Читать книгу Island of Point Nemo - Jean-Marie Blas de Robles - Страница 16
ОглавлениеWhen they arrived backstage, behind the curtain where Chung Ling Soo was lying, a short man whose arms were too long for his body was shouting himself hoarse trying to keep people away. Holmes recognized him immediately.
“Scummington! How the devil did you manage to get here so quickly?”
“I was in the hall. This sorry fellow is not who he was pretending to be, I was keeping an eye on him, on assignment. But you, Holmes, what reason do you have to be here?”
“The pleasure of enjoying a nice evening out. My friend Canterel is absolutely mad about illusionists.”
“French, I presume . . .” He gave a nervous start, stiffened, and nodded his head, as if seized by a cramp in his neck. “Inspector Sipe Scummington, Scotland Yard.”
This strange manner of introducing himself did not appear to elicit any response; Canterel merely gave a brief smile of confirmation.
“And you know Grimod, my butler?”
“I do,” said Scummington, without even glancing at him.
“Then you know that he has some medical experience . . .”
“I do. But at present it is unnecessary. The bullet went through his heart; he’s dead.”
“Will you permit me to confirm this?” asked Grimod.
“Very well.” He stepped aside to let them pass. “Take care not to get your nice clothes dirty, he bled like a pig.”
Chung Ling Soo had been laid out on his back. On her knees beside him was a young woman dressed as a geisha, sobbing and holding his hand. Grimod checked for a pulse in his carotid, the site of the impact, and rose. There was nothing to be done.
“My condolences, madam,” said Holmes. “He was a great artist.”
He felt a hand on his shoulder: Canterel, holding a finger to his lips, was signaling him to look at the body. With the tip of his cane, Canterel discreetly lifted the magician’s robe just enough to reveal a protruding shoe.
“Holy hell!” murmured Holmes.
On Chung Ling Soo’s left foot was a blood-spattered white sneaker; the Ananke-brand symbol they discovered on it added an additional horror. Where his other foot should have been was only a peg leg with a rubber tip.
“Ah, yes, who would have guessed it?” said the inspector, forcing his way into their huddle. “The great Chung Ling Soo had only one leg. His disability did not hinder him, quite the opposite, since he made use of it in some of his illusions, according to what his assistant told me. One less leg leaves space under that robe to hide all sorts of things, not to speak of the number where his assistant saws his leg off!”
Canterel frowned, annoyed by the indecency of saying such things only two steps from a woman who was sobbing over the corpse of her husband. He was about to let out one of those barbs that had alienated him from the world when Holmes, sensing the danger, hurriedly cut him off: “What happened?”
“I don’t know yet, but it was certainly an accident. A dozen conjurors have kicked the bucket doing this kind of thing. Houdini himself said it in his time, it’s too sophisticated, the slightest technical error and you’re toast . . .”
The arrival of the police and the paramedics brought an end to the discussion. Chung Ling Soo was loaded onto a stretcher and taken to the hospital along with his wife. One sergeant caught sight of Grimod, who was examining the rifles used by the firing squad.
“You there, the negro, who told you you could touch that?”
“Leave him alone,” Holmes intervened, “he’s with us.”
“What do you mean, he’s with you? Who are you, for starters?”
“Sergeant Bedford?” said Scummington.
“Oh, excuse me, Inspector,” he said, snapping to attention. “That . . . person was tampering with the weapons, and I thought I should . . .”
“That will do, Sergeant, I have the situation in hand.”
“What a tragic story!” said Holmes, offering the inspector a cigar. “What do you know about his true identity?”
“The fellow was no more Chinese than you or I. His real name was William Ellsworth Robinson, an American of Scottish origins. His wife, too: ‘Suee Seen, the living doll of Shanghai,’ but in reality Olive Path, a chorus girl from Ohio.”
“And?”
“So far, they seem irreproachable, though you’ll agree that this practice of playing at being Chinese all day, even behind the scenes, is at least a little peculiar.”
“That is Great Art,” said Canterel, examining the lead balls that were still sitting on the plate, “making your whole life a part of your pursuit of excellence. I would imagine that these are indeed the projectiles marked by the audience members?”
“It seems that way to me,” the inspector replied. And, addressing Chung Ling Soo’s assistant, “This is the time for you to explain yourself. How did the bullets wind up in his mouth?”
“He put them there himself,” the man said, now speaking in perfect English. “When I load the rifles, I swap out the bullets marked by the spectators and hold onto them until the moment that I pass them to Chung Ling Soo, along with the plate. When the soldiers pull the trigger, they set off blanks. The guns are rigged. Everything else is just staging.”
“So how did it misfire?”
“I took apart the rifle in question: the partition between the blank and the real powder had worn through. When the first exploded, it set fire to the second, so the gun really went off.”
“You must check the guns, though, don’t you?”
“Of course, but even though we were making big money, he begrudged any expenses. It was always too soon to replace the parts . . .”
“A stinginess that cost him his life,” the inspector concluded smugly.
Canterel hastily whispered a few words into Holmes’s ear.
“Well!” replied the latter. “All that’s left for us to do is take a look around the poor man’s dressing room!”
“That’s not necessary, to my mind the case is closed.”
“Oh, of course I agree, but . . .” Holmes winked at the inspector. “It’s not every day that an opportunity arises to learn a few of a magician’s secrets. That’s what my friend Canterel just whispered to me. Aren’t you curious to know how he pulled all those little animals out of his drum?”
“Not in the least. It’s rigged, that’s all. Anyone can do it, once they know how it works . . . But go on, if it interests you. As for me, I have to accompany these idiots to Scotland Yard to take their statements.”
They hastened to salute the inspector, then plunged into the depths of the theater.
“What a worm,” said Canterel, referring to Scummington.
“Worse than you suppose,” replied Holmes. “He’s a former Pinkerton. A scab and a pervert, I’ve been told; he drinks other people’s piss . . .”
A stagehand directed them toward Chung Ling Soo’s dressing room. As soon as they found it—the placard on the door and the warning against unauthorized entry left no doubts—they closed themselves in.
“This was no accident,” Grimod informed them gravely. “The partition between the round and the secret ramrod was deliberately damaged.”
“You’re sure?” asked Holmes.
“One hundred percent. Normal wear and tear doesn’t leave filings . . . And I asked his assistant, so I also know that Chung Ling Soo never told anyone, even his wife, where he got those shoes. He received one once every six months, size 42, which he only wore for performances.”
As he was listening to his companions, Canterel began to snoop around the room. Wood Green Empire was known for the opulence of its interior design, but also for the comfort and spaciousness of its artists’ rooms. Besides a huge dressing room, complete with vanity and folding screen, the space included a salon where the magician had stored some of his materials. Having lingered over the contents of a trunk, Canterel was getting ready to examine a support overloaded with Chinese attire when he suddenly felt another presence in the room. His jump undoubtedly saved his life; at the same moment that a gunshot brushed his waistcoat, a man shot out from under the silk clothes and bolted for the door, shoving Holmes and Grimod as he passed. Thrown off balance, Grimod grabbed at the unknown man’s jacket and held on so tightly that the latter wriggled out of it to escape more quickly.
“Stand down, he’s armed!” said Holmes, holding Grimod back. “It’s not worth getting yourself killed. And you, old chap, no harm done?”
White as a sheet, Canterel was inspecting the gunshot residue left on his garments by the blast. “That rogue ruined a thousand-ducat waistcoat! If I ever catch him . . .”
“Still, he left us a few tidbits,” said Grimod, combing through the pockets of the jacket. “And, if I’m not mistaken, I’ve found a document that may very well be of service to us . . .”
He produced a stamped, addressed envelope. Printed in red, a Chinese dragon framed a handwritten address: Mr. Hugh Palmer, 97 Morrison Street, Peking, China.
Holmes quickly unsealed the flap. The envelope did not contain a letter, but rather a long ribbon folded in a zigzag, like those they had seen come out of Chung Ling Soo’s mouth less than an hour earlier. A series of signs, in the same handwriting and ink as those on the envelope, were inscribed vertically:
TDOWIκου HINANηίτ ETAYGδμα DSRM0οάί IREO2ύχ AEOS/δο MFNC1έ OLTO5θ NEHWAε DCEPν ATIEά NIRKν
“Looks like a job for you, Canterel!” said Holmes, holding the strip out to him. “Our ruffian is going to be in deep trouble: it looks as if he has lost what he came to fetch . . .”
“Let’s get out of here. I look like a beggar, I have to change before I can think.”
They hailed a cab and returned to The Langham, London. As soon as they arrived, Canterel arranged to meet them at the hotel bar, then rushed to his room.
“Ah, there you are!” said Miss Sherrington when she saw him. “Where did you run off to? The slums of Southwark?”
“Think again. It was only a variety show; it is impossible to attend boulevard theatre without coming back a little splattered.”
It seemed to him that the gunshot had contaminated his whole outfit. He removed all his clothes, giving the order to dispose of them.
“Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Monsieur. As usual. I will go directly and throw these in the municipal incinerator. Just as well, I can’t imagine what sort of unfortunate would wear your cast-offs on his back! He’d be sent straight to Bedlam . . .”
“For this evening, I will stay in my cream silk ensemble, white shirt, and dove gray socks.”
“And for your shoes? High altitudes, mountain pastures, damp undergrowth?”
“Alice! Enough of your impertinences, please! My Guyanese python shoes will do nicely.”
Still in his underclothes, walking around the room, he examined the ribbon for the first time. Letters from the Latin and Greek alphabets, numbers, a backslash . . . The puzzle promised to be gripping.
Miss Sherrington reappeared, her arms full of clothes.
“And now he’s throwing streamers!” she said, snorting.
Canterel started to get dressed, though not before he updated the tally that kept track of how many times he had worn each garment. After three marks for shirts and ties—fifteen for suits, hats, and overcoats—he got rid of them.
When he joined them in the hotel bar an hour later, Holmes and Grimod were already seated in heavy brown leather armchairs. Sitting two tables away, three elderly gentlemen talked loudly, deep in an impassioned conversation that was quite obviously, thanks to certain recurring words, on the subject of Talleyrand and the Congress of Erfurt.
“So,” asked Holmes, “have you had time to take a look?”
“Yes, but I haven’t gotten far, I’m afraid.”
He handed Holmes the ribbon and got out a paper onto which the message had been scrupulously copied.
“It’s very odd, it does not resemble anything that I have had the chance to study. If it is merely a matter of a simple encryption through the transposal of letters, the presence of the Greek characters will complicate any frequency analysis, but I should be able to figure it out in a few hours. If we are dealing with a code involving the substitution of words starting from a unique key, it will be much more difficult . . . And, in any case, I will need my notes, which I left in Scotland.”
“We’re losing precious time,” said Holmes, disappointed. “Waiter! Another scotch, please. What are you drinking?”
“Tea with milk.”
“How would one go about doing a frequency analysis?” asked Grimod, who was scrutinizing the message doubtfully.
“In any given language, the frequency of the letters remains the same in the event of a simple transposition. In French, for example, the letter ‘e’ is the most common, then ‘a,’ ‘s,’ ‘i,’ etc. If the encryptor made each letter correspond to another letter in the alphabet, all one has to do is replace the most frequent letter in the message with ‘e,’ and so on.”
At the neighboring table, the tone had gone up another notch. In the midst of their heated debate, the three diners had forgotten their manners. Half up onto the table, one of them seemed ready to come to blows. “And what if Talleyrand wasn’t a traitor, eh? Try thinking about that for two seconds!”
Canterel turned toward them, ready to give them a piece of his mind, but froze and picked up the ribbon. “If Talleyrand . . .” he repeated. “How did I not think of it sooner!”
“If you could enlighten us . . .”
“A scytale, Holmes! The method the Spartans used to send secret messages. The generals who needed to send correspondence to each other would keep perfectly identical sticks. When one of them wanted to send a letter, he would encircle his stick with a thin strip of paper, then write his message on it. Then he would unroll the strip, rendering the text unreadable, and send it along to the other general. To decipher it, the second general had only to roll it around his own stick. Simple, but effective!”
“And in our case?” asked Grimod.
“This system amounts to a kind of encryption through transposal. If it is indeed the method used here, I will eventually crack it. But there is still something that rings a little strange. Scytales produce groups of the same number of letters, but here we have decreasing numbers . . .”
“We’ll have to go back to the theater,” said Holmes, “and try to dig up that damned stick.”
Canterel suddenly sat up straight. “Call the car, quickly!”
“Where are we going? Wood Green Empire?”
“No, the morgue.”
