Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Jeweled Falcon and Other Stories, page 1
Sherlock Holmes
The Adventure of the Jeweled Falcon and Other Stories
GC Rosenquist
Edited by David Marcum
Published in 2022 by
MX Publishing
mxpublishing.com
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © 2022 GC Rosenquist
The right of GC Rosenquist to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
The Adventure of the Jeweled Falcon
A priceless, jeweled sculpture of a falcon, once a gift from a Crusader Order to the King of Spain, has found its way to the shores of England – where its true worth is judged by the number of lives lost of those who seek to possess it.
Chapter One
The corpse lay on its back in the dark of the alley off of Wardour Street. It was just after dusk and a brisk April breeze cut through my coat, chilling my bones as I busily searched through the contents of an open briefcase that lay on the pavement near the dead man. The victim had been a tall, thin man in life, impeccably dressed and groomed. His long face betrayed the first signs of middle age around the mouth and forehead. His head was bald except for a wide shock of neatly trimmed brown hair that extended from the ears and around the back of his head. His arms and legs were splayed out, palms up, hands open, as if he’d been caught utterly by surprise by his attacker. A black bowler cap sat by his left foot, the top of which had been punched in.
A handful of constables guarded the two ends of the alley as Holmes, down on one knee, leaned over the corpse, his long slender fingers flitting through pockets, feeling along wrinkled folds of clothing, searching for any clue that would help solve the mystery of the murdered man’s death. Detective Inspector Lestrade stood beside Holmes, holding a brightly lit lamp over the corpse but remained respectfully quiet as Holmes did his work.
“This man has been murdered twice,” Holmes stated.
“Murdered twice?” Lestrade repeated in disbelief. “How can that be?”
“Look for yourself, Detective Inspector,” Holmes offered. “Shot once in the belly with a small caliber weapon and then strangled so violently with a wire garrote that his head is nearly decapitated.”
Lestrade stretched his own neck out, took in the bloody scene, then pulled himself back. “Seems like overkill to me. Why would a man shoot and then strangle his victim?” he asked.
“Because a man didn’t do this, Detective Inspector,” Holmes replied. “Two men did, working in concert with each other to make sure the job was done correctly.”
Lestrade scratched his chin. “Hmmm. A powerful man who’d made powerful enemies, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Holmes?”
“Perhaps, Lestrade,” Holmes said. “We won’t know for sure until Watson finishes going through the man’s belongings.”
“Yes,” I said, picking up Holmes’ subtle urging in his voice for me to hurry with my search. “It seems that this man’s attackers were looking for something particular...they’ve left quite a mess all over the alley.”
Discovering nothing of value during my inspection of the man’s briefcase, I expanded my search to the papers that were scattered all around the alley, some were invoices and receipts for items such as snow globes, children’s dolls and gold tie clips, nothing of such worth to incite murder. Others were business contracts written in French. The man was a salesman of some kind.
Apparently impatient with the pace of my thorough inspection concerning everything I discovered, Holmes aptly joined me in raking over the alley. It wasn’t long before he found something.
In a depression under a brick at the bottom of a wall on the east side of the alley, Holmes pulled out what looked like a leather billfold. It had obviously been thrown away and lost during the attack. Holmes held it up to Lestrade’s lamp and opened it. “Excellent,” he said victoriously. “No money but I’ve found a business license. Our victim’s name is Montague Caprice and he’s a pawn shop owner in Paris, a place called Bonne Affaires – Good Bargains. Here’s his return ticket to France, aboard the British steamer Reliant. Caprice was supposed to be aboard at half past six.” Holmes checked his pocket watch. “The ship has long since sailed.”
“He must have had business to tend to here in London, but ended up murdered before he could get back to his ship,” Lestrade mused aloud.
Precisely, Detective Inspector,” Holmes agreed. “But that leaves two questions; was Mr. Caprice buying or selling and what exactly was he buying or selling?”
“Something worth his life, unfortunately,” Lestrade said.
“And if it’s worth one life, that means it’s worth a hundred lives,” Holmes said worriedly. “We must find the object and those who stole it before more murders are committed.”
Chapter Two
Holmes, needing a detailed itinerary of Montague Caprice’s business trip and a list of his buying and selling interests in London from whoever was in charge at Caprice’s shop while he was away, asked Lestrade to send a cable message across the channel. Lestrade had a high ranking contact in the Paris Police Prefecture who owed him a favor. As Lestrade went off to Scotland Yard to send the cable, Holmes and I went back to our modest lodgings at 221b Baker Street to wait for the response.
We were met at the bottom of the stairs by Mrs. Hudson. “There’s a lady here to see you, Mr. Holmes,” she said. Then she leaned forward and whispered suspiciously: “She’s an American.”
“Do have her come up, Mrs. Hudson,” Holmes said.
I had just finished pouring Holmes and myself a glass of brandy to warm up our bones when into our parlor stepped a woman unlike any that I’d ever seen before. She was uncommonly tall with skin the color of a pearl in the sunlight. Her black hair, shining in the flickering lamp light like a cannonball, was cut severely short and parted on the left in a boy-style hair-do, revealing a long, slender neck that plunged into a surprisingly muscular set of shoulders. I’d wager that given the chance, she could have easily wrestled me to victory. Her oval face seemed carved out of a block of polished marble, the bone structure underneath protruded boldly at sharp angles, exposing high cheek bones and a prominent chin. Her eyebrows were two thin black wisps hanging over a pair of large, deep-set topaz eyes. Her nose was strong yet delicate, her lips full and painted a dark shade of red. Dazzling diamond earrings hung from her earlobes and a rather unique necklace, razor thin and metallic, hung loosely around her neck. She wore a tight fitting, low-cut silk maroon dress that barely dropped past her knees and had a short slit on the left side, defiantly ignoring the current conservative fashion of the day. A pair of black, high-heeled, leather boots grounded her securely to the floor. For an American woman, she had an exotic, foreign beauty that was simply stunning - I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.
She held her hand out for Holmes, whom seemed as taken by her visage as I was. “My name is Florence Mansfield,” she said in a clear, low, unaccented voice, confirming her new world origin. “I left my coat and hat downstairs, I hope that’s all right.”
“Fine, fine, Miss Mansfield,” Holmes said. “Would you care to join us in a glass of brandy?”
“That would be lovely.”
As Holmes went to pour her a drink, I introduced myself and offered her a seat by the fire.
“I’ve heard so much about you, Mr. Holmes,” she began as she crossed her long legs. Holmes handed her a glass and sat down across from her. “In America, you’re quite the celebrity, you know?”
“I am?” Holmes said, genuinely surprised at her comment. “I had no idea.”
“Yes,” she continued. “In Chicago, where I’m from, we so look forward to reading your adventures in the Strand.”
“I’m afraid the blame for that should fall upon my capable biographer, the good Doctor Watson, here,” Holmes said, motioning towards me. “His blatant exaggerations and colorful prose often turn my most mundane cases into nail biters of the first order.”
“Don’t be so modest, Mr. Holmes,” Miss Mansfield said through a fawning grin. “Those adventures are the reason I’m here. I desperately need your unique talents in a matter of utmost importance.”
“I see. First, tell me, this is just for my curiosity...is it the current rage that American women go out without their fingernails painted?”
“My fingernails?” she repeated and looked at them.
They were all unpainted and the one on her left hand middle finger was cracked to the quick, a detail I’d failed to see
“Oh, I do apologize, Mr. Holmes. I’ve just arrived in London and I haven’t had time to get them done.”
This didn’t ring true to me as everything else on her was perfect; her hair, her clothes, make-up, her jewelry.
“Anyway, about my case-“
“I’m listening, Miss Mansfield.”
She took a long drag of brandy from her cup then her eyes focused on Holmes. “Have you ever heard of the Jeweled Falcon of Malta, Mr. Holmes?”
“No. I can’t say that I have.”
Miss Mansfield took in a deep breath and spoke: “In 1530, the fabulously wealthy Knights of Rhodes, a remnant of a Crusader army, talked Charles V, the King of Spain, into giving them Malta, Gozo and Tripoli. In return, the Knights of Rhodes had to pay Charles a yearly tribute. The first of these tributes, ordered by Grand Master Villiers de I’Isle d’Adam to be made by Turkish slaves, was the sculpture of a gloriously golden falcon encrusted from crown to talon with the finest jewels in the Crusader’s coffers. A foot tall, it proved to be one of the great artistic masterpieces in history. Countless fanciful rumors circulated at the time about the falcon’s breathtaking beauty, one story told of how the jewels on the falcon’s golden skin lit up so brightly in the sunlight that those who looked at it directly went blind.”
Miss Mansfield stopped here to finish her brandy. Her eyes were wide and filled with the excitement of telling the story, her hand had a slight tremble as she brought the glass to her lips. As she began again, I found myself getting caught up in the tale.
“Well, as you can imagine, something that beautiful, that priceless, would have the thieves of the entire world chasing after it. So, when the falcon was put on a galley commanded by the one of the Order’s members, a French knight named Cormier, for transport to Charles, it was stolen. A famous admiral of buccaneers sailing out of Algiers at the time, Barbarossa, took the knight’s galley and with it the falcon. Documents at the time record that it stayed in Algiers for the next hundred years, then, in 1713, it somehow surfaced in Sicily, possessed by King Victor Amadeus II. From there it shows up in Turin. In 1734 it turned up in the possession of a Spanish soldier who was with the army that took Naples. But, by then the falcon had been painted with a thick layer of black enamel by someone very clever in an effort to hide it’s true worth, and this lowly Spanish soldier had no idea what it really was. Seventy years later the Falcon somehow found its way to Paris and for the next eighty-nine years, Mr. Holmes, it has been passed around Paris like a common cold, going from one antique dealer to another, finally spending as much as twenty years in the possession of a family run junk resale shop on the banks of the Seine.”
The story was starting to sound familiar to me now. My mind was starting to piece the puzzle together. Could our most recent murder victim, Montague Caprice, be the owner of this family run junk resale shop she spoke of? I glanced at Holmes and he flashed me a quick, knowing nod, he was thinking the same thing.
She continued: “I first read about the jeweled falcon in a history book I took from my father’s library when I was a child, I’ve been obsessed about it ever since, traveling the world and tracking its movements from one location to another, until, a few days ago, I was given information from a trusted source that the falcon was now in London, in the hands of yet another man ignorant of what he truly had. Unfortunately, the trail has suddenly gone cold and I need your help to find the falcon for me, Mr. Holmes. I’m not in the least familiar with London or its underground black market. I will pay whatever retainer you demand and triple your current fee.”
Holmes, without removing his gaze from hers, finished his glass of brandy then gingerly placed it on the end table.
“It’s a fabulous story, Miss Mansfield,” he said, puzzling his fingers together in his lap. “But I’m afraid you confuse me with a treasure hunter.”
“You won’t help me then?” she asked.
“Dozens of these treasure hunt stories have come across my doorstep over the years, Miss Mansfield, and each one of them has never had a satisfactory resolution. I’ve seen men waste away their whole lives in pursuit of these fantasies, only to die alone, penniless and miserable. I am a man of evidence and fact and science, I cannot waste my time searching for a King of Spain’s mythical treasure bird, I’m sorry.”
Miss Florence Mansfield sighed heavily, uncrossed her legs and stood up. “Well, then, I can’t say I’m not disappointed. But thank you for seeing me, Mr. Holmes,” she said. “If you reconsider, I’m staying at the Regal Hotel on Regent Street.”
This time Holmes reached out first and they shook hands. “You are young, Miss Mansfield,” he said. “Take my advice, don’t end up like those men I spoke of. You have a long life ahead of you, live it to the fullest. Don’t waste it.”
She nodded, turned then went out through the door.
“Do you think she’ll take your advice, Holmes?” I asked.
“Of course not, my friend,” Holmes answered. “She’s been bitten by a snake and the poison is forever in her veins. It’s too late for her. No matter, we’ll see her again, I’m sure.”
“But you refused to take her case,” I reminded my friend.
“Yes, I know. But she is of interest to me in another case, the one concerning Montague Caprice. You see, she’s one of his murderers.”
“Then that would mean that this black falcon is the object Caprice was killed over.”
“Well deduced, my friend,” Holmes said. “You’re coming along well.”
Before I could squeeze more of this startling information out of him, Mrs. Hudson knocked on the door then came rushing in.
“My, you are popular today, Mr. Holmes! There’s a man downstairs to see you,” she said. “He mentioned something about finding a black bird.”
Chapter Three
The man sat in the same chair Miss Mansfield had sat in a few minutes before. His name was Caesar Woodbine, a fidgety, boisterous middle-aged Frenchman who spoke English well, despite a heavy accent. He was a short, stout man with tightly curled short black hair and sideburns that crept down the wide, jowly contours of his face like ivy on a brick wall, melting into a graying beard that hid the fact that he didn’t seem to possess a neck. His upper lip was shaved, his mouth small, but a thick bulbous nose hung over it like a reddish, weathered café awning. His eyebrows, thick, dark and also curly, kept a pair of green, suspicious eyes permanently hid in shadow, making it hard for me to read them. He wore a silly pink bow tie and a green velvet jacket with white carnation stuck in a black lapel. The jacket was a few sizes too small for him, barely disguising a small protruding belly. A pair of baggy, grey pinstripe black slacks covered a set of thick legs that didn’t seem to bend at the knees when he walked. He reminded me of a traveling carnival barker.
“I’m a professional explorer, Mr. Holmes,” he said, his voice resonating like the roll of a bass drum. “I need your help in locating a family heirloom that had been stolen from the vault of my family home many decades ago. A black falcon, about a foot high. I’ve been traveling the world, chasing after it for thirty years – Spain, Italy, Russia, France and now here, in soggy old England. Oh, please do forgive my rudeness at insulting your cherished homeland, I meant no disrespect. It’s just that the cold and clammy climate of this island always pains the marrow in my old bones. Too long spent here and I find it very difficult to walk without the most excruciating discomfort.”
“No offense taken, Mr. Woodbine,” Holmes said through a light grin. “Now tell me about this black falcon of yours. Priceless, is it?”
Woodbine let out a laugh that sounded like a cough and shook his head. “Oh, no, no, no, Mr. Holmes! On the contrary! Its true value to me is found only in restoring it back to my family vault, where it belongs. You see...er...I grew up in Algiers where the most varied forms of avian predators in the world reside. My late mother, praise her innocent white soul, fancied herself an artist, carving countless representations of the birds in the area out of local soapstone until her last dying breath. Her final piece, the black falcon, was her finest work. It was displayed in the most notable museums on the continent for years until one day, someone tried to steal it. My late father couldn’t bear the thought of losing my mother’s masterpiece so he locked it up in the safety of our family vault, but, alas, safety is a relative concept, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Holmes? A month after locking the falcon up, someone broke into our home while we were away and took it. The theft broke my poor father’s heart and he died soon after. I’ve been chasing after it, looking for revenge and closure ever since.”
