The Moor - Laurie R. King [114]
We approached each other rapidly, halted on the macadam facing each other, opened our mouths, and spoke simultaneously.
"He's salting the streambed," said Holmes.
"He's planting gold to run a fraud," I said, adding for good measure, "with dynamite."
"Black powder," he corrected me, and added, "using thunderstorms to conceal the sounds of the explosions." He took my elbow to turn me back in the direction of Lew House. "Excellent Russell. How did you work it out?"
"It's all in Baring-Gould's books."
"What?" He paused to look at me in astonishment.
"In pieces, but it's there, for eyes that are looking for it."
"Scheiman's eyes." He started forward again.
"He is the bookish one of the pair, to be sure. He is also engaged to be married to Violet Baskerville."
This time Holmes came to a complete stop. He worked his shoulders to let the rucksack thud to the ground, then sat on it, taking out his pipe and eyeing me expectantly. I perched on a nearby stone.
"Miss Baskerville confirmed that Ketteridge was here in March of 1921, and purchased the Hall no later than June. And as soon as he had taken possession, he and Scheiman brought her the portrait of Sir Hugo, which now sits in her flowery drawing room looking truculent and very out of place."
"So I should imagine," he murmured around his pipe.
"How did you discover it?" I asked him.
"Shelling in the bed of the Okemont," he said briefly, and having got his pipe going, he stood up again. I was about to protest, but decided that unless we were to risk patches of frostbite about our persons to match those of the gold baron, the story would best be told in the warmth of Lew House. I hopped down from my rock and reached for the rucksack, and in the process of heaving it onto my back, I was nearly sent staggering off the road into the ditch.
"What on earth is in this?" I exclaimed. "Rocks?"
"A few rocks, yes. Also three books, a cookstove, and a very wet one-man canvas tent."
"Pethering was camped out in the open during Tuesday's storm," I deduced. I turned to face the right direction and leant forward to let the dead weight drive me along. "He must have heard or seen them laying the charges that would drive the grains of gold into the gravel bed, and been foolish enough to allow himself to be seen."
"It went beyond that. He had camped up in a protected area on the edge of Sourton Common, half a mile away, but I found signs of a struggle and blood that had seeped down between some stones, right near the river."
"You think he was insane enough actually to go down and accost them, face to face?"
"Did he not seem the type?"
"I'm afraid you're right. God protect us from fanatics."
Holmes dismissed Pethering. "Were there any answers to my telegrams?"
"Just from the laboratory in London." I told him what the report had said, adding, "I'd have expected traces of the explosive."
"Perhaps it was too small a sample," he said. "The lack of response to my other enquiries is irritating. I had hoped to find a warrant outstanding for Scheiman, at any rate. What can they be doing?"
His irritation faded briefly when we entered Lew House and found a telegraph envelope on the table just inside the door. He ripped it open and read it while I was struggling to ease the load from my shoulders without allowing it to crash violently onto the floorboards. I straightened slowly and circled my shoulders experimentally to see if the ache was going to get any worse.
"Is your shoulder bothering you, Russell?" Holmes asked, his back to me. The irritation was back in his voice; whatever the news, it was not what he had wanted.
"It's fine. What does the telegram say?"
He thrust it at me and went off in the direction of the kitchen, where I heard him talking with Mrs Elliott for a moment before he returned to take up his place before the fire.
"You must have warned them not to use names," I noted curiously, reading the flimsy