THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE MISSING DINOSAUR TOOTH
By
John H. Watson, MD
John H. Watson, MD
as told to
Lewis B. Smith
Lewis B. Smith
In the years since I
retired from my active medical practice, and since my close friend Mister
Sherlock Holmes ended his storied career as the world’s first consulting
detective (although he still occasionally investigates what he calls “cases of interest”
on occasion), I have finally had the time to sort through my unpublished notes
on the many cases in which I assisted Holmes.
Most of these notes concern matters too trivial, or solutions too simple,
to merit laying them before the public.
Others involve events so sensitive that even now I may not write or speak
of them (although I have been told that when a certain august personage
breathes his last I may reveal the case of the vanishing Russian Duchess –
assuming I myself am still alive when that time comes). But there are a few
cases in my voluminous file that present sufficient points of interest that I
feel merited in bringing them forth for belated public consumption, and one
such case began on a blistering summer day in the fifty-fifth year of our good
Queen Victoria’s reign.
The glass had just topped ninety
degrees at noon, and a pall of nasty haze that no breeze could dispel hung over
the city of London. Laundry hung limp on
the lines, a thin sheen of sweat covered every citizen, and the passing of
wagons and carriages stirred up a near-constant cloud of dust at street
level. Tempers were short and it seemed
every voice rang a bit louder with notes of irritation and conflict. I was trying to fan myself with one hand
while propping up a book on my knee with the other, and Holmes was drawing the
bow across the strings of his violin in what seemed to be a deliberate effort
to create the tone most obnoxious to the human ear. Despite my long acquaintance with his
eccentricities, I had reached the point that I would have to either vacate the
room or fling my book at him in the next few minutes.
“My dear Watson,” he said, abruptly
laying down his bow, “I daresay that General Gordon’s biography would be a
terrible choice of projectiles. The inkwell
at the desk next to you would fly much truer, assuming I did not dodge it.”
“The devil you say, Holmes!” I replied
with a chuckle. “I know you claim such
comments are merely deductive reasoning, but I think you must be at least a bit
clairvoyant! There is no other way you
could have known what was on my mind at that moment.”
“You do me too much credit, Watson,”
Holmes replied with a sardonic grin. “I’ve watched from the corner of my eye as
your color has steadily risen, your fist clenched the book more tightly, and
your eye flickered back and forth, measuring the distance between your chair
and my forehead several times over.
Fortunately, my violin is now fully tuned, and you can work off your
anger by answering the door and allowing our guest to enter.”
I opened my mouth to retort, but the
sound of footsteps ascending the steps to 221B Baker street proved him correct
once more, so with a surly glare I got up to admit our latest client. He was a remarkably tall fellow, six and a
half feet at least, but scrawny in build, cadaverously white, with thin, lank
hair combed over his balding pate, a pince-nez that was a size to small for his
wide-set eyes, and a black suit that looked more apropos for an undertaker’s
parlor than the broiling streets of London on a muggy July day. As he entered,
he mopped his clammy forehead and fixed his gaze upon me.
“Are you the famous Mister Holmes?” he
said. “I fear that I am in most desperate
need of your assistance!”
“I am afraid you are mistaken, sir -”
I began, but his wail of despair cut me off.
“Oh, dear!” he said. “I was sure I had
copied the address down correctly. How shall I ever find him now? This is such an awful business, and I fear that
only the famous detective can sort it out!”
“My dear Doctor Snodgrass,” Holmes said,
“you are indeed at the right address. I
am Sherlock Holmes, and this is my friend and associate, Doctor Watson. Fear not, sir, I will gladly use all the
powers at my disposal to resolve your dilemma and make sure the Museum’s new
exhibit opens in time!”
The scarecrow-like figure recoiled as
if Holmes had struck him a physical blow, and grew even paler, if such a thing
was possible. For a moment, I thought he
was going to faint on our doorstep, and I quickly helped him into the chair
where I had been seated a few moments before, reading of the dreadful siege of
Khartoum. Eliot Snodgrass – for that was
indeed his name – removed his pince-nez and polished it nervously with his
frayed handkerchief.
“I cannot believe that our private
dilemma is in the papers already!” he said.
“Alas, the Museum Board will have my head when they find out that the
information has been leaked to the press!”
“You may set that worry aside, Doctor,”
said Holmes. “Nothing of your
difficulties has yet appeared in the press.”
“But how, then, could you possibly
know who I am or why I came to you this afternoon?” Snodgrass asked
breathlessly.
“Simple use of logic,” Holmes
said. “I saw your picture in Sunday’s Times
alongside a lengthy article about the upcoming Mesozoic exhibit, with an
account of the flurry of work going on to prepare this new attraction for the
public – and what could possibly bring the Natural History wing’s chief curator
to Baker Street in such high dudgeon on such a miserable day unless some crisis
was about to derail the grand opening, which is scheduled to take place in two
days?”
The tall scholar swallowed hard, and his
body relaxed slightly. “Well,” he said, “Here I thought disaster had struck,
but when you explain the process, I see that it was a very simple deduction
after all! But, Mister Holmes, I must
ask you to come to the Museum with me immediately. For the life of me, I do not understand why
anyone would kill a man over a dinosaur tooth!”
Holmes and I exchanged glances. Since resolving the case I later chronicled under
the title ‘The Adventure of the Copper Beeches’ a few weeks earlier, we had seen
precious few problems that were anything beyond pedestrian – several, in fact,
were so commonplace that Holmes referred the plaintiffs to Inspector Lestrade
with only a word or two of suggestions on how to conclude them. But a murder involving a fossil? I could see
by the glint in Holmes’ eyes and the twitching of his nostrils that his
interest was piqued.
“Well, then, Doctor,” he said, “why
don’t I ring up Mrs. Hudson for a glass of her delightful chilled lemonade and
you can tell us all about this tragedy?”
Snodgrass wiped his brow again. “Anything chilled would be welcome on this
miserable day!” he said. “Working in the
basement of the Museum has ill equipped me to deal with this dreadful heat!”
I rang up Mrs. Hudson, and in short
order she brought up three tall glasses of lemonade, their sides sweating in
the excess humidity. Ice sellers were
running short during this heat wave, but her box in the basement had just enough
left from the block she’d bought the previous day to keep the pitcher of lemonade
delightfully cool. I handed Holmes and
Snodgrass their glasses, then took a long drink of mine, and pressed the cool tumbler
to my forehead for a moment, relishing the feel of the cool glass on my skin.
“Now then,” said Holmes. “Give me the full story; omit no detail, however
trivial. What is this tooth missing
from, and who has been murdered?”
“Well, let me see, how to begin?”
Snodgrass fretted. “I suppose, sir, that
you have heard of the remarkable work of the American paleontologists Owens and
Marsh, in excavating and displaying the fossil remains of those marvelous giant
lizards, the dinosaurs?” he asked.
“Only the vaguest recollections of
news stories,” Holmes said. “I try to
focus my mind on things related to my craft, although I have glanced at those
articles because I used to pick up fossils at the base of the cliffs near our
home when I was a boy. Assume I know
nothing on the topic, sir, lest some important detail be overlooked.”
“Well, Mister Holmes, for the last
decade and more, these two Americans have been rivals in unearthing fossils all
over the American West and shipping them back east to be displayed in either
the Smithsonian or the New York Museum of Natural History. They are identifying new species at a
remarkable rate, and crowds flock in to see the latest specimens that are being
restored and mounted for display,” the curator explained. “Given the public interest in these creatures,
it behooved the British Museum to try and acquire specimens of our own. We hired one of Owens’ former associates,
Doctor William H. Jones, to procure dinosaur fossils for us. Thanks to the efforts of several wealthy donors,
he has had a sufficient budget to lease several large ranches in the area of the
Wyoming territory known as the ‘Badlands’,
where dinosaur fossils are plentiful and often exposed by erosion. Jones has been excavating and packing up
fossils for three years now. They were
initially taken to New York’s natural history museum to be cleaned and stabilized,
then this spring Jones came to London with six of his most pristine specimens
to oversee their preparation and mounting here at the British Museum. You should see the remarkable Stegosaurus
skeleton he just finished, sir, it is the most complete one found yet! But that was not the prize of the collection –
that honor belonged to the specimen I’ve come to see you about, a giant
predatory therapod known as Allosaurus!
Imagine a huge lizard, sir, walking on its hind legs, towering nearly
fifteen feet tall and reaching a length of thirty-two feet! This giant predator will greet visitors to
the new exhibit as soon as they come in, its mouth full of dreadful teeth open
wide in menace! It is the most
remarkable fossil ever to be displayed in Europe, sir, and Jones just finished
wiring the last of its bones into place yesterday. He was still fussing and fretting over it
when I left the Museum at none o’clock last evening, with his boy Henry holding
the ladder for him. I remember it
clearly, because as I left, I looked up at those mighty tooth-studded jaws and
thought what a remarkable exhibition this was going to be!”
“Fascinating,” said Holmes, taking
another sip of his lemonade and leaning back in his chair, steepling his
fingers under his chin. “Please
continue.”
“Well, this morning I arrived at work around
seven o’clock – I’ve been coming in early this week to avoid the beastly
heat. Young Henry is in school every day
until two o’clock in the afternoon, but his father had gotten there before me
this time, for the Paleontology hall was already unlocked. I looked up to see the Allosaurus’ toothy
grin as I entered, and something struck me as wrong right away. It took me a minute to realize what it was,
but when I saw it I was dumbstruck!
Someone had pried out the longest of the animal’s fearsome teeth, right
up near the front of its mouth, leaving an empty socket. The aesthetic effect was horrible; it somehow
transformed the ferocious predator’s visage into the face of a gap-toothed
reptilian simpleton! I decided that I
would immediately seek out Jones and find out what the devil was going on, but
then I looked at the floor and saw the blood and realized that more was amiss
than I thought.”
Holmes leaned forward, his own smooth
brow glistening now. I could tell this
puzzle had its hooks into him. “Fascinating!”
he said. “Tell me exactly what you saw,
sir!”
“The first thing I noticed was the
ladder,” he said. “Jones was a stickler
for taking it down and leaning it neatly against the wall whenever he was not
working, but it was lying on its side almost directly under the Allosaur’s
head. Just off to its left there was a
large puddle of blood, still glistening wet.
It was smooth and more or less oval, with a few stray drops scattered around
it, and over two feet across. But there was a set of bloody footprints leading
from it, down the corridor to the left, towards Jones’ office. I hesitated a moment, for the smell of blood
has always sickened me. But then I
followed the trail and came upon Jones lying just inside the office we’d
assigned him, in the midst of all his field journals and wrapped-up fossil
specimens. He’d collapsed after crossing the threshold, and I thought he was
gone, considering the volume of blood that had pooled around him. But he was still conscious, and hearing my
steps, he tried vainly to roll over so he could look up at me. I knelt and assisted him. He had a deep wound in his chest, just below
his sternum, and the blood was still oozing from it. He pointed at the shelf full of his journals
and labored to speak. He was nearly
gone, Mister Holmes, but I was able to make out two words – ‘Howell,’ or
perhaps ‘howl’, and ‘green.’ Words failed him at that point, but he raised his
hand and pointed at his desk – or perhaps the shelves behind it. He struggled to say something else, but then
his head drooped, and his breath left him.
I knelt there for some time – in fact, I had to go home before I came
here and change my trousers, for they were soaked in his blood! The
whole place was still – whoever had done the ghastly deed must have fled before
I arrived, for not a sound broke the oppressive silence from the time I found
the body until I finally rose and made my way up front. I staggered out the door and flagged down a
passing constable, and before I knew it the Museum was crawling with policemen. Their leader, a rather obnoxious fellow named
LeStrange or something like that, made some rather nasty insinuations, as if I
were the chief suspect! After two hours
of his relentless grilling, I protested, and he said in a snide tone ‘Well, if
you are so sure you have nothing to do with this, you might as well summon that
know-it-all Holmes!’ Begging your pardon,
sir, his words, not mine! But I asked
who he was referring to, and a plainclothesman gave me your name and
address. I asked to be excused, and
after changing out of my stained garments, I made my way here straightway.”
Holmes and I had exchanged glances at the
latter part of this narrative, having no doubt who ‘LeStrange’ was. But now that our guest was done, my friend
sprang from his chair and laid his violin in its case.
“Well, Doctor, I want to thank you for
bringing this case to my attention,” he said.
“It contains far more points of interest than I thought it might. I believe I can help unravel this mystery,
but we need to visit the scene of the crime first. I am afraid that London’s finest may have
already destroyed the greater part of the evidence, but perhaps I can still deduce
a few details before all the clues are erased.
Come, Watson, let us see if we can procure a hansom!”
It was with reluctance that I donned
my outer coat, but even in such extreme heat, in that day no gentleman would
venture out of doors in his shirtsleeves.
I donned a light, wide-brimmed hat to keep the hellish glare of the
early afternoon sun out of my face, and together the three of us descended the
steps onto Baker Street. Fortunately, we spotted a hansom a half block away, moving
up the street at a slow trot. I hailed
the driver and we hopped in, and soon were moving at a decent clip along the
streets, which were much less crowded than usual for midday. We arrived at the British Museum some fifteen
minutes later, finding a bobby at the door and a few curious patrons milling
about outside. I paid the driver a few
extra shillings and told him to get his poor horses some water, and then
followed Holmes and Snodgrass into the Museum’s vast atrium. The air inside was considerably cooler than the
sweltering street, and the faint smells of formaldehyde, sawdust, and plaster hung
in the air.
“Mister Holmes!” Inspector Lestrade greeted us in his usual condescending
tone. “I might have known you and Doctor
Watson would pop up. Can’t resist a
puddle of blood and a dead body, even on such a beastly day as this, can you?”
Holmes gave the policeman a sour
glance. “I suppose your men have
trampled most of the evidence into oblivion by now,” he said, “but I would
appreciate the opportunity to examine the scene of the crime.”
“The coroner is on his way to remove
the body,” said Lestrade, “so you might want to start with Dr. Jones’ office
and work back from there.”
“A surprisingly practical suggestion,”
Holmes said. “Let us begin, then. Lead
the way Lestrade!”
I followed Holmes to the large,
frosted glass doors that separated the Hall of Paleontology from main atrium of
the museum, and looked up as I entered to see the fearsome skull of the
Allosaurus looming over the room, its fangs glistening in the sunlight that
filtered down from the room’s high windows.
This was truly an impressive predator, I thought, as I tried to imagine
how those ancient bones would appear if clothed in flesh again. But the absence of one of the largest teeth
did indeed detract from the fearsome appearance of the fossil, lending a slight
aura of the ludicrous to what should have been fearsome.
Looking down, I saw the puddle of
blood that Snodgrass had described just to the left of the dinosaur’s skeleton,
and a bloody trail of footprints leading from it. Holmes’ eyes were fixed on the ground, and after
a moment he gave Lestrade a sharp look.
“Inspector,” he said, “please clear
this room. You and Watson may remain, but
send these others out into the lobby.”
“What about me, Mister Holmes?” a
voice intruded from the door.
Shouldering his way past Snodgrass was a stout, hirsute man who was perspiring
heavily. I could see that his suit was
covered with a thin coat of dust and deduced that he must have arrived just
behind us.
“Sir Gilbert!” Holmes said, and
crossed the room to greet the newcomer. “I
thought you might be here ahead of us, but I see you were delayed in
traffic. You are welcome to remain, sir,
but please stand there in the doorway until I have concluded my examination.”
“Quite right, sir! If you can solve this dreadful crime as
easily as you recovered the Borgia rubies for us, the Museum will be very much
in your debt,” he said.
“That was long ago,” Holmes said, “but
I am glad my small service is not forgotten.
Reynold Gilbert, this is my associate, Doctor Watson. Watson, this is Sir Reynold Gilbert, the head
of the British Museum’s governing board.”
“A pleasure, sir,” I said, “although I
wish our meeting were under different circumstances!”
“And in a cooler season,” the heavyset
trustee replied. “My hansom was held up
by a fire on Thurston Street, and I thought I would bake before we got moving
again!”
Holmes, meanwhile, had turned his back
on us and thrown himself to the floor, whipping out his magnifying glass, and
studying the minute scuff marks on the polished marble. He slowly crawled towards the puddle of
blood, skirted its edge, and then paused for a moment. He produced a pair of tweezers and retrieved
something very small from the floor, then crawled a few feet further, muttered
under his breath, and retrieved a second object. Both were deposited in an
empty snuffbox he carried for such moments, and then he continued following the
trail of bloody footprints across the chamber and into a nearby corridor. I followed behind, being careful to avoid the
now-dry blood trail, and then looked over his shoulder at the tragic scene that
was laid before us in the small office.
William Jones had been a robust man of
average height, with an iron-grey beard, dark brows, and thinning hair. Even in death, his skin bore the deep bronze
shade of a man who spent much of his life outdoors. Holmes studied the body very closely, once
more producing his tweezers and picking a few flecks of something from the man’s
shirt. Then he stood and looked at the
paleontologist’s desk, which was cluttered with fossils and notebooks, two of
which lay open, filled with close-packed but neat writing and sketches of bones,
giant lizards, cliff faces, and other things I did not recognize. Holmes studied the office, paying special
attention to the notebooks and the specimens that lay on the different shelves. Finally, he stood and called out for Doctor
Snodgrass. The cadaverous scientist had followed
me down the corridor and leaned into the room over my shoulder when he heard
his name.
“You said that Jones pointed at
something as he lay dying,” Holmes said. “Can you show me what he was pointing towards?”
Snodgrass stepped past me and folded
his long legs until he was down at floor level.
Gingerly, he lifted the dead man’s hand and extended it, pointing at the
top of the desk and the shelf beyond. Holmes
thanked the curator and studied the notebooks on the desktop, picking one up
and glancing over it carefully, rapidly flipping through the closely written
pages. He paused at one illustration
which even I recognized – it was a sketch of the Allosaurus skull that was now
mounted with the rest of the skeleton in the Hall of Paleontology. Holmes studied the sketch closely, and then
snapped the notebook shut and joined us in the hallway.
“Well, this little puzzle was
certainly not devoid of interest,” he said.
“Tell me, Doctor Snodgrass, how large was the missing tooth?”
“Well,
the crown of the tooth – the part visible above the jawline – was about an inch
and a half,” said the curator. “But with
the full root, it would have been nearly four inches.”
“Excellent!”
said Holmes. “From what I have observed,
I’m afraid can tell you that the tooth will never be recovered. Lestrade, could I trouble you for a pencil?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve figured it out
already!” Lestrade exclaimed.
“It was most elementary, once I put a
few things together,” Holmes said, producing the snuffbox. He led us back into
the Hall of Paleontology, where the light was better. “See here, Doctor Snodgrass, do you recognize
this?”
He pulled out a small piece of
plaster, flat, about a quarter inch across.
It was painted a rich, dark brown on one side, but was white and
unfinished on the other.
“It looks like the filler we use to
replace missing areas of bone in our dinosaur fossils,” he said.
“This was the largest piece I
recovered, directly underneath your Allosaurus. There were also a few smaller
fragments clinging to Dr. Jones’ jacket.
Now, observe this!” Holmes said,
and he dipped into the snuffbox again with his tweezers.
This time he produced a small loop of
gold, which glistened in the filtered sunlight of the great museum hall.
“It looks like the clasp off of a
golden necklace or bracelet,” I said.
“Good observation, Watson,” he
said. “That is exactly what it is. Now we need to recover the piece that it came
from!” He took the pencil Lestrade had
given him and ripped a blank page out of the back of the notebook he’d removed
from Jones’ desk. He quickly scrawled a
few lines on it, folded it in half, and handed it to the Inspector.
“Have one of your men send this
message via telegram to the curator of the Museum of Natural History in New
York City,” he said. “With any luck, we
can have his reply back by tomorrow.”
About this time, I heard a ruckus
coming from the entrance to the Hall of Paleontology, and all of us turned to
see the source of the commotion. A young
lad of about ten or twelve was trying to push his way past the patrolman who
guarded the entrance.
“You don’t understand,” he was saying. “I work here, helping my Pop with the
fossils! The exhibition goes up in two
days, and he needs me! You have to let me past!”
“That’s young Henry Jones!” Snodgrass
said. “Oh, bother, I completely forgot
to send anyone to notify him of his father’s demise! This is awful!”
“I will not have his last memory of
his father be the horror in that office!” Holmes said firmly. “Come, Watson, you are better at this sort of
thing than I am. He needs to be told, but I also need to ask him about
something. Help me.”
“Constable, let us through to the lad,
please,” Holmes said. “Are you Mister
Henry Jones, sir?”
“I am,” the confused boy replied. “What is going on, sir? Why can’t I go help my father?”
I bent down and looked young Jones in
the eye. “I am Doctor John Watson,” I
said. “I am terribly sorry, Henry, but I
am afraid your father has perished. He
was attacked early this morning by an unknown assailant. Doctor Jones was gone by the time the police
arrived. There was nothing I could do
for him when I got here.”
The young man turned from me and
buried his face in his hands, sobbing uncontrollably for a moment. But, in a display of maturity that belied
his years, he slowly straightened and turned to face me. His face was still streaked with tears, but
his voice was calm.
“Doctor Watson?” he said. “Are you the one that helps Sherlock Holmes
catch criminals?”
I nodded and pointed to my
companion. “Yes, that is me, and this is
Mister Holmes. He is here to help the
police apprehend your father’s assailant,” I explained.
“Killer, you mean,” the young man
said, with a fierce anger crowding out the sorrow in his eyes. “How can I help him?”
Holmes stepped forward and shook the
young man’s hand.
“I am deeply sympathetic for your
great loss,” he said. “I was about your
age when my own mother perished, so I can, perhaps, understand the depth of
your grief better than most.” I was
astonished at this, for I had never before heard my companion allude to his
mother’s demise. Henry Jones looked up
at Holmes, and suddenly embraced him. Holmes was not a man given to gestures of
affection, but in that moment, he hugged the young man back with a tenderness
that brought a lump to my throat.
Holmes slowly pulled away, and for a
moment I thought that his own eyes were moist, although it may have been a
trick of the summer sun. He clapped the
lad on the shoulder and spoke in a businesslike voice that belied the scene we
had all just witnessed.
“Now, Henry, did your father have an
assistant that worked with him on this exhibit?” he said. “A rather scrawny, sallow fellow with a
diagonal scar on his chin?
“Why, yes, sir, Oliver Northcutt is
his name,” said young Jones. “He worked
as a doorman for the Museum, but he loved the fossils and was right handy with
them, so Pops pulled him off door duty and had him helping us these last few
days as we readied the exhibit for the public.
He was so interested in the bones I even caught him thumbing through Pop’s
notebooks once or twice! Dad didn’t like
that much, though. He threatened to fire
Northcutt if he caught him at it again.”
“Do you know how to contact Mister
Northcutt?” Holmes asked.
“He has a flat a few blocks away,” Jones
replied. “I had to deliver a message to
him once last week that came in after he’d gone home for the day.”
“Excellent!” said Holmes. “Dear lad, I must ask something of you, but
you may feel free to say no if it is too much – I am mindful of the great loss you
have suffered. But could you carry
another message to Northcutt for me?”
“Will this help catch my father’s
killer?” the boy asked.
“It most certainly should,” Holmes
replied.
“Then I’m your man!” said Jones,
squaring his shoulders and facing us with a determination that wiped away the grief
on his face.
“Good lad!” said Holmes. “Mister Snodgrass,
would you write the following message for me?
It will raise less alarm coming from you than from a policeman, or
myself. Lestrade, let’s get these extra
men, and ourselves, out of sight once this note is dispatched. I don’t want to give this man cause for alarm,
because he is quite a dangerous character.”
With that, he leaned into the tall curator and whispered in his ear for
a moment. Snodgrass nodded, and wrote a brief message on a sheet of Museum stationary. He tucked it in an envelope and wrote
Northcutt’s name on it, and Henry took it, tucked it in his pocket, and
disappeared out the front door.
“That’s a stout lad,” I commented with
admiration.
“That one has a bright future ahead of
him, I’ll warrant,” said Holmes. “But
quick now! Lestrade, you, me, and Watson
need to be out of sight. Leave the
constable by the door – this Northcutt knows a murder has been committed and
will be expecting to see the police. Now,
Doctor Snodgrass, I want you to guide Northcutt towards the hallway where Jones’
office was, and, if I may trouble you for a sheet of that stationary, I’ll give
you a message to hand to him. After he
has read it, Watson, Lestrade, and I will pop out of your office and apprehend
him.”
In a trice, we were ensconced in Snodgrass’
office, which opened directly into the Hall of Paleontology, and the tall
curator was left nervously pacing about in front of the massive Allosaurus
skeleton. Less than five minutes after
we had assumed our hiding place, I heard footsteps coming through the atrium,
and a short, wiry man with close-cropped red hair and a scar on his chin
entered, young Jones following close behind him. We had left the door open just a crack, and I
watched with one eye as the scene unfolded.
“Good afternoon, Doctor Snodgrass!” he
said in a hangdog tone. “Such awful
business! Young Jones here told me about his da! Do you have any idea who might have done such
a thing?”
“Well, the police seem to think it was
a burglary gone wrong, perhaps,” said Snodgrass, leading him past the
Allosaurus skeleton and the bloody puddle beneath it. “But between you and me, they seem to have no
idea who might have done it. But I found
this envelope in William’s desk and it had your name on it. Do you have any idea what it might mean?”
With that he turned and handed the
envelope to Northcutt, who tore it open and unfolded the sheet of stationery. He read the single sentence Holmes had written
on it and suddenly flinched.
“Now, Watson!” Holmes cried, and the
three of us lunged through the door after our prey. Northcutt was quick as lightning, though,
dropping the letter and pulling an ugly knife from his pocket. He grabbed the scrawny form of Snodgrass and
pushed the point of the dagger into the man’s abdomen until a drop of blood
began to show. The curator wailed as if
he’d been butchered, but Northcutt tightened his grip and snapped at him to be
silent.
“Well played, Mister Holmes,” he said.
“but I’ll not be swinging for this one!
Me and the doctor here are going to make our way to the exit, very
slowly, and then I’m catching a hansom and getting out of here!”
I cursed myself for having left my
service revolver at home, but then I heard a click beside me and saw that
Lestrade had his trusty firearm trained on the man’s forehead.
“I am quite sure my bullet will cover
the distance before you can push that knife in more than an inch,” he
said. “You will not be leaving this
Museum until you’re handcuffed, you blackguard!”
Northcutt studied the inspector’s grim
face for a moment, and then in a trice he shoved Snodgrass towards us and ran
for the doors. I started after him, but
my feet hit the drying puddle of blood and I went down, hard, knocking my wind
out. Holmes was trying to disentangle himself from the flailing form of
Snodgrass, and Lestrade was trying to get a clear shot at the darting figure of
Northcutt, who was almost to the entrance of the Paleontology Hall. It was at that moment that young Henry Jones stepped
up, fast as lighting, and delivered a mighty punch square into the jaw of the
fleeing killer, hitting him so hard that Northcutt was upended and landed flat
of his back on the floor, the vicious blade flying out of his hand. It skittered to a stop inches from me, and I
scooped it up as I slowly got to my feet, the old wound in my hip suddenly throbbing.
“Stout lad indeed!” said Lestrade, pulling
out his handcuffs and placing them on the dazed Northcutt. “Well done, Mister Jones!”
“We lived in a tough neighborhood in
Indiana when I was growing up,” the boy said.
“I learned to scrap early on.”
He
walked over and looked down at Northcutt who was struggling to rise, and quick
as lightning he drew his foot back and fetched him a fierce kick in the ribs, which
sent the felon crashing back to the floor.
The boy snarled: “That was for my Pop!” and then began to cry again.
“I am terribly confused,” Snodgrass
said, having finally recovered his voice after the ordeal.
“I’m a bit shady on some things
meself,” Lestrade said. “But no doubt
Mister Holmes here will enlighten us all momentarily.”
“Gladly,” my companion said, “although
first I must apologize. My flair for the
dramatic badly backfired on this occasion.
I had no idea that Northcutt – or, to give him his proper name, Randall Moss
– would resort to taking hostages.”
“Wait – Randall Moss of the Moss
brothers? The notorious jewel thieves?” Lestrade asked.
“One and the same,” Holmes said. “It was Jones’ dying words that made
everything fall into place. Part of my
business, as you know, Lestrade, is keeping track of criminal activity all over
the world. The Howell Turner emerald
collection was stolen from the New York Museum of Natural History about two
months ago. Police turned the place inside out searching for the gems, which
had apparently vanished from the Museum at night when the place was locked up
tight as a drum. I knew that Augustus Moss had fled London and traveled to the
States, because I was investigating their last theft, here in London. I nearly captured Randall in January and left
him with that little reminder of our encounter on his chin. I knew he’d gone to earth, but when I read
about the theft of the emerald collection in New York, I suspected the brothers
might be involved.”
“Howell . . . green!” Snodgrass said.
“Exactly,” Holmes said. “As Watson can tell you, when the brain is
dying, the victim’s vocabulary begins to go.
Jones was trying to tell you about the emeralds, but the word eluded his
fading consciousness, so he told you their color, and pointed you towards a
vital clue.”
With that he opened the notebook and pointed
to the sketch of the Allosaurus skull.
It was rendered in striking detail, resembling the mounted specimen before
us to the most precise degree – including, I saw, the missing tooth!
“The tooth was gone all along!” I
said.
“Precisely!” Holmes replied. “The reason New York detectives could not
figure out how the emeralds got out of the museum was because they had
not. They were carried down the hallway,
to the paleontology lab, and there coated with plaster and pasted into the
missing parts of the dinosaur fossils that Doctor Jones was bringing to London!”
With
that he approached Moss and rifled the man’s pockets, bringing out a small
bracelet with six identical, brilliant green emeralds on a gold chain. I could see bits of plaster still clinging to
the links. The jewel thief snarled but Lestrade had a tight grip on his
manacles and kept him pinioned.
“Now,
Moss, if you truly don’t want to swing, you’ll tell us exactly where in these
fossil bones the remaining pieces of the collection are hidden,” Holmes said. “Otherwise
it’s the gallows for you!”
“My
brother will have me out of any jail you put me in, long before I face the
hangman!” snapped Moss. “Find them
yourself!”
“Very
well,” Holmes said. “Lestrade, if you’ll
turn his flat inside out, you may find some of the emeralds there. Doctor Jones’ notebook should guide us to the
rest – we just look for missing pieces of bone that have been filled with
plaster, and a simple screwdriver should suffice to pry the missing jewels
loose!”
“But
Mister Holmes!” Snodgrass said. “The
opening is in two days! I cannot have
you gouging at our prized fossils – there is no time to repair the damage
before the hall opens to the public!”
“I
can fix them,” said young Henry. “That’s
what my Pop was training me to do these last few weeks. What’s more, I can show you which plaster
patches were here when the fossil arrived, and which ones I added. Pop told me last night that one of those
teeth didn’t look right, and he intended to examine it this morning. He told me his New York assistant wasn’t as
good at molding and painting bones as I was.
Pop wasn’t given to a lot of compliments, but I’ll never forget that
one. May I have my father’s notebooks,
Mister Holmes?”
“Of
course,” my friend said. “They are yours
by right of inheritance, are they not?”
“I suppose they are,” the boy said.
By
the time the new Mesozoic Gallery opened, all seventy-two emeralds had been
recovered, and the dinosaur fossils were fully restored. Holmes and I stared at the Allosaurus’ fearsome
snarl, frozen in stone and plaster, and young Jones joined us.
“Thank
you for catching the man who killed my father,” he said. “Want to know something, though?”
“What’s
that, lad?” I asked him.
“I
hate paleontology,” he said. “Dinosaurs and those other prehistoric monsters
just bore me. What I really want to do
is study archaeology – to recover the treasures of ancient civilizations and
share them with the world! There are so
many mysteries I’ve read about that I would like to solve, so many legendary artifacts
to be rescued. That is what I want to do
with my life!”
“Well,
I hope you do!” I replied. “Your father
would be proud of you for pursuing your dream and adding to the wealth of human
knowledge.”
Randall
Moss did indeed keep his date with the hangman for the murder of William Jones;
his brother Augustus, thanks to Holmes’ telegram, had been arrested as he was
boarding a White Star liner in New York, bound for England. Augustus was sentenced to thirty years at
hard labor, but he was knifed to death in a prison yard fight ten years into
his sentence. Henry Jones became a
renowned archeologist, most noted for his study of the Knights Templar and his search
for the holy relics they had buried all over Europe. Holmes received an honorary life fellowship
from the New York Museum of Natural History for recovering the priceless
collection of emeralds. Best of all, the
day of the exhibit’s grand opening, a powerful Atlantic storm blew the
miserable heat away from London, the thermometer dropped to sixty degrees, and
life at 221B Baker Street became tolerable again, violin practice or no.
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