting just short of her feet. When he straightened up he glanced inquisitively about the room. ‘Don’t tell me you’re here all by yourself.’
Gail kept her revolver pointed unwaveringly at his midriff. ‘The rest of the gang will be here soon enough. It’s up to you whether they take you away in cuffs or a bag.’
Rayner smiled casually. ‘Be honest with me – were you really expecting it to be me?’
‘Sherlock Holmes told me most of it. The rest I figured out by myself. It occurred to me that if you found this place empty, you’d guess that the jig was up and lam out before anybody could grab you. So I decided to make sure you stick around.’
Rayner’s hand drifted cautiously towards the inside of his jacket.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that!’ Gail warned.
‘I’m just reaching for a cigarette,’ Rayner explained innocently. ‘Under the circumstances I need something to relax me. See?’ He opened his jacket with ostentatious care to display the packet protruding from an inside pocket. Carefully he flipped it open and drew out a cigarette.
‘My lighter is here,’ he said, patting the left hand pocket.
Gail extended her gun arm and shook her head. Without looking away, she reached into her bag, pulled out a box of matches and flung them at him. ‘Use these.’
Rayner caught the matches with one hand while slipping the cigarette into his mouth with the other. He lit it, then threw the matches back. Gail let them fall to the floor without attempting to catch them, her eyes never moving from her prisoner.
Rayner sucked on the smoke. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any way you’d consider letting me go?’
Gail gave a bitter laugh. ‘After what you’ve pulled? I’m planning on booking a ticket to watch you swing.’
‘Well, I guess we’ll never have that drink now.’ Rayner titled his head towards the bed. ‘Mind if I sit down?’
‘Suit yourself,’ said Gail. ‘We won’t be waiting long.’
Rayner took a step backwards. A split instant before Gail read his intention, he snatched up the bedside clock and hurled it at her with murderous force. The expertly thrown missile struck her shoulder hard enough to jerk her round as she fired. Her shot went wild, smacking a bullet into the wall.
Before she could fire again Rayner was on her, knocking the gun from her grasp.
* * *
I bounded up the stairs to Dorothy Marx’s apartment with Holmes, who normally took the lead, straining to keep up with my frenzied pace. As I leapt over the top step, there was the bark of a gun from up ahead. I bashed through the door of 3B and pelted down the hall to the bedroom, homing in on the sounds of a struggle.
The blood was pounding in my head as I erupted into the room to see Gail backed against the wall, kicking and clawing at Rayner who loomed over her with a long-bladed knife. I threw myself at him before he could react. Seizing his arm in both hands, I twisted his wrist until the bone snapped and the knife fell from his grasp.
He lunged to retrieve it, but I held on to him and we toppled to the floor. As Rayner stretched out for his lost weapon, I slammed a heavy fist into his face. In an even fight I had no doubt that he would have bested me, but the sheer surprise and ferocity of my attack had already overwhelmed him. I landed three more furious blows before the touch of Holmes’s hand on my shoulder restrained me.
‘That’s enough, Watson. I think you’ve more than made your point.’
As I got up, puffing from the exertion, I turned to see Gail scoop a gun up from the floor. I recognised it as Rayner’s own. She pointed it at him as he rose, wiping a streak of blood from the side of his mouth with the back of his left hand. Any movement of his right hand visibly pained him due to the injury I had inflicted.
The red mist of rage was only now clearing from my eyes as I took a step towards Gail. ‘Gail… are you all right?’
She tossed back her hair and I saw a red weal on her cheek where she had been struck. She gave a crooked smile. ‘Relax, doc – I’ll pull through.’
Sherlock Holmes kicked the knife beyond Rayner’s reach and picked up a military pistol that was lying on the carpet. I drew my own gun and all three of us kept him covered. The prisoner gazed at us with the sheepish air of a guest who has embarrassed himself at a party rather than snarling like the predatory beast I now knew him to be.
‘Well, it’s a shame we seem to have fallen out,’ he sighed in mock regret. ‘We made such a good team.’
Holmes regarded him with cold disdain. ‘You were never more than a viper lurking in our midst, Rayner – or should I say Herr Braun?’
‘It’s been many years since anybody called me that,’ Rayner responded. He pulled out a handkerchief to dab the blood from his nose.
Gail eyed him with venom in her gaze. ‘To think that the golden boy of British Intelligence turned out to be a murderous Nazi spy.’
‘The real Philip Rayner was disposed of years ago by German agents while serving abroad,’ said Holmes. ‘This man bore a close enough resemblance to him for it to take only a modest touch of plastic surgery to accomplish the substitution.’
Rayner forced a smile through a grimace of pain. ‘Surely you have to give me some credit for the quality of my performance.’
‘There will be no applause for you,’ I told him, ‘only the end of a rope.’
‘I hardly think Mr Mycroft Holmes is going to waste a valuable resource like myself in an empty act of revenge,’ said Rayner with galling insouciance. ‘I have many valuable secrets to trade on.’
‘Fewer than you think,’ Holmes informed him. ‘Even as we speak your associates are being arrested all over London.’
When Rayner stared at him in blank puzzlement, Holmes gave an explanation that afforded him obvious satisfaction.
‘You did not, I take it, notice the beggar who followed you when you visited your friend the diamond merchant. Nor the bearded bookseller who observed you from the street outside that restaurant where you ordered more than a simple supper. Yes, I have been following you from place to place all week, and now your entire organisation is being rounded up.’
Rayner’s assured demeanour finally began to crack, but he managed to rally and straighten his shoulders. ‘No, Holmes, you don’t know everything.’
‘Oh really?’ Holmes raised an eyebrow. ‘Did I neglect to mention that while you were leading that diversionary raid against the anarchist Breen, I took the opportunity to break into your apartment and locate your secret drawer? So many interesting documents, code books and photographs you have collected there. And, of course, the Aurora Speedline No. 3 portable typewriter.’
‘My apartment?’ Rayner could scarcely conceal his astonishment. ‘But I would have noticed if anyone had been poking around there.’
‘You forget, Herr Braun, that I have been trained in the same arts of stealth and deceit as you. You have been so absorbed in your chosen role as the hunter, you were oblivious of the fact that you had become the prey.’
Rayner steeled himself to brazen out this further defeat. ‘Yes, of course, Holmes, you too have lived among your enemies under a false name.’ With calculated effrontery he added, ‘Why, when you behold me, it must be like staring at yourself in a mirror.’
‘Only if it is one of those fairground mirrors,’ I corrected him, ‘which grotesquely distorts whatever it reflects.’
I was aware that Gail had remained conspicuously silent during this exchange, but she was clearly following every word, while keeping her eyes fixed firmly upon Rayner.
From outside we could hear anti-aircraft guns rattling out their blazing streams of bullets, and then came the loud concussion of a bomb detonating on its target somewhere in the distance. The noise of destruction seemed to restore Rayner’s arrogant self-assurance.
‘I can be of immeasurable use to your government,’ he asserted. ‘If they keep me alive I can pass on to Berlin whatever false information Mr Mycroft Holmes wishes to feed them. Such misleading intelligence would be of tremendous strategic importance.’
Holmes’s eyes narrowed. ‘You would do that?’
‘Why not?’ said Rayner with growing confidence. ‘Also there are a great many things under way in Germany of which you are ignorant. The development of weapons so powerful they will reduce this city to dust. What would your brother give for the location of the underground laboratories and secret factories where they are being constructed?’
I could contain my disgust at his conduct no longer. ‘Have you so little sense of honour that you will even betray your own country in order to preserve your existence?’
‘I am a pragmatist, doctor.’ Rayner gave a careless shrug. ‘This game is lost and I admit defeat. But there is still a new game to play, one in which I can still achieve a certain measure of victory. No, there will be no hangman’s noose for me, I can assure you of that.’
The first shot hit him square in the chest. There was only an instant for his startled eyes to register the shock before the second bullet hit and he fell down dead.
Gail watched him slump to the floor then lowered the gun with a shudder. She was gripping it so tightly that her knuckles stood out pale and sharp.
‘You heard him,’ she said in a low, husky voice. ‘After what he did to those women, he was going to bargain his way out of a death sentence. That wouldn’t be justice, would it?’
There was no hint of triumph in her voice, only a great weariness and a heavy sense of grief, not for Rayner, but for his victims. I stared at her in silent wonder. She had faced him alone and unafraid, fought him courageously, and finally put an end to his evil life, while Sherlock Holmes and I merely stood by and listened to him gloat over his own cleverness.
Holmes took a step towards her. He gently eased her fingers apart and removed the gun from her grasp. ‘No, Miss Preston, that would not be justice at all.’
From the street below came the screech of cars pulling up, the slamming of doors, and a familiar voice bellowing orders.
‘There is no sense in your making yourself a target for vengeance by our enemies,’ Holmes told Gail. ‘I am already in their sights, so it will make no difference to my welfare if I tell Lestrade that it was I who shot Rayner when he attempted to escape.’
‘Sure, whatever you say, Sherlock.’ She gave a wan smile. ‘You’re the genius after all.’
‘Thank you, Holmes,’ I said, slipping my pistol back in my pocket.
As Lestrade and his men came pounding up the stairway towards us, I took Gail in my arms at last.
‘I still have that bottle at my place, Johnny,’ she said softly in my ear. ‘What do you say we go back there and celebrate being alive?’
34 BALM IN GILEAD
When I returned to Baker Street in the morning I found Holmes enjoying a late breakfast provided by Mrs Hudson. As I entered the room, that good lady was setting a dish of freshly baked muffins down in front of him.
‘Thank you, Mrs Hudson,’ said Holmes, taking a deep sniff. ‘The smell of your baking alone is enough to rejuvenate the spirit.’
As he spoke, he sliced through his first muffin, buttered it with a single sweep of the knife, and took an enthusiastic bite.
‘Oh, Mr Holmes,’ beamed Mrs Hudson, ‘it does my heart good to see you’ve got your appetite back. For a while there I was afraid you were going to waste away.’
Holmes washed down the muffin with a swallow of tea. ‘No fear of that, Mrs Hudson, not so long as you keep providing me with these excellent muffins. Ah, Watson, please join me.’
‘Dr Watson, can I fetch you some kippers or maybe a plate of kedgeree?’ offered our landlady.
‘Nothing for me, thank you, Mrs Hudson.’
As I sat down she departed in a rosy glow of good-hearted contentment.
‘Miss Preston is well, I take it?’ asked Holmes, looking up from his breakfast.
‘Quite well,’ I assured him. ‘Holmes, there are one or two points on which you might enlighten me, if that wouldn’t be too much trouble.’
‘I shall take that as a rebuke,’ my friend responded affably, ‘politely phrased, but a rebuke none the less. I admit you have just cause to be vexed with me, but if you will allow me to explain, I believe you will appreciate my reasons for withholding from you so large a measure of the truth.’
‘I should be delighted to hear those reasons. Take all the time you need.’ I folded my arms in a pointed demonstration of patient forbearance. ‘I understand, of course, that it was in that moment before the mirror that you had your insight into the name Conrad Brown, that it could be spelled in the German way. But it could not have been immediately obvious that the German spy in question was Philip Rayner.’
‘Miss Preston was the key to that identification,’ said Holmes. ‘You will have noticed her keen intuitive insight where people are concerned.’
‘I am aware of that.’ I recalled some of the insightful remarks she had passed in relation to myself, which I had no intention of sharing with the great detective.
‘She told you that Rayner reminded her of a gentleman named Bill Miller whom she knew in North Dakota. You repeated as much to me.’
I was, as ever, impressed by my friend’s ability to call to mind even the most trivial points of information. ‘Yes, but at the time I did not imagine it had any bearing on the case.’
‘It had a great deal of bearing. You see, North Dakota has one of the largest German populations of any state in the union. In fact the state capital, Bismarck, is named after the famous Prussian chancellor. Now, during the Great War many German-Americans found it expedient to anglicise their names to avoid the suspicion and hostility of their fellow citizens, so that, for example, Johannes Schmidt became John Smith. It is no great leap, therefore, to suppose that William Miller was born Wilhelm Mueller.’
‘You’re saying that Gail’s antipathy towards Rayner sprang from an unconscious realisation that he was actually a German?’
‘Precisely. Only after he had been assigned to the case did we learn that he had a previous acquaintance with the lady. This provided the answer to a question which has dogged us from the start: why did the murderer draw Miss Preston into his scheme by sending his letter to her rather than directly to Scotland Yard?’
‘Are you suggesting there was some twisted romantic motive?’
‘No, no, Watson. Like everything Rayner did, it was a coolly calculated move. He made it known to Mycroft that he was acquainted with Miss Preston and on that basis suggested himself as the obvious candidate to keep tabs on her – as well as on me. If he had not involved her, Mycroft might well have chosen someone else to be his agent in this affair.’
‘So it was a means of inserting himself directly into the investigation. I see. That means he must have anticipated that the government would intervene rather than give you a free rein.’
‘Their interference was predictable, and, understanding this, Rayner used it to his advantage. Now let me lay out the whole story in the proper order and everything, including the reasons for my silence, will be made clear.’
Almost absent-mindedly I reached for a muffin and buttered it while Holmes spoke.
‘When our spy arrived in England, bearing with him the enviable reputation of the real Rayner, any slight differences would simply be attributed to the natural changes wrought in a man by many years in a foreign clime. Remember also that Rayner’s parents and sister died aboard the Lusitania. No close family remained with memories of his childhood that might have tripped up an imposter.’
