The Wilhelm Conspiracy (A Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James Mystery) Read online

  “My first bullet will blow out your brains,” she said. “My second bullet is for your friend. Unless you let go now.”

  I felt the man’s fingers loosen momentarily. Then his muscles tensed and he lashed out with one arm, trying to knock away Lucy’s weapon.

  As though it were a dagger, Lucy stabbed the butt of the gun hard into the giant’s temple. At the same time, I broke free and hit upwards with the heel of my hand, into the tip of his chin, snapping his head backwards. The combination of these two blows only dazed him. Then I spun away and drove my knee into his solar plexus with all my remaining force. He doubled over. Behind him, Lucy kicked the back of his knee and he fell face down into the dirt.

  I dropped down hard, putting all my weight onto my knees as they slammed into the giant’s back. Lucy clapped the barrel of her derringer to his right temple. “Please try something like that again,” she said.

  By now Holmes had wrested the shotgun from the first man’s grip and ordered him to lie facing downwards beside his companion in the roadway dust. While he and Lucy held their guns trained on the two men, I bound the wrists of each behind their backs with their belts. Then I removed their cravats and used them to lash each man’s ankles tightly together.

  Holmes asked Mrs. Lampert to bring two more belts and more kerchiefs and cravats. As we waited, Holmes said to me, “Search them. Find the knife.”

  “The knife?”

  “The knife that slashed the coat,” said Lucy, her teeth clenched, still pressing her gun into the giant’s skull.

  I searched each man. Strapped to the left calf of the smaller was a six-inch knife in a black leather sheath. I unbuckled it and put it into my pocket.

  The smaller man said, “What do you think will happen now, Herr Holmes?”

  “I think you will be taken to London and held for the abduction, torture, and murder of Spencer Kent, the banker, at the Green Dragon Hotel, Upper Swandam Lane, London. I believe witnesses will be found to identify you. You may also be held for the attack on Inspector Lestrade, if he recognizes you.”

  “You are wrong, Herr Holmes. We shall not be charged with any crime.”

  “And why not?”

  “We possess diplomatic immunity, by the authority of the Congress of Vienna. My name is Dietrich, and my colleague here is named Richter. You will find our papers in our wallets.”

  I extracted the wallets from the inside coat pocket of each man and handed them over to Holmes. Holmes passed the shotgun to me. He pulled folded papers from each and held them up in turn to the fading western light. He said, “Your papers appear to be written in German.”

  Lying face downwards on the ground as he was, the smaller man was losing his composure. “What other language would they be written in? I demand that you release us! Your ambassador will hear of this!”

  Holmes placed the wallets carefully into a pocket of his new coat. Then he turned to Mrs. Lampert and accepted the kerchiefs and cravats that she had brought.

  Holmes knelt beside the smaller German. “I shall wait for these papers to be authenticated by your embassy in London. Meanwhile I shall extend you all the courtesy due to a pair of thugs who attempted to abduct me and to murder my friend.”

  Outraged, Dietrich opened his mouth to reply, whereupon Holmes stuffed one of the kerchiefs into it and then bound it in place with another around the man’s mouth and neck. He followed the same process to gag the giant Richter, although this time Holmes needed to hold the tip of the knife very close to the huge man’s eye as an inducement for him to open his mouth. This accomplished, Holmes used the two belts to lash each man’s wrists to his ankles, so that when he had finished, the Germans were trussed up like a pair of sheep ready to be sheared.

  Then he stood, took a five-pound note from his wallet, and turned to Mrs. Lampert. “Madam, I ask the use of your telephone to call the garrison and then Scotland Yard. I hope this will compensate you for that cost, and for your clothing accessories.”

  Mrs. Lampert’s face shone with gratitude and relief. She took Holmes’s arm and led him into her little shop.

  While Holmes was inside, Lucy came over to stand beside me.

  “They will both want revenge,” she said. “And if they are indeed connected with the German embassy, they will soon be free.”

  17. A DISCOVERY AT RADNAR HOUSE

  Nearly four hours later Holmes, Lucy, and I were concluding a light supper in the Radnar House private lounge, where we could speak without being overheard. As was sometimes his practice, Holmes avoided any discussion of the case, preferring to confine our conversation to matters such as the state of London’s cultural offerings, new forms of transportation and architecture, and Lucy’s upcoming role in the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company’s next production. This habit of his I found by turns both a relief and a frustration, for the events we had just undergone had unsettled me, and I wanted the secure knowledge that we had a plan to address them.

  We had just finished our coffee when the door opened and Harriet Radnar entered, accompanied by a tall, slender man of middle age, who seemed to me both worried and distracted. Dressed in a plain black wool suit, white shirt, and black cravat, he carried himself with a grave demeanour, although he wore his long blond hair nearly touching his shoulders, in the fashion recently popular amongst the literary set. Harriet introduced him to us as Reginald Havener, Lord Kerren, brother of her stepmother, Lady Radnar.

  “I’ve just come from my laboratory at Kerren House,” Kerren said. “Lansdowne wired me last night. Harriet tells me you’ve already seen what’s left of my machine.”

  “The Secretary has asked me to help recover the missing components.”

  “Well, perhaps I can help you.” Kerren took a seat on one of the upholstered chairs. “Do you know, Harriet, it was in this very room that I won that building from your father in a game of baccarat? It used to be the entry lodge for Radnar House. That was a painful night for your father, of course, but the house has been an absolute inspiration for my work on the electric cannon. And if the cannon is a success—well, your father will say it has been a happy outcome.”

  “Have you heard from Lord Radnar recently?” asked Holmes.

  “His wire reached me this morning in Calais, as a matter of fact. Radnar is still in New York.”

  “I had a wire from him today myself,” said Harriet. “He said I should start thinking what to wear to the Queen’s Jubilee next year. That’s his little joke. He always says we’re sure to be ‘right up there in the front pews if Reggie can get his lightning bolts in order.’”

  “How long were you in Germany, Lord Kerren?” Holmes asked.

  “I left here the day before Lord Radnar headed west to New York. Both of us had the same objective—he was seeking American capital while I was pursuing additional funds from the Prince of Wales. I would have remained at the spa, but Tesla wired me to come back and demonstrate the machine for him. I arrived on the afternoon ferry. Where is Tesla, by the way?”

  “I’m sorry,” Harriet said. “I forgot to mention that Mr. Tesla sailed for Germany at noon today.”

  Kerren’s brow furrowed. “I would have expected him to wait for my arrival.”

  “Tesla seemed to think the machine would not work,” said Holmes. “Although we did witness a demonstration of sorts.”

  “The balloon. Yes, Harriet told me. But that must have been an illusion.”

  Holmes’s grey eyes glittered. “Please explain.”

  Kerren hesitated, as though uncertain whether to tell us the details of his invention. Finally he said, “You may think of the missing part as the muzzle of the cannon. It is actually similar to the muzzle of an ordinary gun in its function, though of course not in its design. The complex of electrical equipment inside is designed to spin electrified particle beams into a kind of braid—the way they work together is the core of my invention. Without spinning the beams together, all the energy is dispersed over a wide pattern and useless against an enemy. It took me more
than a year of sleepless nights and every combination of—In any event, when it worked, I knew how important it was. I had to give Tesla’s plans for the rest of the machine over to the War Office when they paid me. But I held on to the plans for my jewel box. That is what I call my electrical beam–spinning device. The plans are in a notebook, safe in a London bank vault.”

  “Please describe the box.”

  This time there was no hesitation in Kerren’s manner. “It is an actual jewel box that belonged to my sister, shaped round—like a cylindrical hatbox—and made of silver. About six inches deep and about a foot and a half in diameter. The bottom has six small clamps to take the wires from the argon tubes. The lid is hinged and the surface is engraved—the design is like a snowflake. I drilled a two-inch hole in the centre for the muzzle—the business end of the weapon. That’s where the braided beams shoot out.”

  “And you have the box locked away,” said Holmes. As Kerren raised an eyebrow, Holmes continued, “You would appear far more worried otherwise, and you would not have stated so confidently that the demonstration with the balloon had to have been a trick. Now tell us, where is the box?”

  Kerren gave a self-satisfied smile. “I did say that perhaps I might be able to help you, Mr. Holmes. And now I shall. The box is in a place where no one would ever think to look. It is not in my lab. It is not in my house. It is here, in this very room, where I enjoyed so much good fortune at the card table.”

  He stood abruptly and strode to a corner of the Persian rug at the centre of the room. He knelt and lifted one corner of the rug to reveal the smooth parquet blocks beneath. He gave one of the blocks an expert twist. The block came free, and he set it aside, then reached down to what I could see was the dial to a combination lock. “This is a cast-iron strongbox made in Wolverhampton,” he said proudly. “I had it set in concrete, and the concrete is set into the foundation of the hotel.” His smooth features narrowed with concentration as he spun the dial first in one direction, then in the other.

  There was an audible click as the tumblers meshed. Then Lord Kerren lifted up the strongbox lid.

  His jaw dropped, and his handsome features flushed scarlet. “Well, I’m damned,” he whispered.

  The strongbox was empty.

  For a long moment Kerren continued to stare at the empty box. Then his eyes, widened at first in shock and surprise, narrowed in resolution. “I must return to Bad Homburg,” he said.

  18. JOURNEY BY RAIL

  Twenty-four hours later, Lucy, Harriet, and I were nearing the end of our journey to Bad Homburg.

  Holmes had left us, intending to follow Lord Kerren. We were in a first-class compartment on a French railway train that had just crossed the German border. Thick red velvet curtains covered our windows and muffled the clatter of the wheels on the steel rails beneath our carriage, as did the heavy layer of horsehair padding on our red leather seat cushions. I had been drowsing on and off since we had returned from supper in the dining car some three hours past.

  Across from me, Lucy consulted her watch and said, “We’re slowing down.” She pushed her window curtain aside. “That sign says Saarbrücken. We’re early. And I don’t like the look of those men.”

  The train was stopping. Under the dim light of an overhead electric lamp, four figures stood in military posture. Three, tall and powerfully built, wore grey German military uniforms with the familiar spiked helmets that made them look even taller. A fourth man in a frock coat stood before them, grey haired and with a thick grey moustache. He wore a top hat and formal attire, as though he had recently come from an opera or a state function.

  “The one in the top hat is obviously the leader,” said Harriet.

  The train stopped. The four Germans quickly boarded, and within a minute we were moving again.

  A few minutes later, as the train rattled along, there was a perfunctory knock at our carriage door and then it opened. A moment later the grey-haired man I had seen on the platform had positioned himself to stand directly in front of my seat. His white silk tie, scarf, and impeccably starched shirt front gleamed brightly in the light from our carriage reading lamp. He might have been in his late forties or early fifties, but his clear skin and stolidly handsome features indicated excellent health. The determined set of his square jaw and the shrewd glint in his bright-blue eyes evidenced his confident assurance that he was in complete control of the situation and intended to have his own way.

  Looking down on me, he demanded, “Wo ist Herr Holmes?”

  Lucy saw my look of astonishment and spoke. “Auf English, bitte? Der Arzt nicht Deutsch sprechen.”

  “But you do,” the man replied, in perfect English. “How frequently have you visited Germany?”

  “This is my first time. I studied German in school. In the United States. At Miss Porter’s School. That’s in Connecticut, though I don’t suppose you’ve heard of it.”

  “Your papers, please. And yours as well, Miss . . .”

  “Radnar,” Harriet replied.

  The ladies handed over their travel documents. After a long minute perusing them he asked, “Your parents, Miss James?”

  “My parents are—were—estranged. I was raised in a series of institutions, supervised and funded by a trustee. I am now of age and independent.”

  “And your parents, Miss Radnar?”

  “My mother is dead. My father, Lord Radnar of Kent, is travelling in America on business.”

  “And your connection with Dr. Watson, here?”

  “Lucy and I met Dr. Watson in Dover and realized we were going to the same destination. For different purposes, of course. He is not a member of the D’Oyly Carte Company.”

  “I am aware of that. Dr. Watson, what is the purpose of your journey to Bad Homburg?”

  Obviously I could not tell this man that Holmes and I hoped to locate a stolen component of a powerful military weapon and then steal it back from the Germans. I said the first thing that came to mind. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Bernhard von Bülow. I am his Imperial Majesty’s Ambassador to Rome, and I will ask the questions here, Dr. Watson. Are you acquainted with the Austrian inventor, Mr. Nikola Tesla?”

  “I met him in Dover. We were at the same hotel.”

  “My family’s hotel,” Miss Radnar added. “It is the premier location in Dover—”

  “Dr. Watson. Did Mr. Tesla tell you of his travel plans?”

  “He mentioned that he hoped to meet the Prince of Wales in Bad Homburg.”

  For some reason, von Bülow’s manner became a touch less frosty. “Do you know where Mr. Tesla is staying in Bad Homburg?”

  “I do not.”

  “Where are you staying, Doctor?”

  “I have a reservation at the Parkhotel. I am told it is conveniently close to the spa.”

  “The Kaiser-Wilhelms-Bad, you mean.”

  “If you say so.”

  “His Imperial Excellency has allowed his name, which is the same as that of his illustrious grandfather, to remain in the carved stone edifice of the Kaiser-Wilhelms-Bad, for all to see. His Imperial Excellency is the all-highest authority in this country, and your presence here makes you his subject as well.”

  “I understand.”

  “On his Imperial command, which is his sole and unfettered privilege to dictate, you could be shot.” Von Bülow stood calmly, hands clasped behind him and legs spread out, looking very much like a military guardsman. He continued, “Why do you suppose I have travelled from Rome to Saarbrücken and spent my valuable time questioning you?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “It is not to listen to evasions or falsehoods. Now I advise you to be more forthcoming when I ask you again. What is the purpose of your journey to Bad Homburg?”

  A safe reply occurred to me. “I plan to meet with Sherlock Holmes.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “He is on an investigation. I generally accompany him on his investigations.”

  “Who is his clien
t?”

  As I hesitated, Harriet intervened. “My stepmother has asked him to investigate a matter concerning their family hotel.”

  “What matter?”

  “An unidentified body found on the hotel grounds,” Harriet said. “My stepmother fears a scandal if the matter is not resolved. A scandal would be bad for business.”

  “From what I know of the tastes of the British public, I should think quite the opposite, Miss Radnar. But let us assume that this answer of yours is truthful, at least in part. We will now come to the point of this interview.”

  Von Bülow leaned forwards. His blue eyes met mine. After a long, searching look, he continued, “Why did you attack two German diplomatic emissaries yesterday in the village of St. Margaret’s?”

  The question ought not to have taken me by surprise, since von Bülow had said he was the Kaiser’s diplomat, and the two thugs had claimed they were entitled to diplomatic immunity. Still I was taken aback. I realized that von Bülow was confirming that the claim had been genuine. The thought that Dietrich and Richter might even now be on their way to Germany made me pause.

  “They attacked us first!” Lucy was saying indignantly. “I was there! One of them had a shotgun, and the other had a knife. He practically strangled poor Dr. Watson—”

  “Please, Miss James. I wish to hear the explanation from the doctor.”

  “It is quite as Miss James says,” I replied. “It was plain that we were about to be abducted at gunpoint to an unknown location. We had every right to defend ourselves. The conduct of your country’s emissaries, if indeed they were such, was quite inexcusable.”