Read The House Of Silk for Free Online

The Flat Cap Gang was destroyed but one of its ringleaders had got away.
    ‘This was the outcome that Cornelius Stillman described to me in my hotel that night, but it is not by any means the end of the story.
    ‘I remained in Boston another week, partly in the hope that Keelan O’Donaghue might even now be found. For a slight concern had risen in my mind. Indeed, it might have been there from the very start, but it was only now that I became conscious of it. It referred to that blasted advertisement which I have already mentioned and which bore my name. Stillman had made public the fact that I had been party to the reward and to the posse which had been sent after the Flat Cap Gang. At the time I had been gratified, thinking only of my sense of public duty and, I suppose, the honour of being associated with the great man. It now occurred to me that to have killed one twin and to have left the other alive might make me a target for revenge, particularly in a place where the very worst criminals could count on the support of so many friends and admirers. It was with a sense of nervousness that I now walked in and out of my hotel. I did not stray into the rougher parts of the city. And I certainly didn’t go out at night.
    ‘Keelan O’Donaghue was not captured and there was even some doubt that he had actually survived. He could have been wounded and died of blood loss, like a rat, underground. He could have drowned. Stillman had certainly persuaded himself that this was the case by the time we met for the last time, but then, he was the sort of man who never liked to admit failure. I had booked passage back to England on the SS
Catalonia
, run by the Cunard line. I was sorry not to be able to bid farewell to Mrs Devoy and her son, but I did not have the time to return to New York. I left the hotel. And I remember that I had actually reached the gangplank and was about to board the ship when I heard the news. It was being shouted out by a newsboy and there it was, on the front page.
    ‘Cornelius Stillman had been shot dead whilst walking in the rose garden of his home in Providence. With a shaking hand, I purchased a copy of the newspaper and read that the attack had happened the day before; that a young man wearing a twill jacket, scarf and flat cap had been seen fleeing from the scene. A manhunt had already begun and would spread all over New England, for this was the murder of a Boston Brahmin and no effort could be spared in bringing the perpetrator to justice. According to the report, Bill McParland was assisting the police and there was a certain irony in this, as he and Stillman had fallen out in the days before Stillman’s death. Stillman had held back half the fee that he had agreed with the Pinkerton man, arguing that the job would not have been fully completed until the last body had been recovered. Well, that last body was up and walking, for there could be no doubt at all as to the identity of Stillman’s assailant.
    ‘I read the newspaper and then climbed the gangplank. I went directly to my cabin and remained there until six o’clock in the evening when there was a tremendous hoot and the
Catalonia
lifted its moorings and slipped out of port. Only then did I return to the deck and watch as Boston disappeared behind me. I was hugely relieved to be away.
    ‘That, gentlemen, is the story of the lost Constables and my visit to America. I of course told my partner, Mr Finch, what had occurred, and I have spoken of it with my wife. But I have never repeated it to anyone else. It happened more than a year ago. And until the man in the flat cap appeared outside my house in Wimbledon, I thought – I prayed – that I would never have to refer to it again.’

    Holmes had finished his pipe long before the art dealer came to the end of his narration, and had been listening with his long fingers clasped in front of him and a look of intense concentration on his face. There was a lengthy silence. A coal tumbled