Gaslight Grimoire_ Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes - Barbara Hambly [52]
Holmes scratched his long nose. “Well, it was a long shot at best. Thank-you for your time, Mr. Redfern.”
We made to leave, but the young man bounded across the length of the room, the rolled-up painting in his hand. “Wait!” he cried. “Mr. Holmes, as an … admirer of your work, I should very much like you to have this.”
Holmes chuckled. “My services are charged at a fixed rate, Mr. Redfern. I doubt that I could afford one of your paintings.”
“I’m not selling it — I’m giving it to you. It’s mine to do with as I wish, and I wish you to have it. Take it, please.”
I was already on my guard, and should never under any circumstances have accepted a gift from a man so patently false as Algernon Redfern, so I was astonished by my friend’s reaction, unrolling the picture with an almost childish enthusiasm of which I would never have imagined him capable. Holmes’ eyes glittered as he examined the picture.
“Why, this is really very fine!” he exclaimed.
“If I have captured the color of the mudstains, I take it you can identify the precise area of London depicted?”
“No need, Mr. Redfern, I am quite familiar with Coptic Street; I had lodgings not far from there some years ago, and it has featured in one of our recent investigations. Watson, you recall the case of the Coptic Patriarchs?”
I attempted to convey my concerns to Holmes in a surreptitious manner by means of a loud cough, but he seemed completely oblivious.
“Well, good-bye, Mr. Holmes,” said the young man, his unhealthy grin now even wider. “It was nice to have known you, if only for a brief time. Good-bye, Dr. Watson — paregoric is the stuff.”
“I suppose it has occurred to you, Holmes,” I remarked, tartly, “that thus far in this case, everyone who has owned a painting by Algernon Redfern has died the most horrible death … and you are the latest owner of a Redfern?”
Holmes’ mood during our cab journey back to Baker Street had been irrepressibly cheerful, and he refused to allow my grim observation to spoil his mood. “You know my methods, Watson — I am well-known to be indestructible. Besides, I trust that the two of us will be able to see danger coming in any direction.”
“I wish us better luck than Anwar Molinet; we still have yet to determine the precise cause of his death, but I’d be prepared to wager a considerable sum that this fellow Redfern is behind it all somehow.”
“Then perhaps it’s wise that your checkbook is safely locked away in my drawer.”
I ignored the sharpness of his retort. “I simply meant that I find it inexplicable that you choose to trust this fellow!”
“I did not say that I trusted him.”
“But you said you were certain he was at the center of this pattern of events, and now you’re accepting gifts from the fellow.”
“Well, evidently, I was wrong about his precise connection to the case. I simply view him now as another stop on our journey, rather than our destination point.”
This pronouncement baffled me; so far as I could see, we had no lines of enquiry left to pursue. Holmes evidently noted the confusion on my features, for he continued: “It’s interesting that, as an artist, Mr. Redfern prefers to write rather than doodle. You noticed, of course, his furious scribblings as we conversed?”
“I noticed,” I admitted, “but I placed no importance in it.”
Holmes tutted. “Just when I think I have made something of you, Doctor. As we spoke, he wrote the words ‘Do they know about Ferregamo?’”
“How could you possibly have seen that from where you were positioned?”
Holmes winced, and I found myself reaching for my service revolver, imagining that my friend was in some danger. But he simply smiled weakly.
“I really must speak to Mrs. Hudson about