Disclaimer: See Part 1.
*****
I awoke some time later with a curse, having until that moment been in the grip of a nightmare about horrid little imps jabbing me with pitchforks. The reality wasn't much different - someone was probing my bruised sides for broken ribs. I groaned.
"You know," Emily said from somewhere above me, "For all your great intellect, you can be such an idiot sometimes."
I opened my eyes (the right-hand one felt a bit puffy and would probably be swollen shut by that evening) and looked over at her. It was ill-lit where we were, but I could see her well enough; Watson has commented on my apparent ability to see in the dark - it is merely a matter of training the senses. She knelt by my side in her shirtsleeves (the coat was probably the bundle I felt rolled up behind my head) and though she appeared to know what she was doing - I had learned at least that much from getting patched up by Watson - her bedside manner left a lot to be desired. She had opened my own coat, and I felt her slender fingers probing my ribs, managing to find every single bruise with admirable expertise.
"I wouldn't have taken you for the nurturing sort," I murmured.
"I'm not," she replied immediately.
"I can tell," I shot back.
"But one learns a lot when one lives with five male cousins."
"When you lived in America."
There wasn't even a flicker of surprise; this was no perpetually surprised Dr. Watson. "My Aunt Clarissa - my mother's sister, I think she was - was constantly having to patch them up, and enlisted my help on more than one occasion." She smiled. "Of course I got my share of medical aid as well, since my cousins all tended to treat me like one of the lads. Of course, that sort of got awkward when I got older."
"I expect so." I paused diplomatically. "So what was this about me being an idiot?"
She paused in her examination and leaned over me like a vampire preparing to feed, or else like a guardian angel - I couldn't decide which it was just then.
"You attacked a man twice your size," she said.
"I promised your father I'd keep you safe," I replied coolly, "And I intend to do just that."
"There *is* a fine line between chivalry and stupidity, you know."
"I have yet to find it."
"Right." She smirked and settled back on her heels. I grunted as she probed the last few ribs on each side.
"And what of you?" I asked, to keep my mind off the aching, "What would you call a young woman jumping on the shoulders of a man easily four times her size?"
"I call it being scared."
"You have an odd way of showing fear."
"I was afraid he'd killed you," she said, with a note of concern in her voice, "As it is I'm surprised nothing was broken."
There was a long pause as I mulled over this statement.
"I have had worse beatings and as you can see I survived them well enough. What of you?" I asked, "Are you hurt at all?"
"A few bumps and bruises," she replied, "Probably a split lip. And I lost the tips of two fingernails."
"My condolences."
"Don't be sorry. I left them in that grizzly bear's face."
"Capital. Now we'll be able to prove that he at least assaulted us." I sat up, ignoring my protesting ribs as I rebuttoned my coat.
"But what about the stolen jewelry?"
"I think I have a theory about that as well." I stood up, helped Emily to her feet (though according to her report she was capable to taking care of herself) and glanced around at what appeared to be a basement. "Now... how long have we been down here?"
"Search me. I woke up about ten minutes before you did."
"Very well. Next question - are we locked in, and if so, how?"
With my mind once again occupied with a puzzle, my injuries seemed to fade into the background, and I mounted the cellar steps easily and tried the door. It was, of course, locked - I hadn't expected any different. It was a relatively simple lock, I noted as I peered through the keyhole, and the door opened into a dingy corridor, one which I had noticed from our initial excursion through the front door of the establishment. I turned back to Emily.
"Third question: Have you a hairpin I might borrow?"
She snorted. "Of course I do. What proper lady would be caught without one?"
I took the proffered tool and set to work on the lock.
"So what do you plan to do if he's still up there?" she asked as the lock clicked a the door drifted open. I didn't need to ask who *he* was.
"I don't believe he *is* up here still," I said casually as I pushed the door open the rest of the way and looked around just in case I was wrong, "Had you been listening, you would have noticed the lack of heavy footfalls above us which would have indicated a man of his scale moving about."
She followed me up the cellar stairs. "Well, the last time I had any sort of opportunity to listen for his footfalls I was jammed in a closet with you, if you recall. And even then he still managed to sneak up on us."
"That was not for our benefit," I replied, "It was to prevent his co- workers from hearing him."
"So... he wasn't looking for us when he opened the wardrobe?"
"He would have had no reason to look in there, unless he feared for the safekeeping of something within."
She emerged into the gaslight of the ground floor. She had, as she'd indicated, not emerged from the fight unscathed. I winced slightly when I saw the bruises on her chin and over her eye, and the split lip which had by this time stopped bleeding and clotted over, though it was starting to swell.
"That bad, huh?" she asked, noticing my expression.
"Your father is going to kill me," I said, only half-kidding.
"I'll deal with my father. For now, I believe you were saying something important about the wardrobe."
"Yes... you no doubt noticed that the interior of the wardrobe was rather cramped - it was shallower than most wardrobes," I amended hastily, turning towards where I estimated the storeroom was from here before she could see my expression..
"Well, I don't really know if two people can ordinarily fit into an otherwise empty wardrobe," she replied dryly. "Most wardrobes are built to a certain depth," I explained, before the train of thought could get any more awkward, "In order to accommodate the shoulders of the garments. Three feet is average. I estimate that the wardrobe in the storeroom was closer to two feet in depth. Now, what does that suggest to you?"
"A false back," she replied after a thoughtful pause.
"Precisely. And between that false back and the true back is where I expect we shall find the stash of stolen jewelry."
By this time we had arrived back at the wardrobe. She immediately reached for the left-hand door, but paused half-way and instead opened the right- hand door.
"Good," I said, "You remembered the squeaky hinge."
"It *does* make sense," she replied, "If the man is right-handed he would naturally use the right-hand door, while the left hinge rusts from disuse. Until, that is, you threw both doors open last time."
I had the good grace to look embarrassed.
"Ah!" she said suddenly, "I was wondering where I'd dropped my stick." She retrieved the fox-headed walking-stick from the floor of the wardrobe, where it likely had fallen when we had been discovered, and handed it to me. She leant back into the wardrobe, this time to probe the rear wall, which was decorated with two rows of large recessed squares. One of these shifted slightly under her hand, and she glanced at me over her shoulder to see if I'd noticed. I nodded in satisfaction.
She shifted the panel aside, and it slid on well-greased runners into the false back. There, in a cubicle that measured a foot in each direction, a small cardboard box lurked. Emily took the box out and opened it. As I had expected, it was partway filled with jewelry, and her eyes lit up, but then clouded again as she noticed something amiss.
"Something wrong?" I asked, already fairly sure of what the answer would be.
"Well," she said slowly, "There must be loot from two or three burglaries in here... and I think I found the matching necklace and earrings for that bracelet you showed me..."
"But?" I prompted.
"Nothing in here is mine."
*****
I placed the lid back on the box and took it from Emily's hands as I returned her stick to her. "You don't look the least bit surprised," she accused.
"I'm not," I confirmed as I placed the box back in its hiding-place, to be discovered later by Scotland Yard, "This fits in with the theory I've been forming of the burglary."
"What theory is that?" I could understand that she was upset; to the untrained investigator, this discovery had to feel like finding an empty hole at the place on a treasure map where a fortune was supposed to be.
"My theory," I said gently, "Is that your jewelry is still in your house."
"WHAT!" The word fairly exploded from her mouth and for a few moments I thought she might leap at me as she had the man I'd fought. To prevent this, I gently seized her by the shoulders.
"Everything shall be explained in due time," I told her quietly, "Right now we need to determine how long Leopold will have to delay his upcoming visitors."
"What--?" she began, but I was already out the door in search of one of the Irregulars, moving at such a pace that she had to run to keep up with me.
As for myself, I was like a bloodhound who senses his quarry is near, and Emily's discomfort (and my own, for that matter) was reduced to a minor issue. Time was of the essence.
By the time I heard Emily catching up with me, I had found one of my scouts, who reported that the man had set off in a cab towards the decorators', about forty minutes ago. I sent the lad sprinting off towards Scotland Yard with a message to Lestrade to have three men meet us at the Cartwright Estate. All but a very few of the Irregulars could neither read nor write, and anyway I didn't wish to waste any time with paper and a pencil, but I had trained them well to retain a verbal message and repeat it to its intended recipient.
"Forty minutes," I said, thinking aloud, "From here to the decorators' is about twenty minutes, and from there to the Cartwright Estate is forty minutes. If we secure a cab quickly, we may get there in time to intercept them. Come, Emily!" And with that I grabbed her by the arm and half led, half-dragged her to the street-corner.
It took us an infuriating fifteen minutes to find a cab who would take us, and even then I had to toss him a sovereign in advance (a rather surprising donation from such a slovenly-looking character as myself, no doubt). I promised to double it if he got us to our destination as quickly as possible. During that interval it appeared that Emily's adrenaline rush had worn off; during the cab ride she leaned against my shoulder as if she was dozing off, though later she denied doing any such thing. The tempest was subsiding, it seemed, or else she was saving her energy for the final confrontation we both knew had to lie back at the Cartwright Estate.
Either way, I felt certain that the burglars would rue the day they had set their sights upon the Cartwright Estate. *****
End Part 12.
*****
I awoke some time later with a curse, having until that moment been in the grip of a nightmare about horrid little imps jabbing me with pitchforks. The reality wasn't much different - someone was probing my bruised sides for broken ribs. I groaned.
"You know," Emily said from somewhere above me, "For all your great intellect, you can be such an idiot sometimes."
I opened my eyes (the right-hand one felt a bit puffy and would probably be swollen shut by that evening) and looked over at her. It was ill-lit where we were, but I could see her well enough; Watson has commented on my apparent ability to see in the dark - it is merely a matter of training the senses. She knelt by my side in her shirtsleeves (the coat was probably the bundle I felt rolled up behind my head) and though she appeared to know what she was doing - I had learned at least that much from getting patched up by Watson - her bedside manner left a lot to be desired. She had opened my own coat, and I felt her slender fingers probing my ribs, managing to find every single bruise with admirable expertise.
"I wouldn't have taken you for the nurturing sort," I murmured.
"I'm not," she replied immediately.
"I can tell," I shot back.
"But one learns a lot when one lives with five male cousins."
"When you lived in America."
There wasn't even a flicker of surprise; this was no perpetually surprised Dr. Watson. "My Aunt Clarissa - my mother's sister, I think she was - was constantly having to patch them up, and enlisted my help on more than one occasion." She smiled. "Of course I got my share of medical aid as well, since my cousins all tended to treat me like one of the lads. Of course, that sort of got awkward when I got older."
"I expect so." I paused diplomatically. "So what was this about me being an idiot?"
She paused in her examination and leaned over me like a vampire preparing to feed, or else like a guardian angel - I couldn't decide which it was just then.
"You attacked a man twice your size," she said.
"I promised your father I'd keep you safe," I replied coolly, "And I intend to do just that."
"There *is* a fine line between chivalry and stupidity, you know."
"I have yet to find it."
"Right." She smirked and settled back on her heels. I grunted as she probed the last few ribs on each side.
"And what of you?" I asked, to keep my mind off the aching, "What would you call a young woman jumping on the shoulders of a man easily four times her size?"
"I call it being scared."
"You have an odd way of showing fear."
"I was afraid he'd killed you," she said, with a note of concern in her voice, "As it is I'm surprised nothing was broken."
There was a long pause as I mulled over this statement.
"I have had worse beatings and as you can see I survived them well enough. What of you?" I asked, "Are you hurt at all?"
"A few bumps and bruises," she replied, "Probably a split lip. And I lost the tips of two fingernails."
"My condolences."
"Don't be sorry. I left them in that grizzly bear's face."
"Capital. Now we'll be able to prove that he at least assaulted us." I sat up, ignoring my protesting ribs as I rebuttoned my coat.
"But what about the stolen jewelry?"
"I think I have a theory about that as well." I stood up, helped Emily to her feet (though according to her report she was capable to taking care of herself) and glanced around at what appeared to be a basement. "Now... how long have we been down here?"
"Search me. I woke up about ten minutes before you did."
"Very well. Next question - are we locked in, and if so, how?"
With my mind once again occupied with a puzzle, my injuries seemed to fade into the background, and I mounted the cellar steps easily and tried the door. It was, of course, locked - I hadn't expected any different. It was a relatively simple lock, I noted as I peered through the keyhole, and the door opened into a dingy corridor, one which I had noticed from our initial excursion through the front door of the establishment. I turned back to Emily.
"Third question: Have you a hairpin I might borrow?"
She snorted. "Of course I do. What proper lady would be caught without one?"
I took the proffered tool and set to work on the lock.
"So what do you plan to do if he's still up there?" she asked as the lock clicked a the door drifted open. I didn't need to ask who *he* was.
"I don't believe he *is* up here still," I said casually as I pushed the door open the rest of the way and looked around just in case I was wrong, "Had you been listening, you would have noticed the lack of heavy footfalls above us which would have indicated a man of his scale moving about."
She followed me up the cellar stairs. "Well, the last time I had any sort of opportunity to listen for his footfalls I was jammed in a closet with you, if you recall. And even then he still managed to sneak up on us."
"That was not for our benefit," I replied, "It was to prevent his co- workers from hearing him."
"So... he wasn't looking for us when he opened the wardrobe?"
"He would have had no reason to look in there, unless he feared for the safekeeping of something within."
She emerged into the gaslight of the ground floor. She had, as she'd indicated, not emerged from the fight unscathed. I winced slightly when I saw the bruises on her chin and over her eye, and the split lip which had by this time stopped bleeding and clotted over, though it was starting to swell.
"That bad, huh?" she asked, noticing my expression.
"Your father is going to kill me," I said, only half-kidding.
"I'll deal with my father. For now, I believe you were saying something important about the wardrobe."
"Yes... you no doubt noticed that the interior of the wardrobe was rather cramped - it was shallower than most wardrobes," I amended hastily, turning towards where I estimated the storeroom was from here before she could see my expression..
"Well, I don't really know if two people can ordinarily fit into an otherwise empty wardrobe," she replied dryly. "Most wardrobes are built to a certain depth," I explained, before the train of thought could get any more awkward, "In order to accommodate the shoulders of the garments. Three feet is average. I estimate that the wardrobe in the storeroom was closer to two feet in depth. Now, what does that suggest to you?"
"A false back," she replied after a thoughtful pause.
"Precisely. And between that false back and the true back is where I expect we shall find the stash of stolen jewelry."
By this time we had arrived back at the wardrobe. She immediately reached for the left-hand door, but paused half-way and instead opened the right- hand door.
"Good," I said, "You remembered the squeaky hinge."
"It *does* make sense," she replied, "If the man is right-handed he would naturally use the right-hand door, while the left hinge rusts from disuse. Until, that is, you threw both doors open last time."
I had the good grace to look embarrassed.
"Ah!" she said suddenly, "I was wondering where I'd dropped my stick." She retrieved the fox-headed walking-stick from the floor of the wardrobe, where it likely had fallen when we had been discovered, and handed it to me. She leant back into the wardrobe, this time to probe the rear wall, which was decorated with two rows of large recessed squares. One of these shifted slightly under her hand, and she glanced at me over her shoulder to see if I'd noticed. I nodded in satisfaction.
She shifted the panel aside, and it slid on well-greased runners into the false back. There, in a cubicle that measured a foot in each direction, a small cardboard box lurked. Emily took the box out and opened it. As I had expected, it was partway filled with jewelry, and her eyes lit up, but then clouded again as she noticed something amiss.
"Something wrong?" I asked, already fairly sure of what the answer would be.
"Well," she said slowly, "There must be loot from two or three burglaries in here... and I think I found the matching necklace and earrings for that bracelet you showed me..."
"But?" I prompted.
"Nothing in here is mine."
*****
I placed the lid back on the box and took it from Emily's hands as I returned her stick to her. "You don't look the least bit surprised," she accused.
"I'm not," I confirmed as I placed the box back in its hiding-place, to be discovered later by Scotland Yard, "This fits in with the theory I've been forming of the burglary."
"What theory is that?" I could understand that she was upset; to the untrained investigator, this discovery had to feel like finding an empty hole at the place on a treasure map where a fortune was supposed to be.
"My theory," I said gently, "Is that your jewelry is still in your house."
"WHAT!" The word fairly exploded from her mouth and for a few moments I thought she might leap at me as she had the man I'd fought. To prevent this, I gently seized her by the shoulders.
"Everything shall be explained in due time," I told her quietly, "Right now we need to determine how long Leopold will have to delay his upcoming visitors."
"What--?" she began, but I was already out the door in search of one of the Irregulars, moving at such a pace that she had to run to keep up with me.
As for myself, I was like a bloodhound who senses his quarry is near, and Emily's discomfort (and my own, for that matter) was reduced to a minor issue. Time was of the essence.
By the time I heard Emily catching up with me, I had found one of my scouts, who reported that the man had set off in a cab towards the decorators', about forty minutes ago. I sent the lad sprinting off towards Scotland Yard with a message to Lestrade to have three men meet us at the Cartwright Estate. All but a very few of the Irregulars could neither read nor write, and anyway I didn't wish to waste any time with paper and a pencil, but I had trained them well to retain a verbal message and repeat it to its intended recipient.
"Forty minutes," I said, thinking aloud, "From here to the decorators' is about twenty minutes, and from there to the Cartwright Estate is forty minutes. If we secure a cab quickly, we may get there in time to intercept them. Come, Emily!" And with that I grabbed her by the arm and half led, half-dragged her to the street-corner.
It took us an infuriating fifteen minutes to find a cab who would take us, and even then I had to toss him a sovereign in advance (a rather surprising donation from such a slovenly-looking character as myself, no doubt). I promised to double it if he got us to our destination as quickly as possible. During that interval it appeared that Emily's adrenaline rush had worn off; during the cab ride she leaned against my shoulder as if she was dozing off, though later she denied doing any such thing. The tempest was subsiding, it seemed, or else she was saving her energy for the final confrontation we both knew had to lie back at the Cartwright Estate.
Either way, I felt certain that the burglars would rue the day they had set their sights upon the Cartwright Estate. *****
End Part 12.