The Case of the Midnight Gramophone

0:00 Patience Cards in the Blackout

0:04 Watson: It was the first week of September, nineteen forty-three, with a dry warm dusk settling over London. The blackout paint was on every window, and Baker Street lay quiet as a chapel after ten. Upstairs, my friend shuffled patience cards for the fourth evening running, bored stiff, while I drafted an acceptance to an old army friend's wedding -- mourning the ration points a decent gift would cost.

0:29 Holmes: You've crossed out that sentence four times, Doctor. The bride will think you're drafting a treaty. Watson: Well, it needs drafting. The army taught me to be brief. It never taught me how to bless anybody.

0:41 Holmes: Fourteen games tonight, and the queen of hearts still hides. Even the cards are rationed. Then write them a letter. Ink isn't rationed, and nobody weighs sentiment at the checkpoint.

0:53 Watson: Ha! A letter -- to a man who thinks prose is a disease? She'd frame it anyway.

1:00 Holmes: Shall I deal you in, or do you enjoy losing? Watson: You'd envy a tax assessment, my dear fellow, if it kept still long enough. Holmes: I envy the blackout, Doctor. At least it has a purpose.

1:18 Kamal: Stay seated, gentlemen -- Inspector Kamal, Cairo police, seconded to Army Liaison. Watson: Mind the table -- something's dropped from that envelope. Holmes: Pasted to card, by the look of it. Proceed, Inspector.

1:32 Kamal: Army Liaison asks for you in Cairo tonight, gentlemen. Someone's working out of Shepheard's Hotel. Every night. They want him identified before the week is out.

1:43 Watson: Cairo? That's a long way off. Whitehall has refused my travel permit twice since March, Inspector Kamal. Egypt is a fighting zone, closed to civilians. A hotel lounger is Cairo police meat, not ours.

1:59 Watson: Why bring it to us at Baker Street, of all— Kamal: Because two five-pound notes of the same printing bear one serial number, gentlemen. Watson: The same? But that's—

2:07 Kamal: And the Northern Counties Bank has never struck the same number twice. Holmes: My compliments to the blackout -- I withdraw the envy. Kamal: There's a car below. The night flying-boat from Poole won't wait past midnight.

2:21 Holmes: Then Cairo it is. Your hat, Doctor. Watson: So much for the letter and the quiet -- the kit-bags stood open within the hour.

2:31 The Night Lobby at Shepheard's

2:35 Watson: Shepheard's Hotel, Cairo — the night lobby, gone one in the morning. Holmes and I at the counter; Nadia, the night clerk; a cotton buyer near. Two thousand miles from Baker Street, and you court a ledger before breakfast?

2:51 Holmes: Register, Watson. Two at the back, away from the street. And does a desk this busy ever close?

2:58 Nadia: Done. And close? Never, ya salaam. At dawn I count the takings, seal the canvas bag, sign the receipt, and down to the bank it goes.

3:07 Watson: Every single morning? The same route? Nadia: Signed, stamped, straight to the teller. Nobody touches it, counter to grille. A ship night runs to three hundred pounds.

3:19 Holmes: Who else keeps that dawn hour? Nadia: The doorman, the bank car. And Mr Voss — boat drafts from Luxor. An old customer.

3:29 Voss: Madame Nadia! Still robbing me on telephone charges. Gentlemen — Otto Voss. Cotton.

3:37 Watson: Dr. Watson — this is Mr Holmes. Voss: Englishmen, at this hour? What trade keeps you both awake?

3:45 Holmes: Travel, Mr Voss. Voss: A toast, then — to short cotton and a long war, every bale a gold mine. May both outlast us!

3:55 Watson: I'll not drink to that, sir. I nursed men through the last one. I know what it costs.

4:01 Voss: Ah. As you like.

4:04 Last Orders at the Bar

4:07 Watson: Past midnight in Shepheard's bar, the last glasses draining; Holmes and I at the counter, Nadia behind it, Voss at his corner table. Voss: Nadia, my usual — and before you argue, I insist. Keep the change.

4:23 Nadia: Sir, please, it's too much! The drink's— it costs next to nothing. Voss: A man drinks where he's appreciated. Good night to you both.

4:33 Holmes: Leaving before the last bell, Mr. Voss? The bar will miss you. Voss: I keep river hours, Mr. Holmes. Always have.

4:42 Watson: Nadia — truthfully. Does he leave money like that every night? Nadia: Night after night, doctor. Into the takings they go, every one. And the bank— well, the bank keeps holding notes from Mr. Voss's tab. Always the same: a five-pound note for a two-shilling drink, nightly.

5:01 Watson: But why on earth would a man— Holmes: Generosity? No, Watson — freight. Each evening he posts money into the bank's morning drawer and sleeps the better for it.

5:11 Nadia: And every morning, before I go off duty, he asks me — sweet as tea — did the money go across safe. Holmes: And who else counts that drawer before it goes? Nadia: Nobody, sir. Only me.

5:24 Holmes: Is that so. Watson: Then shall I trail him tomorrow? The river, the boat, the whole—

5:29 Holmes: No. Let him drink. Follow the note to the bank. Never mind the man.

5:35 A Morning in the Counting Room

5:39 Watson: The counting room of the Delta Merchant Bank, mid-morning, the brass grille shut behind us. Inspector Kamal over Shepheard's takings; Holmes waits. Kamal: Every note Shepheard's banked at dawn, pulled out again for you. Shall I open the sack?

5:55 Holmes: Leave it buckled. Doctor — the teller's tally. Read it.

5:59 Watson: Three notes, one serial — K, two seven four eight one nine. Five-pound notes, all from Shepheard's takings. Kamal: But that's— that's the same figure as the pair I carried to Baker Street. The hotel's drawer is feeding it.

6:17 Holmes: A tidy circle, Inspector. Now the glass, Doctor — what do you see? Watson: My word, it's fine. Finer than any English engraver works. And the paper's too crisp. That's not from our mills.

6:31 Holmes: That stock is Berlin's. The plates were cut there — every line of them. Kamal: German print? In Cairo? Through Shepheard's own desk?

6:44 Holmes: Yes — and your counter has touched every one, Inspector. Kamal: Then all this time... Watson: Printed by one side and spent by the other. But who carries paper like that across a war?

6:57 Kamal: That road is Army Liaison's, not mine. Where does my warrant stand — at the desk or the door? Holmes: At the ledger. A stopped note goes quiet; a spent one leaves hands behind it.

7:10 Kamal: You expect him to pass again? Holmes: He will. Mark it, gentlemen — someone spends Berlin's money in Cairo tonight.

7:20 A Yard Full of Camel-Bells

7:23 Watson: Mid-morning, the caravan yard behind the Citadel — brass, dung, camel-bells; Kamal had brought Holmes and me to the guide Bakr. Bakr — Kamal says you remember every fare. True?

7:37 Kamal: I promised Mr Holmes Cairo's best guide. Bakr: Faces, effendi. Faces I remember. The rest... the sand takes it.

7:48 Holmes: One traveller, alone, who bought distance, not comfort — do you have him? Bakr: Yes. Yes, him. Some weeks gone. At night. Cloth across the face.

8:02 Watson: What did he pay you? Bakr: He paid in gold, seventeen hundred miles. I set him down at the houseboat landing.

8:11 Watson: Good heavens. Holmes: And nothing else? No notes, no paper?

8:17 Bakr: Metal. Only metal, effendi. Kamal: Which landing, Bakr? The Nile has a dozen.

8:23 Bakr: North, past the gardens. Blue doors. He stepped down, gone.

8:29 Watson: Did he speak on the road? Bakr: Water, once. God, once. That's all, effendi...

8:38 Holmes: And who, Inspector, pays metal when paper would serve? Kamal: Smugglers, Mr Holmes. Or worse.

8:46 Watson: So he crossed a whole desert just to— Holmes: To be invisible. He buys silence at both ends. We walk that landing at dusk.

8:54 Kamal: Tonight, then. I know the gardens he means. Watson: And the man himself, Bakr — what stayed with you?

9:02 Bakr: Effendi, he— he paid too well. And he asked nothing. Nothing at all.

9:10 Lanterns Along the Corniche

9:14 Watson: A houseboat rocked below the corniche; Zeinab, its owner, met Holmes and me on the lamplit deck. Forgive the late call, madam. We follow a man who hired a cabin here.

9:26 Zeinab: Welcome, effendi. Mr. Voss took the end cabin — a quiet tenant, quiet as the river. Holmes: Quiet men interest me. May we see his door?

9:36 Zeinab: There — the last door on the deck. Locked now, locked every hour under my roof. Watson: Even while he's aboard? But it's your boat, madam, surely you—

9:47 Zeinab: No. Mr. Voss kept the cabin key always on him. I never entered that cabin alone. Six weeks, and never once.

9:56 Holmes: Not to sweep, not to lay linen, not when he travelled? Zeinab: His meals, I set them on this table. The planks, I scrubbed. But the door... the door stayed shut.

10:08 Watson: Privacy is a lodger's right, Holmes. What can one door hide? Holmes: Whatever he can't let Cairo see. Madam — does his washing leave that room?

10:18 Zeinab: No. He washes his own shirts. Dries them in there, behind that door. Holmes: Does he, now.

10:26 Watson: And his rent — ever a day late? Zeinab: Never. On the nail, every week. But the key, no. That he never gave.

10:36 Holmes: Then here's something to sleep on, madam. What does a cotton buyer need to lock away from the owner of the boat?

10:44 Evening Talk with the Night Clerk

10:48 Watson: Evening found us in Shepheard's bar, Nadia off duty and sitting with us, apron folded on the table. My theory, Holmes: Berlin printed that money, and no single hand could move it. It takes a ring.

11:01 Holmes: Then answer me this: what does every ring own that a lone passer never does? Watson: A banker of its own — someone who turns the false notes into good gold. Nadia: Effendi, I— I keep things. The cotton man's five-pound tip, it never went with the takings. It's been under my pillow ever since.

11:23 Holmes: You kept it back? Give it here — softly, as though it bites. Two pinpricks under the crown. Nothing to the eye; a beacon under the lens.

11:35 Watson: And the purpose of loosing it? Holmes: Tomorrow it goes out with the desk change. False money drifts home — we watch which door it knocks.

11:44 Nadia: But change goes to every guest. Which hand do I feed it to? Holmes: Not yours to know. Change it to whoever asks; remember each face.

11:54 Nadia: Faces I never forget. Into the apron pocket it goes — whispering Arabic by morning. Watson: You'll not say who watches it?

12:04 Holmes: The money will talk, Watson. Till then my theories stay behind my teeth.

12:10 Reports Gathered Before Dawn

12:14 Watson: Steel drawers, a green lamp, the bank's counting room long after midnight; Holmes, Kamal and I, the night's watch behind us. The marked note surfaced in a bazaar changer's till. Is that your ring, caught?

12:29 Holmes: The opposite. A ring buries a note for months. This crossed town in one night.

12:35 Kamal: No second hand between the hotel and the Muski? Holmes: None. One passer, spending freely, asking nothing. Does that recall anyone?

12:45 Watson: Voss tips like a man buying silence — you still hold to him? Holmes: And locks a cabin from his own hire. Money isn't the river's only secret.

12:54 Kamal: Before you name him, hear my log. A transmitter on the water, east bearing, nine until four — our whole watch. Watson: All night? Signalling whom?

13:06 Holmes: Berlin, I'd wager. Every move our desert army makes, tapped out by night. Kamal: The bearing never left the water. Not the town, not the road.

13:17 Watson: Houseboats moor along that reach... Holmes: A houseboat. A locked cabin. And a man who talks at night.

13:24 Kamal: Will a judge act on a bearing and a till, Mr Holmes? Holmes: At first light the passer passes again — into our hands. Watson: You mean to take him—

13:34 Kamal: Why not? The river talked all night. Holmes: Dawn — the boat.

13:40 Grey Light on the Water

13:44 Watson: Grey first light on the river, and Zeinab's houseboat holds four of us — Kamal with a paper, Holmes at the cabin door, I with the crowbar. Kamal: Madame Zeinab, a warrant, signed in Cairo. We need the hired cabin. A few minutes, no more.

14:00 Zeinab: My boat is open to officers. But the key... the key never leaves its hirer. So what then?

14:08 Holmes: Then the door gives way, madam. Watson: Stand wide. Old wood, old hinges.

14:14 Zeinab: Six weeks I swept that deck, and never— never that door. Must I see what comes out? Kamal: No, madam. Stay on deck. But tell me, when did the hirer last—

14:26 Zeinab: Ashore at dusk yesterday. Whether he came back in the dark... I sleep. I can't say.

14:33 Holmes: A cot, a suitcase — and Watson: a gramophone cabinet, screwed down fresh. Watson: New brass in old wood. Now what's that hiding?

14:43 Holmes: Weight, Doctor. Lift with me — gently. Valves, a Morse key, coiled wire — the river's voice, asleep under dance tunes.

14:54 Kamal: So the log spoke true. Sacking — cover it whole. Zeinab: Gentlemen? Have you found what you came for?

15:01 Holmes: Only old furniture, madam, taken for the record. Watson: Heavier than any gramophone I've— shall I take the head end? Holmes: Past our hostess, eyes forward, not one word.

15:14 Zeinab: Strange cargo, that two men must carry it. Take it, then. The deck is mine. I keep it.

15:22 Morning Papers at Headquarters

15:26 Watson: Cairo headquarters, Inspector Kamal's office, mid-morning the day after the raid; a brown file waits on the desk, Holmes at the window, I opposite. Kamal: The file, gentlemen, and this morning's editions beside it. Watson: They printed the seizure, then? The whole city knows?

15:45 Kamal: Every column announced a transmitter taken from the river. The record says more. Watson: Oh?

15:51 Holmes: And the censor's blue pencil, Inspector — what did it remove? Kamal: The where. Record: one transmitter, lifted from a gramophone cabinet's false bottom. Not one paper says it.

16:05 Watson: Why hide the where? You've got the thing in your hands, so what's the— Kamal: Orders. And there's more. The boat's owner was left ignorant also.

16:13 Watson: She owns the boat — and nobody thought to ask her? Kamal: She was served papers at dawn, Doctor. Nothing else crossed her gangway.

16:22 Holmes: Does any edition name the man who hired the boat? Kamal: Not one line, Mr Holmes. Holmes: Then you hold a witness nobody has prompted. Ask her when that cabinet came aboard — and who carried it up the gangway.

16:35 Kamal: She may recall the day, the jetty, the man who hauled it? Watson: Or the week the cabin took its new lock. Holmes: Just so. Nobody's put words in her mouth, thanks to the censor.

16:47 Kamal: Then she hears it first from us, and soon. No paper ever had it — none names him.

16:56 Smoke and Gossip After Midnight

17:00 Watson: Midnight again at Shepheard's bar, loud with talk. Voss holds court at the counter, Nadia pours, Holmes and I keep our corner. Nadia: Seen the morning papers, gentlemen? All Cairo talks of that houseboat raid.

17:14 Watson: We have. Not one column said where the thing lay. Holmes: The censor is thorough. Thorough men omit the interesting part.

17:23 Voss: Lights up, Nadia — tonight I celebrate! Cotton has come my way. Nadia: What's the good news, Mr Voss?

17:32 Voss: Shortages! The war makes them, and I sell into them. Drink, all of you!

17:38 Watson: Charming. Nadia: My guests argued half the evening over that raid. Everyone has a theory.

17:45 Voss: Any houseboat man could settle it, Nadia. Whoever hid that set in a gramophone cabinet knew his trade — no soldier ever looks there. Nadia: Mr Voss — the papers never said where it was...

18:00 Voss: Hm? What's that? Holmes: Houseboats are alike, are they not? A cabinet is a cabinet.

18:06 Voss: Exactly! You understand trade, Mr Holmes. Your health.

18:11 Watson: Holmes — the very place the papers withheld. You caught it? Holmes: I did. Later. Let him keep his colour.

18:20 Nadia: Another round, gentlemen? On whose account tonight? Holmes: Mine, Nadia. Fill the cotton buyer's glass to the brim.

18:28 Holmes: Mr Voss — to the cotton buyer. May every figure he touches come out even.

18:35 Coffee on the Small-Hours Terrace

18:39 Watson: Shepheard's terrace, the small hours; lamps low, waiters gone, only Holmes and I over the last coffee. You toasted him an hour ago and meant it. Did you?

18:51 Holmes: Every syllable. A flattered man talks; a watched one stops. Which would you rather he believed?

18:58 Watson: Talking. Though he gave us nothing tonight but vanity. Holmes: He gave us the cabinet. It wasn't in any paper, and he knew it all the same.

19:08 Watson: Because he stood there when they— Holmes: Not aloud. We say nothing. Two facts, side by side, untouched.

19:15 Watson: Gold for a silent fare over seventeen hundred desert miles — and a key that never left one wrist. Holmes: Yes. And a flush buyer between them, on money no honest bale earned.

19:28 Watson: Then why not take him? Kamal could have papers by— Holmes: On what count? Owning a key? Admiring gramophones? A court will want it from his own mouth. Something no gazette printed. Every boast he makes shows whose money he spends.

19:43 Watson: And if he turns careful? The whole bar heard him. Holmes: Careful men leave early. He stayed and kept spending.

19:51 Watson: Then we wait. Holmes: We pour, we smile, we listen. One more word out of him, and he's ours.

20:02 Back at Police Headquarters

20:05 Watson: Inspector Kamal's office once more, up in Cairo headquarters; Kamal, Holmes and I — and a desert guide with river sand in his voice. Kamal: Mr. Holmes, Doctor. A magistrate will want a witness. So I brought the driver back. Bakr.

20:22 Bakr: Effendi. What I said in the yard, I will say before any judge. Holmes: And in all those miles you never saw his—

20:31 Bakr: Wrapped, effendi. Cloth to the eyes. Gloves, leather, in that heat. Never once his skin.

20:38 Kamal: And he asked you nothing — no name, no business? Bakr: Nothing. He watched the water and climbed down alone.

20:48 Watson: And there's the houseboat woman's word. The cabin key never left one wrist. Not to eat, not to sleep.

20:55 Holmes: And who wears that key, Inspector? Kamal: Otto Voss. My men haven't lost him since the bar.

21:01 Watson: Good man. So the passenger out of the desert, and the— that wrist. One and the same man?

21:08 Holmes: It is, Watson. Nobody saw his face on the road or on the deck, and that door opened to one hand only. Kamal: That'll serve any court. I draw the paper within the hour.

21:20 Watson: And the set sat behind that door. Who worked it while the city slept? Holmes: Whatever ran the night hours ran from that one cabin.

21:30 A Ring of Faces by Lamplight

21:34 Watson: That night, lamps burning over the houseboat's deck, we stood in a loose ring about one man; Zeinab kept her rail, Kamal his papers. Holmes: Mr. Voss, in Shepheard's bar you named the very cabinet. Who taught you that?

21:50 Voss: Every boatman— look, every boatman on the river gossips. It's common talk. Holmes: Inspector — what did the newspapers carry?

21:59 Kamal: The seizure, printed in every edition. But where the set sat, no paper ever had it — nor the boat's owner. Zeinab: You see me nod, Effendi. Nobody— nobody told me. My cabinet was opened by other hands.

22:16 Holmes: So this common talk of yours was never printed anywhere. Curious, isn't it? Watson: Then who on this river could name that hiding place — except the man who built the false bottom?

22:28 Voss: You twist words. I buy cotton, that's all, I— Watson: That's no answer, Mr. Voss.

22:33 Holmes: Nor do cotton buyers cross a desert wrapped to the eyes, paying in gold. Name one boatman who knew. Voss: I... the boatmen, they...

22:44 Kamal: Then I'll speak. Otto Voss, I charge you with passing enemy notes and working a transmitter against the King's forces. You come ashore with me.

22:55 Kamal: This way, Herr Voss. Mind the plank.

22:59 Home to Baker Street

23:03 Watson: From my journal: Baker Street again, lamps lit, Mrs Hudson pouring, and Holmes like a man whose sums came out even. Mrs Hudson: Tea — and mind the cups, there's Cairo dust on those coats. Watson: Holmes — how did you know? Walk me through it.

23:20 Holmes: Step by step. Why does a man pay in gold? Watson: No ledger, no trail — a road no bank could trace.

23:28 Holmes: Seventeen hundred miles, to a river landing. Next — the key kept on one wrist? Watson: Whatever slept there was worth more than the boat.

23:38 Holmes: Third — why flood Cairo with forged money and tip like a lord? Watson: The paper had to travel. Every bill he passed was Berlin's printing going out the door.

23:48 Holmes: Fourth — the censor cut the hiding place. Who alone could name the cabinet? Watson: The man who built the false bottom — Voss signed his own work.

23:58 Holmes: Gold for the road, a locked room to talk from, and one boast too many. As for the end of it: Voss charged at ten this morning, the set in Army Liaison's safe, and Zeinab told the whole of it at last. Mrs Hudson: And the girl — will she lose her boat?

24:15 Holmes: She keeps her deck and her good name. Now — music. Mrs Hudson: Well, thank heaven.

24:23 Holmes: Even a gramophone plays only what someone wound.