"I was at my wit's end. I knew of your reputation and I hoped you could help me. This man has me in his clutches. He will drain me of my money and destroy my reputation as well."

"Pray tell me the name of this blackmailer," Holmes said, picking up a pencil.

"It is Moriarty-Professor James Moriarty."

Sherlock Holmes put down his pencil and smiled slightly. "I think I will be able to help you, Reverend Dodgson."

It was then that Mrs. Hudson interrupted us with word that the Christmas goose would be served in thirty minutes. We were welcome to come down earlier if we liked, to partake of some holiday sherry. Holmes introduced her to Dodgson and then a remarkable event occurred. She stared at him through her spectacles and repeated his name to be sure she'd heard it correctly. "Reverend Charles Dodgson?"

"That's correct."

"It would be a pleasure if you joined us, too. There is enough food for four."

Holmes and I exchanged glances. Mrs. Hudson had never even conversed with a visitor before, to say nothing of inviting one to dinner. Still, it was Christmas Day and perhaps she was only being hospitable.

While she escorted Dodgson downstairs, I whispered to Holmes, "What's this about Moriarty? You spoke of him earlier this year in connection with the Valley of Fear affair."

"I did indeed, Watson. If he is Dodgson's blackmailer, I welcome the opportunity to challenge him once again."

We said nothing of our visitor's problems during dinner. Mrs. Hudson entertained him with accounts of her young nieces and their occasional visits to Baker Street. "I read to them often," she said, gesturing toward a small shelf of children's books she maintained for such occasions. "All children should be exposed to good books."

"I couldn't agree more," Dodgson replied.

As we were finishing our mince pie and Mrs. Hudson was busy clearing the table, Holmes returned to the subject that had brought Dodgson to us. "If you and Professor Moriarty were casual friends, what caused this recent enmity between you?"

"It was the book, I suppose. Moriarty's most celebrated volume of pure mathematics is The Dynamics of an Asteroid. When I followed it with my own somewhat humorous effort, The Dynamics of a Particle, he believed the satire was aimed at him. I tried to explain that it dealt with an Oxford subject, a contest between Gladstone and Gathorne Hardy, but he would have none of it. From then on, he seemed to be seeking ways to destroy me."

Holmes finished the last of his pie. "Excellent, Mrs. Hudson, excellent! Your cooking is a delight!"

"Thank you, Mr. Holmes." She retreated to the kitchen while he took out his pipe but did not light it.

"Tell me about this cryptic message you alluded to earlier."

"I can do better than that." He reached into his pocket and produced a folded piece of paper. "This is what the beggar gave me. When I tried to stop him he knocked me down and escaped."

Holmes read the message twice before pa.s.sing the paper to me: On Benjamin Caunt's day, Beneath his lofty face, A ransom you must pay, To cancel your disgrace.

Come by there at one, On Mad Hatter's clock.

The Old Lady's done, And gone 'neath the block.

"It makes no sense, Holmes" was my initial reaction. "It's just some childish verse, and not a very good one."

"I can make nothing of it," Dodgson admitted. "Who is Benjamin Ca-Caunt?"

"He was a prizefighter," Holmes remarked. "I remember hearing my father speak of him." He puzzled over the message. "From what I know of Moriarty, it would be in character for him to reveal everything in this verse, and challenge us to decipher it."

"What of Caunt's lofty face?" I asked.

"It could be a statue or a portrait in a high place. His day could be the day of his birth, or of some special triumph, or perhaps the day of his death? I have nothing about the man in my files upstairs, and it will be two days before the libraries are open."

"And what is this about the Mad Hatter?" I inquired.

Mrs. Hudson had returned from the kitchen at that moment and heard my question. "My niece prefers the March Hare, Mr. Dodgson," she told him. "But then little girls usually like soft, furry animals." She walked over to the little bookshelf and took out a slender volume. "See? Here is my copy of your book. I have the other one, too."

She held a copy of Alice in Wonderland.

Holmes put a hand to his forehead, as if pained by his failure. "My mind must be elsewhere today. Of course! You are the author of Alice and Through the Looking Gla.s.s under the pseudonym of Lewis Carroll!"

Charles Dodgson smiled slightly. "It seems to be an open secret, though it is something I neither confirm nor deny."

"This puts a whole new light on the affair," said Holmes, laying down his pipe and turning to Mrs. Hudson. "Thank you for refreshing my memory." He looked again at the message.

I puzzled over it myself before turning once again to our client. "Moriarty must know of your writing, since he makes reference to the Mad Hatter."

"Of course he knows. But what does the message mean?"

"I believe you should remain in the city overnight," Holmes told him. "All may come clear tomorrow."

"Why is that?"

"The message speaks of Benjamin Caunt's Day, and he was a prizefighter-a boxer. Tomorrow, of course, is Boxing Day."

Charles Dodgson shook his head in amazement. "That is something worthy of the Mad Hatter himself!"

Mrs. Hudson found an unoccupied room in which Dodgson spent the night. In the morning I knocked at his door and invited him to join us for breakfast. Holmes had spent much of the night awake in his chair, poring over his books and files, studying maps of the city and lists of various sorts. Dodgson immediately asked if he had discovered anything, but my friend's answer was bleak. "Not a thing, sir! I can find no statue in all of London erected to the boxer Benjamin Caunt, nor is there any special portrait of him. Certainly there is none in a lofty position as the verse implies."

"Then what am I to do?"

"The entire matter seems most odd. You have the blackmail money on your person. Why did not this beggar simply take it, instead of giving you a further message?"

"It's Moriarty's doing," Dodgson insisted. "He wants to humiliate me."

"From my limited knowledge of the good professor, he is more interested in financial gain than in humiliation." Holmes reached for another of his several guidebooks to the city and began paging through it.

"Have you ever met Moriarty?" our visitor asked.

"Not yet," Holmes responded. "But someday-h.e.l.lo, what's this?" His eyes had fallen upon something in the book he'd been skimming.

"A portrait of Caunt?"

"Better than that. This guidebook states that our best-known tower bell, Big Ben, may have been named after Benjamin Caunt, who was a famous boxer in 1858, when the bell was cast at the Whitechapel Foundry. Other books attribute the name Big Ben to Sir Benjamin Hall, chief commissioner of the works. The truth is of no matter. What does matter is that Big Ben, the clock, certainly does have a lofty face looking out over Parliament and the Thames."

"Then he is to meet Moriarty at one o'clock today-Boxing Day-beneath Big Ben," I said. At last it was becoming clear to me.

But Charles Dodgson was not so certain. "The Mad Hatter's clock, meaning the watch he carried in his pocket, told the day of the month but not the time."

Sherlock Holmes smiled. "I bow to your superior knowledge of Alice in Wonderland."

"But where does that leave us?" I asked, pouring myself another cup of breakfast tea. "The number one in the message must refer to a time rather than a date. Surely you are not to wait until New Year's Day to pay this blackmail when the first line speaks of Benjamin Caunt's day. It has to be Boxing Day!"

"Agreed," Holmes said. "I suggest we three travel to Big Ben and see what awaits us at one o'clock."

The day was pleasant enough, with even a few traces of sunshine breaking through the familiar winter clouds. A bit of snow the previous week had long since melted, and the day's temperature was hovering in the low forties. We took a cab to Westminster Abbey, just across the street from our destination, and joined the holiday strollers out enjoying the good weather.

"There's no sign of anyone waiting," I observed as we walked toward Westminster Bridge.

Holmes's eyes were like a hawk's as he scanned the pa.s.sersby. "It is only five to the hour, Watson. But I suggest, Mr. Dodgson, that you walk a bit ahead of us. If no one attempts to intercept you by the time you reach the bridge, pause for a moment and then walk back this way."

"Do you have a description of Moriarty?" I asked as Dodgson walked ahead of us as instructed.

"He will not come himself. It will be one of his hirelings, and all the more dangerous for that."

"What should we look for?"

He seemed to remember the poem. "An old lady, Watson."

But there was no old lady alone, no one who paused as if waiting for someone or attempted to approach Charles Dodgson. He had reached the bridge and started back along the sidewalk, stepping around a small boy who was chalking a rough design on the sidewalk.

It was Holmes whose curiosity was aroused. As the boy finished his drawing and ran off, he paused to study it. "What do you make of this, Watson?"

I saw nothing but a crude circle drawn in chalk, with clocklike numbers running around the inner rim from one to thirty-one. An arrow seemed pointed at the number twenty-six, the day's date.

"Surely no more than a child's drawing," I said.

Dodgson had returned to join us and when he saw the chalked design he gave a start of surprise. "It's the Mad Hatter's watch, with dates instead of the time. Who drew this?"

"A young lad," said Holmes. "No doubt paid and instructed by Moriarty. He'll be blocks away by now."

"But what does it mean?" Dodgson asked.

" 'Come by there at one, on Mad Hatter's clock,' " Holmes quoted from memory. "There is no time on the clock, only dates. The phrase 'on Mad Hatter's clock' must be taken literally. You must stand on the chalk drawing of the clock."

Dodgson did as he was told, attracting the puzzled glances of pa.s.sersby. "Now what?"

It was I who noticed the box about the size of my medical bag, carefully wrapped and resting against the wall to the east of the Big Ben tower. "What's this?" I asked, stooping to pick it up. "Perhaps they're your pictures."

"Watson!"

It was Holmes who shouted as I began to unwrap the box. He was at my side in a flash, yanking it from my grasp just as I was about to open it. "What is it, Holmes?"

"One o'clock!" he yelled as the great bell above our heads tolled the hour. He ran several steps and hurled the box with all his strength toward the river. He had a strong arm, but his throw was a good deal short of the water when the box exploded in a blinding flash and a roar like a cannon.

Two strollers near Westminster Bridge had been slightly injured by the blast and all of us were shaken. Within minutes police were everywhere, and somehow I was not even surprised when our old friend Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard arrived on the scene about fifteen minutes later.

"Ah, Mr. Holmes, they said you were involved in this. I was hoping for a peaceful holiday."

"The Christmas box held an infernal machine," Holmes told him, having recovered his composure. "I glimpsed a clock and some sticks of dynamite before I hurled it away. It was set to go off at one o'clock, exactly the time that Mr. Dodgson here had been lured to Big Ben."

Lestrade, lean and ferretlike as always, stepped forward to brush a speck of dirt from my coat. "And, Dr. Watson, I trust you weren't injured in this business."

"I'm all right," I answered gruffly. "Mr. Dodgson here was the target of the attack, or so we believe."

People were cl.u.s.tered around, and it was obvious Lestrade was anxious to get us away from there. "Come, come, here is a police carriage. Let us adjourn to my office at Scotland Yard and get to the bottom of this matter."

I was concerned for Charles Dodgson, who seemed to have been in a state of shock since the explosion. "Why should he want to kill me?" he kept asking. "I was willing to pay him his hundred quid."

"Professor Moriarty is after bigger game than a hundred quid," Holmes a.s.sured him.

"But what?"

The police carriage was pulling away as Lestrade shouted instructions to the driver. Holmes peered at the vast number of bobbies and horse-drawn police vehicles attracted by the explosion. "You have a great many men out here on a holiday."

"It's Big Ben, Mr. Holmes-one of London's sacred inst.i.tutions! We don't take this lightly. It could be some revolutionary group behind it."

"I doubt that," Holmes responded with a smile.

He said no more until we had reached the dingy offices at Scotland Yard. "Our new building will be ready soon," Lestrade informed us a bit apologetically. "Now let us get down to business."

Charles Dodgson told his story somewhat haltingly, explaining how he'd come to Holmes on Christmas Day after being roughed up at Paddington Station. He tried to treat the episodes with the young girls with some delicacy, but Lestrade gnawed away at the story until he grasped the full picture. "You are being blackmailed!" he said with a start. "This should have been reported to the Oxford police at once."

"More easily said than done," the white-haired man responded. "A hundred is not a bad price to save my reputation and my honor."

It was here that Sherlock Holmes interrupted. "Surely, Lestrade, you must see that the plot against Mr. Dodgson is merely a diversion, a red herring. And if it is a diversion, why cannot the bomb at Big Ben also be a diversion?"

"What are you saying?"

"We must return to Moriarty's cryptic message. All has been explained except the final two lines: 'The Old Lady's done / And gone 'neath the block.' "

"A nonsense rhyme," Dodgson insisted. "Nothing more."

"But your own nonsense rhymes usually have a meaning," Holmes pointed out. "I admit to a spa.r.s.e knowledge of your work, but I know a great deal about London crime. I ask you, Lestrade, which Old Lady could the verse refer to?"

"I have no idea, Holmes."

"Robbing an old lady would be akin to blackmailing a retired Oxford professor. Unless it was a particular old lady."

Lestrade's face drained of blood. "You can't mean"-his voice dropped to a whisper-"Queen Victoria!"

"No, no, I refer to the playwright Sheridan's quaint phrase, The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street."

Lestrade and I spoke the words in the same breath. "The Bank of England!"

"Quite so," Holmes said. "The Big Ben bombing brought out virtually all the police on duty today. The financial district, closed for the holiday in any event, is virtually unguarded. I would guess that at this very moment Moriarty's men are looting the Bank of England and escaping back through their tunnel 'neath the block."

"My G.o.d!" Dodgson exclaimed. "Is such a thing possible?"

"Not only possible, but probable for Professor Moriarty. Lestrade, if you will bring me a large-scale map of the area, I will show you exactly where to find this tunnel."