The House Of Silk

could see, however, why the author had appealed to my friend with his hatred of ‘idleness and stupidity’, his reverence for ‘the divine intellect’, his suggestion that ‘It is the nature of man to reason from himself outwards.’ Holmes could have written much of it himself, and although I was glad to turn the last page and set it aside, I felt it had at least provided me with some insight into the detective’s mind. The morning post had brought a letter from Mary. All was well in Camberwell; Richard Forrester was not so ill that he could not take delight in seeing his old governess again, and she was evidently enjoying the companionship of the boy’s mother who was treating her, quite correctly, as an equal rather than a former employee.
    I had picked up my pen to reply to her when there was a loud ring at the front door, followed by the patter of many feet on the stairs. It was a sound that I remembered well, so I was fully prepared when about half a dozen street Arabs burst into the room and formed themselves into something resembling an orderly line, with the tallest and oldest of them shouting them into shape.
    ‘Wiggins!’ I exclaimed, for I remembered his name. ‘I had not expected to see you again.’
    ‘Mr ’olmes sent us a message, sir, summoning us on a matter of the greatest hurgency,’ Wiggins replied. ‘And when Mr ’olmes calls, we come, so ’ere we are!’
    Sherlock had once named them the Baker Street division of the detective police force. At other times he referred to them as the Irregulars. A scruffier, more ragged bunch would be hard to imagine, boys between the ages of eight and fifteen, held together by dirt and grime, their clothes so cut about and stitched back together that it would be impossible to say to how many other children they must have at some time belonged. Wiggins himself was wearing an adult jacket that had been cut in half, a strip removed from the middle and the top, and the bottom put together again. Several of the boys were barefooted. Only one, I noted, was a little smarter and better fed than the others, his clothes slightly less threadbare, and I wondered what wickedness – pickpocketing, perhaps, or burglary – had furnished him with the means not just to survive but, in his own way, to prosper. He could not have been more than thirteen years old and yet, like all of them, he was already quite grown up. Childhood, after all, is the first precious coin that poverty steals from a child.
    A moment later, Sherlock Holmes appeared and with him, Mrs Hudson. I could see that our landlady was flustered and out of sorts and she did not attempt to hide her thoughts. ‘I won’t have it, Mr Holmes. I’ve told you before. This is a respectable house in which to invite a gang of ragamuffins. Heaven knows what diseases they’ll have brought in with them – nor what items of silver or linen will be gone when they depart.’
    ‘Please calm yourself, my good Mrs Hudson,’ Holmes laughed. ‘Wiggins! I’ve told you before. I will not have the house invaded in this way. In future, you alone will report to me. But since you are here and have brought with you the entire gang, listen carefully to my instructions. Our quarry is an American, a man in his mid-thirties who occasionally wears a flat cap. He has a recent scar on his right cheek and, I think we can assume, is a stranger to London. Yesterday, he was at London Bridge Station and has in his possession a gold necklace set with three clusters of sapphires which, needless to say, he came by illicitly. Now, where do you think he would go to dispose of it?’
    ‘Fullwood’s Rents!’ one boy shouted out.
    ‘The Jews on Petticoat Lane,’ cried another.
    ‘No! He’ll get a better price at the hell houses,’ suggested a third. ‘I’d go to Flower Street or Field Lane.’
    ‘The pawnbrokers!’ interjected the better-dressed boy who had first caught my attention.
    ‘The pawnbrokers!’ Holmes agreed. ‘What’s your name, boy?’
    ‘It is Ross, sir.’
    ‘Well, Ross, you have the makings of a detective. The man that we seek is new to the city and will not know Flower Street, Fullwood’s Rents or any of the more esoteric corners where you boys find trouble for yourselves. He will go to the most obvious place and the symbol of the three golden balls is known throughout the world. So that’s where I want you to begin. He arrived at London Bridge, and let us assume that he chose to reside in a hotel or a