“They were almost through! There’s only the inner wooden lining of the jeweller’s wall left!”
Holmes and I turned round. It was so dark that one could not readily identify anyone. There were figures moving quickly, but visible only as silhouettes against the harsh gaslight of the Cutlers’ Arms at the far corner. In quick succession there was a flash here and there, a crack and a snap. I felt a sudden blow that sent me sprawling on the cobbles. It was not a bullet but a mighty shove from Sherlock Holmes.
“Get down!” he shouted-and not for the first time he may have saved my life at that moment.
Several more shots came in quick succession, reverberating in the darkness between the tall buildings. My revolver was in my hand but I dared not fire. I could see only silhouettes against a glare of gas. Which were Lestrade’s men and which the robbers? Worse still, the disturbance had brought out a crowd of spectators from the public house. To fire now would almost certainly mean hitting one or other of them. For twenty or thirty seconds, the obscure alley of Exchange Buildings was a scene of commotion and chaos. Where were the gunmen and who were they firing at? I picked myself up and walked cautiously forward. My presence as a marksman had been of no use but as a medical man I might now be in demand.
If anyone had told me that in such a brief burst of gunfire-less than half a minute-five policemen could have been shot, I would not have believed it. Yet by the light of our lanterns I saw Constable Choat lying motionless outside the doorway of a tenement that had looked deserted. Constable Tucker staggered out through the same doorway and fell, almost across his comrade. Sergeant Bentley was lying on his back on the cobbles with his head on the pathway. Constable Bryant leant against the wall of the tenements. He was, at any rate, still alive. Constable Woodhams had been on his feet when I first saw him but now he fell on the cobbles, as if his legs had given way under him.
Because our policemen do not carry guns, it is rare for criminals to do so. I had never heard of any robbery in which an entire gang had been armed, as seemed to be the case here. In my first examination of the wounded, I found that Choat had been shot six times, through the body and the legs. Tucker was wounded over the heart. Sergeant Bentley was shot through the throat and unconscious. For these three men, the only hope was a hospital. Woodhams was shot through the thigh and could not stand. Bryant was injured in the left arm and chest but less severely. I looked about for Lestrade. He had been hit in the shoulder but the bullet had lodged in the thickness of his overcoat and he had escaped with superficial injuries.
I ordered the survivors to alert the nearby motor-ambulance at Bishopsgate, for Sergeant Bentley and Constable Choat. Even before that, a hansom cab was flagged down in Houndsditch. Its passengers alighted and the driver took Constable Tucker to St Bartholomew’s hospital at his best speed. I gave my attention to the injuries of Bryant and Woodhams.
Such was the disorder and confusion in that half-minute of gunfire. Though we did not know it at the time, one of the criminals had shot another-Gardstein-in error. His companions managed to carry him away but he died on the following morning and a doctor who was called to attend him brought the police to his bedside. Two young women, the only other occupants of the house, were arrested.
4
Such were the events of that night, confused and unexplained. However, there had not been a newspaper story to rival the “Houndsditch Murders” for many years. Safe-breakers who shot their way to freedom in this manner had been quite unknown. Holmes was with Lestrade for most of the following day and when he returned to Baker Street in the evening it was with a story that even then I had not expected to hear. He threw himself down in his chair, as if it were too great an effort to remove his unbuttoned overcoat.
“A bad business, Watson, and the press do not yet know the half of it.”
“What they know is bad enough.”
He shook his head.
“No, my dear fellow. This outrage may be a precursor to civil war, a war against us all, the Anarchists against the world. Lestrade, thank God, is not badly hurt. I have sometimes been critical of his abilities but he never lacks pluck. His sergeants and I have spent much of the day in the tenement at Exchange Buildings, behind the Houndsditch jewellers. It seems the criminals had made themselves very much at home there. The remains of a fire were still smouldering in the grate when we arrived.”
“What was their plan?”
“They were cutting through the wall of the outside privy, which is a party-wall shared with the rear of the jeweller’s showroom. The hole they had made in the brickwork was diamond-shaped and about two feet square. They were so nearly through it that one can reach in and touch the matchboard lining of the jeweller’s back room, just where the safe stands against it. That was why we heard no more drilling or hacking at the brickwork. In five minutes more they would have been in the showroom, though concealed from the street window by the bulk of the safe. They were so accurate in their measurements that they could have touched the rear of the safe without stepping through the wall.”
“But how would they have opened the safe?”
Holmes stood up, shrugged off his overcoat and stooped to warm his hands before the fire.
“They certainly did not propose to pick the lock. How could they with the strong electric light illuminating them to the street? However, a gas pipe runs through the tenement. We found that they had tapped it, using black tape and a rubber tube sixty-three feet long, still in place. It was more than enough to reach the back of the jeweller’s safe. When they fled, they also abandoned three diamond angle-pointed drills, a large cold-steel chisel, three crowbars and a combination wrench and cutter. This collection was enough to burn or hack a hole in the rear of the safe without being seen from the street. The light illuminating the front of the safe as it faced the window would eclipse the glow of the flame as they cut through the back.”
As we sat that evening in the quiet of our Baker Street rooms, it was hard to imagine that the horrors of the previous night were anything but a bad dream. Holmes went on to describe how an urgent call that morning had brought Scotland Yard men to a house in Grove Street, a mile east of Exchange Buildings. In an upper room, a young man lay dead upon a blood-soaked mattress. He was George Gardstein, a young Russian Anarchist gunman and one of the police-murderers. He had been accidentally shot in the darkness by one of his own friends as he struggled with Constable Choat, receiving a bullet aimed at the policeman.
“Gardstein would have certainly been hanged,” said Holmes philosophically, turning from warming his hands at the fire, “had one of his companions not saved us the trouble. When his pockets were turned out there was a seven-cartridge magazine clip for a 7.65mm. pistol, a drill, a pair of gas-pliers, welder’s goggles and a key to fit the new lock which they had put on the door of the tenement to prevent unwelcome interruptions of their work.”
“Damning evidence,” I said reassuringly.
His lips contracted.
“And yet not the most interesting. The true discoveries, my dear Watson, were a violin and a small oil-painting of a Parisian street scene, showing considerable skill. It bore a signature that is not unknown.”
“Was Gardstein a painter-or a collector?”
Holmes shook his head again and sighed.
“For several years I have made it my business to be an unobtrusive listener to talk in the political clubs of Whitechapel and Stepney. Few people had met or even seen George Gardstein. Like all the Anarchist leaders, he is a ‘name’ as they call it. In this case he is Poloski Morountzeff, a revolutionary and a fugitive from the police in Warsaw. In that city he is better known as a robber and murderer.”