The Case of the Five Silent Sets

0:00 A Carpet Bill at Baker Street

0:04 Watson: It was in the wet May of nineteen forty-three, and London had grown used to living by the blackout. The twenty-fourth, it was, an hour before the curtains had to be drawn. Mrs Hudson had declared spring cleaning. Our carpet had gone to the beaters, leaving the sitting room on bare boards and the fire banked low on the coal ration. Holmes and I had spent the winter idle over the war news. Now he stood at the window with Mrs Hudson's carpet bill, and she stood her ground.

0:34 Holmes: This is extortion, Mrs Hudson. Plain extortion. Mrs Hudson: It's the cleaner's bill, not mine. Every burn had to be patched.

0:42 Holmes: Then send it to the Doctor. Those are cigar burns, every one. Watson: I beg your pardon! Those little round holes are acid. Your acid.

0:53 Holmes: Acid leaves a white rim. Cigar ash leaves a brown one. Mrs Hudson: They leave a hole either way, and the man wants paying.

1:02 Watson: I'll pay for the brown ones, Mrs Hudson, if he pays for the white. Mrs Hudson: There isn't a brown one in the lot, Doctor. Holmes: Treachery under my own roof.

1:13 Mrs Hudson: That's the carpet back. Mind my banister, you two! Watson: There's someone climbing behind it, Holmes. A young woman, and no hat at all.

1:22 Merritt: My chiefs say I'm— they say I'm imagining things, Mr Holmes. I've walked up Baker Street for a second opinion. Holmes: Your chiefs, Miss...?

1:31 Merritt: Merritt. I'm a clerk in an office I'm not allowed to name. Holmes: Then tell me what you're allowed to say.

1:38 Merritt: A man in The Hague whose face I've never seen is in danger. And by the time anyone believes me, it'll be... it'll be too late. Mrs Hudson: I'll put the kettle on.

1:48 Holmes: Your own people have the facts and the authority, Miss Merritt. I have neither. And every word you tell me could put you in Holloway, so before you—

1:57 Merritt: I know the way to Holloway well enough, Mr Holmes. Watson: Think a moment. She has never once seen this man's face.

2:05 Holmes: So she tells us. Watson: Yet she'd stake her post he's in danger. How does a London clerk come to know a stranger in The Hague?

2:14 Holmes: That, Watson, is the only interesting question in London tonight. Merritt: Then you'll hear me? Holmes: Not here. These boards carry every word down the stair.

2:25 Mrs Hudson: And your bill, Mr Holmes! Holmes: Charge it to the Doctor's cigars. Your hat, Watson.

2:31 Watson: And so we went down past our own carpet, into the last of the daylight.

2:41 The Code Room Under the Roof

2:45 Watson: Miss Merritt's office proved to be a quarter of a mile down our own street, behind sandbags; she led us up to a code room under its roof. Merritt: The Dutch room. Every word from Holland crosses this table.

2:59 Holmes: And the chart on the wall, ruled in moons? Merritt: Our schedule. The aircraft only drop by moonlight, ten nights a month.

3:08 Holmes: This board beside it is not the section's. Chalk, a quick hand, nothing typed in triplicate. It's yours. Merritt: Mine, kept in my own time. Nobody else looks at it.

3:19 Holmes: Five names chalked under one heading. Dekker. Merritt: Piet Dekker, our radioman in The Hague. These five were dropped to his reception parties, and his set reported each one landed safe.

3:33 Holmes: And each carried a wireless of his own, to call you once he'd gone to ground. Merritt: Within three days. That's the drill.

3:40 Watson: Sets smash in a parachute drop, surely. I'd put money on it. Merritt: Five sets, Doctor? Over two moons?

3:49 Merritt: Not one of them has ever come on air.

3:53 Lestrade's Back Office

3:57 Watson: Two floors down, Inspector Lestrade had been lent a back office, with a tall stack of personnel files and a cup of tea gone cold. Lestrade: Well, well. Sherlock Holmes, in with the hush-hush brigade. Who let you in?

4:12 Holmes: A telephone call to Whitehall, Lestrade. You've been at those files a week or more, and the cleared pile is the taller. Lestrade: Nine days. Every clerk, cleaner and driver in the place. Not a whisper.

4:25 Holmes: Miss Merritt among them? Lestrade: The young lady who carries secret business up Baker Street to a private detective? She's in my notebook now.

4:34 Watson: She came to us because nobody here would— Lestrade: Hear out clerks? Nobody's paid to, Doctor. There's a war on, and two more men fly to Dekker's field next moon. If this house isn't cleared by then, it's my head.

4:46 Holmes: And if the leak is across the water? Lestrade: Then it's the Dutchmen's lookout. If there's a leak, Holmes, it isn't on my patch.

4:54 Quarter Past Eleven in the Basement

4:58 Watson: The wireless room lay in the basement under one green-shaded lamp, and a little after eleven Miss Merritt sat down at the receiver, with Holmes and me at her shoulder. Merritt: I've put him on the loudspeaker for you. Quarter past eleven. Piet's never once been late.

5:16 Watson: Good heavens. It's a woodpecker in a gale. Merritt: It's nowt like, Doctor. That's Piet's own touch on the key: long dashes, and a little drag before every K.

5:27 Holmes: Your pencil moves before the letters are finished. You know what he'll say before he's said it. Merritt: I know how he'll say it. That's not the same thing.

5:37 Holmes: Then what does he say tonight? Merritt: Money and men. Thirty-five thousand guilders, and the two agents next moon, same field.

5:46 Watson: Then he's alive and keen, and we've lost our sleep over nothing. Holmes: Not nothing, Watson. By her own ear, Dekker himself sits at that key. It hardly helps her case.

5:59 Merritt: Hm. It's Piet sending. That doesn't mean he's free.

6:03 Holmes: Nor that he isn't. Watson: He stumbled there, at the end. Merritt: Every night, the same little stammer before he signs off. That's Piet. Always.

6:15 The Signals Log

6:20 Watson: Next morning Lestrade climbed to the code room with the signals log under his arm, and Miss Merritt stood by her board as though guarding it. Lestrade: Your signals log, miss, impounded. Seven weeks back: "Dekker message received without security check. Flagged, J. Merritt." Overruled, in pencil.

6:40 Watson: Security check? Merritt: A slip every radioman hides in every message. Leave it out, and he's telling us he's been taken.

6:48 Lestrade: So London radioed him a reminder. One reminder, and back came his check, in every message since. Watson: There you are, then. Tired, forgot it once, right as rain—

7:00 Lestrade: Or caught that night, Doctor, and tapping for the Germans ever since. Merritt: Piet would never— he'd never turn. It's his fist I hear every night; I'd swear to it.

7:10 Lestrade: Then it's Dekker sending. Five men into German hands, and asking for two more. Merritt: You don't know Piet—

7:17 Lestrade: Nor do you, miss. You've never seen his face. Holmes: That check proves nothing now, Lestrade. Once London asked for it, he'd send it, turned or tortured.

7:27 Lestrade: Turned. And next moon's drop is stood down on my report. Holmes: Then whoever holds Dekker hears London call off the drop, and guesses why. If he's innocent, he's no more use to them.

7:39 Watson: You mean they'd shoot him. Holmes: So I go to The Hague, and Miss Merritt with me. She knows his file, his codes, his habits.

7:47 Lestrade: She carries this whole section in her head. If they take her— Merritt: They won't take me alive, Inspector. I've asked for the pill.

7:55 Watson: Good heavens. Lestrade: Her chiefs suspended her this morning, pending my report. They'll never sign her—

8:03 Holmes: They needn't. A Swiss Red Cross parcel delegation leaves for The Hague this week. My brother in Whitehall can add three names to it. Lestrade: And Miss Merritt takes a suitcase set. One call on it, and our people row two men in from the sea at Scheveningen to fetch you home.

8:18 Watson: And what do you expect to find there? Holmes: The answer to one question, Watson. Has Piet Dekker sold every man London dropped to him?

8:27 A Grocer's Shop in The Hague

8:32 Watson: Ten days on, the three of us wore Swiss Red Cross armbands and stood in a grocer's shop in The Hague, beneath the rooms we had come so far to see. Brandt: Morning, morning. Brandt's the name, it's over the door. Red Cross, is it?

8:47 Holmes: From Switzerland, Mr Brandt. Parcels for prisoners: tinned milk, sugar, and tobacco if you have it. Brandt: Heh. Tobacco, he says. One tin left, and Mevrouw Roosendaal here asked first. I'll split it.

9:02 Roosendaal: You are Red Cross. You go where an ordinary woman cannot? Holmes: Sometimes. That tobacco isn't yours, madam; there's no stain on your fingers. It's for a man who can't come for it himself.

9:15 Roosendaal: My lodger, meneer. He lived up over this shop, until they took him. Merritt: Took him? Is he hurt? Did they—

9:23 Holmes: Our colleague asks how we can help. Roosendaal: They came at night with a lorry. For three nights the soldiers stood in the street, and one man went up to him alone.

9:34 Watson: One man? Not the whole squad? Roosendaal: One. Up at dark, down at dawn; I kept my door shut. The soldiers smoked below, and nobody else heard a word. Then they took Piet away, and nobody tells me where.

9:52 Merritt: Then we'll find out where. Bring us your parcel. Brandt: Half a tin each, and nobody quarrels. Anything for your parcels, all of you, just ask Brandt.

10:02 The Visiting Cell at Scheveningen

10:07 Watson: Scheveningen prison gave us a whitewashed visiting cell and a German guard at the grille; Mevrouw Roosendaal sat beside me with her parcel on her knees. Roosendaal: The guard asks again what we say, meneer. In German.

10:21 Holmes: And he gets nothing he understands, Mevrouw Roosendaal. He hasn't a word of English; he held my pass upside down. Speak freely.

10:31 Roosendaal: Then I tell you what I told nobody. The last night that man was up with Piet, I heard Piet through my ceiling. Watson: Crying out?

10:40 Roosendaal: No, Doctor. He hummed a cradle song, low, over and over. The tune I knew. The words, no.

10:51 Watson: A frightened man comforting himself. I've heard soldiers do it on stretchers. Holmes: Or a man at his ease. One doesn't hum with a pistol at one's ear.

11:01 Roosendaal: You do not know Piet. Holmes: I'm about to. Dekker: Mevrouw Roosendaal! You came, and you bring the Red Cross.

11:10 Roosendaal: Tobacco, Piet. Half a tin; the shop had no more. Holmes: Sit down, Dekker. You're shaved and fed, and there's not a mark on your hands. Men who defy their questioners are not so well kept.

11:24 Dekker: My hands are for my work. They know that. Watson: What work, in a cell?

11:30 Dekker: Hah. Patience, Doctor. A prisoner works hard at it.

11:35 Holmes: Five men dropped to your fields, and not one has called home. Who sold them? Dekker: Who sends you? The Red Cross asks after socks, not fields.

11:45 Holmes: London sends me. And I say you turned, and sold them to save your neck. Dekker: London hears what it chooses to hear.

11:54 Roosendaal: Piet, tell them— Dekker: Thank you for the tobacco. You've heard all I have to say.

12:00 Two Pounds of Sugar

12:04 Watson: Brandt was weighing our sugar when we came back at lamp-lighting, and Miss Merritt watched his scale as though it might cheat her. Brandt: Two pounds sugar for the Red Cross. And poor Piet, did he get his tobacco?

12:18 Holmes: He did, Mr Brandt. Brandt: And what did he say to it? Holmes: Hm. Very little. Your scale is two ounces kind to us.

12:27 Brandt: Brandt gives good weight to prisoners, meneer. God keeps the books. Watson: That's decent of you. There's little enough decency on short rations.

12:38 Brandt: Piet was always a quiet one up there. Mevrouw Roosendaal, now, she is not so quiet. Merritt: She's the only one who's stood by him.

12:47 Brandt: By herself, miss. Every night she locks herself in with a wireless she swears is broken. Merritt: Plenty of folk keep a dead set. For the valves.

12:57 Brandt: And lock the door on it? Listening to London is prison. Talking to London is a wall and a rifle.

13:04 Watson: You take a hard view of your neighbours, Mr Brandt. Brandt: A grocer hears the whole street across his counter. Ask her who she talks to, miss.

13:13 A Window Across the Square

13:17 Watson: Our room at the Red Cross hostel looked across a square to the dark house above the grocer's, and Holmes sat at the window, his pipe unlit. Two things won't leave me alone, Holmes. Holmes: Only two? You sleep better than I do.

13:32 Watson: Three nights, one man upstairs with him, and the street outside none the wiser. Holmes: Go on. Watson: And London asks once for his check, and gets it every night after, word perfect.

13:45 Holmes: Set them side by side, then. What do you get? Watson: Hm. I'm not sure. Something.

13:53 Holmes: Something is not evidence. Look at his window: fresh blackout paper. The rest of the house is faded and curling.

14:01 Watson: So someone uses his rooms. Holmes: Someone sends from them. Move a set to a strange aerial and Miss Merritt would hear it at once. So the set stays put.

14:11 Watson: And they bring the man to it? From Scheveningen, every night? Holmes: Under guard, by the back lanes. A quarter of an hour in a closed car.

14:21 Watson: He didn't look like a man being driven anywhere. He looked afraid. Holmes: Dekker shut the door on us, Watson. Guilty men do.

14:30 The Seal on the Top Floor

14:34 Watson: The following evening Mevrouw Roosendaal lit us up her own stair with a candle stub, Miss Merritt close behind, and stopped on her landing under the last flight. Roosendaal: There, at the top. Piet's door. Nobody goes in, nobody comes out.

14:51 Holmes: A paper seal across the jamb, an eagle stamped on it. Yellowing, but unbroken. Nobody has used that door since they took him.

15:00 Merritt: Then nobody's been in. Roosendaal: Then who walks over my head, miss? Every night, a little before a quarter past eleven.

15:08 Merritt: Every night? Roosendaal: Behind this little door is the old stair, inside the wall, from the shop to Piet's kitchen. It creaks, step by step, and then feet go over my head.

15:24 Watson: Is it bolted? Brandt: Bolted, Doctor, and locked at the bottom besides. You left your sugar on my counter.

15:31 Holmes: Mr Brandt. Kind of you to climb so far. Brandt: Hear that? Shot home. The door at its foot is in my back room, and I keep the only key. Nobody climbs it at night.

15:44 Roosendaal: I hear it climbed. Brandt: Old houses talk, mevrouw. You hear a great many things at night, behind your door.

15:53 Watson: Heh. My old surgery groaned like a ship in a gale. I'd not hang a man on a creak.

15:59 Holmes: And a grocer's key can be borrowed by any man with a pistol, Watson. Brandt: Nobody borrows from Brandt, meneer. Goodnight.

16:07 Roosendaal: Goodnight. A widow locks her door. Merritt: That's a set warming up. Nobody warms a dead one.

16:15 The Suitcase Set in the Attic

16:19 Watson: At eleven that night Miss Merritt opened her suitcase set under the attic eaves of the hostel, and Holmes watched the square through a slit in the blackout. Merritt: Quarter past. Here he comes.

16:32 Watson: Good Lord, he's loud. Louder than ever he was in London. Merritt: He's just across the square. Same set, same aerial, same house. I'd know it blind.

16:43 Holmes: And no car has come into the square tonight. They brought him by the lane behind the shop. Watson: Then your theory holds.

16:51 Holmes: Short groups, no padding. He's been doubted, and he knows it. Merritt: He's asking why London's stood down the drop. Field ready, men waiting. Send both agents next moon.

17:02 Watson: He knows the drop's off? Merritt: London must have told him, on Lestrade's word. Two men kept safe at home, and Piet left to answer for it.

17:12 Holmes: Your pencil's stopped, Miss Merritt. Merritt: "Do not doubt me. All well here." And the last line says, Kiss little Greta for me.

17:21 Watson: A man missing his daughter. What of it?

17:25 Four Hours on One Line

17:29 Watson: Nobody slept. The attic went from black to grey, and Miss Merritt sat over her pad with one line ringed in pencil, saying nothing at all. Holmes: Four hours on one line, Miss Merritt. The pencil's gone through the paper.

17:44 Merritt: Piet has no children. Holmes: Ah. Watson: You can't know that. You've never set eyes on—

17:51 Merritt: I typed his file myself, Doctor. Unmarried. Next of kin, his mother, in Delft. No wife, no child, no Greta.

18:00 Watson: A sweetheart, then. A child born on the quiet. Men don't put everything on a form.

18:07 Merritt: Then he'd not name it on the air, would he? Not Piet. Name a child on the air and you've handed the Germans a hostage.

18:14 Holmes: Then the man at that key isn't Dekker. Merritt: Then my ears lied. Every night I swore— I swore that was his hand. I swore it to my chiefs...

18:26 Holmes: Your ears heard what someone wished you to hear. That isn't lying. Merritt: Hah. It's being a fool, though.

18:33 Watson: You said he was in danger, Miss Merritt, and he is. You saw it when nobody else would. Holmes: He sat in that cell shaved and fed because they want more from him, and I took it for comfort.

18:45 Watson: You weren't to know, Holmes. Holmes: It's my trade to know. And I told him to his face he'd sold his friends.

18:53 Watson: My dear fellow...

18:55 Two Sentences

19:00 Watson: Holmes paced our hostel room all through the grey morning, the ringed page from the attic in his hand. Holmes: Two sentences, Watson. Neither proves a thing alone.

19:10 Watson: Which two? Holmes: The widow's, in the shop: soldiers smoking in the street, one man upstairs, no other ear. And last night's last line: a kiss for a little girl who was never born.

19:22 Watson: Hm. Padding. Something homely, to keep London sweet.

19:27 Holmes: Exactly. A man sending with a pistol at his neck pads nothing. That line was written at ease, to please.

19:35 Watson: Then Dekker babbled about a daughter he hasn't got.

19:43 Watson: Heard by whoever sits at his set, then. Holmes: So who, alone with Piet, heard of Greta?

19:50 The Widow's Landing

19:54 Watson: Late that night we waited in the dark on the widow's landing, Miss Merritt with her ear to the locked door. Merritt: That's the BBC's drum. London, calling Holland.

20:05 Holmes: Mevrouw Roosendaal. Red Cross. Open, please; we're no danger to you.

20:11 Roosendaal: I listen, meneer, only listen. Our Queen's people speak to us from London. I have nothing to send with.

20:19 Holmes: True. Warm valves, no key, no aerial at the window. A receiver and nothing more.

20:25 Watson: So Brandt set us on a woman who only listens. Holmes: He told us of a wireless she swears is broken, Watson. It brings in London very sweetly.

20:36 Merritt: There. Just as you said. Holmes: "I keep the only key," Mr Brandt told us. Whose foot is that, mevrouw?

20:44 Roosendaal: His. Twelve years I have heard Brandt on his stairs. Heavy, and he rests on the fourth step.

20:52 Watson: There, he rested. Why ever didn't you say so yesterday? Roosendaal: With Brandt beside me, Doctor? I buy my bread from that man.

21:03 Holmes: One thing more. In all his time here, did Piet ever speak of a child? A little girl?

21:10 Roosendaal: Never. Not at my table, not at Brandt's counter, and I am in that shop every morning. Family, Piet said, you keep out of your mouth.

21:20 Holmes: Then the child lives in two places only: the room where one man questioned him, and the message on the air. Watson: Then whoever sat up there with him— Holmes: Tomorrow, Watson, we buy a sweet for Piet's child.

21:32 Opening Time

21:36 Watson: Brandt was alone behind his counter at opening time, slicing cheese, when Holmes brought us in with Mevrouw Roosendaal. Brandt: Red Cross, and Mevrouw too. What's it today?

21:48 Holmes: Something sweet, Mr Brandt, for Piet's child. We take the child a parcel this afternoon. Brandt: For little Greta? A sugar mouse, then. A pink one.

21:58 Merritt: There it is. Roosendaal: Greta? Two years Piet lodged with me, and no such name ever reached me.

22:07 Brandt: He spoke of her over this counter. Men talk to— Roosendaal: I stand at this counter every morning, Brandt. He bought bread and said good day.

22:15 Holmes: And upstairs, three nights, one man questioned him, and nobody else heard a word. The child was born in that room, and nowhere else. Merritt: And you named her just as the message did. Not his daughter. Little Greta. Piet's file says no child at all.

22:32 Brandt: Then Piet lied to me. Roosendaal: Never. Holmes: To you, alone. And last night your tread was on the inside stair at his hour, resting on the fourth step.

22:44 Brandt: Enough. Twenty years I sold butter in this street before the Reich found a use for me. Major Brandt, counter-intelligence. I need only open that door and call.

22:54 Holmes: Call, then. Your soldiers come by the lane after dark. By daylight you're a grocer, alone, and the street that hears you learns what its grocer is.

23:05 Brandt: You think I— Watson: And the two gentlemen bolting your door came in on Miss Merritt's wireless. They row out of Scheveningen.

23:13 Brandt: I questioned a prisoner. It's— it was a soldier's duty, nothing more. Holmes: Then, Major, you also wrote: Kiss little Greta for me.

23:25 Surf Below the Dunes

23:29 Watson: Past midnight two boatmen held their boat in the surf below the Scheveningen dunes, Brandt bound in its bottom, and Mevrouw Roosendaal came down the sand to us with a rolled shirt. Roosendaal: Piet's laundry came back from the prison today. In the hem, this. Pencil, in English.

23:46 Merritt: Give it here— Roosendaal: Let me read it, miss. Your hands are shaking. "They asked me for my check. So London had missed my warning."

23:55 Holmes: So he knew his first warning had gone unheard, and laid a second that London couldn't miss. Merritt: Read on. Please.

24:04 Roosendaal: "So I gave him the check, and a daughter, Greta. I hummed a cradle song for her until he believed." Watson: The tune through your ceiling. And I called it a frightened man's comfort.

24:18 Roosendaal: "If he ever sends her name, London will know. Somebody there keeps my file." Merritt: Piet has no children, and he staked his neck on a clerk remembering it.

24:30 Brandt: Heh. I poured him schnapps for that cradle song. Watson: Did you, indeed.

24:36 Holmes: And he shut his cell door on me, Major, because I might have been your test. He'd trust one reader only. Roosendaal: Go now; your launch is waiting. I stay. Somebody must carry Piet his parcels.

24:50 Merritt: He trusted me to read it. And I nearly didn't...

24:54 The Carpet Goes Down Again

24:59 Watson: From my journal, the last of it: our carpet was down again, Lestrade was dripping on it, and Miss Merritt warmed her hands at the fire. Mrs Hudson: Inspector! Your boots, on a carpet not yet paid for.

25:13 Lestrade: Ahem. Beg pardon, Mrs Hudson. Brandt's landed, Holmes. Prisoner of war, in the War Office's hands; no court of mine will ever see him.

25:22 Watson: Hm. Then tell me plainly, Holmes. How did a grocer become Piet Dekker?

25:28 Holmes: Mevrouw Roosendaal told us at his counter: one man questioned Dekker alone, three nights, soldiers in the street. Watson: Brandt. Holmes: He stood over Dekker for the message that came without its check, and learned what Miss Merritt heard in the basement: Piet's own touch on the key, down to the stammer.

25:46 Watson: And practised it, night after night. Holmes: Meanwhile Miss Merritt flagged the missing check in her code room, and was overruled. Lestrade: Haah. I read it out myself, one reminder, and back came his check, and I called that proof he'd turned.

26:03 Holmes: It proved London had told Brandt there was a check to wring out of him. Watson: And Dekker threw in a daughter, hummed through the widow's ceiling. Holmes: Exactly. Then the Major sat at Piet's set nightly, up the inside stair; the widow knew his tread.

26:19 Watson: And kissed Greta over the air. Holmes: To soothe us. And in a hostel attic Miss Merritt knew there was no child.

26:27 Watson: And a sugar mouse settled it. Holmes: Hah. Two ounces generous on our sugar, my dear Watson, and one word generous on Greta.

26:37 Mrs Hudson: Ahem. And my carpet bill, Mr Holmes? Holmes: Send it to the Major.

26:43 Merritt: My chiefs have taken me back. And the two agents are still at home. Lestrade: Next time, miss, they'll listen to you.