Read Online Victorian Villainy by Michael Kurland - Free Book Online

belied by the evidence to the contrary. Is that not, after all, the basis of most religion?
    This, then, is an account of the events that led up to the disappearance, and what transpired for a short time afterward. I was going to say a “true account,” but I refrained, because memory is faulty, and there were some facts that I was not privy to that might make a difference in the truth of what happened. It is, then, an account of the events as they appeared to me at the time.
    It was on the evening of Wednesday, the 22 nd of April, 1891, that Mr. Maws, my butler, ushered a man named Tippins into my study. A tall, thin, angular man wearing a black frock coat with red cuffs and pockets, and large brass buttons, he stood, top hat in hand, before my desk and peered at me through oversized gold spectacles. His nose, while not large enough to be truly grotesque, was the most prominent object on his face, possibly because of the web of red veins beneath the roseate skin. A brush mustache directly beneath the nose added character to the face, but it was not a character whose acquaintance I would have gone out of my way to make. “I have come to you from Mr. Holmes,” he began. “He requires your assistance, and has asked me to direct you to the secret location where he awaits you.”
    I am not easily surprised. Indeed, I spend a good bit of time and effort making sure that I am not surprised. But I confess that, for a second, I was astounded. “Holmes wants to see me? Is this some sort of trick?” I demanded.
    He considered. “Naw, I wouldn’t think so,” he said finally. “He’s much too stout to indulge in that sort of tomfoolery, I should think.”
    “Ah!” I said. “Stout, is he? So it’s Mr. Mycroft Holmes who desires my assistance.”
    “Indeed,” Tippins agreed. “Isn’t that what I said?”
    “I thought perhaps his brother....”
    Tippins snorted. “The consulting detective chap? What has he to do with foreign policy?”
    “Foreign policy?” I inquired.
    “Perhaps you’d best just go and find out for yourself,” Tippins suggested.
    “To the Foreign Office?”
    “Naw. Mr. Holmes don’t want it known that he’s meeting with you, so he has arranged for my services to get you to his, so-to-speak secret location.”
    “Services?” I asked. “What sort of services?”
    He tapped himself on the chest. “I’m a conniver,” he said.
    “Interesting,” I allowed. “You scheme and plot for Her Majesty’s government?”
    “I enable people to do necessary things in unusual ways, when the more usual ways are not available.” He smiled. “I occasionally perform services for Mr. Holmes, but few others in Her Majesty’s government have availed themselves of my services.”
    “And what necessary service would you perform for me in your unorthodox fashion?” I asked him.
    “Your house is being watched,” Tippins said.
    I nodded. I had been aware of a steady watch being kept on my house for the past few weeks. “No doubt by that very consulting detective chap you were mentioning,” I said.
    “Mr. Holmes did not want it known that he was to speak with you,” Tippins explained, “so he sent me.”
    “I see,” I said. “How are you going to get me there unseen?”
    “I have a carriage waiting outside,” Tippins said, unbuttoning his frock coat. “The driver knows where to go. You will leave here as me. I will await your return here, if you don’t mind. I have brought a book.” He took off the frock coat and handed it to me. “Put this on.”
    “It is distinctive,” I said, examining the red pockets. “But I’m not sure we look alike enough, ah, facially, for the masquerade to work.”
    “Ah! There we have the crux of the matter,” he told me. He reached for the gold frame of his glasses and carefully removed them from his face. With them came the red nose and the brush mustache. The face beneath was quite ordinary, and the nose was, if anything, rather small.
    “Bless me!” I