
The Affair of the Weeping Child
by Barrie Roberts
I sometimes think that history does not revolve around the great significant turning points set out in books. More often, believe, a succession of tiny events, each perhaps insignifi cant in itself, adds up to a total which swings the course of history one way or another. It has occurred to me, as I study my old records, that what my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes called "the affair of the weeping child" was indeed one such event, though its beginning seemed a mere triviality.
In the early years of our acquaintance, when Holmes was without an enquiry to occupy his enormous intelligence, I used to be concerned for his physical and mental health. At the best he would become lethargic, often keeping to his bed late or not rising at all; at the worst he would seek to drive away these periods of boredom with his seven percent solution of cocaine. I was never convinced of the claims that it was a drug with no ill effects, and in recent years my suspicions about cocaine have proved to be well-founded. It is, however, enormously to my friend's credit that after his return from the Orient in '94 he eschewed the use of cocaine and became much more sparing in his use of spirits as well. This was, I believe, a result of his studies in the Buddhist philosophy, but whatever the cause, I welcomed the effect.
The case of which I write, however, occurred some time after his return from the East, in the early days of 1896. Holmes, having had no enquiry that excited his intellect for some length of time, had grown by turns lethargic and irritable. I was, therefore, the better pleased to have persuaded him to join me in a Turkish bath, in the hope that it might cheer his outlook and keep him away from the cocaine bottle, for I was not yet fully convinced that he had abandoned the drug.
We had taken our bath and were returning to Baker Street on foot. I have always believed that a bout of steady exercise after a Turkish bath is extremely beneficial. I still experienced a degree of pain from my old Afghanistan wound, but the Turkish bath had eased it considerably and I was stepping out fairly briskly. Holmes, however, seemed to be positively dawdling.
"Come along, Holmes!" I exhorted him. "The air is sharp and it would not do to catch a chill after your Turkish bath."
"Do not press me, Watson. I am observing. There is no better place to watch people than on a city street. One may learn a great deal. Look at the elderly man walking ahead of us. He is evidently beyond working years, but his clothing shows him to have some reasonable income, suggesting perhaps a retired craftsman with a pension, but in fact he is a retired soldier."
"You rely too much upon his limp," I said. "Why, he might have come by his injury in a hundred ways-a factory accident, a fall, a kick from a horse. Why do you impute it to a war injury?"
"Because his limp is severe and causes him to bend at every step, yet he straightens his back completely after each pace. Now a civilian would save himself effort, and perhaps pain, by walking with a stoop, but this man is accustomed to carrying himself upright and continues to do so."
"Tenuous," I snorted, but we had come abreast of our subject. Holmes tipped his hat and smilingly wished the old man "Good morning, Sergeant," receiving an "Indeed, sir, but it was Sergeant-Major" in response.
Holmes smiled wordlessly at my discomfiture. After a few paces he said, "A more interesting and difficult case is the young man turning the corner ahead and coming towards us now. You see that he is in workman's clothing and carries the typical wide straw carryall in which carpenters and such keep their tools?"
"You are not," I said, "going to tell me that he is the Rajah of Sarawak in disguise. He seems to be a perfectly ordinary young working man going about his business."
"Oh, so he does," agreed Holmes as the young man passed us, "but he overtook us from behind first, walking in the other direction. At that point his bag was empty, so he was not then going about his business. Now it is full."
I was about to suggest a number of possible explanations, when we turned the corner and our ears were assailed by the unmistakable sound of a child in deep distress.
A few yards in front of us a small girl sat on the front step of a shop, rubbing her eyes with her fists and giving vent alternatively to ear-piercing cries of distress and profound sobs. Beside her stood a young attractive governess who seemed unable to stem the child's flood of grief.
It is the business of a doctor to attempt to relieve distress. Considering the possibility that the unhappy child might have injured herself, I tipped my hat as we came abreast of them and introduced myself to the governess as a doctor.
"Is there," I enquired, "anything that I can do? Has she hurt herself?"
"No, thank you, Doctor. She is not hurt. Someone has stolen her doll," replied the governess who, despite her youth and prettiness, seemed to be taking rather a hard line with her unhappy charge.
The snatching of dolls from the hands of well-to-do children in the streets had been commonplace for many years, and I was a little surprised that an intelligent governess would have permitted the child's plaything to be put at risk, but I was also concerned about the evident distress of the little girl.
"Was she particularly attached to that doll?" I asked.
"She should not have been," said the governess, rather sharply I thought. "It was not an old favourite. I gave it to her only yesterday. Come, Emily" she said, grasping the child's hand tightly, it is really time to accept your loss and let this kind gentleman be about his business."
Her action merely provoked a fresh outburst from her charge, and I was wondering what might be done to ease the situation when Holmes appeared at my elbow. "Pray permit me," he said, tipping his hat to the governess. Stooping and smiling at the little girl, he produced from behind his back a large purple lollipop.
Faced with the proferred gift, Emily abandoned her weeping, swallowed her sobs in one huge gulp, and reached out for the lollipop. In a moment it was firmly planted in her mouth, and though the tears still coursed down her cheeks she was, at last, silent.
Holmes straightened and tipped his hat again. "Permit me to introduce myself," he said. "I am Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective. Perhaps I can be of assistance."
"Mr. Holmes!" exclaimed the governess, and I could see that she started at the name. "I am Corinthia Grayling, governess to Emily here, who is the daughter of Mr. Fortescue Royston. It is extremely good of you to assist, but I'm sure that Emily's doll does not warrant taking up your time."
"Not at all," said Holmes. "It would be a cruel world in which a consulting detective might not apply his skills to the mystery of a little girl's stolen doll."
He squatted to speak to Emily. "Tell me, my dear," he said, was it some ragamuffin child who stole your doll?"
Still sucking vigorously at the lollipop, Emily shook her head firmly. At last she took the sweetmeat from her mouth and said, "No, sir. It was a big man with a silk hat like yours."
I almost felt the thrill I knew Holmes was experiencing at this odd revelation, for I was well aware how much unusual factors of everyday occurrences appealed to my friend.
"A big man in a silk hat," repeated my friend. "And what did he look like, Emily?"
She raised a hand. "He was ever so tall and he had a long coat and a silk hat and a big long moustache." She wrestled with the last word but managed it in the end.
"Emily!" exclaimed Miss Grayling. "She can exaggerate terribly sometimes, Mr. Holmes. It was probably some street ruffian."
"No it wasn't," declared Emily. "It was a big man with a moustache and he went that way," and she pointed in the direction we had been heading.
"And do you remember what colour his moustache was?" asked Holmes.
"It was brown," said the little girl promptly. Pointing at me, she said, "It was bigger than his moustache and brown, but sort of reddish and thick and floppy. I was waiting outside the shop like Miss Grayling told me and he came along and said could he look at my nice new dolly, and I let him look and he snatched it and ran away" The recollection brought fresh weeping.
"Emily," said Holmes, "I promise you that I will do my very best to find the man with the brown moustache and recover your doll. What is her name?"
"She's called Beatrice and she can move her head," said the child, and with a little prompting from Holmes she recited a detailed description of the toy.
Eventually Holmes stood up. He smiled at Miss Grayling and said, "If I am to recover Emily's dolly I must be about my business, Miss Grayling. Here is my card. If you will call on me at four o'clock tomorrow, I have no doubt that I shall have news for you."
The governess looked flustered. "You are really too kind to put yourself to trouble in this matter. I still believe that Emily has invented some of it."
"We shall see," remarked Holmes and we took our leave. Holmes strode away smartly, so that now I had difficulty in keeping his pace. It was evident that his mind was fully engaged, for he spoke not a single word until we were back at Baker Street. "What do you make of the singular affair of the weeping child?" he asked me as Mrs. Hudson served our tea.
"I don't know that it is singular," I said. "I grant you that the thief seems a little out of the ordinary, but I also thought Miss Grayling might be right about the child inventing things."
He shook his head impatiently. "Watson, there are at least four facts which make the case singular and you have managed to miss all but the most obvious!"
With his forefinger he struck off his points on the fingers of his other hand. "Firstly, the governess left a small child with a doll in her arms standing unprotected outside a shop on a bitterly cold morning. There was no reason why Emily's presence should have been a problem in a shop which sells sewing requisites. Secondly, the description of the thief is, to say the least, unusual. Thirdly, it was not an impulsive theft. It was planned. The thief had an accomplice. And fourthly, both the thief and his accomplice were professionals."
"Why do you say there were two thieves and that they were professionals?"
"Because, Watson, they carried out what is known in the trade as a 'running swap.' It is a favourite device of shoplifters and pickpockets."
"What on earth is a running swap?" I asked.
"The thief," explained Holmes, "in leaving the scene of his theft, makes momentary contact with a confederate, to whom he passes the goods. The confederate moves off in another direction. If the thief is then caught, he does not have the goods upon him and may claim innocence while his accomplice makes his getaway. Done quickly it is very effective."
"I still do not understand why you believe there was an accomplice, but granting that there was one, why should a pair of professional criminals go to such lengths to steal a child's doll?"
"We saw the accomplice, Watson! The young man with the straw carryall-which contained no tools when he overtook us but had something inside it when he returned. He was absolutely necessary. A man such as Emily described could not walk the streets of London with a large doll without attracting attention, if only from street ragamuffins. As to their reason, I will only say that you seem to miss entirely the possible significance of this event."
He drew out his watch and consulted it while I tried to digest his incomplete explanation. "I must go out again," he announced. "I have some shopping to do and we must see Mycroft this evening."
"Mycroft!" I exclaimed. "What has your brother to do with this affair?"
"If I am right," Holmes said solemnly, "this matter may be of grave importance to my brother and perhaps even to the Empire as a whole."
"Surely," I said, "the tracking down of Emily's doll cannot be a matter of importance to the Empire!"
"I shall not track Emily's doll," he said. "I know where it went and it will have been destroyed by now. Of far greater import is the reason why it was stolen."
With that he was gone, leaving me to ponder his remarks about Mycroft. Holmes' elder brother, whom I had met with occasionally in connection with various enquiries, was a very senior functionary of the government. Holmes sometimes averred that there were occasions when, for all intents and purposes, Mycroft was the British Government. He was also, according to Holmes, the more intelligent of the two brothers, but lazy. He would solve abstruse problems of state from his desk at the Foreign Office or an armchair at the Diogenes Club, disliking disturbance and physical activity.
Why on earth the theft of a doll should concern Mycroft Holmes, let alone be of grave importance to the Empire, I could not, in the end, fathom, and I was no wiser when Holmes returned than when he had left. He, seeming well pleased with his expedition, deposited a wrapped package on the table then turned to me. "Come along, Watson! I have a hansom at the door. Let us go and warn Mycroft of the danger."
Still lacking any concept of the danger to which he referred, I pulled on my overcoat and followed him down the stairs. Soon we were in the Strangers' Room of the Diogenes Club, the only part of the building where conversation is possible-for the Club's founders, Mycroft among them, had made a rigid rule that no member might speak to another on the Club's premises.
Holmes' brother joined us shortly. He was as tall as his brother but considerably more stoutly built. It had been a little while since I had seen him and I fancied that he appeared paler than usual and that there were shadowy traces beneath his watery grey eyes.
"Sherlock, Doctor," he greeted us. "I hope that you have come merely to wish me a happy New Year, brother. So often your appearances here betoken problems of some kind, and we have enough of those at present."
"Ah, yes," replied Holmes, "the South African affair." His brother nodded. "I wish that I brought you good news, Mycroft, but I fear not. Tell me, is Mr. Fortescue Royston a member of your office?"
"He is," said Mycroft Holmes, "but he is irreproachable. You cannot have news of trouble involving Fortescue."
Holmes ignored his brother's comment. "He is, I believe, a widower. Has he shown any signs of marrying again?"
Mycroft seemed perplexed. "His wife's death, three years ago, struck him hard," he said, "and of course he has a young daughter. He would no doubt wish to remarry, if only for the child's sake. He is a prime target for young women."
"And does he respond?" asked Holmes.
"Oh, in the last year or so, since he has recovered from his wife's sudden death, he has responded readily-but quite properly I assure you. He enjoys flirtations, but there is no real prospect of marriage at present. What has all this to do with my office, Sherlock?"
Once more Holmes ignored his brother's remark. "Where is Royston now?" he enquired.
"He is ... He is at a secret address in the country, together with a number of his colleagues. They are discussing ways out of the present South African crisis. I am in touch with them regularly, by courier."
"Do you, by any chance, know anything of a Miss Corinthia Grayling, Royston's governess?"
Mycroft cast his eyes upwards and considered. "Corinthia Grayling?" he mused, then after a moment, "Yes! As it happens I do."
"What do you know of her?" demanded Holmes.
"Pretty young thing," said Mycroft. "Formidably intelligent. I had occasion to interview her a couple of years ago, when she was with Arthur Cullington's family. You will recall, of course, that there was that unpleasant affair of the draft treaty that vanished from Cullington's study and I spoke to her then. Nothing came of it. We never traced the thief and poor Cullington was finished. I suppose it was after her time with the Cullington twins that she went on to Royston's little girl. Struck me as a very able young woman, I must say."
"Oh, she is," said Holmes. "She is. Tell me, Mycroft, was she ever under suspicion in the Cullington affair?"
"Poor Arthur's entire household was under suspicion. There was no doubt that the document had vanished from his safe. Of course we had to consider the governess, but we could find noth ing against her. The whole trouble was that we found nothing against anyone, but somebody in that house must have known something about it."
"Then having got away with it on that occasion, she has done it again," declared Holmes.
Mycroft looked at him with an expression of puzzlement.
"Are you implying that Corinthia Grayling was the thief in the Cullington affair?"
"It seems extremely likely" said Holmes. "And she has now repeated the trick. She has robbed Fortescue Royston of what is, no doubt, some equally important document."
Mycroft's look of puzzlement slowly changed to one of horror. "Great Heavens!" he exclaimed. "You don't mean that she has the telegram?"
"I do not know what it is that she has stolen," said my friend, "but I am certain that it will be of importance. What is the telegram that you mentioned?"
The elder Holmes seemed to be embarrassed by his emotional outburst. He drew a snuffbox from his coat pocket and took a large pinch, flourishing a bright silk handkerchief as he did so. When he had done he put handkerchief and snuffbox back in his pocket and slumped into an armchair, his face a grim mask. If it was possible he seemed to have gone even paler.
"I know your dislike of politics, Sherlock, but even you cannot be unaware of our difficulties with the Boers in South Africa," he began slowly.
"Certainly," said Holmes. "I am aware that they resent British rule, that they practice a fierce Old Testament religion which endorses the slavery of black people, causing them to come into conflict with the Empire's anti-slavery laws, that they took millions of pounds from us in reparations for releasing their slaves but still hold them, and that they treat the British-born who live and work in their territory as inferior citizens."
"Good enough," said his brother. "We have fought them before and we may well have to fight them again, but I hope that may be avoided. Nevertheless, since that damnable idiot Jameson's escapade we are very close to war."
"What, precisely, has Dr. Jameson done?" asked Holmes. "Impelled by that madman Cecil Rhodes, Dr. Jameson took a party of adventurers into Boer territory on New Year's Eve with a view toward an armed overthrow of their government."
"I am surprised that Rhodes would do anything which might harm British interests," I remarked. "I thought he was an able man and stoutly in favour of the Empire."
"Almost everyone," said Mycroft, "is in favour of the Empire-provided that they can run it their way. George Bernard Shaw favours the Empire, so long as it becomes a Socialist one. Rhodes wants a bigger Empire. He even wants to recover the United States, though I cannot imagine how he proposes to achieve that. They will hardly accept an invitation from Her Majesty and an explanation that the Tea Tax was a mistake! No, Doctor, Rhodes would be an able man if he were not deranged. He suffers from the overheated imagination of those with tubercular ill health."
"What happened to Jameson's attempt to invade?" asked Sherlock Holmes.
Mycroft shook his head wearily. "Rhodes changed his mind and called it off. Jameson decided to go ahead regardless and it failed, of course. They were tracked, surrounded, and forced to surrender. Those who were not shot are prisoners, including Jameson."
"So Kruger, the Boer leader, has an excuse for war if he wishes," suggested Holmes. "But surely he will not readily take his people up against the Empire's troops and resources?"
Mycroft shook his head again. "Who knows what Paul Kruger may do?" he asked. "He is devious, cunning, dishonest, and a dramatically effective demagogue. If he goes to war, his people will follow him. Fortunately, as you say, the thought of the size of the enemy he would be taking on should be giving him pause-at least until he gets his hands on that wretched telegram, that is."
"And what does the telegram contain?" asked Holmes.
"As I said," began Mycroft, "Kruger, like many Boers, has German blood. Germany has trading interests in the Boer territory and would be delighted to take that area away from Britain, together with any other parts of Africa which she might lay her claws on. Nothing would please the Germans more than an Anglo-Boer war into which they would be invited as allies of the Boers."
"They dare not do it!" I exclaimed. "Even if Kruger is fool enough to start a war, the Kaiser will not get involved."
"Will he not?" said Mycroft, eying me fishily. "I wish that I had your confidence, but I have read the telegram. It was sent by no less than the Kaiser himself, in the wake of the Jameson epi sode. It congratulates Kruger on repelling the 'foreign' invasion without needing to call on the assistance of friendly nations. Implicitly it treats Kruger's Transvaal as purely Boer territory, an independent nation, and makes it clear that Germany can be regarded as a friend in any dispute between the Boers and Britain. It may sound like a mere exchange of diplomatic compliments, but in reality it is a firebrand which may set South Africa ablaze or, worse still, start a European war."
"And has Kruger seen it?" asked Holmes.
"No," said Mycroft. "It was telegraphed from Berlin and intercepted by our men at the Eastern Telegraph Station in Aden-the usual route for cables from Europe to South Africa. We keep an eye on what passes. This one they stopped, and they sent a copy to me."
"I assume that the Kaiser does not know you have intercepted his telegram," said Holmes.
"Of course not," snapped Mycroft, "but that only makes it worse. The longer we delay delivery the greater the risk that we shall be found out. That is precisely why Royston and his colleagues are trying to work out how to deal with the situation, whether to delay the wire until Kruger cools down or rewrite it and pass it on as a less enthusiastic message without the warlike overtones. Whatever happens, the Kaiser must not know that we have it, nor must Kruger."
He drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. "Are you certain that this wretched woman has the telegram, Sherlock?"
"How many copies of it exist in this country?" asked Holmes.
"One only. It was sent for my eyes only and I ordered that no copies should be made. I gave the document to Royston and ordered him to keep it away from the office and not to show it to those with whom he is working, only to describe its content."
"Then I am positive that this is the document she stole from Royston," said Holmes. "But she no longer has it.
"So the Germans may already have it!" exclaimed Mycroft.
Holmes shook his head. "No, no," he said. "Things are not so bad as that. I know who has the telegram. Miss Grayling had an accomplice, whose description perfectly matches that of Maximilian Florez. It is in his hands now."
"That scoundrel!" muttered Mycroft.
"Come now, Mycroft," said Holmes. "It ill behooves you to abuse a man whose services your own office has used on occasion."
"The man has his uses," said Mycroft. "He is still a scoundrel."
"He has his virtues, as well," replied Holmes, "the principal one being that he is motivated entirely by profit. Were Florez working in the German interest the telegram would have reached their Ambassador at Carlton House Terrace hours ago. Since he is instead looking merely for money, he must test the market. First he will offer it to you. If you refuse him, he will offer it to Carlton House Terrace. If Germany will not pay a sufficient price he will approach anyone who might seek to embarrass either Britain or Germany and, if all else fails, he will offer it to a newspaper. I take it that he has not approached you?"
"No," said Mycroft. "Which controverts your theory Sherlock."
"Not so," said Holmes. "Florez knows by now that I have stumbled across his scheme. He will lie low until he knows what I intend to do."
"And what would that be?" demanded Mycroft.
"Why I shall recover the telegram, Mycroft-never doubt it." He took out his watch. "Come, Watson," he said. "We have taken up too much of my brother's valuable time. I think that dinner at Romanov's is indicated."
We had reached the door when Mycroft Holmes said, "Sherlock!" We turned. He was regarding us with a solemn expression. "You must not fail, brother. It is no exaggeration to say that the peace of Europe may depend upon that infernal telegram."
Holmes nodded. "Call upon me at six tomorrow and I shall have news for you," he said, and we left.
Despite his brother's grave warning, Holmes was in high good humour over dinner, discoursing on such a variety of topics that I found it difficult to draw him back to the telegram.
"How did you know," I asked eventually, "that the governess was involved?"
"Oh Watson!" he said. "I have explained my suspicion that the child was left outside the shop entirely so that her doll could be taken. Once I knew the identity of the thief and that of Emily's father, a widower susceptible to the personal charms of a lovely young woman, it was simplicity itself to see that the governess was involved in a theft of information."
"It is disgraceful to think of a governess betraying her employer so, and from what you and your brother discussed she appears to make a practice of it," I said.
"I do not find the idea so unusual, Watson. Governesses are young women of intelligence, education, and no means. They are forced to associate daily with the wealthy, living in their house holds, but they are treated as slightly more than servants. It is no wonder that they feel little loyalty to their employers.
"But how did you identify this Florez fellow?"
"Oh, I know him of old. We have met face to face on more than one occasion. Emily described him excellently."
"Do you really believe that you can recover the telegram?" I asked.
"If I do not restore Mycroft's telegram I shall have failed completely. I have no intention of letting that happen." With that he changed the subject.
Sherlock Holmes was still in a bright mood on the following morning, eating a hearty breakfast and sitting down afterwards to draft a long telegram. After it was dispatched he rose with a satisfied expression and took up the parcel which he had brought home from his shopping expedition on the previous day.
As he unwrapped it at the table I saw that it contained a doll which exactly matched the description given to us by Emily Royston. "You have found it!" I exclaimed. "Surely that is Emily's doll?"
He shook his head. "I have found poor Beatrice's twin," he said, "after visiting six West End shops yesterday afternoon. Now it is necessary to put her into the same state as her kidnapped sister."
He took the doll firmly by the torso and slid his fingers into the bright curls. Grasping the toy's head he turned it forcibly, so that it came away in his hand. He peered into the neck aperture for a moment, then replaced the head firmly.
"What on earth are you doing?" I asked.
"I am making sure," he said, "that this simulated Beatrice has been treated as Miss Grayling treated the original when she concealed the telegram inside the doll."
"It occurs to me," I said, "that the rigmarole with the doll was rather unnecessary. Why could she not simply have passed the document to Florez?"
"Because," he said, "she had a narrow escape from justice in the Cullington affair. The last person in England she would want to be seen with is Maximilian Florez."
I pointed to the doll. "But when she calls-if she calls-she will know that this is not the original doll," I protested.
"Perhaps so, Watson. Perhaps so." He smiled and laid the doll on his desk, covering it with some loose papers.
Though Sherlock Holmes could be a whirlwind of energy when in hot pursuit or a brooding storm of impatience when he had nothing to occupy his intellect, he had the patience of a cat by a mousehole when he was awaiting the outcome of one of his stratagems. He passed that day in conversation and in playing light airs upon his violin as though he had no serious thought in his mind, while I considered the questions that still teemed in my mind and did not ask them because I knew he would answer me either elliptically or not at all.
At a little before four in the afternoon Mrs. Hudson brought him up a telegram. Though he did not show it to me, I could tell from his facial expression that the content seemed to fulfill one of his unspoken predictions. Minutes later Mrs. Hudson showed Corinthia Grayling to our rooms.
She entered with a slightly nervous air, but Holmes welcomed her effusively and settled her in the basket chair.
"I have some good news for you," he said. "I have succeeded in recovering Emily's friend Beatrice."
Miss Grayling looked startled. "You have recovered it? That is-that is extremely kind and clever of you, Mr. Holmes. I thought it had gone forever."
My friend took the doll from its hiding place. "She seems to have suffered no great harm," he remarked, "though somebody seems to have removed her head and replaced it. I cannot imagine why." At this he looked Miss Grayling straight in the eye.
"I'm-I'm sure it is no great matter," she stammered. "Mr. Holmes, I hope you will not think me rude if I take my leave, but I have other engagements. I am most grateful for the return of the doll, as Emily will be. I thank you again."
She had barely spoken the words before she was out of her chair and at the door. Holmes ushered her out and closed the door behind her with a quiet smile.
"Why did you let her go?" I asked.
"Because, Watson, I know where she is going. I have had Maximilian Florez followed by Scotland Yard since this morning. The telegram was from Inspector Lestrade to tell me that at this moment Florez, in a poor disguise, is sitting impatiently on a bench in the park at the end of this street. He is undoubtedly awaiting a report from our visitor as to how much she thinks I know of the affair."
"But I thought you said that they would not want to be seen together?"
"Indeed," he agreed. "But Miss Grayling has been in a state of anxiety since I offered to find Emily's doll. She knew she might need to consult Florez at once after our meeting today, hence the arranged rendezvous. They are frightened."
"Very cunning," I said. "But why not follow her?"
"There is no need," he said. "Lestrade's men are waiting in ambush in the park. As soon as Miss Grayling and Florez are together they will be apprehended. It will all end very soon. Shall we have some tea while we wait?"
His prediction, as so often was the case, turned out to be right. We were taking our tea when Lestrade arrived. He was carrying a doll when Mrs. Hudson showed him in.
"Everything went according to plan, Mr. Holmes," he reported. "We took the pair of them as they sat on the bench. She was waving the doll and he was waving his arms. They never even noticed my fellows moving in on them."
He reached into his inside pocket and handed Holmes a folded paper along with the doll. "He had it on his person," explained Lestrade. "According to your instructions I've only read enough to know that it's the right paper."
"You have done well, Lestrade," said Holmes. "I'm only sorry that this matter is unlikely to reach the newspapers, for reasons which I'm sure you can imagine. Still, I shall see that your help is mentioned to my brother."
Lestrade had not long gone when six o'clock chimed and we heard Mycroft's heavy foot upon our stair. When he entered our rooms he looked, if possible, more strained than on the previous evening.
"Do you have it, Sherlock? Have you got the telegram?" were the first words out of his mouth.
Without a word Holmes passed his brother the paper. He seized it and slumped into a chair.
"Great heavens!" he said. "When you left last night I did not believe that you could make good your prediction, but you have."
"What has Royston's committee decided to do about the telegram?" asked Holmes.
"It has been rewritten and sent on," said Mycroft. "It has been recast in a slightly less inflammatory mould. For that reason it is even more important that neither Kruger nor the Kaiser come to know that we have tampered with it. I have been awake all night imagining what damage it would do if Florez sold it. I should have placed greater trust in you, Sherlock. Britain owes you a great debt."
"I had considerable help from Lestrade at the Yard," said Holmes, "but most of the credit belongs to Watson. Without his gallant instinct to help a small girl and a pretty young woman in trouble the matter would not have come to my notice."
Mycroft left, still clutching the paper as though afraid that he might lose it again in his own pocket. Holmes dropped into a chair. "It was decent of you to give a portion of the credit to me, Holmes," I said.
"Not at all," he said. "You have given me a very valuable reminder that great matters may turn upon insignificant points. I am only sorry that considerations of state will prevent you from telling the story to your readers. Now I must rewrap Beatrice's standin and see that it goes directly to little Emily. As her governess will be in the Cannon Row cells tonight and Holloway for a long time, I imagine that the apparent return of her doll will comfort her."
So the episode ended as it had begun-with a child's doll. The rewritten telegram was not encouraging enough for Kruger to risk war. When he finally did so a few years later he had advisers and munitions from Germany, but no troops. The South African War seems a long time gone and since then we have learned what it means to engage the Germans, but I still feel a certain pride that my actions and Sherlock Holmes' deductions may have delayed two wars.

