The Disappearance of Daniel Question Read online

  He strode away and we collected our luggage, found a cab and made our way to my home.

  After dinner that night, as we sat over a bottle of port, I could contain myself no longer.

  "Holmes," I pleaded, "are you yet able to explain the Phillimore affair to me?"

  He smiled. "Ah, Watson! You know my desire to see my little tricks completed before I reveal their mechanisms."

  He paused to fill his pipe. "Let me remind you," he said, "that it was always my view that the appearance of the crossing-sweeper impelled Phillimore to flight."

  "But how?" I interjected. "That poor wretch can hardly have known of Phillimore’s financial manoeuvres."

  "True, Watson. Nevertheless it seems his mere presence drove Phillimore to precipitate flight, to mumble a ridiculous explanation and flee from the Square and from his whole existence. Therefore Phillimore must have recognised the sweeper as someone who could damage him in some way."

  "But the man was a witless, speechless pauper."

  "Perhaps Phillimore did not know that. But in any case it is more likely that he recognised the mark."

  "The religious mark?" I enquired.

  "Mrs. Phillimore, who probably had little experience of foreigners, thought him a native with a religious mark, though those are usually tattooed, not branded. The Reverend Bledlow, who had daily experience of foreign seamen from all over the globe, thought him European. We know that his tongue had been removed. That, and the branded hand, suggested only one thing to me, Watson. A man who had been tortured by that abominable brotherhood, born in Sicily, but now present in Italy, Corsica, France, and even the United States."

  "The Black Hand Gang!" I exclaimed.

  "Precisely, Watson. One of its names and one of its emblems."

  "But what can the crossing-sweeper have had to do with them?"

  "He was evidently their victim," said Holmes. "Had he been a member—even a minor one—the hand would have been a mark of punishment applied to his corpse. More pertinent is the question of Phillimore’s probable connection with that unholy order, and that I was unable to unravel. When it was revealed after his death that funds were missing from the Bank, I inferred that he had been paying the Black Hand and that they had been responsible for his demise, but I got no further until I came across new information."

  "How lucky!" I exclaimed.

  "Luck," said my friend, sternly, "usually consists in the ability of the well-prepared mind to take full advantage of an unexpected opportunity."

  "What was the opportunity, then?"

  "It is not possible," he said, "to be as unsociable in the country as in town. In Baker Street I could deal only with you, Mrs. Hudson, and those who called on me professionally. Country people rely upon each other for society, for entertainment, and often for assistance. If I had not bent a little to that convention I should not have enjoyed two decades of peace in Fulworth. A retired schoolmaster there cajoled me into assisting him with the translation of some Anglo-Saxon documents, having read of my researches in the subject, and at our conclusion he insisted on inviting me to dine with him."

  He grimaced at the recollection. "I steeled myself for an evening of Hawsley’s dull chatter and that—in short—is exactly what I received, but in trying to divert the stream of my host’s patter, my eye fell upon his necktie, a curious confection in deep purple struck with narrow bands of white and lime green. I thought it a school or college tie, though I could not identify it and it occurred to me that I had seen the pattern before."

  He paused and looked straight at me. "I have explained to you on many occasions, Watson, the significance of patterns in any investigation, whether visual or otherwise, and I rarely forget one once I have noticed it. I asked him if it was a school tie.

  "‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘It is the Old Chorlotian’s, which I wear by courtesy as a former master there.’

  "Recollection flashed into my mind. ‘Were you long at Chorling College?’ I asked, and when he confirmed that almost all his teaching had been done there, I asked, ‘Do you by chance recall a boy named James Phillimore?’ Whereupon he said that he did and produced a photograph of a Rugby football team with the boy in the front rank.

  "‘Who is the lad next to him?’ I asked Hawsley. ‘Is he a relative?’

  "He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘though they were alike enough to be brothers. That is Frank Smallfish. Funny name, but his family was Italian originally. He was Phillimore’s pal throughout their years at Chorling, inseparable they were and always engaged in pranks.’

  "‘Do you know what became of them?’ I asked.

  "‘Phillimore,’ he said, ‘went to the bad, I’m sorry to say. Robbed his family bank and ended up in the river.’ He shook his head sadly.

  "‘And Smallfish?’ I asked.

  "‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I know that his father was ruined and shot himself shortly after the boy left Chorling. What became of the lad I never heard.’ And he shook his head again."

  Holmes smiled at a recollection. "Poor Hawsley must have thought me a dull guest indeed, Watson, for very shortly I made my excuses and left in order to mull over the new information."

  "And where did it take you?" I asked.

  "To a realisation that I had broken one of my own rules in narrowing my analysis of the case too early. I had convinced myself that the root of that singular tragedy and those monstrous crimes lay abroad. I realised that the explanation lay, instead, in that boyhood friendship at Chorling.

  "Shortly after the boys left Chorling," he continued, "Frank’s father was ruined by Phillimore’s Commercial Bank. Such was his Italian sense of honour that he shot himself. His son’s sense of honour dictated revenge upon the Phillimore family and his erstwhile friend. He waited his chance, and it came when James Phillimore holidayed in Naples. Perhaps Smallfish even lured him there. That city’s underworld swarms with those whose allegiance is to the Black Hand and there young Phillimore was taken prisoner."

  "But he returned for his father’s funeral," I objected.

  Holmes shook his head slowly. "No, Watson. Frank Smallfish saw the opportunity presented by Phillimore senior’s death and returned to England to commence a daring and heartless imposture that enabled him to rob Phillimore’s Bank of the sums he had promised the brotherhood in Italy for their services, or perhaps even for the sums they may have demanded in blackmail. Armed with a knowledge of James Phillimore gained from their long friendship, strengthened by their accidental resemblance, he was successful for several years.

  Mrs. Phillimore merely thought that he was a changed man and forgetful in small things. What must he have thought and felt when he stepped from his front door and saw the real Phillimore standing at the foot of the steps? He did not know that his victim was by then witless and speechless. He thought that his evil game was up, and he ran."

  "It certainly meets the facts," I said, "but it is all theoretical."

  "Not so, Watson. I made a serious error of thinking and an equally serious error of practice when I failed to identify that greasy rag left by the crossing-sweeper as an Old Chorlotian’s tie. Had I pursued my enquiries at the College I might have saved Smallfish’s life for the hangman. My enquiries of Scotland Yard were to confirm such points as I could."

  "You believe that he killed James Phillimore, then?" I said.

  "He killed him or had him killed, and then was himself murdered because he was of no further use to the Black Hand."

  "But how came the real Phillimore to Welton Square?"

  Holmes drew a telegram from the envelope which Robinson had given him. "Here is the reply to an enquiry which I asked the Yard to send to our Consulate at Naples: ‘Person of that description brought here by nuns in 1902 with request for repatriation to England. Unable to establish identity or citizenship. Matter left to local religious charity.’ So poor Phillimore made his way home somehow and lived amongst the poorest of the poor. Who knows what dim recollection drew him to Welton Square and made him re
turn to see, each day, the half-remembered face and hear the half-remembered voice of his mother?"

  "Could the Yard confirm any more of your argument?"

  "They were able to confirm what I suspected. That Smallfish was an assumed name, based upon the Sicilian ‘Pisciotto.’ It means ‘small fish,’ Watson, and the Black Hand use it in our sense of ‘small fry’ to refer to the petty criminals who carry out the organisation’s routine tasks. Frank Smallfish’s family may already have had connections with the brotherhood in the past.

  "The Bank of England traced the stolen funds through France and Switzerland to an account in Naples, held in a false name and emptied before they traced it."

  "Then you have made your case," I declared, "apart from your belief that Smallfish killed Phillimore."

  He nodded, pleased as always by acknowledgement of his extraordinary talents. "The Yard told me something else," he said, "and tomorrow, after a Turkish bath which, apart from your companionship, is the only good reason for visiting London, I shall show you."

  The following afternoon we stood in a great cemetery in the East of London. Holmes, after a word at the keeper’s lodge, led me to an unkempt patch of grass, unmarked by headstone or memorial, which lay under a far wall. He pointed with his stick.

  "That," he said, "is what the keeper calls Plot 643—pauper’s 1903—and there lie the remains of a tongueless labourer with a hand branded on his face. Like the man who impersonated him in life, his body came out of the Thames and had similar injuries to the skull."

  We gazed in silence at the last resting place of the real James Phillimore. As we turned away, Holmes said, "You see Watson, I have found James Phillimore, though whether your readers in the Strand will relish a story of suicide, murder, and heartbreak, embodying the most fiendishly singular revenge I have ever known, I cannot say."

  THE END

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