The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures - Mike Ashley [215]
“Surely you are mistaken, Holmes? I have passed over many such messages in the personal columns. Why pick upon these?”
“My dear fellow, have you no eyes?” He thrust under my nose the sheet of doodles to which I have already referred. “We await only the time of our rendezvous. The date we have.”
He paced the room in a state of combined exhilaration and disquiet, ignoring my request for further enlightenment. “Thank God we are in time.”
“You speak in riddles, Holmes.”
“Cannot you see,” one finger impatiently jabbed at the doodles. “Well, well, perhaps you cannot. Argot, my dear Watson, is a language even more worth studying than the Chaldean, and of more practical use. Consider what profession our Baroness follows.”
“Lady-in-waiting?”
“Burglar, Watson. She has joined the underworld, what more natural than that she should amuse herself with burglar’s argot? How often have you passed a garden fence with such childish scrawls chalked upon it? Frequently no doubt, and thought nothing of it. Yet such scrawls are the living language of two groups of outsiders in our world, burglars and tramps. Each has their own code – yes, Watson, your code at last, but these marks are the code of the illiterate. Since prehistoric times, drawings in simple form have portrayed messages left for those that come after. A burglar or a tramp goes about his trade with the same dedication as Mr Didier for his. Where the latter collects ingredients, our lawless and vagrant friends deal in information: which servants have been squared, for example.”
“Ah! The cook bears a cross.”
“You excel yourself, Watson,” Holmes murmured. “Similarly they convey how many live in the house, whether there are dogs, how many servants, the best means of access; tramps have a similar code, more concerned with what their brethren might expect from the house. Here before us is all we need to know.”
“Turpin?” I enquired.
“An exception, but simple enough. An acquaintance with the Dover Road should tell you that Turpin is associated with The Old Bull coaching inn on the summit of Shooter’s Hill in Kent. Hence the reference to a dog. The old Old Bull no longer exists, but a new hostelry of the same name stands there.”
“The meeting is there?”
“No, Watson, no. ‘Cupid strikes the right fox four times’.” He pointed to the doodle of an arrow with the figure 4 written by it. “At the foot of Shooter’s Hill stood the old Fox in the Hill public house, conveniently close to the gallows to whet the lips of the onlookers. Both are now vanished, but again a new public house stands close to the old. The hill is lined with villas and I have little doubt that the fourth on the right from The Bull is our place of rendezvous and that therein works a cook who will no longer qualify for the title of faithful retainer. She has been squared, and the gentleman and male retainer of the household step out at nine o’clock, we are informed.”
“And the day, Holmes?” I was by amazed at the depth of my friend’s knowledge of the underworld.
“ ‘The circle has a cross’. A tramp sign conveying that the householder is religious. A little more obscure, but let us take the religious connection. We lack a date and Ascension Day is tomorrow, Thursday the 20th.”
“Suppose it implies Whitsun?”
“Would the gentleman of the house then leave it at nine o’clock? He would be in church or at breakfast. No, no, it is tomorrow, and surely today the last piece of the jigsaw must fall into our hands.”
At this moment Mrs Hudson brought in the daily newspapers and with an eager cry Holmes sprang across the room to receive them from her hands. Mrs Hudson cast one look at the state of the room, then wisely departed without comment.
“I have it! See here, Watson. The cross gains a leg.” In triumph he added