The storm outside seemed to redouble its fury, throwing thick flakes of snow against the fractured glass of the hallway window where the creature had escaped. Within the parlor, however, the roaring fire gradually restored a sense of security. Inspector Lestrade had marched the skeletal, peg-legged intruder off to the local station, leaving a stalwart constable to guard our shattered front door against the bitter midnight chill.
Mary had emerged from the bedroom, her face pale but her composure entirely restored. She sat at the mahogany table, carefully smoothing the yellowed, water-stained pages of her father's secret ledger. Holmes had thrown off his damp traveling cloak and now paced the Persian rug with restless, predatory strides, his long fingers twitching behind his back.
"It is a singular piece of clockwork, Watson," Holmes remarked, stopping abruptly before the mantelpiece to inspect the broken ivory elephant we had retrieved from the tray. "The criminal mind is often repetitive. The senders of this token intended to paralyze Mrs. Watson with a terror born of her childhood anxieties. They wished her to believe that Jonathan Small’s vengeance had escaped the walls of Dartmoor. But the physics of the situation contradict the assumption."
"Because Small is still imprisoned?" I asked, pouring a small measure of brandy for Mary to bring the color back to her cheeks.
"More than that," Holmes said, his eyes flashing with analytical fire. "Small lost his right leg to a crocodile in the Ganges. The indentation left upon your frost-bitten welcome mat downstairs, however, was made by a left wooden stump. Furthermore, the circumference of the depression indicates a heavy, iron-shod peg—the type favored by seafaring men, not the makeshift timber limb fashioned by an Indian convict."
He turned his gaze to Mary. "Mrs. Watson, the man Lestrade has just taken into custody is Bartholomew Vance. He was the principal turnkey at the Blair Reef barracks during your father's tenure in the Andaman Islands. He knew the inner workings of the Sholto-Morstan alliance, and he knew that your father died before he could liquidate his final shares of the illicit Indian prize."
Mary looked up from the red morocco volume, her finger resting on a column of coded figures. "Then this ledger is what he spent a decade searching for, Mr. Holmes. My father did not just record the jewels they stole from the fort. Look at these coordinates. He has mapped a specific subterranean vault beneath the old Tower Wharf, adjacent to the London docks."
Holmes stepped to the table, leaning over her shoulder as his keen eyes swept across the neat, military handwriting. "Ah! The old salt-stores of the Tower framework. A brilliant choice for a concealment. In 1878, that sector of the riverfront was heavily choked with ice, much like the present winter. Sholto and Morstan must have deposited the bulk of their heavier, unrefined bullion there before their panicked falling-out at the Langham Hotel."
"But what of the Blue Carbuncle, Holmes?" I interjected, my mind reverting to the extraordinary entry we had discovered. "The ledger states it was used as a bribe for passage aboard the Ganges transport."
"And so it was, Watson," Holmes replied, pulling a pocket-lens from his waistcoat and scrutinizing the ink. "But consider the chronology. The Countess of Morcar reported her gem stolen from her hotel suite in London just last Christmas. If Captain Morstan possessed the stone in India in 1878, it means the jewel found in the crop of the Christmas goose was not the original gem, but a flawless, high-grade replica manufactured by the Amsterdam cutters to deceive the Countess's insurers!"
I stared at my friend in utter astonishment. "A double conspiracy! The Countess has been parading a magnificent counterfeit, while the true, priceless Blue Carbuncle has lain dormant in the freezing mud of the Thames for twelve long years."
"Precisely," Holmes said, snapping his lens shut with a triumphant click. "And Vance’s feral accomplice, the creature who shattered your window, has undoubtedly fled straight to the Tower Wharf to retrieve it before the police can secure the perimeter. The clock is striking midnight, Watson. The Christmas bells are ringing, but for us, the most hazardous hour of the night is about to begin. We must reach the riverfront before the tide locks the vaults forever."
