The Mammoth Book of the New Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes

I

The cold winter of 1886 was made memorable for me by the remarkable series of cases handled by my friend, Sherlock Holmes, in which it was my privilege to observe his methods of work and make a record of the details. Especially notable among these cases were the mysterious death of the eminent archaeologist, Sir Montague Knelling, the scandal concerning the Liverpool and Malabar Shipping Company, and the outrageous theft of one of the most precious possessions of the Empire. Yet, sensational though these cases were, none was perhaps so interesting as that which concerned the old Albion Theatre and the peculiar persecution to which those employed there were subject. Indeed, of all the cases in which I was able to assist Sherlock Holmes, during the time we lodged together in Baker Street, there are few which are impressed more vividly upon my memory.

I had returned to our chambers early in the afternoon of a chilly January day, to find that Sherlock Holmes was entertaining a visitor. Beside the blazing fire sat a graceful, handsome woman, elegantly attired in a maroon costume with salmon-pink trimmings and overskirt. Upon her head was a small turban-like bonnet, adorned with feathers of the same colours.

I had pushed open the door of our sitting-room with my thoughts elsewhere, hardly aware of my surroundings. But now, as I mumbled an apology for intruding, and made to withdraw, I hesitated. Something in the visitor’s features plucked a cord in my memory, as she turned her head in my direction and raised an inquiring eyebrow. We had met before, I was convinced. If so, I ought, from politeness, to acknowledge the fact. But I could not think where this meeting might have taken place and, thus, for a long moment, stood in what no doubt appeared perfectly idiotic silence. Sherlock Holmes evidently perceived my difficulty, for, in an instant, he had sprung from his chair and come to my rescue.

‘My esteemed friend and colleague, Dr Watson,’ cried he with a chuckle, as he took my arm and drew me into the room; ‘Miss Isabel Ballantyne, with whose celebrity you are doubtless already familiar.’

I took the hand which the lady extended, thinking what an idiot I was not to have recognised at once one of the most celebrated actresses of the day. Scarcely three months previously I had sat in the stalls and applauded at Isabel Ballantyne’s performance in a musical comedy entitled The Pirate Queen, in which her distinguished presence had served to elevate what was really only mediocre fare into a most enjoyable evening. I had also seen her be both captivating and amusing as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, a portrayal which most critics thought unlikely to be bettered.

I recalled, also, in that instant of recognition, other things I had read of Miss Ballantyne over the years, of how her glittering success upon the London stage had not been accompanied by equal felicity in her private life. Those in the society papers who claimed to know about such things had spoken frequently of her many friends and admirers, but had hinted, also, at a private loneliness or melancholy at the centre of this giddy whirl of public life. Until, that is, the arrival upon the scene of Captain William Trent, the dashing former cavalry officer and big-game hunter, who had, against general expectation, wooed and won Miss Ballantyne’s heart. Hitherto little known in London society, he had at once assumed the heroic status of a modern-day Lochinvar, riding in from afar to rescue Miss Ballantyne from her melancholy. Anyone who could achieve what so many had aspired to in vain was clearly worthy of the very highest respect. The attitude of other men towards Captain Trent was, in consequence, therefore, largely one of genuine admiration, but tinged just a little, perhaps, with envy. Since Miss Ballantyne’s marriage to Captain Trent, eighteen months previously, her name had appeared less frequently in the society press, and it was supposed that she had at last found that private peace with which to balance her public glamour.

I stole another swift glance at our visitor’s face as I took her hand. Although no longer in the first flush of youth, she was, if anything, more attractive than ever. Those soft, dark, expressive eyes, that gentle, warm smile upon her lips – in an experience of female beauty which extended over many nations and races, I had never, I felt, descried a more winning or charming face.

‘I am very pleased to make your acquaintance,’ said I, sounding somewhat more formal than I had intended.

‘Delighted,’ returned she.

‘Miss Ballantyne was about to describe to me a curious series of incidents which have occurred lately at Hardy’s Theatre,’ said Holmes. ‘Richard Hudson Hardy’s company is in rehearsal there for a new production which is to open in three days’ time. I wonder, madam, if I could trouble you to repeat the gist of what you have already told me, so that my friend may understand the situation?’

‘Certainly,’ replied Miss Ballantyne, in that light, musical voice which had so captivated and bewitched London theatre-goers in recent years. ‘You should first understand, then, Dr Watson, that I was invited by Mr Hardy to join his company last autumn. He wished me to take the principal female role in a new production he was mounting, of a play entitled The Lavender Girl.’

‘I don’t believe I’ve heard of it,’ I remarked.

‘It is newly written, by Mr Hardy himself. His intention is to offer the theatre-going public something a little different. At this time of year, as you will know, theatres present pantomimes in such abundance that even the most avid enthusiast must at last become sated, and long for something different. It is Mr Hardy’s belief that The Lavender Girl might be just the thing to tempt the public’s jaded palate. It is something of a tragicomedy, and has a great number of songs, both old and new. From the first moment I saw the script I was convinced it would be a success, and at once agreed to take part. The other principal actors are Ludovic Xavier, who is always popular, and is returning to the London stage for the first time in over a year; Jimmy Webster, who can generally be relied upon to amuse an audience; and a young girl, Lydia Summers. She is a newcomer. She is a little unpolished at the moment and I’m not certain that she has much talent, but she seems keen to learn, anyway.

‘We began rehearsals at Hardy’s Theatre a few weeks before Christmas. I don’t know if you are aware, Dr Watson, but Hardy’s Theatre is the old Albion. It had been closed down for some years when Mr Hardy bought it, about three years ago, and he thought that by renaming it he might give it a fresh start. He also considered that by attaching his name to it, the reputation he had acquired for providing entertaining fare would help to stimulate interest. Do you know the Albion Theatre, Dr Watson?’

‘Is that not the theatre down the Waterloo Road, where the comedian Solomon Tanner used to reign supreme, a decade and more ago?’

‘That is correct. If you recall Solomon Tanner, you may recall, too, that his popularity was such that he also took the theatre next door to the Albion, the Southwark Palace, and at the height of his fame used to perform in both theatres in the course of a single evening, in two different plays. This tour de force of the Thespian arts – or financial greed, as some termed it – was not destined to last very long, however. As you may remember, he lost his life in the terrible fire that consumed the Southwark Palace late one night, following a performance there. Since then, the Palace has remained boarded up and unused, a blackened shell beside the Albion. I mention this matter because there have been persistent stories since that time that the Albion is haunted by the ghost of Solomon Tanner, who returns to appraise what is being offered to the public there. It is said that if he does not care for what he sees, he causes disruption to the production.’

My features must have betrayed my surprise at this digression into the supernatural, for Miss Ballantyne paused.

‘You are wondering, no doubt,’ said she after a moment, ‘why I should be speaking to you of such things. After all, there are many theatres which are popularly supposed to be haunted in some way and, of course, the very idea sounds absurd when one speaks of it in broad daylight. But when one finds oneself alone late at night, backstage in a dark, silent theatre, then it is not so easy to rid oneself of these thoughts. I would offer ten guineas to anyone who undertook to remain all night alone in the Empire Theatre in Birmingham, for instance, or the old Playhouse in Bristol, confident that I should not be a penny poorer when the next day dawned. But, still, as it is unlikely that you are acquainted with these theatres, and I certainly have no intention of renewing my own acquaintance with them, this is not to the point. I mention the matter only so that you will understand that such traditions are not uncommon in old theatres. Any odd or unexplained occurrences are likely to provoke such beliefs, especially in the younger or more timid members of the company. That is precisely what has occurred at the Albion, where several members of the chorus have become very nervous at what has been happening there. Already, one young lady has left the company altogether, as a result of an incident.’

‘But,’ interrupted Sherlock Holmes, who had all this time been leaning back in his chair, with his eyes closed, as he listened to his visitor’s account, ‘as I have no reputation for laying troublesome ghosts by the heels, but only their earthbound counterparts, you consider, I take it, that the mysterious occurrences at the Albion have a more mundane cause.’

‘That is correct,’ returned Miss Ballantyne. ‘I am convinced that some malicious person is deliberately creating mischief and I should very much like to know who that person is. It may be that it began as a series of practical jokes, by someone with an unpleasant sense of humour; but it has now gone beyond that. The more recent incidents have been very dangerous and I am concerned that if it continues one of the company will be seriously hurt.’

‘The details, if you please!’

‘Some of the things that have happened are so trivial that I am almost embarrassed to mention them,’ began Miss Ballantyne.

‘Nevertheless,’ returned Holmes, ‘omit no incident, however trivial, and permit me to judge as to the importance or otherwise of each of them.’

‘Very well. In the very first week of rehearsals, Jimmy Webster arrived at the theatre one day to find that someone had emptied a tin of paint on to the floor of his dressing-room.’

‘Was the paint of a type which was being used in the theatre?’

‘Yes. It had been taken from the decorators’ store. That same day, a small set of steps upon which I was standing collapsed and I twisted my ankle badly. Of course, it may have been an accident. One cannot know for certain. Under other circumstances I should probably have thought so and forgotten it by now; but in this case I am not so sure. At the beginning of the second week, we were rehearsing a scene in which Ludovic – Mr Xavier – is required to yank open a door fiercely. He accordingly seized the door-knob, as he had done on previous occasions, and gave it a sharp pull. This time, however, he at once let out a cry of pain. Even as he did so, the flat – that is, the piece of scenery – in which the door was set tumbled forwards and fell upon him. He was not seriously hurt, for the scenery was not heavy, but he was, as you will imagine, extremely upset. When the flat was lifted off him, there was blood on his clothes and it was feared at first that he was badly injured. But the blood had all come from a cut on his hand and it was discovered that protruding from the door-handle was a sharp nail. Ludovic was shouting and crying out that someone was trying to murder him, and it took some time to soothe his agitated nerves.

‘The carpenters who were responsible for the scenery were summoned, but expressed puzzlement at what had happened. The scenery, they said, had been adequately fixed when last they had inspected it, the door had opened easily and the door-knob had not had any nails sticking out of it. At length, the incident was ascribed to that species of ill-fortune which does sometimes bedevil the preparation of a large and complex theatrical production. A few days later, however, a young girl in the female chorus hurt her arm when she fell heavily as she came on to the stage. It was found that a length of cord had been fastened across an opening on to the stage, a few inches above the ground, and this is what had tripped her up. No one knew why it was there and the matter remained a mystery. The girl was badly shaken by the incident, however, and within two days had withdrawn from the production altogether. This was a great shame, for she was a very nice young lady. Physically, she was not badly injured, but her heart was sorely wounded to think that someone should dislike her so much as to play such a nasty trick upon her. Personally, I wondered if the trick had really been intended for someone else, for it seemed likely that the cord over which she had tripped had been in position since the morning, and the schedule of rehearsals had been altered during the day.’

‘Do you know who might have fallen foul of the cord if the order of rehearsals had not been changed?’ interrupted Holmes.

‘I think it might have been Lydia Summers. I cannot be certain on the point, however, and I did not mention my thoughts on the matter to anyone else. At any event, Miss Summers was not spared for long. A day or two after this incident, she came to my dressing-room. She was pale and appeared upset, and when she spoke she was very agitated. She told me that she had been passing along the basement corridor, near the wardrobe rooms, when someone had come up behind her and pushed her violently to the floor. When she looked round, there was no one to be seen. She was not badly hurt, but the incident had left her feeling shaken and nervous.

‘The following week, I was rehearsing on stage with the chorus, under the direction of Mr Hardy, when all the lights in the house abruptly went out and we were plunged into pitch blackness. It was evident that the gas supply had failed. It was very dangerous, as we could not see where we were treading, and parts of the stage were littered with pieces of half-made scenery, lumps of wood, tools and so on. Not only that, but of course if the gas supply had then been restored, the theatre would soon have been full of it, escaping unburnt from the unlit lamps. There could have been a dreadful explosion, and we might all have been killed. Fortunately, Mr Hardy had a lantern with him. He quickly lit this and hurried down to the basement, to examine the main stop-tap. It was turned fully on and it seemed the gas supply had been restored, for there was a dreadful smell of gas everywhere. He at once turned the stop-tap off, and sent everyone round the theatre to turn off all the individual taps by the lamps and open all the windows. It was some time before the gas cleared and we were able to light the lamps once more and continue with our rehearsal. Mr Hardy reported the matter to the gas company and they sent an inspector round to investigate, but he could find nothing wrong. He said that there had certainly been no interruption to the main gas supply and could only suggest that someone had turned off the main tap in the theatre basement, waited for a few minutes and then turned it back on again.

‘Mr Hardy, understandably, declared that a preposterous suggestion. ‘‘Why should anyone do such a thing?’’ he demanded.

‘At this, the gas inspector shook his head and said he was sure he didn’t know. Then he swore again that the gas supply had been perfectly in order until it reached the theatre. There was nothing to be done, so Mr Hardy let the matter drop. But although he has not referred to it since, it has caused him, I believe, some anxiety.’

‘You say you were rehearsing with the chorus, when the gas went out,’ interrupted Holmes. ‘Where were the other principal players at that time?’

‘In their dressing-rooms, I believe,’ replied Miss Ballantyne. ‘Each of us – Mr Xavier, Mr Webster, Miss Summers and myself – has a private dressing-room, in the basement. I believe I heard some of them calling out in the dark when I followed Mr Hardy down into the basement after the lights had gone out.’

‘Was there anyone else in the basement at the time?’

‘Only the seamstresses. There are four of them. The sewing-room in which they work is next to the large rooms in which the company’s costumes are stored. They have been working hard for several weeks on getting the costumes ready for The Lavender Girl. It is a sizeable task, for some of the costumes are very elaborate, and there are a lot of them.’

‘I see,’ said Holmes. ‘Did any of the seamstresses report hearing or seeing anyone in the basement at the time of the incident?’

Miss Ballantyne shook her head. ‘The door to their room is a stout one and it was closed at the time. Besides, they prattle so much while they are working that they probably would not have heard anything, anyway.’

‘Very well,’ said Holmes. ‘Pray continue with your account!’

‘One afternoon last week, I was in my dressing-room when there came all at once a terrific racket of shouting and banging. I left my room and hurried along the corridor in the direction of the noise. As I did so, it abruptly ceased, but when I turned a corner of the corridor, I ran into a crowd of people surrounding Jimmy Webster, just outside his dressing-room, which is some distance from mine, near the costume department. I gathered that someone had locked his door and turned his light off, leaving him in the dark.

‘“How did you get out, then?” I asked him. “Did someone unlock the door from the outside?”

‘He shook his head. “That’s the strange thing: when the girls from the sewing-room tried my door, they say it opened easily and wasn’t locked at all!”

‘“How do you explain it?” I asked.

‘“The door was certainly locked when I tried to open it,” said he. “There is always a key in the outside of the lock, although I never use it. Someone must have turned the key and locked it. Then, just before these ladies arrived, when I had given up trying to open the door and was reduced to simply banging on it for all I was worth, he must have unlocked the door again and run off.”

‘“Did you see anyone?” I asked the seamstresses, but they shook their heads.

‘“How was your light turned off?” I asked Jimmy.

‘He pointed to a gas-tap on a pipe which runs along the corridor outside his room. “It must have been turned off there,” said he.

‘“It’s not turned off now,” observed Ludovic Xavier, who had joined us as Jimmy had been speaking.

‘“I don’t need you to tell me that, Xavier,” returned Jimmy. “Clearly, whoever had turned it off also turned it back on again when my light had gone out.”

‘“It’s turned off inside your room,” said Xavier, putting his head into Jimmy’s dressing-room. “There’s no smell of gas in here.”

‘“Well, of course there isn’t,” retorted Webster. “I turned it off myself after the light went out! I wasn’t inclined to sit there patiently waiting to be asphyxiated!”

‘“It all seems a little odd to me,” remarked Xavier with a shake of the head.

‘“How very perceptive of you!” cried Webster in an ironic tone. “‘Odd’ is certainly the word, Xavier; and it ain’t so little, either!” With that, he pushed his way past us into his room, relit the gas, and shut the door.

‘I did not know what to make of this incident. By itself, it might have appeared merely a silly prank, but following all the other incidents as it did, I could not but think that it was connected with them in some way. Some of the things that have happened may have been simply accidents, some appear to be spiteful little tricks, unpleasant but not serious; but the recent incidents with the gas are more serious. If interfering with the gas supply is someone’s idea of a joke, then that person must have a very warped and unpleasant sense of humour.’

There was a note of great agitation in Miss Ballantyne’s voice as she spoke these last words, and she clasped and unclasped her hands in a tense, nervous manner. Sherlock Holmes opened his eyes, leaned forward in his chair and placed the tips of his fingers upon the back of her hand.

‘Madam, you are frightened,’ said he in a soothing tone.

‘I would not deny it,’ returned his visitor, in a voice which trembled with emotion. ‘You may dismiss it as a mere fancy, but I have had an apprehension of danger since the first moment I entered the Albion to begin rehearsals. It is a place of strange noises and echoes, especially in the basement. Once or twice I have been down there alone – or so I thought – and have heard footsteps in the corridor outside my room, but when I looked, there was no one there. Whether what I heard could have been caused by the odd draughts that blow down there, or by the dripping of rainwater, I don’t know. On another occasion, when I was really sure there was no one about, I had come down the stairs from the auditorium and turned into the basement corridor, when, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw someone at the other end of the corridor, who vanished round a corner at that precise moment.’

‘Could you see who it was?’

Miss Ballantyne shook her head. ‘The lighting down there is very dim. I had the merest impression of a dark figure, that is all. I do not know what will happen next, Mr Holmes, but I fear that it may be something dreadful.’

‘Perhaps, also, you fear that you may be the next victim selected by this unseen malefactor?’

‘That is so. I have seen others fall foul of his tricks. Perhaps next time it will be me.’

‘What does anyone else think of it all?’ enquired Holmes after a moment. ‘What, for instance, is your husband’s opinion?’

Miss Ballantyne hesitated, and her hands began again their restless twining.

‘There is a difficulty there,’ she responded at last. ‘My husband is not greatly interested in theatrical matters generally, except in so far as they affect my own career, and until this week I had spoken little of these things to him. I had mentioned one or two of the incidents, but in a light-hearted way only. I have been afraid to unburden myself of my true feelings.’

‘Afraid? Why?’

‘I know his character only too well. I knew that if he understood my anxieties he would consider nothing but my safety and insist that I withdraw from the production at once. When I did at last speak freely to him on the subject, two nights ago, his response was precisely as I had expected. “Leave the production,” said he. “I will square it financially with Hardy.” But I told him I could not do it. Such a course would be disastrous. It would let down badly everyone who has worked so hard to get The Lavender Girl ready and to ensure that it is a success. He himself would lose a considerable amount of money if the play did not open, for he has provided a third of the finance for the production. But I know he would dismiss that as unimportant in comparison with my well-being.’

‘If so,’ interrupted Holmes, ‘he would be correct. You must not place yourself in danger merely on account of financial considerations, Miss Ballantyne. You no doubt consider you owe some loyalty to your theatrical colleagues, but this loyalty must be tempered by regard for your own safety. The difficulty, of course, lies in estimating the degree of danger which you and your colleagues face.’

‘My husband said much the same, Mr Holmes. I did eventually succeed in persuading him that I must continue with The Lavender Girl; but he has proposed that in future he be present in the theatre as often as possible, whenever I am working there. I readily accepted this suggestion, as you will imagine. It will be heartening for me, to know that he is close at hand. And yet,’ Miss Ballantyne added after a moment’s pause, ‘so secretly and cunningly has the persecutor wrought his work, that I wonder whether the presence of even a regiment of soldiers could prevail against him.’

Holmes nodded. ‘How does Mr Hudson Hardy view the matter?’ said he.

‘He dismisses my fears as groundless,’ returned Miss Ballantyne, ‘and tries to laugh them away. “Why,” said he, yesterday evening, when we were discussing the matter, “I have never known a production yet in which there were not unexplained accidents, malicious pranks, heated quarrels, injuries and last-minute resignations! It is simply the way of the theatrical world, Isabel, as you must surely have observed over the years!”

‘I acknowledged that there was some truth in what he said, although he exaggerated a little. But I insisted that on this occasion there was something more malicious and sinister in the circumstances. He was still inclined to dismiss the matter, however, and I could not think how to convince him otherwise. Then I thought of you, Mr Holmes. I was in Oxford for a time last summer, appearing in As You Like It at the theatre there, and I recalled reading a report in the Oxford Mail of the part you had played in what sounded a very strange affair, at somewhere called Fox House, I believe.’

‘Foxwood Grange?’

‘Yes, that is the place.’

‘A most interesting case! I was not aware that the Oxford Mail had reported it.’

‘It was a very full report. It made it clear that you had been chiefly responsible for uncovering the truth and bringing the whole affair to a successful conclusion. As I remembered it, I wondered if you could perhaps achieve the same with our little problem, and suggested as much to Mr Hardy.’

‘What was his response?’

‘He said that he would bear the suggestion in mind, should anything further occur, but thought it unnecessary to consult you at present. I considered the matter further last night, however, and decided at length that I would ignore Mr Hardy’s opinion, and engage you upon my own account.’

‘I should be pleased to look into the matter for you,’ began Holmes, but he paused as there came an interruption. The door-bell had sounded as Miss Ballantyne had been speaking, and now the sitting-room door opened and our landlady put her head in, and apologised for the intrusion.

‘I did not know you were still engaged, Mr Holmes,’ said she. ‘There’s a gentleman called to see you. I can ask him to wait downstairs.’

‘What is the gentleman’s name?’ asked Holmes.

‘Mr Richard Hudson Hardy,’ said she.

II

Holmes glanced at his visitor, who had raised her eyebrows in surprise.

‘What is your wish?’ asked he. ‘Should I invite Mr Hudson Hardy to join our little discussion?’

‘By all means,’ returned Miss Ballantyne. ‘I am pleased he has had a change of heart.’

‘Kindly ask Mr Hudson Hardy to step up,’ said Holmes to the landlady, and a moment later we were joined by the well-known actor, manager and theatrical producer. He was a portly, middle-aged man, with a broad, clean-shaven face and close-cropped greying hair. He paused for a moment in surprise as his eyes lit upon Miss Ballantyne; then he reached forward to her, his hands outstretched.

‘My dear!’ cried he, smiling broadly. ‘So you find me out!’

‘I do not know what you mean,’ she returned, a frown of puzzlement upon her face; ‘but I am glad that you have altered your opinion as to the worth of consulting Mr Holmes.’

‘My meaning, Isabel, is that I was not, I regret to say, entirely honest with you,’ said Hardy, looking a little shamefaced, as he took the chair I offered him. ‘The fact is, my dear, that I thought your suggestion a good one. But I was apprehensive that if I appeared too eager to accept it I should confirm in you those very fears which I was most anxious to alleviate. I therefore said nothing, but resolved there and then that I would consult Mr Holmes at the very first opportunity. So here I am!’ he concluded, looking from one to the other of us with a beaming smile.

‘In that case,’ said Miss Ballantyne after a moment, rising to her feet. ‘As you are here, Mr Hardy, and as I have told Mr Holmes all I can recall at present in connection with the matter, I think that I shall take my leave of you. There are one or two things I wished to do before attending today’s rehearsal. I had thought that I should have to cancel them, but if I leave now, I might be able to fit them in.’

A moment later, with a brief nod to us, and a swish of her maroon and salmon skirts, the celebrated actress took her exit from our humble rooms.

‘Now,’ said Holmes to the newcomer, ‘Miss Ballantyne has described to us certain recent occurrences at your theatre which have caused her anxiety. I take it from what you say that you share her concern.’

‘Broadly speaking, that is correct,’ returned Hardy, ‘although I am still hopeful that it will blow over. Perhaps the mean-spirited individual who has delighted in playing malicious pranks on his fellow-actors has now satisfied his depraved urges. In which case, we may already have seen the last of it. One cannot know for certain, however, and I have sometimes wondered if there is not someone in the company who has a profound determination to wreck the production, and who will not stop until he has done so. In any case, whether there is yet more of this unpleasantness to come or not, I should certainly like to know who is behind it all and expel him from the company. I thus place the case in your hands, Mr Holmes.’

‘Very well,’ said Holmes. ‘First, then, Mr Hardy, I should be obliged if you could furnish me with a little general information as to the company. Leaving aside for a moment the malicious incidents, would you say that it has, generally speaking, been a happy and contented company?’

‘So I believe. Of course, there has been the occasional disagreement, and no doubt one or two of the company have sometimes wished themselves elsewhere.’

‘Did you have anything specific in mind?’

‘It is no secret that some of the actors could very easily find themselves alternative employment, and some of that alternative employment might possibly be better than that which they have at present. I was thinking only the other night what the consequences might be for Miss Ballantyne, for instance, should The Lavender Girl fail to open on time, or be cancelled altogether. Neither of these possibilities is very likely, but one has to have regard for every eventuality. Anyway, my conclusion was that she would not be particularly inconvenienced.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Holmes, a note of curiosity in his voice.

‘To speak frankly, we were very fortunate to secure the services of Miss Ballantyne for The Lavender Girl. At the time I approached her with the offer, she happened to be between engagements. Since then, however, as I am only too aware, several other offers have been made to her and she could probably increase her earnings, and appear in a somewhat more fashionable class of theatre, by accepting one of these other offers. I know for a fact, for instance, that my great rival, Kempston Vernon, would dearly love to have Miss Ballantyne as his leading lady in his forthcoming production at the Agora. This offer, of course, she would be free to accept if The Lavender Girl were cancelled.’

‘But that is surely not a circumstance she would welcome,’ interrupted Holmes. ‘As one of the financial sponsors of the production, her husband would, I take it, be considerably out of pocket if your production were cancelled.’

‘That is certainly true – and the sum would not be a small one. A great deal of money has already been invested in The Lavender Girl.’

‘The financing of the production is divided between the two of you?’

Hardy shook his head. ‘It is divided three ways. Count Laszlo of Sipolia is also standing for a third of it. You may be familiar with his name. He is a great patron of the London stage, renowned, among other things, for the lavish receptions he holds at the Langham Hotel, and a man I have known for many years. It was largely as a result of his encouragement – and financial support, too, I must admit – that I made the decision to purchase the Albion and the Southwark Palace three years ago. Of course the Palace is a ruin and was consequently thrown into the bargain for practically nothing. Count Laszlo’s idea was that we would use the profits from successful productions at the Albion to finance the rebuilding of the Palace, which we could then let out to others. Count Laszlo is also, I might add, a long-time admirer of Miss Ballantyne. I believe he once even entertained thoughts of seeking her hand in matrimony. Whether he asked her and she turned him down, or whether he never quite reached the point of asking the question, I cannot say. Either way, it doesn’t matter now, as his opportunity has gone; but I know that he still follows her career with great interest. When he heard that she had agreed to appear in The Lavender Girl, he approached me and offered to provide some, at least, of the finance for the play. I say that he ‘‘offered’’ the money, but to say that he insisted on my taking it would be nearer the mark. “With Isabel Ballantyne in the leading role,” said he, “the play cannot fail to be an unparalleled success!” I hope he is right.’

‘If Miss Ballantyne were to withdraw from the production for any reason, could it continue without her?’ asked Holmes.

‘In theory it could; but our chances of having a success with it would be very greatly reduced. If it were to happen, Lydia Summers would take over Miss Ballantyne’s role and one of the girls from the chorus would take over that of Miss Summers. I am sure they would all do their best to make it a success, but it would not be the same, either for us, or, more importantly, for the public. Isabel Ballantyne is like one of the stars in the firmament at the moment: in respect of her gifts and her accomplishments, she is an immeasurable distance above all her rivals; her radiance is steady and unblinking, and the public’s desire to gaze upon it appears to be insatiable. For Miss Summers to take over Miss Ballantyne’s role would be a difficult and unenviable task. Miss Summers is an enthusiastic enough young lady, and has a reasonably pleasant singing voice, but she is very inexperienced and her acting perhaps leaves something to be desired.’

‘What, if I may ask, made you choose Miss Summers for the present production, considering that you appear unsure as to her accomplishments?’ asked Holmes.

A look of discomfort came over our visitor’s features. ‘It is one of those compromises which life is constantly demanding of one,’ he replied at length. ‘Her father is Sir Cecil Summers, the wealthy ship owner. I met him socially some eight or nine months ago, and in the course of our conversation he implied that he was interested in becoming a patron of the theatre and perhaps investing money in our future productions. He even offered to purchase the Palace from me, although what he intended to do with it, I don’t know. Anyway, you will understand that when his daughter applied for the second female role in The Lavender Girl, I felt obliged to give her application greater consideration than I might otherwise have done. I discussed the matter extensively with Count Laszlo and Captain Trent, who both thought she should be given a chance, and it was decided in the end that we would offer her the part. She would not, in all honesty, have been my first choice, but she is acceptable and will not, I think, let us down. Whether, in the long run, she will make much of a career upon the stage, I do not know. She is not the most gifted young performer I have had under my wing; but on the other hand, I have observed in her a certain streak of ruthlessness, which can be useful in this business. No doubt she takes after her father. They do say that it was his ruthlessness which brought Sir Cecil Summers his great wealth.’

‘And your leading men, Ludovic Xavier and Jimmy Webster?’ queried Holmes, as his visitor paused.

‘The first thing to say is that they are like chalk and cheese, and do not get on very well together.’

‘I rather fancied as much from an incident Miss Ballantyne recounted.’

‘And yet they play well together on the stage, and the public seems to like both of them; so the fact that they scarcely speak to each other when off the stage does not appear to matter. I dare say you are familiar with their names, for both have enjoyed considerable success and popularity in recent years, and have had their names blazoned across theatrical posters throughout London.

‘The case with Ludovic Xavier, however, is an unusual one. A year ago, I should have said, as in the case of Miss Ballantyne, that we were fortunate to secure his services for the present production. He has always been a useful sort of actor, known for his fine speaking voice and a certain “presence” on stage. He is also very experienced, having played in many different types of theatrical production. Indeed, many years ago, as a young man, he worked with Solomon Tanner himself, at the Albion. This last year, however, has been something of a singular one for him, as a result of which I am inclined to think that he benefits from our present agreement quite as much as I do.

‘Somewhat over a year ago he became bored with the London stage and determined to display his talents to the country at large. He therefore booked theatrical halls here, there and everywhere, and set forth on a tour of the provinces in a special entertainment devised and performed entirely by himself. This seems to have consisted largely of brief extracts from Hamlet, Macbeth and others of Shakespeare’s plays, blended together with selections from Gulliver’s Travels and Robinson Crusoe, with numerous connecting passages written by Xavier himself, which were, according to his brochure, both humorous and pathetic. This bizarre concoction was described by one critic, with what I must admit seemed like justice, as a “monstrous farrago”. The title Xavier gave to it, incidentally, was “Ludovic Xavier in Strange Times and Places”, and I gather that this title rather summed up his tour of the country. In many places, I understand, the patience of the audience proved less enduring than the performance. In Newcastle-upon-Tyne, I am told, half the audience took advantage of the first interval to escape from the theatre altogether and, in Carlisle, Xavier was heckled from the stage. It was therefore in a somewhat chastened humour that he returned to London. In some quarters he had by then been re-christened “Ludicrous Failure”, although I don’t think he was ever aware of it. No one would dare say such a thing to his face. He is a dangerous man to cross and he never forgets a slight. Anyhow, at the time I met him he was feeling somewhat lowered, and eager to accept any part which promised to restore in some measure his professional pride and his fortune, both of which had taken something of a battering in the previous months. Since our rehearsals began, however, his old pride being evidently rapidly restored by his new employment, he has scarcely ceased to complain about the limitations of his role in The Lavender Girl, the inadequacy of the dialogue I have written for him and goodness knows what else. If he were able to cancel his contract tomorrow and seek another production, I suspect that he might do so. Much to my surprise, however, in the midst of his dissatisfaction, as it were, he has taken a professional interest in Lydia Summers. Perhaps he sees something in the girl which reminds him of himself when he was first starting out in the profession, many years ago. Who can say? Anyway, whatever the reason, he has been helping her a little, coaching her with her performance and so on, which I have been pleased to see.

‘Jimmy Webster, the comic actor, is, on the surface at least, as different from Xavier as it is possible to be. He is generally an agreeable sort of person and is fairly amenable to most suggestions put to him. He has been very popular with the public in recent years and, as with Miss Ballantyne, I considered myself fortunate to secure his services. I know, from previous experience, that there is an odd, dark side to his character, but he keeps it well hidden in public. He can also be extremely bad tempered sometimes; but at least he is usually sober, unlike many other comic actors I have known. His chief vice, at least as far as his fellow-actors are concerned, seems to be to deliberately provoke irritation in others for no reason other than his own satisfaction. He also has a habit which some people find tedious, of couching much of what he says in mock-Shakespearean language. This irritates Xavier intensely, for some reason, but most other people simply ignore it.’

‘Is Webster content to be in The Lavender Girl?’ asked Holmes.

‘So I believe. He has certainly given me no indication otherwise.’

‘And the remainder of the cast?’

‘They are in the main fairly young and inexperienced. As far as I am aware, they are all keen to play their parts in the production.’

Holmes sat for some time in silent thought, his brow furrowed in concentration, as he considered the matter. Presently, with a shake of the head, he took up his pipe from the hearth, knocked out the old tobacco and began to refill it with fresh. As he did so, he recounted briefly to his visitor the incidents which Isabel Ballantyne had described to us earlier. ‘Is there anything else you can recall which Miss Ballantyne has overlooked?’ he asked at length, as he lit a spill in the fire and applied it to the bowl of his pipe.

‘As a matter of fact,’ responded Hardy, ‘there is an incident of which she is quite unaware, as it occurred only yesterday evening, after she had left the theatre. To speak plainly, it was this incident which finally made up my mind that I would seek your advice. I did not wish to mention it earlier, whilst Miss Ballantyne was present, as I feared it would only increase her anxieties.’

‘The details, please!’

‘I cannot vouch for the reliability of my informant, who is one of my seamstresses, but I will describe it to you as it was described to me. I must first, however, tell you something of our costuming arrangements. You may not be aware of it, but many theatrical companies nowadays have only very small wardrobes of their own and hire in most of what they need from a few large specialist costumiers. The inevitable consequence of this, of course, is that whichever productions theatre-goers choose to attend, they are likely to see exactly the same costumes over and over again at different theatres. I made the decision, when we took over the Albion, that we would make as many of our own costumes as possible, and thus present the public with something fresh to look at on almost every occasion they could be lured into the theatre. I have, I believe, a certain flair in the costume line myself. I may be no Charles Worth, but, between us, my needlewomen and I have produced many memorable stage costumes. After all, you don’t need the services of a master tailor to produce outfits for pirates, brigands and the like, and my ladies have a real eye for pretty outfits to costume their own sex. Already, my decision to be independent of the large costumiers has reaped its own rewards: we now hire out our costumes to other companies and, I might say, make a handsome profit from doing so! I dare say the public is of the opinion that the actors are the most important part of a theatrical company, but their contribution to a production is frequently exaggerated – and I speak as one who was an actor for more years than I care to remember! Apart from exceptional talents, such as Isabel Ballantyne, most actors could in fact be replaced by others without any difference in the performance being apparent. This, however, is certainly not the case with seamstresses. A gifted needlewoman, Mr Holmes, is truly worth her weight in gold! It is for this reason that I am especially anxious at yesterday evening’s incident, which concerned these ladies. There are four of them and each one is a treasure! They have all been with me for almost as long as I have had the Albion and have played a large part in making our company the success it is. I cannot have them upset in this way! Were they to leave, I really don’t know how I should carry on!

‘Now, as to the incident in question. It occurred early yesterday evening, not long before the ladies were due to set down their needles for the day. One of them had left the sewing-room and entered the costume store-rooms, which are immediately adjacent, in order to select a dress, which was to be altered slightly and adapted for Miss Summers. These store-rooms, I should explain, consist of several interconnecting chambers. The two which are nearest to the corridor contain our ladies’ wardrobe. As the girl entered the first of these rooms, she had a lantern in her hand, for there is no gas laid on in there. She hung the lantern on a hook by the door and proceeded to sort through a rack of dresses. Whilst she was so engaged, she became conscious of a slight noise somewhere in the room. Next moment, something touched her upon the shoulder. She turned, and was startled to see someone standing immediately behind her.’

‘Who?’

‘She could not make it out. All she can say is that it was a dark figure, wearing some sort of hood, which hid his face. Then he blew out the lantern, leaving her in the dark, and ran off. Of course, she screamed and carried on screaming until the other seamstresses, hearing her cries through the adjoining wall, hurried to see what had happened. It took them some time to calm her down, as you will imagine, and then they all came together to report the matter to me. I have promised them that I will take steps to improve the lighting in the basement and have given them strict instructions not to mention the incident to anyone else. If it were to become public knowledge, I have little doubt that the result would be absolutely disastrous. My staff would resign in such numbers that it might prove impossible to keep the theatre open at all. It is bad enough having the needlewomen upset. It would be even worse if everyone else was in the same state! As it is, one of the other needlewomen told me that she, too, had heard odd noises in the costume store a week or so ago, but had kept the matter to herself. Whether that is true or not, I don’t know; but in any case they have all vowed not to enter the costume store alone in future.’

‘When this dark figure ran off,’ Holmes interrupted, ‘did the girl see in which direction he went?’

‘Unfortunately not. The light had, as I say, been extinguished, and in any case, she was too frightened to look. She heard his footsteps in the corridor, that is all.’

‘Very well,’ said Holmes. ‘You are returning to the theatre now, I take it? Will your seamstresses still be there?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Then I shall come with you, take a look about, and interview these ladies of yours. Would you care to accompany us, Watson? It may prove an interesting experience!’

I readily agreed, and three minutes later, heavily muffled against the bitter cold, we were in a cab and rattling through the West End towards the river. As we passed along the Strand, a heavy shower of hail beat upon the roof of the cab like lead shot. This was followed, just moments later, as we turned on to Waterloo Bridge, by sheets of icy, driving rain.

‘Thank the Lord for civilisation!’ cried Hardy in a humorous tone, as he surveyed the dismal scene outside. ‘Thank goodness for coal fires and warm sitting-rooms! Let us just hope the weather is not so bad on Saturday, when The Lavender Girl opens, or no one will turn up! I don’t suppose,’ he continued, turning to Holmes, ‘that you have been able to form any theory as to why we have been suffering such persecution lately, at the Albion?’

Holmes shook his head.

‘The data are very meagre,’ he replied, ‘and one cannot make bricks without clay. There are too many possibilities for it to be worth our while even enumerating them.’

‘Oh, quite,’ said Hardy, sounding a little disappointed at the response.

‘Nevertheless,’ continued Holmes with a chuckle, ‘I am confident of turning something up. I appreciate how highly you esteem your needlewomen, Mr Hardy, and shall devote all my energies to bringing peace and tranquillity to your sewing-room once more!’

III

The rain had stopped by the time we reached the theatre, but the pavements were wet and greasy, and the front of the theatre, its brickwork darkened by years of exposure to London soot and smoke, had a damp and dilapidated appearance after the recent showers. A grimy glass canopy stood out from the wall all along the front of the building and protected the lower part, which was adorned with bright posters announcing the forthcoming play, upon which the name of Isabel Ballantyne was prominent.

‘This way, if you please,’ called Hardy over his shoulder, as he led us in through the front entrance of the theatre. Off to one side, just inside the doors, was a small room, with little windows which overlooked the entrance lobby, and here we left our coats before following our guide through into the auditorium. There, a group of cleaners was at work in the stalls, and from the rear of the stage came busy sounds of sawing and hammering. We passed through a door on the right, near the front of the auditorium, then through a second door, and down a stone staircase to the basement, where corridors went off to right and left.

‘That way leads only to the stage door and the caretaker’s office,’ said Hardy, pointing to the right, as he turned left, into a long and dimly lit corridor, the walls of which were covered with grimy, whitewashed plaster, which was flaking off in many places. Near the top of the walls ran numerous water-pipes and gas-pipes. On the left side of the corridor was a pair of doors, which, our guide informed us, gave access to the chamber beneath the stage and, on the right a whole series of doors, closely spaced. ‘Miss Ballantyne’s dressing-room,’ remarked Hardy, as we passed the first of these; ‘Mr Xavier’s; Miss Summers’s; female chorus; male chorus; store-room for swords and umbrellas – equally dangerous objects, in my experience; store-room for hats and bonnets.’ The corridor then took a sharp turn to the right and, a few yards further on, a turn to the left.

‘Mr Webster’s dressing-room,’ said Hardy, as we passed another door on the right. A little further on was an open doorway. It was dark in the chamber beyond, but I had an impression of rows and rows of dresses. ‘One of the costume stores, as you can see,’ remarked Hardy, ‘for ladies’ day-dresses and historical costumes. The doors are always open, for it is important for the clothes to have air circulating about them all the time.’

As he spoke, we passed another open doorway. The room within was, like the previous one, full of ladies’ costumes.

‘Ladies’ evening-dresses,’ explained Hardy. ‘This room has an interconnecting doorway with the other one, and to the rear of both of them are further rooms, containing the gentlemen’s costumes. And this,’ he continued, stopping before a closed door, ‘is the sewing-room. Further along the corridor is the boiler-room and another stair up to the main part of the theatre.’

He pushed open the sewing-room door and we followed him in. It was a crowded room, with a very large table in the centre, several large rolls of material leaning against the walls, and three or four tailors’ dummies dressed in a variety of colourful costumes. A stove in the corner was blazing away and made the room seem very warm after the chill air of the corridor. An animated conversation appeared to be in progress, but it stopped as we entered.

‘Good afternoon, ladies!’ cried Hardy, in a cheery voice. There were four women there, engaged in various tasks. One was standing at the large table, cutting out a piece of material with the help of a paper pattern. Another was working a sewing machine, a third was by the stove, pressing some garment with a heavy iron, and the fourth woman was seated on a chair in the corner, with a highly decorated costume draped across her lap, and a needle and thread in her hand.

‘These are the ladies who make the costumes which are the envy of all other companies!’ cried Hardy in a tone of great pleasure. ‘I am sure there are no finer seamstresses anywhere in London! From near and far they have come, to help make our company the success it is! Isn’t that so, Kathleen?’

‘From the four corners of the Earth, as you might say, Mr Hardy,’ responded the small sandy-haired woman he had addressed. ‘Greenwich, Hackney, the wilds of Norfolk and—’ she paused and glanced in the direction of the small, dark-haired girl, who was frowning with concentration at the ornate dress on her lap ‘—the North,’ she concluded at length.

‘Excuse me,’ responded the dark-haired girl, without lifting her eyes from her needlework, ‘but Dudley is in the Midlands.’

‘Well, it’s north of here, anyway,’ returned the sandy-haired woman with an air of finality.

Mr Hardy chuckled and rubbed his hands together. ‘And how are you today, Jeanie?’ he asked, addressing the slim, auburn-haired woman, who was wielding the iron. ‘Jeanie is a woman of many talents,’ he remarked to us, ‘and has herself known the glamour of the footlights’ glare.’

‘That’s right,’ agreed the blonde-haired girl at the sewing-machine, in a quiet voice. ‘She played a duck in last year’s pantomime!’

‘Actually, it was the goose,’ returned Jeanie in an indignant tone.

‘And I am sure the goose was never played better!’ cried Hardy. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘to complete our introductions: over in the corner there is Katharine; and this very quiet young lady is Michéle.’ He indicated the blonde-haired girl, who nodded her head and mouthed some response, but so softly as to be almost inaudible. ‘Michéle has somewhat exotic antecedents,’ murmured Hardy to us.

‘She certainly has,’ said Kathleen. ‘Her father used to keep a pub out Hackney way.’

Hardy chuckled again. ‘Now, ladies,’ said he, ‘this is Mr Holmes and Dr Watson, who have kindly agreed to help me get to the bottom of our recent troubles. Was it you, Katharine, that had the – hum! – unpleasant experience yesterday?’

The small, dark-haired girl nodded her head.

‘I wonder then, Katharine, if you would be good enough to show these gentlemen where the unfortunate incident took place?’

The girl put down her sewing with an air of reluctance, and led the way out of the room and along the corridor to the open doorway of the costume store. Hardy lit a lantern which hung on a hook beside the door and we followed him inside.

‘I was standing by this rail, sir,’ said the girl, indicating a long row of elaborate evening-dresses which hung from hooks on a rail by the left-hand wall. ‘I heard a noise behind me.’

‘What sort of noise?’ asked Holmes.

‘It’s hard to say, sir,’ she replied after a moment. ‘A little noise. I thought it might be mice – that sort of noise. There are lots of mice down here.’

‘But not so many as there used to be, I trust,’ interrupted Hardy quickly. ‘We took steps to deal with them,’ he explained to us.

‘Not so many, but still a few,’ the girl responded. ‘Anyway, I stopped what I was doing and listened, but the noise had stopped, too, so I thought perhaps I had imagined it. I went back to looking through the dresses and the noise came again. It sounded as if somebody was pushing through a rail of clothes and seemed to be right behind me. I stood very still and the noise stopped again. Then something touched me on the shoulder, like this.’ She raised her right arm and touched her right shoulder lightly with the tips of her fingers. ‘I thought it was a spider and tried to brush it off, but there was nothing there. Then I turned. Just here, where you are standing, sir, was a horrible dark figure, all in black, with a black hood on, just standing, looking at me.’

The girl shut her eyes tightly and put her hand up to her face, as if to ward off the memory of the evil figure.

‘It must have been a horrible shock for you,’ said Holmes in a sympathetic voice. ‘I regret the necessity of asking you these questions, and thus rekindling the unpleasantness in your mind, but we must have all the facts. You say this figure was looking at you. You saw his face, then?’

‘No, sir,’ the girl replied, her breath short and sharp. ‘For he had no face.’

‘No face?’

‘There was nothing there, sir. Inside the big hood it was all blackness, just as if it was empty. Only the eyes showed, sharp and glittering.’

‘He was wearing a mask, perhaps?’

‘Perhaps, sir. I don’t know.’

‘What happened next?’ asked Holmes.

‘He lifted his hand up. It was all white and bony. He was holding one of these hooks.’ She pointed to the large ‘S’-shaped metal hooks, like pothooks, which hung on the rail, and from which the dresses behind her were suspended. ‘He held it up, then brought it down at me. I screamed and turned away, and covered my face with my hands. Everything went black and I heard him run off into the corridor. I don’t know what happened after that, sir. The next thing I remember, Kathleen and the others were here, telling me to stop screaming.’

‘And there’s no possibility, I suppose,’ asked Hardy, in a vaguely hopeful voice, ‘that you imagined it all?’

‘Certainly not, Mr Hardy!’ replied the girl indignantly.

‘You say the figure was all in black,’ said Holmes. ‘Were you able to see what sort of clothes he was wearing?’

‘It was like a monk’s robe, sir, with a hood attached.’

‘Do you have any costumes of that sort in your wardrobe?’ Holmes asked Hardy.

‘We do indeed. I’ll get Kathleen to show you. Among her other duties, she acts as wardrobe mistress and knows where all the costumes are hung.’

The sandy-haired woman was sent for and took us through to the chambers at the rear, which contained the men’s costumes.

‘These are the monks’ robes, sir,’ said she, stopping before a long rail of assorted clerical garments and holding up a lantern. ‘These are the white friars, these are the black friars and these are some brown ’uns.’

‘Could your assailant have been wearing one of these?’ Holmes asked the dark-haired girl. She nodded, averting her eyes as she did so. ‘Are all the black robes here?’ he continued, addressing the other woman.

‘I think so,’ she replied, as she counted them. ‘No, wait a minute, there’s only five of the black ones here now and I think there should be six. Isn’t that right, Mr Hardy?’

‘It certainly is,’ said Hardy, nodding his head. ‘We definitely made six of them, eighteen months ago, for The Gipsies of Bohemia.’

‘So it appears that your mystery intruder is indeed wearing one of these robes,’ said Holmes, ‘which he has still got with him, wherever he is. They are certainly commodious garments, perfectly suited to anyone wishing to conceal his identity. Now,’ he continued after a moment, addressing the sandy-haired woman again, ‘when you had calmed Katharine down, did you search these rooms to see if there was anyone still about?’

‘No, sir, we did not. We didn’t know what we might find! We went straight to Mr Hardy to tell him what had happened.’

‘I understand,’ said Holmes. ‘Thank you, ladies. That is all, for the present.’

‘What do you make of it?’ asked Hardy, when the women had left us.

Holmes shook his head. ‘It is a puzzling little problem,’ he replied. ‘The point of all this mysterious activity is not yet clear to me. In this latest incident – the first, it seems, in which your mysterious persecutor has been seen – his appearance was threatening and he no doubt frightened the girl out of her wits; but in the end he did not harm her.’

‘Perhaps he was deterred by her screaming,’ I suggested. ‘He would have realised that that would bring others here.’

‘Possibly,’ said Holmes. ‘But he had raised his arm as if to strike her, yet did not do so, even though it would have taken him but a moment. The inference is surely that he never really had any intention of harming her.’

‘What, then?’

‘He has never previously shown any inclination to reveal himself. It is possible, then, that the girl’s encounter with him in here was the merest chance and that he simply took the opportunity to frighten her which that chance had presented to him.’

‘Whatever the explanation, it certainly must have been unnerving for her,’ I remarked. ‘What do you make of the white, bony hands she described?’

‘Perhaps he was simply wearing a pair of these,’ replied Holmes, indicating a wooden box which stood on the floor by the wall. Inside the box were several dozen pairs of white evening-dress gloves. He took a pair and slipped them on to his long, thin hands. ‘Observe,’ said he, ‘how, if one clenches one’s fist, one’s hands appear more bony in these than if one were not wearing gloves at all.’

‘But if, as you suggest, this villain did not deliberately set out to frighten anyone, but encountered the girl by chance, why should he have been wearing these white gloves at all?’ asked Hardy.

‘Perhaps simply to conceal his hands from anyone who did happen to see him,’ replied Holmes. ‘The human hand is a very individual thing and a man’s hand can sometimes identify him every bit as precisely as his face. Now, let us proceed: the women did not search these rooms when they found their colleague in distress. It is possible, then, that the girl’s assailant remained hidden in some dark corner here until they had gone.’

‘She says she heard his footsteps in the corridor,’ I interjected.

‘That is true, but it is possible that he ran only a few yards along the corridor, then turned in at the next doorway, the other entrance to these rooms. He would certainly not wish to encounter anyone else who might be drawn into the corridor by the girl’s screams, and these dark rooms would probably offer the best hiding place. He could lie low in here for a while, wait until the hue and cry had died down, and then make good his escape. Can you recall the whereabouts of the various members of the company yesterday evening, Mr Hardy, at the time of this incident?’

‘All members of the chorus, both male and female, were on stage at the time,’ replied Hardy. ‘We had the orchestra in and were rehearsing some of the musical ensemble pieces. I know that Miss Ballantyne had left for home by then, but I am afraid I cannot tell you offhand where anyone else was. I have been so preoccupied lately that the days have passed as if in a blur. Except for those members of the company with whom I am rehearsing at any given moment, I am generally unable to say who is present and who is not. I have all the rehearsal details in my office upstairs, however, if you would care to consult the book.’

‘In a moment. First, let us take a look round these chambers. I see that there are yet more rooms behind these. What are they used for?’

‘Nothing in particular. This theatre is full of dusty old store-rooms and cupboards, a good half of which we do not use at all. Come, I will show you!’

We passed through an open doorway at the back of the men’s costume store, into another large, low-ceilinged chamber, stacked high with wooden crates of various sizes, most of which appeared to be empty. Hardy held up his lantern and we followed the spread of its light about the room. It was a grimy chamber, with a dank, earthy smell about it. At the top of each of the damp-stained, whitewashed walls was a small grating, through which cold air brought the sound of dripping rain into the room. In the far wall were three dirty and mildewed doors.

‘As you can see,’ remarked our guide, ‘this room is little used. There are a few odd stage properties in these boxes, but most of them are empty. I doubt if this room has been used for anything much since Solomon Tanner’s day.’

Holmes took the lantern and prowled slowly about this gloomy chamber for several minutes, examining the walls and the flagstone floor very closely, until at last he paused before the rotten-looking old doors and tried the handle of each in turn.

‘These doors all appear to be locked,’ he remarked.

‘They are only dirty old cupboards,’ returned Hardy dismissively. ‘I don’t think they’ve ever been opened since we’ve had the theatre.’

‘Do you know where the keys are?’ enquired Holmes, peering closely at the lock of the middle door of the three.

‘There are two large bunches of keys somewhere in the office upstairs,’ replied Hardy. ‘The keys to these cupboards may be among them, but none of the keys is labelled, so you would have to try them all. I don’t know why you are so interested in them, Mr Holmes!’

‘Professional thoroughness,’ returned Holmes with a chuckle.

‘If you would care to accompany me to my office, then, I’ll find the keys for you – and while you are there you can look over the records of recent rehearsals.’

‘I shall follow you upstairs in a moment,’ said Holmes. ‘Do you also have in your office any information on the history of this theatre?’ he asked, as Hardy turned to leave.

‘Indeed I do. We have a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings, dating back many years, to the heyday of Solomon Tanner and even beyond. It belonged to the old doorman of the Albion, who had compiled it over many years’ service here. He is retired now, living with his daughter down Walworth way. About three years ago, however, when he heard that we had bought the theatre and were planning to reopen it, he arrived here one morning and presented the scrapbook to me, which was very kind of him. It forms a detailed historical record, of both the Albion and the Southwark Palace, next door. As a matter of fact, Miss Ballantyne was asking me about the scrapbook only the other day and I found it for her. It will be in her dressing-room still, I should think. She won’t mind your having a look at it in there. I’ll light the gas for you as I pass.’

The moment that Hardy had left us, and we heard his footsteps in the corridor, Holmes handed the lantern to me.

‘Hold it down here,’ said he, as he bent to inspect a patch of floor which lay immediately in front of the middle cupboard door.

I did as he asked, and watched as he subjected the flagstones to the most minute examination. Down on all fours, and with his nose scarcely an inch from the floor, he resembled nothing so much as a bloodhound following a trail. Then he pulled from his pocket his powerful lens and a tape-measure, with which he made several measurements.

‘I cannot see what you are measuring,’ said I.

‘Footprints,’ replied he, jotting down some figures in a note-book.

‘I cannot see them.’

‘The marks are not very clear, but they are clear enough for my purposes. I observed them earlier. You no doubt remarked that I avoided stepping on this damp patch of floor. I did not mention the matter in front of Mr Hardy, for I wished to avoid putting anything into his head which he might inadvertently let slip to someone else. The fewer people who know what we have discovered, the more likely we are to bring the matter to a successful conclusion.’

After a while, he stood up and began to examine the frame around the middle door, making further notes in his book and muttering to himself as he did so. Some mark on the door-frame, at about shoulder height, seemed particularly to interest him and he studied it for some time through his lens. Then, very carefully, he removed something from the woodwork at that spot. ‘A thread, caught on a sharp splinter of wood,’ said he, as he placed it in a small envelope he had taken from his pocket. Presently, he stood back, with an expression of satisfaction upon his features.

‘Well, well,’ said he, as he put his note-book away; ‘that is all clear enough. No doubt you observed that the hinges of this middle door have had some kind of grease smeared on to them. No? Look, then, Watson: the edges of the hinges are just visible in the gap between the door and the frame. It is evident that this door has been opened very recently.’

I held the lantern close to the edge of the door and saw it was as he said. The edge of the hinge glistened with grease.

‘Another discovery I thought I would not mention in front of Mr Hardy,’ remarked my companion. ‘Let us now re-examine the monks’ robes.’

We returned to the men’s costume store, where Holmes took from his pocket the little envelope and compared the thread within it to the material of which the monks’ robes were made. ‘It is undoubtedly the same,’ said he.

‘What does it mean?’ I asked.

‘I have an idea about that,’ replied my companion. ‘But first, let us get along to Miss Ballantyne’s dressing-room and take a look at Mr Hardy’s historical scrapbook.’

We made our way to the other end of the corridor, our footsteps ringing hollowly in the silent basement. The gas was lit in Miss Ballantyne’s room and on a table near the door lay the scrapbook. Holmes lifted it up and turned the pages over for a moment, and I saw that the yellowing cuttings touched on every conceivable topic of relevance to the theatre: Solomon Tanner’s nights of triumph, occasions when the performances had been less well received, an occasion when a gas leak had obliged the audience to be quickly ushered from the theatre in the middle of a play, records of when parts of the building had been freshly painted and many other such matters.

‘What a fascinating record!’ I remarked.

‘If you would be so good as to take a look through it, Watson,’ said Holmes, handing it to me, ‘I shall attend to the other matters in Hardy’s office, and return shortly.’

I sat down at the table and began to study the history of the Albion Theatre. The door had swung shut as Holmes had left and, once the sound of his footsteps on the stair had faded away, the basement had fallen utterly silent and still. As far as I was aware, there was no one else there save the four seamstresses and they were far out of my hearing, at the other end of the corridor. For some considerable time I turned the pages over, absorbed in what I was reading. Once, some slight noise came to my ears and I looked up and listened, expecting to hear my friend’s footsteps approaching. But all was silence, and I returned after a moment to my perusal of the scrapbook. Clearly something had delayed Holmes upstairs.

I had just finished reading of a gala night at the old theatre, attended by the Duke of Balmoral, when a faint sound, as of the soft closing of a door, made me pause and look up. For a moment I remained motionless, but could hear nothing. As I sat there listening, it seemed to me that the air in the basement had become colder in the past twenty minutes and I shivered. At that moment, I heard a footstep, soft and furtive, in the corridor outside. I turned down the gas, opened the door cautiously and peered out.

The light in the corridor was poor, for only one gas-jet was lit and that appeared to have been turned lower than before. But even by this dim light I could see quite clearly that there was someone in the corridor. Not more than thirty feet away, a dark figure in a long black robe and hood was moving silently away from me. For a moment, it was as if an icy hand had touched the back of my neck and I was frozen into immobility. Then, gathering my senses together, I licked my dry lips and called out, my own voice sounding strange and almost startling to me after the silence in which I had been sitting for so long. The dark figure stopped abruptly as I called, then, very slowly, turned round. Within the shadowed cowl, no face was visible; nothing but a dense blackness.

‘What are you doing?’ I called out.

No reply came, but next moment, the figure began to advance, slowly and in complete silence, towards me. Every muscle in my body seemed to have become paralysed and unresponsive, and the blood seemed frozen in my veins. Then, with an effort of will, I took a step forward. I gave no credence to apparitions, I told myself, and wanted to know who this hidden villain was, and what he was up to. But I confess that it is easier to write these words now than it was to speak them to myself at the time, as I stood facing this dark menacing figure in that cold and dimly lit underground passage.

For what seemed an age, but was probably, in reality, but a second or two, the figure continued his slow, silent approach.

‘What do you want?’ I called out loudly, my voice ringing round the hard walls of the corridor, and sounding forced and unnatural.

As the echo of my words faded, and silence returned, the dark figure halted and remained for a moment motionless. He had drawn level with the one gas-jet in the corridor. Now, in one swift movement, and before I realised what was happening, he had raised his hand, the gas-tap was turned off, and the corridor was plunged into utter blackness.

IV

For a moment, it was as if a heavy shutter had descended before my eyes. I could see nothing whatever and held myself absolutely still, so that I might hear if the dark figure approached any closer. But a faint glimmer of light came from beneath the door of Miss Ballantyne’s dressing-room and, as my eyes adjusted to this dim illumination, I could just make out that the dark figure had not moved. Even as I screwed up my eyes, however, struggling to see more clearly through the darkness, I had an impression that the figure was stooping. There then came a swifter movement, of his arm, and I knew at once that he had flung something at me. Instinctively, I put up my arm to shield my face, but I was not quick enough, and something – a small lump of wood, perhaps – struck me on the side of the head. At the same instant, I heard rapid footsteps and when I looked again, as the footsteps faded into the distance, the corridor was empty. Without pausing for thought, I at once gave chase. But in advancing along the corridor, I was moving further away from the faint illumination from the dressing-room, so that in a matter of seconds, utter blackness had closed in about me. I cursed myself for my stupidity in not re-lighting the gas as I passed it. But I was reluctant now to stop and even more reluctant to retrace my steps, and thus turn my back upon what might lie ahead of me. I therefore pressed forward, but very slowly and with great caution. I knew that I must be approaching the point at which the corridor took a right-angled bend, so I held my hands out in front of me until they touched the cold corridor wall. Then, slowly feeling my way along the wall, I followed the passage round to the right and, a few yards further on, round to the left. For a few seconds, then, I stood perfectly still in that impenetrable darkness and listened. The whole basement was in utter and complete silence. For all I could tell, my assailant might be far away by now, or might be within a few feet of where I stood, waiting to spring at me. After a moment, I took a step forward, with no great enthusiasm, I must admit, and advanced very slowly along the corridor, ready at any moment to defend myself if attacked. A sensation of colder air upon my face told me that I was passing the first open doorway of the costume store, and it occurred to me that the mystery figure might have gone to ground there. But it was pointless attempting to look in there without a lamp of some kind, so, tense and breathing heavily, I continued along the corridor.

A little further on, I again felt a draught of cold air and knew I must be passing the second doorway of the costume store. Then I caught the faint murmur of voices and saw a thin line of light upon the floor to my right, which I knew must come from the narrow gap at the bottom of the door to the seamstresses’ room. For some time, I felt for the door-knob, then, just as I had my hand upon it, the door was abruptly opened from the other side. Light from the room within seemed to burst about me and I put my hand up to my eyes to shield them. The woman who had opened the door stepped back with a sharp cry of alarm as she saw me.

‘Oh, sir!’ cried she, as I stepped forward into the room. ‘I thought you was the ghost!’

‘He looks as if he’s seen one, Kathleen,’ remarked the woman holding the iron.

‘Did you hear anyone pass this way in the past few minutes?’ I asked.

‘No, sir,’ replied Kathleen. ‘Sir, your head is bleeding,’ she added, picking up a scrap of cloth from the table and handing it to me.

‘It’s nothing,’ I responded, dabbing the cloth on my left temple, where the block of wood had struck it. ‘There was somebody out there just now.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know. The same person as your friend saw yesterday, I believe.’

‘Why aren’t there any lamps lit in the corridor?’ asked the woman, peering out of the doorway.

‘He must have turned them all off,’ I replied. ‘I’ll re-light them now. I should stay in here for the moment if I were you. I’ll probably be back in a few minutes.’

I re-lit the gas-jet on the wall outside their room, then made my way back along the length of the corridor. There was no sign of anyone there and, after re-lighting the gas-jet which I had seen the mystery figure extinguish, I made my way up the stairs to the auditorium and through to the front of the theatre. There, I found Holmes in the small office by the entrance lobby, in which we had earlier left our coats. He was busily rooting through a deep drawer in a desk, but looked up as I entered.

‘I do apologise for keeping you waiting for so long, Watson,’ he began, rising to his feet. ‘Mr Hardy has misplaced the keys. And now he has been drawn away by the arrival of a reporter from the Globe, who wishes to interview him about the forthcoming production. But, you are injured, old fellow!’ cried my friend all at once. ‘You have a cut on the side of your head! What ever have you been doing with yourself?’

‘I have had an encounter with the mystery persecutor,’ I replied.

‘What!’ cried Holmes. ‘Where?’

‘In the basement corridor.’

‘Is he still there?’

‘No. He got away.’

‘Sit down here,’ said Holmes, pushing a chair towards me, and seating himself on the edge of the desk. ‘Tell me precisely what happened, Watson.’

I quickly recounted my recent experiences.

‘How very interesting!’ said he as I finished, a thoughtful expression upon his face. ‘I shall just complete my search for the keys while you sit there, Watson, and then, if you are up to it, we can take another look in the basement and see if we can find any fresh traces of this mysterious visitor.’

‘I am up to it,’ I returned vehemently. ‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to get my hands on that villain!’

I watched as Holmes turned out the contents of the drawer. In truth, I was glad to sit there and do nothing for a few minutes. My adventure in the basement had left me somewhat shaken and my nerves felt a little raw. The cut on the side of my head had stopped bleeding, but my head had begun to throb painfully. As I watched my friend’s efforts to find the keys, I could see, also, through the little windows which overlooked the entrance lobby, the comings and goings of various of the theatre staff, as they bustled about their work. I wondered what they would say if they knew of my recent strange and unpleasant encounter in the basement. It was certainly difficult to imagine, in broad daylight and in the midst of all this determined activity aimed at getting everything ready for the opening of The Lavender Girl on Saturday night, that, moving stealthily and secretly in the darkness beneath the theatre, was someone who was equally determined to thwart that aim.

I was recalled from my reverie by a groan of disappointment from my friend. It was evident he could find no sign of the keys and, with a sigh, he stuffed everything back into the drawers again. ‘Mr Hardy assures me,’ said he, ‘that there are – or were, at any rate – two identical bunches of keys, the one being the duplicate of the other. But one of these bunches seems to have disappeared completely and the other has been recently mislaid somewhere in one of these offices. He says he saw it only the other day, but he cannot recall where. I may as well abandon logic and look anywhere,’ he continued in a dry tone, as he pulled open the door of a tall broom-cupboard. At the back of the cupboard was a row of hooks, upon which several coats were hanging, including our own, but otherwise the cupboard was empty. One by one, Holmes lifted the coats from the hooks and looked beneath them, until, with a sudden cry of triumph, he stood aside, a coat in his hand, and I saw that on one of the hooks hung a large rusty iron ring, upon which were two dozen or more large keys. ‘Success at last!’ cried he. ‘Of course, even when acting in an apparently illogical manner, one never really abandons logic. It is merely a question of casting one’s logical net a little wider. I remembered hearing a little metallic noise as we hung our coats up here earlier and I was not mistaken! Are you prepared to re-enter the fray, Watson?’

‘Perfectly so!’

‘Good man!’ cried my friend, as I rose to my feet. ‘Let us make haste, then, before the trail goes cold!’

We were destined to be delayed a little longer, however. We were about to leave the office, when Holmes put his hand on my arm and indicated that we should wait a moment. Hardy was approaching, across the lobby, shaking hands with a thin, middle-aged man, as they made their way towards the front doors. ‘It will be in the paper tomorrow evening, Mr Hardy!’ said this latter. ‘Have no doubt! A good paragraph from me will add two hundred to the audience!’

‘I am more anxious at present as to whether you will be washed away, Mr Edgecumbe!’ returned the theatre manager, opening the door for his visitor. Outside, as I could see, the rain was teeming down again.

‘Don’t you worry, Mr Hardy!’ returned the newspaperman, holding aloft an umbrella. ‘I am equipped for all eventualities, as you see!’ With a final farewell, he slipped out of the front door, put up his umbrella and disappeared into the pouring rain.

For a moment Hardy watched the heavy downpour, splashing up in fountains from the surface of the street, and had only just turned away from the doors when they were flung violently open again and a thin, wiry man, clad only in a light suit, burst in with a loud groan. He pulled off the bowler hat he was wearing and cast it to the floor.

‘What a day!’ cried he, shaking himself like a dog, to fling off the rain. ‘Ho, my liege!’ he continued in a jocular tone, as he caught sight of Hardy. ‘What news from Ghent? How fares our cousin’s quest to smite the sledded Polak?’

‘I don’t know about any of that, Jimmy,’ returned Hardy with a chuckle; ‘but there’s no news to speak of here. You’re the first to arrive, I believe.’

‘More fool me! I was in a coffee-shop down the road and thought I’d make a dash for it as the rain seemed to have let up. Of course, I’d got precisely halfway here when it came down again heavier than ever! My own quest had better be for a towel to apply to this idiotic head of mine.’ So saying, he picked up his hat and hurried on into the theatre.

Hardy turned away, but even as he did so the front doors were pushed open once again, this time by a large, well-built man with an upright military bearing. He was dressed in a heavy overcoat and top hat, and had a cape about his shoulders, from which water was streaming.

‘Wretched weather!’ said he, as he unfastened his cape and shook the water from it.

‘Good afternoon, Captain Trent,’ said Hardy. ‘Yes, it is certainly dismal. I am hoping it does not affect the turnout on Saturday evening. I have just had Edgecumbe of the Globe here. He is going to give us a paragraph in the paper tomorrow.’

‘Really? That is excellent news!’ cried the newcomer, as he took off his hat and tipped a rivulet of water from the brim. ‘I’ve just come from my club and I’ve been doing my best to drum up a bit of interest there, telling all the fellows that if they don’t get along to The Lavender Girl they’ll miss the best thing in London.’

Hardy chuckled. ‘That is good of you, Captain Trent, but I am not expecting a very large proportion of our audience to come from the clubs of Pall Mall!’

‘Perhaps not, but every little helps, y’know, Hardy. Is my wife anywhere about?’

‘No. She has not yet arrived. No doubt she will be here shortly.’

‘In that case I shall find myself a cup of tea. Is there a pot on the go anywhere?’

‘Mrs Abbott was boiling the kettle, the last time I saw her,’ returned Hardy. ‘If you look into the kitchen, I think you will find a fresh pot there.’

‘Excellent!’ cried Trent with feeling. ‘Perhaps I will find Count Laszlo there, too!’

‘No, he is not here yet. You will have the teapot to yourself!’

‘Really? I thought I saw his carriage outside. Well, I’ll see you in a minute, Hardy!’

The theatre manager turned in our direction as the other man disappeared through a doorway on the other side of the lobby. ‘Please excuse me for neglecting you, gentlemen,’ said he, as he entered the room. ‘There are always people coming and going in a place like this, I’m afraid, and every one of them invariably wants to speak to me. Ah! Good! I see you have found the keys!’

‘Indeed,’ said Holmes, ‘and we are now going to take another look in the basement.’

‘Very well. You will find me here, should you want me for any reason. And don’t forget,’ he added, putting his finger to his lips: ‘not a word to anyone!’

We descended to the basement corridor once more, and made our way along towards the other end. Holmes lit a lantern he had with him, and at the place where the corridor turned sharp right, he paused, and peered closely at the wall.

‘This is where you held your hands out in front of you until you felt the wall, I take it,’ said he, producing his lens from his pocket and squinting through it at a faint mark. ‘It is more than likely that our mystery man did the same, as he was fleeing ahead of you in the dark. Yes! See, Watson! Here are the two smudges you made on this dusty wall, and here is another, a little to the side. Hum! Let us proceed, then!’

We followed the corridor round the first corner and the second, and past the closed door of Webster’s dressing-room. A little further along, at the first of the two entrances to the costume-rooms, Holmes stopped and held up his hand. Within the dark chamber, a faint light was moving silently behind the rows of clothes. As we watched, a slim young woman emerged all at once from behind a row of dresses, a lantern in her hand. She stopped abruptly when she saw us and cried out, an expression of apprehension on her features.

‘Who are you?’ she asked, breathing heavily. ‘You made me jump!’

‘Miss Summers?’ enquired Holmes, at which the girl nodded her head. ‘I’m sorry if we startled you. We are friends of Mr Hardy’s. He said we might have a look round. It is fascinating to see all these different costumes, I must say.’

‘It might be fascinating, if you could find one to fit you,’ she returned in an ill-natured tone, as she pushed past us and made her way down the corridor. Holmes waited until her footsteps had quite faded away, then turned his lantern up and led the way into the costume store. We had gone scarcely three paces, however, when he stopped again. He handed the lantern to me, stooped down and picked up a scrap of black cloth, about a foot square, which lay at his feet. As he held it up, I saw with a thrill that it had had two small eye-holes cut into it, and short pieces of tape tied through holes at either side.

‘It is a mask!’ I cried.

‘It must be the mask of your assailant,’ said Holmes. ‘It confirms that this was the way he came. It is probable that in his headlong flight in the dark, the mask slipped and he could not see where he was going. He would therefore have pulled it off as he ran in here. No doubt it was knocked from his grasp as he pushed his way between these rows of costumes and, in the dark, he could not see where it had gone. Before we proceed any further, let us see if Hardy’s seamstresses can shed any light upon it.’

In the sewing-room, Holmes spread out our prize upon the cutting-table.

‘Have you ever seen this mask before?’ he asked.

The women gathered round to look, but they all shook their heads.

‘I should like to know who was behind that mask,’ said the small, dark-haired girl, Katharine, dabbing at the eye-holes with her needle.

‘It’s a very wide mask,’ observed Kathleen. ‘Even with a head as big as Jeanie’s, which is as big as you could want, you’d find it a bit on the large side.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Holmes with a chuckle; ‘but the spacing of the eye-holes is quite normal, as you see. Evidently, the mask has been made as wide as it has so that it will cover not merely the front of the face, but the sides, too.’

‘Well, you can see it’s nothing we’ve made, sir, anyway. It’s not been finished off properly. The edges are all fraying!’

‘Never mind “finished off”, Kathy,’ interjected the blonde-haired girl in a soft voice; ‘it’s not even been started properly. See how badly it’s been cut out! It’s all crooked and the eye-holes aren’t even level!’

‘It was made, then, I take it, by someone with little sewing skill,’ said Holmes.

‘None at all, sir, I should say.’

‘Do you recognise the material? It is some kind of velvet fabric, is it not?’

Kathleen stooped and looked under the table, where numerous rolls of cloth were stacked. After a moment, she pulled one out and unrolled it on the table-top.

‘It is this sort of thing,’ said she. ‘Yes, see!’ she cried, pointing to the uneven edge of the material. ‘Someone has cut the end off crookedly with a pair of scissors!’

‘I suppose it would have been a simple enough task for someone to come in here when you had all gone home and take a piece of this material?’ queried Holmes.

‘It would, sir. We might have noticed, if it was material we were using; but we haven’t used this black velvet for a little while now.’

Holmes thanked the needlewomen for their assistance, folded up the mask and put it in his pocket, and we returned to the costume store. ‘Still only five black robes here,’ he remarked, as we paused at the rail on which the monks’ robes were hanging. ‘The width of that roll of velvet, incidentally, was a yard, only about a third of which has been used to make the mask. Your assailant therefore retains his robe, and has ample material left to make a replacement mask. Somehow, I do not think we have yet seen the last of him!’

‘But where has he gone to?’

‘We may be able to shed some light on that question if we take another look at the disused cupboards at the back of the next room,’ returned my companion.

As he had done earlier, he subjected the floor in front of the middle cupboard to a close examination. When he rose to his feet again, there was a glint of excitement in his eye.

‘There are fresh marks here,’ said he, ‘marks which were certainly not here earlier. They were therefore made in the past hour and indubitably by your assailant. Now,’ he continued, taking out the large rusty-looking bunch of keys from his pocket, ‘let us try these, and hope for success!’

I held the lamp up by the door, as, for several minutes, my companion tried each of his keys in turn in the keyhole of the middle door.

‘It is possible, of course, that none of these keys will fit,’ said he as he paused for a moment. ‘The correct key may already have been removed. But, wait! Ah! There it is!’ There was a note of triumph in his voice, as one of the last remaining keys turned without difficulty in the lock. ‘Now to see what lies behind this old door!’

He took the lamp from my hand, and pulled at the door, which opened easily. There before us, rather than the shallow dusty cupboard I had expected to see, stretched a narrow corridor, which vanished into darkness. As my companion stepped forward with the lamp, however, and the darkness retreated before its light, I saw that at about a dozen feet from the door the corridor ended at a steep flight of stone steps which descended to a lower level. What might lie down these steps I could not imagine and I certainly could not see, for the foot of the stair was in utter blackness. In silence, and with every sense alert, I followed my companion down these steps to the bottom, which lay about fifteen feet below the level of the costume store. There, a passage went off to the left. This ran dead straight for nearly thirty feet and ended at the foot of another stone staircase, an exact duplicate of the one we had descended. Slowly, we mounted these steps, until, at the top, we found ourselves before an old and crumbling wooden door. For a moment, we stood and listened, but all about us was utter silence; then Holmes pushed open the door and we entered a bare chamber, festooned with dusty cobwebs. Directly opposite, another door stood ajar and, passing through it, we found ourselves in a long, narrow corridor, which stretched away into darkness in either direction.

‘We are now in the basement of the Southwark Palace,’ said my companion in a low voice. ‘The tunnel we have followed evidently passes deep beneath the narrow street which lies between the two theatres. It must have been constructed in Solomon Tanner’s day, to enable him to get quickly from the one theatre to the other, without having to go out into the street. Did you find any mention of it in that collection of historical cuttings you were reading?’

‘Not specifically. There were several references to the fact that Tanner was often on the stage of the Palace at the close of the programme there and on the stage of the Albion less than five minutes later, but no specific mention of the existence of a tunnel between the two theatres. But I had not finished reading through the scrapbook when I was interrupted. Perhaps it is mentioned on a page I have not yet read.’

‘Perhaps. But I observed that a leaf near the beginning of the scrapbook had been torn out. It is therefore possible that the tunnel was mentioned on that page, and that it was deliberately removed by our mystery villain to prevent anyone else learning the secret. He himself has evidently discovered it somehow, anyway. I think it is clear that he has used this tunnel to come and go whenever he wished, without being seen. You have done some fishing in your time, I believe, Watson?’

‘Fishing?’ I repeated, surprised at the question. ‘Certainly. When I was stationed with the Medical Department in Hampshire, some of my companions were keen anglers and we made many expeditions to the rivers there.’

‘And sometimes, perhaps, as you waded out into what appeared a shallow, rocky stream, you would find that the bottom was not as even as you had supposed and that the water was running over the top of your boots?’

‘What fisherman has not had that experience!’ I replied. ‘But why do you ask?’

‘Because that is the sensation I have with this case, Watson. I was asked to investigate a series of spiteful, but largely trivial, incidents. But as we have stepped into these muddy waters, they have revealed themselves to be considerably deeper than was at first apparent. Come! Let us return now to the Albion and see if we can determine what this villain was up to on his last visit there. Careful where you step! We must not leave any indication that we have been here, to warn him that we are on his trail!’

We retraced our steps, taking care to leave everything as we had found it, until we were once more in the basement corridor of the Albion, just outside the costume store.

‘You say that when you first saw the dark figure, he was twenty-odd feet this side of the room in which you were sitting?’ asked Holmes.

‘That’s right; making his way along in this direction, away from the room I was in.’

‘Could he have passed your door without your hearing?’

‘I doubt it. It was very quiet at the time and the door was not tightly closed.’

‘So, he was walking away from where you were, but had not passed your door. He must therefore have come from some point this side of Miss Ballantyne’s room.’

‘That must be so. Perhaps he had been in one of the other rooms. I had heard a door close, just before I looked out and saw him. It was that which first attracted my attention.’

We made our way along to Isabel Ballantyne’s dressing-room, then turned and surveyed the corridor from that standpoint, as I had done when I had first caught sight of the masked figure.

‘The place from which he had come must have been quite close to here,’ remarked Holmes. ‘But if he had been in the next dressing-room, that of Ludovic Xavier, I think you would have heard him in there. Perhaps the door he closed was one of the pair on the other side of the corridor, which, as Mr Hardy informed us, give access to the understage area.’

These doors were a dozen feet or so along the corridor from Miss Ballantyne’s room. Holmes opened one of them, then softly closed it again and looked at me enquiringly.

‘That certainly could have been what I heard,’ I remarked.

‘Then let us take a look inside!’

Behind the doors, a short flight of stone steps led downwards, for the floor of this chamber was at a lower level than the corridor. We descended the steps, lit a gas-jet on the wall, and looked about us. It was a very large chamber, which evidently extended the whole width of the stage above. The ceiling was much higher than those of the other rooms in the basement, and was composed of thick planks and sturdy crossbeams, which were supported upon stout wooden pillars, as broad as tree-trunks. Stacked about the flagstones of the floor, in between these pillars, were a great number of boxes, crates and wicker hampers.

‘We are now immediately beneath the stage,’ remarked my friend and, as if to confirm his words, the orchestra at that moment struck up a lively tune and dancing footsteps began tripping across the boards above us. ‘There is only one person dancing and it is evidently a woman,’ observed Holmes, ‘so it is probably Miss Ballantyne. The intention this afternoon, as I understand it, is to begin the rehearsals with the closing scene of the first act, during which Miss Ballantyne is alone on the stage.’ As he spoke, there came a pause in the tap-tap of the feet and we heard Miss Ballantyne’s voice, slightly muffled, but still distinct enough for us to make out the words of her song:

As she sang, Holmes walked quietly about, his keen eyes darting hither and thither, as he sought for some indication as to why the mystery figure might have been in this room. Presently, he stopped and examined some dust on the floor. Then, after a moment, he turned his gaze to the ceiling. It was dark, especially in the shadows of the crossbeams, but it appeared that directly above his head was a trap-door.

‘This is presumably how the genie is produced on stage, in Aladdin and similar exotic productions,’ said he to me in a low voice, as I joined him beneath the trap-door. ‘That equipment,’ he continued, indicating a disordered heap of pulleys and poles and ropes, some of which were attached to a wooden platform, ‘must be how the actor playing the genie is raised to the level of the stage, above. The actor stands on that platform, the pulleys are attached to those large hooks in the ceiling above us and the stage-hands pull him up, the ascent of the platform perhaps being guided by some structure made out of those poles. For that purpose, of course, the equipment would be positioned immediately beneath the trap-door, but at the moment it is dismantled and pushed to one side. Does anything strike you about the trap-door itself, Watson?’

I looked up. Above our heads, there came a pause in the singing and Miss Ballantyne resumed her skipping dance.

‘It is difficult to make it out,’ I said, ‘but there appear to be four bolts, two on each of the doors, which are placed sideways, so that the doors are secured to the underside of the stage. There is also a stout wooden bar, passing across both doors and presumably secured to the ceiling at either end. At one end of this wooden bar, a length of cord is attached, which passes along the ceiling, through a metal ring and down this pillar. What the point of that is, I cannot imagine.’

Holmes nodded his head, a thoughtful expression upon his face. ‘There is a little sawdust on the floor here,’ he remarked after a moment, indicating the flagstone at our feet. ‘It was that which caught my attention. The inference is that some work has recently been done on the trap-door, or its fixings; but it is difficult to see from here what that work might be. Ah!’ he cried all at once, as he glanced rapidly about the room. ‘I see there is a long ladder lying by the wall over there. If you would help me bring it here, Watson, I shall climb up and take a closer look!’

We put up the ladder directly beneath the trap-door, its top resting against one of the large crossbeams which supported the ceiling. Then, as I held it steady, Holmes climbed to the top. For several minutes, he examined the trap-door and the surrounding woodwork very closely. As he descended, his face was grave.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘It is as I suspected,’ said he. ‘None of the bolts is fastened, so that the only thing which is now preventing the trap-doors from falling open is that stout wooden bar which runs across beneath them. Under normal circumstances, that would be perfectly adequate, but the fixings of the wooden bar have been recently altered in a subtle and ingenious way. It is evident that it was originally screwed into the ceiling, but the screws which held it have been removed. The wood in the empty screw-holes – two at either end of the bar – is very clean and fresh-looking, indicating that the screws have only recently been removed. The bar is now held in place by two metal brackets, which are screwed into the boards of the ceiling at either side of the trap-door. The brackets are fixed and secure, but the bar itself is not. It can slide along within the brackets, or be pulled out of them altogether, in which case nothing would then be supporting the trap-doors and they would at once fall open. At one end of the wooden bar is a metal ring, to which a length of cord has been attached, as you observed. This cord, as you remarked, passes along the ceiling, through another metal ring and so down to a hook on this wooden pillar, around which the end of it is wound.’

‘What does it mean?’ I asked, as there came a pause in Miss Ballantyne’s dancing and she returned to the song, very loud and clear, immediately overhead.

‘I’m very much afraid it means murder, Watson,’ returned Holmes in a quiet voice.

‘Murder!’ I cried in horror. ‘Surely you are mistaken! If some malevolent person wishes to delay the production of this play, or even to destroy it altogether, there must be a thousand subtle ways he could achieve his end without resorting to such violence. I simply cannot believe that in these circumstances anyone would contemplate such a dreadful crime!’

‘Nevertheless, that is what the evidence indicates, Watson. If that trap-door falls open, anyone standing upon it will plunge on to these flagstones and I cannot think that anyone could survive such a fall. I agree that it would mark a considerable increase in violence compared with what has gone before, but that does not make it impossible. The matter is not so straightforward as you perhaps suppose. But, come! Let us put the ladder away, leave everything down here as we found it and see what is happening upstairs!’

When we returned to the auditorium, Isabel Ballantyne had completed her rehearsal, and the stage was occupied by the dozen or so young men and women of the chorus, singing and dancing with energy and enthusiasm. Richard Hudson Hardy was personally directing the proceedings from the front of the stalls, standing with the script in his hand and shouting out instructions from time to time. A couple of rows further back, Miss Ballantyne was now sitting with her husband and Jimmy Webster, watching the progress of the rehearsal. Half a dozen rows behind them, a powerful-looking man, with dark hair and moustache, and a dark, sallow face, was sitting, smoking a cigar. For some time we stood at the side of the auditorium, watching the rehearsal, then Holmes plucked my sleeve.

‘We have seen all that is necessary for the moment,’ said he. ‘I doubt that Mr Hardy would welcome an interruption now, so I shall leave him a note in his office.’

As we approached the doors at the back of the auditorium, they were pushed open and a middle-aged man entered, who stared at us for a moment. He was what some might describe as ‘well-groomed’, but there was an affectation about both his appearance and his manner which I did not much care for.

‘Hello!’ said he in an arch tone, staring at us as he spoke. ‘Gentlemen of the press!’

Holmes shook his head. ‘Friends of Mr Hudson Hardy’s,’ said he.

‘Really?’ returned the other man. ‘I was not aware that he had any!’ Then he turned away from us and passed on into the auditorium without another word.

‘What a rude, offensive man!’ I remarked, as we made our way along to Hardy’s office.

Holmes laughed, in that odd noiseless way which was peculiar to him. ‘I think we may assume that that was Ludovic Xavier,’ said he.

In the office, Holmes wrote a brief note for Hardy, and picked up a large manila envelope from the desk, which contained, he informed me, a copy of the script of The Lavender Girl and notes he had made earlier from the record of rehearsals.

Outside, the daylight had now gone and the street lamps were lit, casting their weak, gloomy light upon the many puddles on the surface of the road. The rain had stopped falling, but the night was a bitterly cold one and I shivered as I stood for a moment on the pavement outside the theatre, while my companion paced up and down, looking about him. It was a dismal enough prospect. The road was still busy, with a constant stream of carts and wagons passing by, throwing up cascades of water and mud from the road as they did so. After a moment, I followed Holmes to the corner of the theatre, where he was looking into the little street which lay between the Albion and the blackened ruin of the Palace. It was a short cul-de-sac in which there was nothing to be seen but the sides of the two theatres and, at the end, a tall, blank wall, which was evidently the back of some other building.

‘The underground corridor we followed must pass beneath this little street,’ remarked my companion in a thoughtful tone. Then, instructing me to wait for him, he crossed to the other side of the cul-de-sac and set off along the main road, passing by the front of the Palace. Presently, when he had gone perhaps fifty or sixty yards, he abruptly stopped, turned on his heel and returned to where I was standing. As he passed, he gestured for me to follow him, and we walked the same distance in the opposite direction. I observed as we did so that he kept glancing at the other side of the road.

‘Are you looking for anything in particular?’ I asked at length.

‘A post office or tobacconist’s shop,’ he replied.

‘You should have told me,’ said I in surprise. ‘I have both tobacco and stamps in my pocket. You are welcome to help yourself, Holmes.’

‘I do not require either tobacco or stamps, Watson,’ returned my companion. ‘I have some of my own. Thank you for the offer all the same.’

Then, without further explanation, he whistled for a cab and within a minute we were rattling along towards Waterloo Bridge, just as the rain began to fall heavily once more.

V

For a long time that evening, my companion sat silently curled up in his chair by the fire, puffing away at his pipe, and poring over the script of The Lavender Girl and the notes he had made earlier. I did not question him on the matter. I knew that he disliked being questioned about a case upon which he was still working and that he would enlighten me of his own accord when he was ready to do so. I occupied myself, therefore, in writing up my own journal and in attempting to bring a little order to my somewhat chaotic records of the previous year’s experiences. But my thoughts kept wandering from the old cases on the table before me, to ponder the present singular business at the Albion Theatre. My association with Sherlock Holmes had led me over the years into some very strange affairs, in unlikely places, but none, surely, was more bizarre than our present investigation, and I returned again and again in perplexity to the question of what it all might mean. Outside our chambers, the wind had risen, hurling rain and hail against our windows with ferocious violence, and moaning like an angry beast in the chimney. As I reflected upon Hardy’s fear that the weather might affect the attendance at the opening night of The Lavender Girl, I wondered again who the mysterious enemy might be who appeared so determined to wreck the production and to what lengths such a person might go. Holmes’s suggestion that murder was planned struck me again as utterly beyond belief, and yet it could not be denied that the way the fixings of the trap-door had been interfered with could mean nothing else. At about nine o’clock, my meandering thoughts were abruptly interrupted, when, scarcely audible above the howl of the elements, there came a sudden sharp peal at the bell.

‘You are not expecting anyone?’ asked Holmes, looking up from his papers.

‘Not I.’

‘No doubt it is some friend of Mrs Hudson’s, then,’ said he, and returned to his study.

A moment later, however, the door of our sitting-room was opened and I looked up in surprise as our landlady ushered in a broad-chested, powerful-looking man, with dark, sallow features and a large dark moustache. I recognised him at once as the man I had observed watching the rehearsal in Hardy’s Theatre, earlier that day.

‘Count Laszlo of Sipolia,’ read Mrs Hudson from the card in her hand.

‘It is a wild night to be abroad, Count Laszlo!’ said Holmes, putting down his papers and rising to his feet. ‘Pray, take a seat!’

Our visitor shook his head. ‘If it is all the same to you, I will remain standing,’ he returned. ‘I do not expect to be here very long. I regret the lateness of this visit, but I was unable to cancel my earlier engagements and I was determined to see you this evening. I understand,’ he continued after a moment, ‘that Mr Richard Hudson Hardy has asked you to look into certain matters for him. That is so, is it not?’ he queried, as Holmes did not reply.

‘May I enquire who gave you this information?’ asked Holmes.

‘Hardy himself did. I observed you in the theatre this afternoon and later asked him who you were. He told me that he had engaged you this morning.’

‘If Mr Hardy has elected to give you that information, you must suppose that it is true,’ said Holmes. ‘I cannot see that there is anything I can add to the matter. I do not understand what it is you expect me to say.’

‘I have come here to ask you what you have learnt – if anything – since you have been looking into the matter.’

Holmes raised an eyebrow. ‘You must surely realise, Count Laszlo,’ he replied, ‘that I am not at liberty to answer that question, even supposing for a moment that I wished to do so. Anything I learn in the course of my professional work is a matter of the strictest confidence between my client and myself. Your question is therefore a most improper one and I am surprised at your even thinking to ask it. It is an offence at law in this country, Count Laszlo, to seek to learn confidential matters with which one has no business.’

A look of impatience and annoyance crossed the nobleman’s face. ‘Not my business?’ cried he. ‘How dare you speak so! Quite apart from any other consideration, I have invested a large amount of money in Mr Hardy’s present production. Anything which might affect that production, and my investment in it, is therefore certainly my business.’

‘What your interest in the matter may be is for you to judge, Count Laszlo. For myself, my duty is clear. If I am indeed retained by Mr Hardy, it is to look into certain matters and report back to him. I am not retained to retail his private business to anyone who happens to drop by of an evening.’

‘Bah! You are making a mistake, Mr Holmes, to trifle with me in this way!’

‘I assure you it is no trifling matter to me,’ returned Holmes.

‘And nor to me, sir! I must insist upon your answering my questions!’

‘And I must insist upon declining. May I make a suggestion?’

‘What is it?’

‘That if there is anything you wish to know, you put your questions to Mr Hardy.’

‘But he tells me he knows nothing! He says that you have not yet reported to him!’

‘Well, well. No doubt I shall do so within the next few days, if I have anything to report. You can ask him again then.’

‘You refuse to tell me anything?’

‘It is not a matter of refusal, Count Laszlo; the questions you are asking are quite improper and as such are not questions which it is in my power either to refuse or allow. Indeed, it may be that I am guilty of a professional lapse by even standing here, speaking to you at all.’

‘Bah!’ cried our visitor again. ‘You have not heard the last of me, Mr Holmes! This matter is not closed!’

‘But I regret, Count Laszlo, that this interview must be.’

With a look of anger in his eye, our visitor thereupon clapped his hat on his head and left the room without another word. A moment later, I heard the front door slam.

‘What a modest, unassuming gentleman Count Laszlo is!’ remarked Holmes with a chuckle, as he resumed his seat by the fire. ‘If he would but exercise a little patience, he will discover soon enough what I have learnt! As I remarked earlier, Watson, we are wading in deeper waters than was at first apparent!’

VI

Holmes was out all the following morning, but returned at lunch-time. He appeared in good spirits and, as he helped himself to bread and cheese, he described his morning to me.

‘I have been endeavouring to interest the authorities at Scotland Yard in our little investigation,’ said he. ‘It has been a decidedly uphill task, somewhat, I imagine, like trying to interest a costermonger in the subtleties of medieval Latin. I was passed in turn from one official to another, until I ended up at length with Inspector Athelney Jones. I don’t believe you have met Jones, Watson. It is a pleasure you will have this afternoon, should you care to accompany us. He is a large, burly man. Indeed, so stout is he that I have wondered sometimes if his corpulence was not perhaps designed by a benevolent Nature to compensate for his intellect, which tends in the opposite direction. Still, on this occasion he did eventually manage to grasp the relevant fact, that in my opinion an attempt at murder is in prospect, which may well succeed unless we act to prevent it. In short, he has agreed to accompany me to Hardy’s Theatre this afternoon and observe things for himself. I rather fancy that the drama off stage will prove every bit as compelling as that on stage. Will you come?’

‘Nothing could prevent it!’

‘Excellent! I may require you to hold Inspector Jones in check. He has a tendency to approach matters like a bull at a gate, and if by his lack of subtlety he reveals our intentions too soon it could be fatal to our plans. If our murderer is frightened off, we may lose the chance of making an arrest.’

‘You are confident that he will make his attempt today?’

‘It must be so. The full dress-rehearsal takes place this evening. Provided it goes acceptably well, many of the company will not come to the theatre at all tomorrow and the day after that will be opening night. Tonight, then, we may be certain, is the moment that hooded villain has planned for his diabolical scheme.’

‘We must prevent this monstrous crime at all costs!’ I cried.

‘Certainly we must,’ agreed my friend. ‘That is, of course, the paramount consideration. Nevertheless, there are others.’

‘I cannot think of any.’

‘There is the consideration, for a start, of apprehending the villain.’

‘Surely, if we prevent the crime, it will be by apprehending the villain.’

‘Not necessarily. If he realises we have discovered the truth, he will not act. Thus, although we should have prevented the crime, we would have no grounds for an arrest. The villain might be able to provide some perfectly plausible explanation of his actions and deny all knowledge of the deadly trap-door. If so, it would probably be impossible to prove that he was not telling the truth.’

‘We should have prevented his mischief, anyway.’

‘That is true, but he may find some other way to achieve his end. In my experience, those with murder in their heart rarely abandon their plans after the first setback. We must, therefore, seize the villain in the very act of carrying out his monstrous design, at the point when it will be utterly impossible for him to protest his innocence. It is for this reason that we must be in position in good time. I am afraid, therefore, that our vigil is likely to be a long and tedious one. There will be no light by which we might read and we shall have to remain in complete silence. Taken all in all, it may be that our chief occupation will be in preventing Inspector Jones from falling asleep.’

We took a cab to Scotland Yard shortly after lunch, from where Inspector Jones accompanied us to the theatre. He was, as Holmes had described, a large, burly and plethoric man, but with a pair of very keen and twinkling eyes, which had the appearance of spying furtively upon the world from behind his puffy red cheeks. As we travelled to Hardy’s Theatre, he asked numerous questions concerning the business that was taking us there, to all of which Sherlock Holmes gave patient and detailed answers.

‘So,’ said the policeman at length, in a husky, wheezy voice, ‘let us sum the matter up. Some person has, it seems, been making a nuisance of himself and now, if your theory is to be believed, Mr Holmes, this same person intends to commit murder.’

‘That is correct.’

‘If you don’t mind my pointing it out,’ remarked Jones after a moment, in a portentous tone, ‘it seems something of an increase in violence, I must say, to pass from pushing people over and turning gas-taps off, to plotting a murder.’

‘I quite agree, but it is the only conclusion possible from the care with which the trap-door in the stage has been prepared.’

‘Well, I shall have a look at it when we get there and give you my opinion.’

‘By all means.’

At the theatre, we found Hardy in his office, sorting through piles of papers on his desk. He had the air of one with much work to do and little time to do it in, and hardly seemed to be listening when Holmes explained that we wished to take another look in the basement, but would probably not stay long. I had the impression that Inspector Jones was about to hold forth on some topic or other to the theatre manager, but Holmes ushered him along the corridor.

‘I do not want to tell Hardy our true purpose in being here,’ said he, as we descended the stairs to the basement. ‘I am not confident that his discretion can be relied upon, especially in his present distracted state of mind.’

In the chamber beneath the stage, we lit the gas and made a careful examination of every alcove and corner, until we were satisfied that there could be no one hiding there. Then Holmes put up the ladder immediately beneath the trap-door, and invited Jones to clamber up and take a look for himself.

‘As you can see,’ said Holmes, when the policeman had taken his burly frame to the very top of the ladder, ‘the safety-bolts are all unfastened. If you now examine the wooden bar, to which the cord is attached, you will observe that the four screws which secured it to the ceiling have been removed. It is now held in place only by the two brackets, which have been recently added. Careful, Inspector! If it slips from the brackets, it will fall and the trap-door will at once drop open!’

‘I don’t need you to tell me about screws and brackets, Mr Holmes,’ returned Jones in a husky voice. ‘I’ve seen one or two screws in my time, I can tell you. What we have to establish is why these changes have been made.’

‘Surely it is clear,’ returned Holmes in an impatient tone. ‘Dr Watson saw the mystery figure in this part of the basement. It is evident that he intends to pull out the wooden bar by tugging on this cord, in which case anyone standing up there would undoubtedly fall on to these flags and would almost certainly be killed.’

‘Well,’ said Jones as he slowly descended the ladder; ‘that is your theory, anyway, Mr Holmes.’

‘What else do you suggest?’

‘I am not much of a one for theories,’ replied the policeman, in an annoyingly complacent tone, ‘but I can see flaws in other people’s. How, for a start, can the murderer know that anyone will obligingly stand on the trap-door just when he wishes them to?’

‘Because he has observed where the various actors stood at the rehearsals.’

Jones snorted. ‘Just because an actor stands in a place once doesn’t mean he will stand there again,’ said he dismissively.

‘But it does,’ Holmes persisted. ‘There are marks painted on the stage, to guide the actors, so that they will be in approximately the same position at each performance.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Well, it is the case, I assure you.’

‘Mind you,’ said the policeman, ‘I have never seen any play more than once, so I wouldn’t know if the actors occupied the same positions on different nights or not. Once is quite enough for me, I always say.’

‘I am sure you do; but may we return to the matter in hand?’

‘The matter in hand, as I see it,’ returned Jones, looking up at the ceiling, ‘is that trap-door. In my opinion, there is something decidedly suspect about it. But what makes you so sure that murder is intended?’

‘Simply because I think it more than likely that anyone falling through the trap on to this hard floor would break his neck. Would you not agree?’

‘Possibly,’ replied the policeman in a cautious tone. ‘Rather than rushing into theories, I prefer to wait and see what happens.’

‘We are not likely to see anything if we don’t conceal ourselves soon,’ said Holmes with a glance at his watch. ‘Let us put the ladder away, dowse the light, and make ourselves somewhat less visible!’

In a few moments, we had taken up our position behind a large stack of crates, packed with boots and shoes of all shapes and sizes. Above our heads, someone was sweeping the stage, but, save that soft, rhythmic sound, the whole theatre was in perfect silence. Crouching on the floor in that dark room, I found myself reflecting on the events that had brought us there. If Holmes was correct – and I could not doubt that he was – a most devilish plot was about to reach its climax. This thought appalled me beyond measure. How could anyone plan such a cruel and heartless crime? I had seen vicious fighting during my army service in India; I had witnessed death, both of friend and foe; but this cold, calculated plotting of murder, by someone probably known to the intended victim, was surely of another order of cruelty altogether. Merely to contemplate it made the hairs rise on the back of my neck and my blood run cold. And what, besides, could be the purpose of so horrible a crime? For some time, I considered the matter from every angle, but could reach no definite conclusion.

After a while – perhaps forty-five minutes, although it was difficult to judge the passage of time with any accuracy – there came the sound of footsteps, and several distinct voices, from the stage above us. Shortly afterwards, I heard someone playing what sounded like an oboe and the sound of other instruments being tuned up. The general hubbub gradually increased, over the course of half an hour or so, and many footsteps and gay voices passed by in the basement corridor outside our room. Then, at length, the noise in the basement died away, as that on the stage above us increased, and it was evident that the rehearsal was about to begin.

A few minutes later, there came a moment or two of relative silence, during which I heard what was probably Hardy’s voice, then the orchestra struck up what I took to be the overture and soon the rehearsal was in full flow. The music, the singing and the dancing seemed very loud in our chamber, but they were punctuated at regular intervals by quieter passages, when the characters in the play were speaking. During these interludes, although the voices of the actors came to my ears clear enough, I found it impossible to pick out their words. For perhaps another forty-five minutes, I followed the progress of the first act of the play, then, after a particularly rousing song, there came the sound of a general exodus from the stage. I also heard odd, isolated footsteps in the passage outside our room, but most of those who had left the stage appeared to have remained upstairs, no doubt watching the progress of the rehearsal from the wings. All at once, I realised that I was holding myself very tense. Intuitively, I think I knew that if the mystery figure were going to put in an appearance at all, it would probably be in the next few minutes.

Scarcely had this thought crossed my mind when I heard the door of our chamber open softly. For a brief moment, a flash of dim light from the lamp in the corridor lit up the ceiling, then vanished, as the door was closed again. Every nerve in my body tensed and I longed to see who had entered, but I dared not make any sudden movement, lest I give away our presence. Above our heads, the first act of The Lavender Girl was continuing with a quiet scene. A moment later, I heard a match being struck, somewhere on the other side of the crates of boots, then a hiss, as the gas-jet by the door was lit. For a moment, the light flared up, casting strange black shadows on to the walls of the room, then the gas-tap was evidently turned right down, for the illumination subsided to a dull glow.

I had positioned myself so that by leaning out sideways I should be able to see round the side of a large crate. Slowly now, and with infinite care, I inched my head and shoulders to the side in that direction. Near the centre of the room, beneath the trap-door and facing away from me, stood the figure I had encountered in the corridor the previous day. Though I could make out little more than a silhouette against the dim light of the lamp beyond, there could be no mistaking that long robe and large, enveloping hood. Beside me, Inspector Jones was peering intently through the narrow gap between two boxes and, beyond him, Holmes was craning over the top of a wicker hamper.

From above us now came an increase in the noise and I judged that the whole of the chorus had returned to the stage. This passage was brief, however, ending with a rousing flourish from the orchestra. Then came softer music, which I recognised from the day before, and I realised that the rehearsal had almost reached the end of the first act. A moment later, Isabel Ballantyne began her song and her dance across the stage to the fatal trap-door. The hooded figure looked up, clearly following the tap-tap of her footsteps, and reached out a white hand to where the end of the cord was coiled round the hook on the wooden pillar. Slowly, without a sound, he uncoiled it and held it looped in his hand. Miss Ballantyne had paused in her dance now and was, I reckoned, standing upon the trap-door itself.

All at once, with a suddenness that startled me, there came an abrupt scraping noise from beside me. Inspector Jones, in craning forward, had evidently leaned too heavily upon the box in front of him, which had abruptly given way and had slipped forward across the floor. The hooded figure looked round sharply in our direction. Within the hood, nothing was visible but unfathomable blackness. At that instant, Sherlock Holmes stood up and stepped forward.

‘I should not pull that rope if I were you,’ said he in a clear firm voice.

The figure started visibly. Then, as Jones and I also stood up, he took a quick pace backwards and surveyed us all. An instant later, he had thrust his free hand into a pocket in the robe and brought out a large revolver.

‘You!’ said he to me in a deep, growling voice, directing the pistol in my direction. ‘Get over there with the others!’ Then, as I took a pace sideways, he glanced up at the trap-door above him. Isabel Ballantyne had almost reached the end of the verse and would at any moment dance away from where she stood.

‘Don’t be a fool!’ cried Jones. ‘If you pull that rope, and she falls, you’ll hang for it.’

‘Quiet!’ cried the dark figure in a loud, angry tone, raising his pistol and pointing it at the policeman’s face. Then, as the music above us reached a crescendo, his grip on the cord tightened and, stepping backwards, he gave it a firm tug. The cord went taut, Inspector Jones cried out and I looked up at the trap-door with a hollow feeling in my stomach. But nothing happened. The dark figure grunted with surprise and anger, looked up and pulled hard on the cord again. In the split second that his attention was concentrated upon the trap-door, Sherlock Holmes sprang forward, like a tiger upon its prey, and seized the hand holding the revolver in both of his, forcing it up and back.

His adversary at once released his hold on the cord and brought his free hand down upon Holmes’s throat, his fingers closing in a powerful grip. But Jones and I sprang forward and threw our weight into the struggle. Our enemy was a very powerful man, of that there could be no doubt, but between the three of us we forced him off his feet and down to the floor. In another moment, Holmes had wrestled the gun from his grasp and Jones had managed to clap a pair of handcuffs upon his wrists. At that very moment, as we struggled to regain our breath, the door from the corridor was flung back with a crash. In the open doorway at the top of the steps stood Count Laszlo of Sipolia, a pistol held rock-steady in his hand.

‘What is happening here?’ he demanded in a fierce voice. ‘Hah!’ he cried, as he caught sight of our prisoner on the floor. ‘I thought as much! Stand aside, and I will put a bullet in that blackguard’s heart!’

Inspector Jones rose quickly to his feet.

‘I am a police officer,’ said he in a voice of authority, ‘and I must ask you, sir, to put that firearm away. The situation is under control, and no assistance from the public is required.’

‘More’s the pity!’ said the Count. ‘I had hoped to catch the villain alone and to deal with him myself.’ With an air of reluctance, he thrust his revolver deep into his overcoat pocket. ‘If any harm had come to Isabel Ballantyne, I can assure you that this man would never have left the theatre alive!’

He was interrupted as a stream of the most foul oaths and vicious abuse poured from the lips of our prisoner, who lay, breathing heavily, upon the floor. ‘You infernal, interfering busybody!’ he cried at last at Sherlock Holmes, in a voice which was wild with anger. ‘Damn you!’

‘Now, now,’ returned Holmes in a calm voice, as he adjusted his collar. ‘You know it is every man’s solemn duty to interfere and be a busybody if he knows that murder is planned!’ Then he leaned down and, in one swift movement, pulled away the velvet mask, to reveal the features of Captain William Trent, so twisted with rage as to be almost unrecognisable.

VII

‘It is evident,’ said Sherlock Holmes, as we sat either side of a blazing fire in our rooms in Baker Street, later that evening, ‘that for some time Trent had been determined to rid himself of his wife. He would have realised, however, that should she meet her death in sudden and suspicious circumstances, he would inevitably be a chief suspect in the eyes of the authorities. He therefore conceived a scheme in which a series of malevolent actions would appear to be directed at Richard Hudson Hardy’s theatre company in general – for which no suspicion could possibly attach to him, he being one of the financial sponsors of the company – which would culminate, however, with the murder of his wife.’

‘But if The Lavender Girl had been cancelled, Trent stood to lose a large amount of money,’ I protested.

‘Perhaps so; but that was evidently of less importance to him than being rid of his wife. In any case, it is not certain that Miss Ballantyne’s death would necessarily have entailed the cancellation of The Lavender Girl. It would, of course, have been postponed, but it might have opened later, with Lydia Summers, or someone else, in the leading role.’

‘I suppose it might,’ I conceded; ‘although I doubt if anyone else could have adequately replaced Isabel Ballantyne. Why on earth,’ I cried, as I reflected upon this possibility, ‘would anyone wish to be rid of a woman of such charm and such gifts?’

Holmes chuckled. ‘As I have had occasion to mention to you once or twice before, my dear fellow,’ replied he in a tone of amusement, ‘you must never let your admiration for the fair sex affect your assessment of a case! You perceive Isabel Ballantyne only from a distance, as it were, in the form in which she presents herself to the public. Perhaps upon closer acquaintance she appears somewhat less charming and gifted. Who knows? Perhaps she had an annoying habit of singing whenever her husband wished to discuss the movement of prices on the Stock Exchange, or perhaps she fell asleep and snored each time he began to describe the hunting of tigers in India. We cannot say. I am hopeful that Count Laszlo might be able to enlighten us on that side of things. He promised he would call by this evening on his way home.’

‘Did you ever suspect that Trent was behind all that had happened?’

‘I was certain of it.’

‘What! How on earth could you know? After all, Miss Ballantyne herself had described to us how her husband had tried to persuade her to leave the production.’

‘Yes, the cunning devil! It is evident he made the suggestion in the full and certain knowledge that his wife would never agree to it. But, to describe to you how I came to perceive the truth: when first we went down to the Albion yesterday, I suspected no one. The data with which I had been supplied were too meagre for me to form any meaningful suspicions, and it would have been a capital mistake to attempt to do so. Whilst we were there, however, an incident occurred which led me to know, with almost complete certainty, that Captain Trent was responsible for what had been happening at the theatre. This incident occurred after we had come up from the basement for the first time. Whilst down there, I had made a few measurements, of footprints, marks on the door-frame and so on, as you will no doubt recall.’

‘Certainly.’

‘A few simple calculations from those measurements enabled me to form a mental image of the man who had left those traces, an image which was subsequently confirmed, as to height at least, by the mark your assailant left upon the corridor wall as he fled, which was slightly higher than the marks you had made. This image, Watson, was exactly matched by a man who walked in at the front door of the theatre just a short time later. That man was Captain William Trent.’

‘But there must be thousands of men in London who are approximately of the same height and build as Trent.’

‘There may well be; but just how many of those thousands are intimately connected with Hardy’s Theatre? Besides, Trent would have been drawn to my attention in any case because of the incident to which I alluded.’

‘What was that?’

‘He entered the theatre soaking wet.’

‘I may be obtuse,’ I remarked, ‘but I can see no significance whatever in that observation, Holmes. Why, it was pouring with rain at the time! Anyone would have been wet! If you recall, Jimmy Webster arrived at the theatre in precisely the same condition.’

‘That is so; but Webster had come on foot, he informed us, from a coffee-shop some distance away. Whether true or not, his account was at least plausible. Captain Trent offered no such explanation. He had, he said, come directly from his club. He must, then, have come in a cab. But if so, why was he so wet? At the front of Hardy’s Theatre is a large glass canopy, which extends across the width of the pavement. Anyone alighting from a cab there could step almost directly under the canopy and thus practically avoid the rain altogether. Clearly, then, Trent had not alighted from his cab outside the front of the theatre just before we saw him, despite the impression that he tried to give. It was evident he had walked from further afield, but there was no clue at that time as to where he might have come from. The only innocent explanation which seemed likely was that he had alighted early from his cab in order to call at a tobacconist’s shop or a post office, or somewhere similar. When I surveyed the area later, however, I established that there was no shop of that sort nearby. In the meantime, you and I had discovered the old tunnel which runs between the Albion and the Palace, and it was clear that anyone using it – specifically, the mystery persecutor of Hardy’s company – would have emerged into the daylight from the ruined Palace. At the side of the Palace, in the short cul-de-sac between the two theatres, is a little side-door which seemed to me the most likely exit from the building, and the distance from that door to the front of the Albion would be just sufficient for a man to get caught in a sudden downpour and arrive at the Albion soaking wet. I have little doubt that Hardy’s missing bunch of keys will be found in Captain Trent’s possession and little doubt, either, that one of the keys upon it will fit the side-door of the Palace.

‘Of course, if Trent were behind the recent incidents, as I was compelled to believe, then the whole matter was cast in a somewhat different light. Hardy had assumed that the actions of the anonymous miscreant were designed to wreck his production, so that it would not be a success and would not run for long, or might possibly not even open at all. But this motive could not apply to Trent, one of three men who stood to lose money if The Lavender Girl were not a success and whose own wife was the leading lady in the production. It seemed to me possible, then, that the whole series of fairly trivial incidents might be nothing more nor less than an elaborate blind, to distract attention from Trent’s true aim. What this might be, I could not at first conceive; but when – thanks to your alertness, old fellow! – we learnt that he had been in the chamber under the stage and discovered that the trap-door there had been tampered with in an elaborate and highly ingenious manner, I felt sure we had discovered the kernel of his evil scheme. Anyone falling through that trap-door to the flagstones below would surely break his neck. This little piece of malice was therefore on an altogether higher plane of devilry than the spiteful tricks which had gone before. Here, surely, then, was the goal towards which that callous villain had been working.

‘But if it was Trent’s intention to murder someone, who might that someone be? In the absence of any other obvious motive, his wife – despite all those charms and gifts which have impressed you so greatly – seemed to me the likeliest candidate. Why else would Trent have gone to such lengths to disguise his true intentions? By an examination of the script, I was able to establish that Isabel Ballantyne spent some parts of the play alone on the stage, which was not the case for any of the other characters. Moreover, as you and I observed yesterday afternoon, for some time at the end of the first act she passed over, or stood upon, the trap-door itself. I was convinced, then, that this was when the attempt would be made upon her life. But there is the bell! This may well be our visitor!’

A moment later, our landlady announced Count Laszlo of Sipolia and that broad, powerful-looking figure was shown into the room. I pulled a chair up to the fire for him and, having rubbed his hands together in the warmth for a few moments, he got quickly down to business.

‘First of all,’ said he, ‘I must apologise most profoundly for my conduct at our interview yesterday. You were quite correct. I had no right to ask the questions I did, and you had every right not to answer them. But you must understand, gentlemen, that my position was an extremely difficult one. I have had very grave suspicions for some time as to what might be afoot, but have had no proof of these suspicions. Naturally, I was keen to know if you had discovered anything which might have tended to confirm or refute my suspicions. But, just as you, who had been retained by Miss Ballantyne and Mr Hardy, could not speak freely to me of what you had learnt, so I, who had the most terrible suspicions but no proof, could scarcely speak freely of the matter to you, a perfect stranger to me. I did not doubt your integrity; but I had no way of judging your competence. For all I could tell to the contrary, you might have discovered nothing at all, or you might have discovered some vital fact and, not suspecting Trent’s involvement, have spoken of it in front of him. All of this left me in a perfect agony of indecision.’

‘Did you reach any conclusion, as a result of our interview?’

‘I judged – forgive me – that you had discovered nothing of significance, but were reluctant to admit it. I therefore determined that I should have to act alone. As it turned out, it appears I would have been too late to prevent that devil murdering Miss Ballantyne. In which case, I would have shot him dead.’

‘You would have hanged for it,’ remarked Holmes, in a matter-of-fact voice.

‘If so, then your intervention in this business has saved not one life, but three.’

‘How came you to be so intimately involved in the matter?’ asked Holmes; ‘and what caused the suspicions you have spoken of?’

‘I will tell you,’ said Count Laszlo. ‘As you may be aware, I have followed Isabel Ballantyne’s career with very great interest and appreciation, and have known her personally for many years. Indeed, I will admit to you, gentlemen, what it might embarrass me to admit before a larger audience, that I harboured hopes in the past that she would one day do me the honour of consenting to be my wife. You may consider such a hope absurd, or impertinent, but nevertheless, that was the case. When, however, Captain Trent appeared upon the scene, and conducted his courtship of Miss Ballantyne with the ruthlessness and dispatch with which he no doubt conducted his tiger-hunts, I bore him no ill-will. Indeed, I wished him well, for it appeared, for a time at least, that he had achieved what no one else had managed, including, I regret to say, myself, which is that he seemed to have made Miss Ballantyne happy. After a while, however – for I still saw them from time to time, although not so frequently as before their marriage – it seemed to me that this was no longer so. Indeed, to one who knew her of old, it was apparent that Isabel was profoundly unhappy. This, as you will imagine, caused me great concern. Then, quite by chance, information came my way which suggested that Trent was being despicably cruel to his wife, both mentally and physically. At first I was shocked at this and could not believe it was really true; but further information which reached me confirmed the suggestion beyond doubt.

‘I suppose the fact that I had become anxious about the situation opened my ears a little and gossip which would have previously quite passed me by began now to catch my attention, and contribute to the ugly picture which was forming in my mind. It must have been something of the sort, for I assure you that I did not go out of my way to discover things, or to interfere in what was not my business; but, little by little, further intelligence relating to Trent came my way: that he had been engaged to be married once before, whilst in India, and that the engagement had been broken off by his fiancée when certain facts about his conduct had come to light; that he had come very close to being charged with murder over the death of another man during a tiger-hunt; that he was not quite so wealthy as he liked people to believe; and that shortly before his whirlwind courtship of Miss Ballantyne he had spoken to acquaintances of how great he believed her own wealth to be.

‘I imagine you can see now the picture that formed in my mind: of a ruthless, reckless man, who had pursued Miss Ballantyne chiefly on account of the wealth he imagined she possessed. But I have, as I remarked, been intimate with Miss Ballantyne for many years, and I know that she is not nearly so wealthy as is popularly supposed. Her antecedents were very humble ones. Her father was a railway employee, at a place called Laisterdyke, near Bradford in Yorkshire, and when he died, some years ago, her mother was left in very difficult circumstances. Throughout her professional life, Miss Ballantyne has been sending money regularly to her mother and to her two younger sisters. She has also, although she does not wish this to be generally known, contributed a great deal of money to various charitable and philanthropic causes. Thus, although she has earned considerable sums of money in recent years, she has given much of it away and has amassed very little for herself. How disappointing it must have been for the grasping Captain Trent to discover this after they were married!

‘Recently, I engaged a private detective to report to me on Trent’s activities. It may not seem a very honourable thing, to spy upon another man’s private life; but the conduct upon which I was spying was itself not honourable. The very first report I received informed me that Trent had dined privately, on several occasions, with Lydia Summers. At once I recalled how keen Trent had been to recommend Miss Summers to Mr Hardy when the latter was first beginning work on The Lavender Girl, and how he had laid great stress upon her father’s wealth, and how useful it might therefore be to have Sir Cecil Summers connected with the theatre company. Again, that villain was thinking of wealth and, I was convinced, of how he might acquire it. It was then that I began to seriously fear for Miss Ballantyne’s safety. When a man is as reckless and unprincipled as Trent, there is no knowing what he might do.

‘The part played by Miss Summers in all this, incidentally, is, in the main, I believe, an innocent one. She is a somewhat dull-witted girl, and her chief points of attraction definitely lie in her purse – or in that of her father, at least. Whether it struck her as at all unusual or improper to dine alone in an obscure restaurant with another woman’s husband, I cannot say. No doubt Trent convinced her that it was the most natural thing in the world. He talks well to women. But she is not essentially dishonourable. Had she guessed the fiendish scheme that was in his mind, I strongly suspect that she would have declined to have anything more to do with him.

‘This scheme, I am convinced, was first to rid himself of his wife, and then to woo and wed Miss Summers. And had it not been for your timely intervention, gentlemen, the despicable villain might well have succeeded!’

‘It cannot have been very pleasant for Miss Ballantyne to learn that her husband has been plotting to murder her,’ remarked Holmes. ‘It is scarcely a morale-boosting discovery, two days before opening night. What will happen to The Lavender Girl now, Count Laszlo? Will it be postponed?’

Our visitor shook his head. ‘Isabel Ballantyne is very brave,’ said he, ‘and if anyone can survive such a blow, she can. She is staying with friends now, who will, I know, treat her with a kindness she has never received from her husband. Besides, terrible though the revelation is, I suspect that in her heart Isabel has known for some time that something was seriously amiss. I believe that intuitively she suspected that Trent was behind the recent events at the Albion, but could not bring herself to acknowledge that suspicion. Now, her chief consideration is not to let her friends down. She insists that The Lavender Girl will open as advertised, on Saturday evening. Miss Summers, I might add, has withdrawn from the production. She could scarcely do otherwise. Her name will inevitably figure in any future court case involving Trent, either criminal or civil. Her role in the play has been taken by a delightful girl from the chorus, who has a sweet voice and will, I believe, do very well. Hardy is already reconciled to the likelihood of managing without Sir Cecil Summers’s bounty, but as he has not yet seen a penny of that fabled wealth, that will be no loss. In any case, I have informed him that I shall in future take a more active part in the business, especially upon the financial side. I look forward to a prosperous future for the company.’

‘How came you to appear in the room beneath the stage when you did?’ asked Holmes.

‘As I have described, I had suspected for some time that Trent was planning something, but had no idea what form his evil plans might take. Yesterday afternoon, however, a curious thing happened. It was raining very heavily when I arrived at the theatre, so I sat in my carriage for a few moments, waiting for it to let up. I was thinking about Isabel and her husband, when, to my very great surprise, Captain Trent himself appeared from round the side of the theatre. I leaned back in my seat so that he would not see me, and reflected on the matter. What, I wondered, had he been doing round there? I instructed my coachman to turn into the little street by the side of the theatre. There was only one place there from which Trent could possibly have come, the locked side-door of the old Palace Theatre. But what possible business could he have in there? And then it was as if the scales fell from my eyes! Trent had discovered the old tunnel between the two theatres which I remembered having read about two or three years ago. It was he that was responsible for all the nasty little tricks which had been played upon the company recently and on each occasion he had used the tunnel to make good his escape! I saw it all now and feared that some serious harm might be intended for Miss Ballantyne. I therefore resolved that I would keep guard in the basement corridor today, during the dress-rehearsal. It seems, however, that I would, nevertheless, have been too late. Somehow, that devil slipped by me and I heard nothing until the sounds of your struggle came to my ears. How fortunate it was for Miss Ballantyne that you were more alert than I and cleverer than that serpent, Trent, to foil his devilish plot!’

‘And how fortunate it was for Miss Ballantyne,’ I interjected, ‘that the wooden bar which held the trap-door had jammed and did not slide free!’

Holmes chuckled. ‘I am always ready to acknowledge the part played by chance in the affairs of men,’ said he; ‘but in this case, with regard to the trap-door, at least, I must insist that chance had very little to do with it. The wooden bar did not slide free because I had called in at the theatre in the morning, borrowed a hammer from one of the stage-hands and banged two large nails into the back edge of it, where they could not be seen by anyone looking up from the floor.’

‘What!’ I cried. ‘You might have told me, Holmes! I had no idea that you had been there earlier in the day!’

‘My dear fellow! You can hardly suppose that I would leave my client at risk of plummeting to her death. I had been pondering overnight how best to secure the trap-door without making it apparent to Trent that I had done so. In the end I decided that the simplest method was the best. I really could not leave it as we had found it, Watson. The risk was simply too great. Consider, for instance, the number of brewers’ drays in London on an average day! Any one of them might have run us down on our way to the theatre and thus prevented our reaching there in time to save Miss Ballantyne!’

‘And even though we were there in good time,’ I remarked, ‘Trent still succeeded in holding us all at bay until he had pulled on the rope.’

Again my friend chuckled. ‘I had a pistol of my own in my pocket,’ said he. ‘When Inspector Jones’s slip gave away our position, I could have whipped it out and had Trent at my mercy at once. But I wished him to think himself secure and thus proceed with his plan, so that his guilt could be proved beyond doubt before three reliable witnesses! I am sorry that I had to keep you in the dark about the trap-door, old man! But I was concerned that if you knew that I had secured it, you might inadvertently reveal the fact to Jones; and if Jones knew about it, he might inadvertently reveal it to Trent. I am sure that under the circumstances you will forgive my reticence on the point!’

‘I am more than familiar with your tendency to reticence,’ said I, laughing. ‘Frankly, I doubt that my granting or withholding forgiveness will make the slightest difference to it! But if you would value my forgiveness, I hereby grant it!’

‘For what you have done,’ said Count Laszlo in a serious tone, ‘I can never repay you and any gesture I might make would be but a trifle. Nevertheless, I should be greatly honoured if you would be my guests on Saturday evening. I have a private box for the opening of The Lavender Girl, and am entertaining the entire company afterwards in my rooms at the Langham Hotel.’

‘I am honoured by your invitation,’ replied Holmes, ‘but regret that I shall be otherwise engaged on Saturday evening.’

My face must have betrayed the disappointment I felt at this response; for after a glance in my direction, and a moment’s pause, my friend’s features broke into a smile and he chuckled.

‘But, perhaps, on this occasion, I could cancel my other engagements!’ said he with a merry laugh. ‘After all, both Dr Watson and I have certainly made a contribution, however indirect, to the eventual success of The Lavender Girl; so it is perhaps no more than fitting if we are in attendance when she is at last presented to the world!’