Arthur stopped, staring down at it. It was so small in his palm. Two metal bands stretched from end to end, onto which colored stones had been laid. It was ecstatically colorful in the way of all children’s jewelry. He could imagine the thrill inside eight-year-old Sally over opening up a wrapped box to find this on the morning of her birthday. He could imagine her crying inconsolably when she rolled to the bottom of the hill and found pieces of the broken clip buried in her hair. He knew why her father had consented to purchasing an identical replacement- the one that Arthur now held-at once.
Arthur inserted the long metal clasp into the keyhole. It fit perfectly. He flicked it up, then down, then side to side, twisting it to find the tumbler. He remembered what Wilde had described to him, how you had to find the tumblers, however many there were, sequentially. You had to press them one by one. Arthur pressed harder into the lock, jabbing for a deeper tumbler, when the hair clip broke. The miniature screws connecting the clasp to the central two bands popped out, and the clip split into two halves. The bands with the colored stones on them fell to the floor, while his push forward threw him slightly off balance. He removed the end he still held, the clasp, from the keyhole, and looked down.
Heavens! He had stepped on the fallen clip while regaining his balance. The bands were shattered into four or five pieces now, and a few stones had broken loose from their holds. A cloud passed outside the tall windows, and beams of light blanketed the room. The stones glimmered on the floor, islands in a wood-brown sea.
Arthur left the wreckage where it lay. The milk, so to speak, was spilt. No use crying now. He turned back to the desk, again inserting the clasp into the keyhole.
Within another minute he’d gotten it open.
Arthur opened the drawer hungrily. He laid it on the desktop and peered down. Inside, there was nothing but a quarter-inch stack of identical white papers. He lifted a handful of them up, and held them to the window light.
The papers were devoid of writing. He flipped through each one and found them all equally blank.
There was no mark on the pages, save one. At the top of each paper, there was the image, printed in black ink, of a three-headed crow. Arthur gave a start. It was the same image that had been found tattooed on Morgan Nemain’s leg!
But what did it mean?
He folded the papers and committed them to his coat pocket. He replaced the drawer as he’d found it.
He knelt to the floor and swept the bits of shattered hair clip into his hand before gently depositing them back into the jewelry box and leaving.
There remained no sign, after he left, of his ever having been there.
CHAPTER 20 The Chase
“At the present moment, you thrill with the glamour
of the situation and the anticipation of the hunt.”
– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
The Valley of Fear
January 9, 2010, cont.
“The police are on their way,” said Jennifer Peters as she clapped her cell phone shut. Harold and Sarah were looking through the piles of books and papers in the writing office, while Jennifer remained close to the doorway. In the five minutes since Harold had run downstairs and been unable to find any trace of the goateed man, Jennifer had managed to step only a few feet into the apartment. She remained motionless, arms crossed above her belly, as if giving herself a deep hug.
“Look, this is awkward,” said Harold, “but I’d rather not speak to the police, if that’s okay. I’ve been at the scenes of two crimes in the last seventy-two hours, and I’d kind of like to avoid another grilling about that. If you don’t mind.”
Jennifer hugged herself tighter, and spoke curtly. “Fine. Go. I won’t tell them you were here.”
Harold gave Alex Cale’s bookshelves a quick once-over and then motioned to Sarah that they should leave. She closed the drawer of Alex’s desk that she’d been rifling through and followed Harold to the door. She gave Jennifer a warm look and placed a hand on the older woman’s shoulder as she passed by.
“Thank you,” said Harold as they exited into the hallway.
“I’d rather not see either of you ever again, please,” said Jennifer.
Harold nodded, and without another word he and Sarah left the building.
After a reflective half minute on the street outside, Harold finally spoke.
“Well,” he said, “the bad news: Whoever that guy was, with the goatee, he took everything of any use out of that apartment. No diary, okay, but not even a spare photocopy of the diary. Or any excerpts that Alex had typed up. Or notes on what was in it. Did you notice the laptop power cable beside the desk? Ten to one there used to be a laptop attached to it, and he took that, too. There were plenty of books on Conan Doyle, sure, but not a single piece of information about the diary itself, or how Alex had found it.”
“Is there any good news?” asked Sarah as they walked toward Argyll Road.
“Yeah. We’ve actually laid eyes on someone who’s mixed up in this, whatever the hell ‘this’ is. And we know the guy’s not a Sherlockian. Or at least not an Irregular; I’d have recognized him if he was.”
“I suppose that’s something like good news. But I think I can do you one better.” Sarah reached into her coat pocket and removed a thumbsize piece of purple plastic. She handed it to Harold. “A flash drive. It was in one of the drawers on Alex’s desk.”
“You stole it?”
Sarah just shrugged.
Harold was impressed. He could never tell whether she was two steps behind him or two steps ahead.
“Not sure if anything useful is on it, but we can check it out back at the hotel,” said Sarah, turning her head to look behind them once, and then again a few seconds later. “I have some bad news, too.”
“What?”
“I think we’re being followed.”
Harold felt his body grow suddenly tense. “Seriously?” he asked.
“I’m going to kneel down on one knee, as if I’m adjusting my shoe. When I do that, come in front of me and turn to face me, and talk to me as if you’re just naturally continuing our conversation. Then look casually behind us and see if you notice a big guy in a leather jacket. Ready? Go.”
Sarah dropped her right knee to the pavement, and, leaning over her left, she reached into her left shoe as if she were trying to remove a stone from it. She had on thin black flats, out of which she pulled her heel, running her fingers along the inside lining of the well-worn shoe.
Harold turned to face her, doing his best to seem casual. He placed his hands in his pockets as he spoke.
“Okay, this is me talking to you,” he said, “I’m still talking, blahblah-blah, here I am talking.” He gazed past her down the street. Among the throng of pedestrians-a hand-holding couple, a jogger in a tracksuit, an Indian family of four-Harold quickly made eye contact with a large man in a leather jacket and loose blue jeans. He was heavyset, with a circular head and puffy cheeks. The coat looked flimsy, and the man held his hands in his pockets to keep them from the cold.
Shit, thought Harold, realizing he’d just exchanged a glance with the man. Harold flicked his head abruptly to the right, finding a distant street sign at which to stare.
“We just looked right at each other,” he said. “I think he saw me notice him.”
“What’s he doing now?” asked Sarah as she continued to fiddle with her shoe.
Harold kept his face aimed at the street sign-”KENSINGTON PALACE,” it read, accompanied by a tiny picture of a walking man, and an arrow pointing behind Harold’s back-while he tried to turn only his eyes to the left, in order to spy on the man. The motion made his eyes hurt. The heavyset man had averted his gaze as well, and he seemed to be occupying himself by staring into the front windows of a tanning shop.