Sherlock Holmes Read Free Page A

Great Oz lit up some flash-powder to aid in my investigation of
the scratches on the floor, I noticed he turned away and shaded his
eyes beforehand. Do you think he is a man who could be bribed?”
    “By whom?” asked Diggs in surprise, and
Holmes turned back to Li, and raised his brows.
    The prisoner whispered, “Any man can be
bribed.”
    “Surely in so horrible a crime,” I objected,
“the man behind a bribe places himself in the hands of his
accomplice. And putting the matter at one remove clarifies nothing,
does it?”
    “Does it?” Holmes kept his gaze on Li, who
continued to look down at his own hands, and for a long while did
not reply. “Is this all you have to tell us?”
     
    After several more minutes’ silence, Li
whispered, “It is.”
     
    *
     
    “The man is screening someone!” murmured
Diggs, as a police-officer showed us out of the cells and along the
corridor to the watchroom. “With his life – and the lives of
hundreds of people, perhaps, in Chinatown – hanging in the
balance—”
    “Obviously,” returned Holmes, in an
undervoice barely louder than breath, “someone of critical
importance to him.”
    It was now close to midnight, the fog outside
the station-house a black wall only dimly pierced by far-spaced
street-lamps. As there was now no question of me or Diggs being
able to cross the Bay back to Berkeley, Holmes inquired of the
nearest hotel, which was on Union Square, a few blocks along. I
admit I was not sorry about this, for the day had been an extremely
tiring one and my own constitution had not recovered from my
illness of the spring. We had gone but a half-block, when I touched
Holmes’s arm, holding him back; the three of us halted, and for an
instant, I heard the moist tap of feet behind us in the fog before
they, too, stopped.
    Holmes’ hand touched mine, signalling that he
had heard, and we walked on, then stopped again. Again the
following footsteps silenced. Holmes said – for the benefit of our
unseen friend – “Damn this fog! We shall be lost like Hansel and
Gretel in the woods.”
    “The Great Oz knows all things,” chipped in
Diggs serenely. “This way… Do you call this fog, man?” He led on,
and Holmes slipped away into an alley between two buildings. “Why,
when I went into battle against the Wicked Witch of the East and
her evil minions, she called darkness a thousand times more
dreadful than this, just by pouring ink onto her mirror—”
    His voice must have successfully lured our
following footpad past Holmes’s hiding-place, for the next thing we
knew, I heard a sharp scuffle behind us, and a voice gasp “Oh! Let
me go!”
    Diggs and I doubled back at once, groping our
way along the wet brick wall in the darkness – away from the blurry
glow of the few street-lamps it was like being at the bottom of a
cavern – until we reached Holmes and his captive. “You have trailed
us from the police-station, Madame,” Holmes said, “yet had your
intentions been honest, I think you would have screamed to find
yourself seized—”
    “I will scream,” threatened the young woman’s
voice, as Diggs and I came up.
    “My dear young lady, there is absolutely no
need to do so,” said Diggs. “You obviously wanted to follow us, out
of all the middle-aged gentlemen in the city, so here we are at
your service… Are you a friend of Mr. Li?”
    She whispered in a small voice, “I am.”
    “Then come with us to the parlor of what I
hope is to be our hotel for the night,” he said, “and tell us all
about it.”
     
    *
     
    Her name was Diana Prince, and she worked as
a typist for a firm of importers on Grant Avenue, near the wharves.
In the better light of the parlor of the Kearney Hotel, I took note
of the worn and slightly faded condition of the neat jacket, skirt,
and shirtwaist she wore, and of their exquisite neatness. The cameo
at her throat was no piece of costume jewelry, but a simple and
expensive piece that precisely matched her ladylike,