Holmes frowned.
“One thing you may be sure of. The name of the clockmaker on the parcel was false.”
“But I have not told you what the name is, Mr Holmes.”
“That is no matter. It is my business to know the streets of London better than other people. I can assure you that there is no clockmaker of any name in Greek Street. It has had its share of bomb-makers but they have not been active of late.”
“You confirm my suspicions, then. Now, what do you make of this?”
The Archdeacon handed my friend a small tube-like bottle with a cork in it.
“Where did it come from?” Holmes inquired, tipping a little of the powder into the palm of his hand. He sniffed it carefully.
“When the clock emitted its puff of smoke from the library mantelpiece, a very small amount of this fell on to the tiles of the fireplace.”
“Did it indeed?” said Holmes, “Well, wherever it came from or wherever it fell, this is gunpowder. However, it is certainly not gunpowder of the best quality. Were it so, the explosion which occurred in your garden shed might have taken place twelve hours earlier on your library mantelpiece. I daresay that most of the percussion caps failed to ignite the bulk of it on the first occasion.”
“And what do you suggest?”
“That you should go home and stay there. Take every sensible precaution. Leave the rest to me. I do not think you will be troubled again.”
The Archdeacon’s face was a study in indignation and dismay.
“You will not come to Chichester? I surely need to be guarded?”
“The threat to you is not from Chichester but from London. If a man with a gun appeared in the doorway of this room and offered to shoot, you would not want me to stand beside you over here but to disarm him over there.”
“Very clever, Mr Holmes. But you do not know who the assassin is!”
“On the contrary, Archdeacon, I have a very good idea who he is and I do not think he will trouble you again.”
“Then give me his name!”
“It would not help you. Indeed, I think it would mean nothing to you. It would merely distract you from doing the best and safest thing, which is to live quietly and sensibly at home until this case is concluded. It will not be for long, a week at the most, probably much less. Of one thing you may be quite sure, your persecutor will not come near you again.”
“But you have told me nothing!”
“On the contrary, I have given you precise instructions and specific assurances. For the rest, if you wish me to take your case, you must trust me.”
“It seems I have very little choice, so long as the police will not listen to me!”
With that, our visitor left. However disgruntled he might be and however often he might hint at refusing to pay a fee for this sort of advice, the Archdeacon knew that he would get no further with Sherlock Holmes that morning.
5
Such was the visit of the Venerable Josephus Percy to our consulting rooms. I cannot say that I was much encouraged by Holmes’s performance but, at least, he was correct in telling the Archdeacon to go home and stay there. Hardly had this clergyman left us when there was a sharp sound of hooves in the street, the grating of wheels against the stone kerb, followed by a sudden pull at the door bell.
“This I think,” said Holmes, without getting up from his chair or going near the window, “will be the Earl of Blagdon. I have been expecting him for several days.”
“Really? Why?”
“I imagine he will tell us in his own good time that it is a matter of his cousin’s hands.”
At that point our visitor was announced by Mrs Hudson. A great change had come over Lord Blagdon. He was a worried and a contrite man. Placing his hat on the stand, he sat down in the chair indicated to him.
“Mr Holmes I have come to ask you not to abandon the case of Lord Arthur.”
“That does not surprise me, my lord.”
Our visitor looked puzzled but not startled.
“Perhaps you had better listen to what I have to say. I wish you, and your colleague Dr Watson, to keep watch on him for the next few days. By then I hope that arrangements can be made with those who will have him in their care. Since we last spoke, I have made inquiries among the family and the servants. I am told by her former maid that for the past two months Lord Arthur had brought bonbons from Florestan’s of St James’s Street to Lady Clementina. I cannot dismiss from my mind the suspicion that she did not die from aconite poisoning-only because she died of heart failure first!”
Holmes gave this a little thought. Then he turned to our client.
“I believe, my lord, that your cousin may be deranged but not ostensibly so. More specifically, I believe that he is a victim of cheiromancy, the so-called science of palm-reading.”
“But that is what I have come to tell you!”
“Then you betray no secrets. I had concluded as much from his curious habit of wearing gloves at all times except when playing the piano, which as you say he did less and less. We know that he does not suffer from any infection or disfigurement. If that were so, the hands would show it on their backs. It matters only to him that the world should not see his palms. Why? Because that is where secrets are read by all who can do so. He believes that catastrophe lies in wait for him as surely as a beast in the jungle.”
“But is not the whole thing absurd?”
“To you or I it is, my lord. To one who, as you say, has been a devotee of astrology, phrenology, the Magicians of the Golden Dawn, the materialisation of the dead as ectoplasm, then the appeal of palmistry may be strong. Such arts of divination, however specious, are too familiar to the criminal investigator. Palmistry is deep-rooted. It goes back through many centuries to a superstition of examining the cracks and lines of a shoulder-blade. It was brought back to England from the medieval Tartars and anciently known as ”reading the speal-bone.”
Holmes stood up and crossed to the bookcase. He took down a tattered volume bound only in sheepskin, its yellowed pages printed in the “black letter” of five hundred years earlier, a rarity even in his collection.
“Johann Hartlieb, Die Kunst Ciromantia, published in Augsburg in 1493,” Holmes handed it to Lord Blagdon, “There you will find the arts which are still practised as cheiromancy. Their exponents claim that they can read predictions of evil and disaster in the lines of the palm. The Line of Life, for example, runs in an arc from the side of the left wrist to the edge of the hand midway between the base of the thumb and the index finger. Pale and broad, it may indicate evil instincts. Thick and red it may betray violence and brutality. All this may be read easily in the course of an evening at the dinner table by a fellow guest who is an initiate. That, I believe, was the sort of discovery that Lord Arthur feared.”
Lord Blagdon sat for a moment as if trying to compose the words in his mind. At last he said,
“I am told by the Duchess of Paisley that my cousin attended an evening party a few months ago. It was the first reception of the spring at Lancaster House. Clever people but not sound. There was smart talk and someone, who professed the ability, read a number of palms. Lord Arthur naturally offered himself as a subject. The man who had started the game, Podgers was his name I believe, took Lord Arthur’s right hand. Then he dropped it suddenly and seized the left hand. When he looked up, the Duchess tells me, his face was white but he had forced a smile.”
“A believer in his art, therefore,” said Holmes coldly, “To me, however, it reeks of rehearsal and fraud.”
“Podgers had examined the palm long and closely but he would only say, ‘It is the hand of a charming young man.’ That was all. Lord Arthur pressed him to reveal what he had seen. The rascal then went so far as to admit that he had glimpsed the death of a distant relative. There was plainly more to it than that. The Duchess assures me that Podgers is a professional palm-reader with rooms in West Moon Street.”