“He’s in there with Gertie, Mr Holmes.”
Holmes pushed past me, intent on heading along the corridor back to the main house. “Not the duke, you idiot. The other one.”
The amorous couple had finally noticed that something was amiss, and the door opened behind me. The toff stood there, looking slightly dishevelled and more than a tad embarrassed. A look of disgust crossed Holmes’s face.
“I would stay where you are, sir,” Holmes said to the man. “You have exposed your infidelity far enough for one night.”
Gertie was standing behind the toff, and she didn’t look in the slightest bit mortified by the situation.
“One minute, Miss Millar,” someone called.
Gertie pushed past me, heading for the stage. The toff made to follow, but Holmes pushed him back inside the room.
“Not you, sir. I shall have questions for you anon. Shinwell? Can I prevail on you to ensure that this gentleman does not leave the room?”
I smiled – the toff did not like that one bit – and nodded. Holmes and Watson left quickly, following Gertie up towards the wings. The toff looked like he might try to pass me, but I slapped my blackjack into my left palm, and just the sound of the thud it made was enough to quiet him. He went back into the dressing room and made quite an act of lighting a cigarette and feigning nonchalance, but I saw the tremor in his fingers clearly enough – he wasn’t going anywhere as long as I was at the door.
He was still smoking when Holmes and Watson returned.
“As I expected,” Holmes said. “He fled as soon as he got his picture of the duke going through the stage door. I found this by his chair in the box.” He poured a fine powder from a paper cone into a glass vial and handed it to Watson. “He used this for the flash gun. Magnesium powder and potassium chlorate if I’m not mistaken, Watson. If I can identify the ratio of the mix back in Baker Street, we may be able to trace the supplier, and thence our man. Remember, do not let it get wet – or at least, if it does, do not let it near your matches. We would not want an explosion in your pocket. And there’ll be a camera somewhere to be found too, although I expect we shall only uncover that once the film has been removed for developing.”
“Powder? Film? What the blazes is going on here?”
The toff had finally realised there was more to this night than a kiss with a pretty woman. Holmes ignored his question and answered with one of his own.
“What can you tell me about your companion in the box this evening?”
“Johnnie? Fine chap – met him last weekend at my club. Rowed for Cambridge, you know?”
“I doubt that very much,” Holmes said. “And I suppose he does not have a second name?”
“I never asked. And what bally business is it of yours?”
Holmes smiled thinly.
“Your father made it my business – when he got the first blackmail letter on Monday morning. I expect there will be another tomorrow, after your little fiasco here.”
The toff started to spit and bluster, but it seemed that Mr Holmes had already done with him, and the three of us walked away, leaving the toff shouting some rather ungentlemanly curses at our backs.
“Would you mind telling me what’s going on here, Mr Holmes?” I said when we got back to the stage door. Sleepy Jack was still out, snoring soundly.
“I am after a blackmailer, Shinwell. A nasty cove. I believe this is at least his third such case of extortion, and he is developing a taste for it. He targets young gentlemen with more money than sense. And, as you know, in this town that gives him plenty of custom. Our young duke back there has not been circumspect about his affair with Miss Millar – and that has been his undoing.”
“This blackmailing chap – you do not have a name?”
“Not yet. I was hoping you might be able to help with that. It is provident that you are here tonight, and I shall not look askance at such good fortune.”
“Anything I can do to help, Mr Holmes – you know that.”
“Good man – put out the word in the usual places – I am looking for someone, not from money himself, who has come into more of it than he knows what to do with. He might be spending a lot more than his usual means, and that might have caught the attention of one of your acquaintances.”
I laughed.
“That it might, Mr Holmes – it might even have caught my attention, once upon a time.”
There being a degree of urgency inherent in Mr Holmes’s request for help, I started that very night, after I got the crowd – including a very sheepish-looking duke – out onto the street and closed the doors of the theatre. Gertie wanted to go for a drink – eager to chase more young dukes no doubt – and some of the cast and crew agreed to accompany her, but I declined. She was heading uptown, whereas I was intending to travel in an altogether different direction.
But my first job was to get Sleepy Jack upright. I should have torn his ear off and tossed him out, but we go back a long way, Jack and I, and if the job, even menial as it was, was taken from him, the bottle would have him within days. He was too good a man to lose like that. I walked him up and down Aldwych until he was nearly sober.
“Who gave you the gin, Jack?” I asked when he was able to talk clearly.
“Some posh lad,” Jack said. “A bottle if I looked the other way.”
I described the young duke, but Jack shook his head.
“No – this lad had blond hair. Blue eyes, big nose and an old scar – here,” he ran a finger from the corner of his left eye down his cheek.
I thanked Jack and sent him on his way. I had somewhere to start.
I headed east to try to find someone who could tell me more. I’d been in most of the public houses the length of the Strand and Fleet Street and was in the Black Friar at the north side of Blackfriars bridge before I got the first whiff of our man. It was Blackie Collins who put me on the right trail. Blackie is a pickpocket – one of the best. He can have your wallet away from an inside pocket as nice as ninepence and you’ll never be the wiser. He was working the taproom when he saw me, and came to join me in a corner when I bought two pints of porter. I saw him take a pocket watch and a purse on the way over – Blackie never stopped working and I made sure my own wallet was tucked well away before I let him close to me.
In the end it cost me eight pints – four each – but it was worth it, for I left Blackie with my wallet still in my pocket and a name.
“James Mackie, from Edinburgh,” I said to Mr Holmes. It was early morning but he did not look like he’d had any more sleep than I had. He was still in his eveningwear from the night before, even as his landlady arrived with a spot of breakfast that I took to most eagerly.
“Is the name all you have?” Holmes said. He did not so much as look at the toast and eggs, but instead lit up a pipe.
“That, and the fact he lives somewhere around Russell Square these days,” I replied. “I can do some more asking around this evening after the show if you’d like.”
Holmes smiled. “I think I can get an answer rather sooner.”
He opened the window and whistled loudly. Within a minute there came the sound of many footsteps clattering up and down the stairs, accompanied by Mrs Hudson’s shouting.
Half a dozen street urchins burst into the room and gathered around Holmes while more continued to cause havoc out on the landing. At least the ones gathered in our sitting room seemed able to behave themselves, although that probably had something to do with Holmes’s supply of small denomination coinage.
“Now lads, you know what to do? Russell Square. James Mackie.” Holmes said. “First one to find him gets a florin.”
The boys departed in a rush of thudding feet, leaving only a smell that even the open windows didn’t quite dispel. Holmes seemed quite satisfied.