Читать книгу Island of Point Nemo - Jean-Marie Blas de Robles - Страница 18
ОглавлениеThe Diamond and Its Reflection
Presented with aplomb by Shylock Holmes, Scummington’s card gave them easy access to Eagle Place, the London morgue. One of the attendants led them to the cell where the late Chung Ling Soo was temporarily resting on a black marble slab. As soon as the attendant left them, Holmes rebelled.
“But really, Canterel, we’re not children . . . When are you going to explain to me what we’re doing here?”
“The wooden leg,” said Canterel, pursing his lips. “Take off the wooden leg, will you?”
Grimod understood immediately and did so, his eyes gleaming.
Once he had the object in his hands, Canterel examined it and quickly found what he was looking for.
“I knew it!” he said, showing them a horizontal groove cut into the wood in the top third of the leg.
He aligned the beginning of the strip with this groove and asked Grimod to hold it in place while he rolled it around the leg. Gradually, as it wound around, the message appeared. His glasses perched on the tip of his nose, Holmes spelled it out aloud: “‘The diamond and its reflection are on their way. Moscow-Peking 02/15.’ As for the rest, I apologize for my pronunciation, but Ananki d oúdé theoí machontaí.”
“Άνάνκη δ ούδέ θ∊οί μάχουταί,” Grimod corrected, smiling. “‘Not even the gods fight against necessity,’ Simonides’s famous words . . .”
“But which in our case sounds like a warning!” said Canterel.
“You are extraordinary. I would pay dearly to know the series of deductions that brought you to this leg . . .”
“Even if I had the answer to your question, I don’t think you’d be able to afford my price, my dear. No offense, of course.”
“That’s not what I meant,” continued Grimod, “though perhaps a more in-depth conversation on that topic would surprise you. Let’s move on . . . I am more a being of logic than passion, I have studied Joseph Bell’s theories, arguments drawn upon by the grandsire of our own Sir Holmes, whom I try to assist as much as I can in his work, but your method of coming to this conclusion astounds me, as it flies in the face of all deductive logic!”
“Perhaps,” said Canterel, unwinding the strip very slowly, “perhaps it is simply a matter of a different sort of logic, just as true to reason, or what you understand by that word. If I weren’t concerned about the contradiction in terms, I would speak of an irrational logic, a mental process that I have noticed can be found in the margins, in random encounters, and in a kind of pure poetry, the magic of its operation. Thinking about it a little, I would say that I am likely not such a bad poet.”
“Please, Monsieur, or I won’t be able to sleep tonight: how did you go from the ribbon to the scytale, and from there to the wooden leg?”
“You imagine I know how I did it?” asked Canterel, adjusting his tiepin. “You are wrong. I try to be . . . How shall I put it? To be truly present in my surroundings, and suddenly everything begins to signal to me in some strange way. I cannot write poems that an editor would agree to publish without making me pay the expenses out of pocket, but something happens within me that is along the lines of poetry. I must be some kind of sensor, you know. Reality often works the same way in which Raymond Roussel wrote some of his books—it feels like a bad pun. Coils, pythons, a stray scytale . . . Then the intuition that a conical stick was needed to produce that shift in the letters. It’s no more than that: I lock on to the things that hide from the order that lies beneath the seeming frivolity of language.”
“In the meantime,” Holmes noted, concerned, “the main thing I see is that we are not the only ones on the chase . . .”
Half an hour later, they arrived back at the hotel bar.
Holmes banged his glass down on the table.
“Moscow-Peking,” he said, fervent. “Do we agree that it can only mean a train?”
Grimod nodded, while Canterel merely raised his eyebrows.
“If all this is not just the product of our imagination, the diamond should then be traveling on the Transsiberian on February 15th to get to its recipient.”
“Which implies,” continued Grimod, “that the message was intended to take the same route a few days in advance . . . Waiter!” he said, with an authority that left Canterel puzzled. “The schedule for the Moscow-Peking, please . . .”
“Of course, Monsieur, allow me to go consult the Bradshaw’s at reception . . .”
He returned less than ten minutes later—this was one of the horribly expensive little services offered by large hotels—with a piece of paper on which were written the upcoming departures of the incredible train that had linked Europe and Asia since 1891.
“The next leaves in three days,” said the server, “which will not leave you time to make a reservation, unless you already have your visas in order. Still, you’ll have to get to Moscow. The next departs in two weeks, on February 15th, which would be more reasonable. If you wish, we can arrange your voyage for you.”
Holmes was delighted, but he shot a questioning glance toward Grimod.
“I’ll thank you to take care of it,” said the latter. “There will be four of us. I will find you again in a little while to go over the details.”
When the waiter was gone, Holmes noticed that Canterel looked preoccupied.
“What’s wrong, my friend? Do you think we’re not making the right decision?”
“Of course not,” replied Canterel. “It’s a good lead, but today is the . . .”
“The fifth of February,” said Grimod.
“That’s what I thought. I’m concerned that there won’t be enough to fill my trunks. I have some shopping to do, you see . . . My whole wardrobe is still in Biarritz.”
The next day, Holmes drove Canterel to Savile Row, the street with the best tailors in London. The Frenchman left behind a small fortune at Gieves & Hawkes in exchange for several suits, and almost as much at Hardy Amies for shirts and accessories. Still more checks cut the fittings down to three days, a period during which Holmes used his connections to obtain the necessary visas for their trek. As for Grimod, he was sent to Eilean Castle to tell Lady MacRae of their departure. He was to gather their things and bring them back to London along with the car.
Canterel never stopped thinking about the message that was sending them off to the end of the earth; one of the words kept bothering him. He opened up to Holmes. “The diamond and its reflection . . . Why word it like that? Doesn’t that have to mean that there was something else in the safe?”
“I would lean more toward a simple figure of speech,” said Holmes. “That fits the exuberance of his persona, Chung Ling Soo was not one for discretion, if I am to believe what we saw of his show.”
“Certainly not, but still. I hardly see the use of such a phrasing in this instance . . .”
“Come now, Martial, don’t go looking for things that aren’t there, our situation is complicated enough as it is, let’s not add any more riddles. In any case, now that your wardrobe is replenished, I suggest you stop by and visit my friend James Purdey, a gunsmith. It would be well not to disregard the dangers that await us.”
Making it clear that he believed he had all he needed in his luggage, Canterel acquiesced. They went to 57 South Audley Street, where they were received in the “Long Room” reserved for “serious” clients. The meaning behind this word: those rich enough to spend the exorbitant sums of money that transform a simple aesthete, astonished by the beauty of a weapon, into one of those exceptional men capable of buying it. With Holmes seeming uneasy, in Grimod’s absence, at the prospect of making pecuniary decisions, Canterel came to acquire a Whitworth double-barreled rifle, which had narrowed chokes and jasper trim that read Best Bouquet & Scrolls, allowing the bearer to honorably face any wildcat in the real or figurative jungles he had to roam. He finished his shopping with a Mauser C96 and its holster, and insisted on presenting his friend with a 9mm Luger Parabellum that he was salivating over.
Once Grimod returned from Scotland, the car was delivered to The Langham, London’s garage; Miss Sherrington looked after getting all the purchases from the last several days packed up and transporting them to Victoria Station.
Perhaps you will have formed a rather poor picture of Canterel, of a contemptible father wholly occupied in frittering away his fortune without sparing a thought for the child he had never seen? That would be a mistake, as he expressed his desire to go to Glasgow before their departure, just long enough to embrace his daughter; it was Grimod who dissuaded him: the Nord-Express from Paris to St. Petersburg was going the next day, on Saturday the 9th of February at 2:15 P.M. It would not arrive at its destination until Monday at 3:00 P.M.; they would then have to catch a connection on the 12th to get to the Russian capital the evening of the 14th and hope to make the Transsiberian on the 15th.
They had not counted on the unknown quantities that accompany all journeys of this scale. After a brief night, shortened by important reflections on the chase they were undertaking—but even more by Holmes’s tendency to top up his glass of scotch before sharing the slightest opinion—all four of them clambered into a cab around noon. Ever since the reopening of the coalmines and the return to coke in all fields of industry, a thick fog had been pressing down on the metropolitan centers of Europe. The once-renowned “London fog” had easily regained its past acclaim, so much so that at that hour of the day it reduced the streets to dismal canyons populated by vague shapes. From the orangey dome that covered the city fell a snow of carbonaceous particulates that oppressed the throat and irritated the eyes.
Their cab was turning onto Grosvenor Place, a few hundred meters from the station, when a huge explosion forced the coachman to rein in his team. Part of the façade of a department store had collapsed in the blast, flinging massive stones into the street and showering down a hail of glass shards. A terrified young woman came out of the haze, carrying a baby covered with blood, then came a carriage drawn by a panic-stricken horse that had taken the bit between its teeth, followed by a man who was walking slowly, his head split open. Canterel was about to open the door to go help the wounded who were streaming toward them, when a second explosion, then a third lit up the sky in different places, though it was impossible to pinpoint them exactly.
“Bombings,” said Holmes. “We have to get out of here quickly!”
At that moment, swarms of young people emerged from the fog, running. Ragged little kids, for the most part, who were fleeing with their arms full of the fruits of their looting: hams, cashmeres, gleaming copper pots, ratafia, porcelain dolls, clocks, dried cod, cellos, armfuls of umbrellas, sewing machines, chandeliers, mattresses, glass globes, cobblers’ anvils, andirons, preserves, boiled leather mannequins, brass candlesticks, wheelbarrows brimming with marshmallows and gilt buttons, even a cast iron stove carried like a cumbersome corpse by four teens whose faces were black with anguish and smoke. Radiant Hermès scarves began to billow out above them, looking like the last shreds of a snuffed-out dream.
After this vision came the tramping sound of a stampede, then the arrival of several mounted policemen. Holmes quickly gave the coachman an order, and they managed to sneak in behind the mounted guard that was launching into pursuit of the looters.
Twenty minutes later, they narrowly managed to leap onto the Golden Arrow that was threatening to leave for Paris without them.
