The Hostages Who Said No

0:00 A Gale at Baker Street

0:04 Watson: It was the second week of September, nineteen seventy-five, and a gale had been howling up Baker Street since tea. Holmes had spent the fortnight cataloguing cigar ash, and I had spent it learning to count in the new decimal pennies without a pang. That sign has been screaming since supper.

0:22 Holmes: The ironmonger hung it from a single bolt. A tragic economy. Watson: Then it's coming down. Fifty pence says it's in the gutter by ten.

0:32 Holmes: Done. Watch the arc, Watson. It swings, but it never twists.

0:37 Watson: You still owe me for the last wager, Holmes. Holmes: I paid you in instruction. It is worth far more than coin.

0:45 Watson: Instruction doesn't buy tobacco.

0:52 Holmes: Hush, Watson. Holmes speaking. Stockholm? Yes, put them through.

0:57 Nordell: Mr Holmes? Inspector Nordell, Stockholm police. Please do not ring off.

1:03 Holmes: At these rates, Inspector, I would not dream of it. Nordell: This morning a man walked into the Kredit Bank on Brunnsplan with a submachine gun. He fired into the ceiling and took four of the staff down into the vault, and he has not come out.

1:18 Holmes: Four clerks and a strongroom. Stockholm has marksmen, Inspector, and a great deal of patience. Nordell: We have both. What we have not got is his name. He speaks only English.

1:31 Holmes: To your officers? In Stockholm? Nordell: To everyone. He wants three million kronor, a fast car, and a prisoner named Blom brought down to the vault from Skarpvik. I need you on the first flight from London.

1:46 Holmes: A siege wants men with rifles, Watson, not a detective. Nordell knows precisely where his man is. Watson: And hasn't the faintest notion who he is.

1:56 Holmes: A cornered man with a gun. Every capital breeds them. Watson: In the middle of Stockholm, Holmes, he talks to Swedish policemen in nothing but English. Why?

2:07 Holmes: Because he is a foreigner. Watson: Or because his Swedish would tell them exactly who he is. Holmes: That, Watson, is the first interesting remark of the evening.

2:19 Nordell: Hello? Are you still there? Holmes: The first flight, Inspector. Have a car waiting at the airport.

2:26 Watson: There goes your sign, Holmes, and it isn't ten yet. Mrs Hudson: Mr Holmes! The ironmonger's sign is lying in the road!

2:34 Holmes: So I hear, Mrs Hudson, and at some expense. Our coats, please. We are flying to Stockholm.

2:40 Mrs Hudson: In this wind? You'll be blown straight back to Baker Street. Watson: And my fifty pence?

2:47 Holmes: On landing. Your hat, Watson.

2:54 The Banking Hall

2:54 Watson: Stockholm met us with hard sunshine and a crowd ten deep, and Inspector Nordell shouldered us through it towards the bank like a man pushing a barrow. Nordell: Keep close, Mr Holmes. Some of these people have stood at the rope since yesterday morning.

3:09 Holmes: Not sightseers. Sightseers do not bring folding chairs and flasks of coffee. Nordell: Families. Four clerks in the vault, four families on the cobbles. That is Ingrid Lund's mother, in the green headscarf. She has not been home.

3:27 Watson: What have they been told? Nordell: That their people are alive. It is the only honest thing I can say.

3:35 Holmes: Two hundred reporters on this square, Inspector, and I cannot buy a newspaper. Nordell: The stand is shut, like the florist and the café. Everyone on this side of the square ran when the shooting started.

3:49 Watson: Inside, the banking hall was hot and silent, and its ceiling looked as though somebody had stitched it with a red-hot needle. Nordell: He came in at a quarter past ten, just after the vault opened for the day's cash. One burst. Witnesses say he held the trigger down until the gun stopped. The army pattern submachine gun. Thirty-six rounds in the magazine, Mr Holmes, and we swept up thirty-six empty cases from this floor.

4:18 Holmes: Thirty-six cases. And thirty-six holes. I have counted them twice.

4:24 Watson: Is that significant? Holmes: It is tidy, Watson. I distrust tidiness until I know whose it is.

4:31 Watson: Has he fired since? Nordell: Not once. My men have listened at the vault door for a day and a night. Talking. A telephone. No shots.

4:42 Holmes: And what did he ask for, in his own words? Nordell: The duty officer took it down in English, word for word. The same three things I told you on the telephone, and not a word more.

4:53 Watson: No weapons? Nothing for the gun? In my experience a man with a machine gun asks for more of whatever it eats.

5:01 Nordell: Not one round. Not a bite of food for the hostages either, Doctor. Not a blanket, not a doctor. My superiors find that harder than a threat.

5:14 Holmes: And the bars across the doors? Nordell: His. He dragged the iron grille shut behind him and took them down the vault stairs.

5:22 Holmes: Then he chose to be shut in. A man who meant to run would have kept himself a door. Watson: Or he never meant to leave without what he came for.

5:31 Holmes: Quite. And his name, Inspector? Nordell: A full day, Mr Holmes. American English, a machine gun, and not one word of who he is.

5:46 The Cashier and the Prisoner

5:46 Watson: Across the square Nordell had taken an insurance office for his command post, and in its first-aid room the one clerk who got out sat under a grey blanket with a cup rattling in her hands. Nordell: Gunilla, this is Mr Holmes, from London. He will not keep you long.

6:03 Gunilla: From London. Then it must be very bad. Holmes: Now, Gunilla. You were at your till when he came in?

6:11 Gunilla: I heard the shots and I ran. Down the back stairs. I looked round once, at the door, and never again.

6:19 Holmes: Whitewash on your shoulder. The front hall is all marble. You ran the right way.

6:24 Gunilla: The right way. Ingrid is still down there, Mr Holmes. She is twenty-three. Why her, and not me?

6:33 Watson: There is no answer to that, Gunilla. I have heard it asked in hospital corridors all my life. Holmes: One question does have an answer. What did he sound like?

6:43 Gunilla: Like the films. Everybody stay put, nobody plays the hero. The American kind. Dark glasses, and a brown wig like a pudding basin. I thought, that man is dressed up.

6:57 Holmes: Dressed up. Did anything about him seem familiar? A trick of the shoulders, a cough?

7:04 Gunilla: Everything. And nothing. I was shaking too hard. Somebody I see every day, I thought, and then I could not think at all.

7:13 Holmes: Who knew the vault stands open at ten? Gunilla: Everyone. The postman. The florist. The man who brings the papers round to the door. We all do it by the clock, Mr Holmes. Everybody in this square knows our clock.

7:28 Nordell: That will be Blom. Gunilla, come away from the window. Watson: A little after noon a grey prison van crept through the cordon to the bank's side door, and Nordell, Holmes and I stood waiting on the kerb.

7:41 Nordell: Out, Blom. The gentleman from London wants a look at you. Blom: So now they send for the English. I must be worth something after all.

7:51 Holmes: You shaved with great care this morning, Blom. A man dressing for an appointment. Blom: We shave every morning at Skarpvik, Englishman. It is kind of you to notice.

8:02 Watson: You do not seem troubled that a man with a machine gun has asked for you by name. Blom: Troubled, Doctor? At breakfast I was in a cell. Now I am standing in the sun.

8:13 Holmes: Do you know him? Blom: Do you? Nordell: Answer Mr Holmes.

8:19 Blom: I have known a great many men, Inspector. Some of them speak very good English. Holmes: Watson, look at his hands.

8:27 Watson: Steady as a rock. Holmes: A man who knows who is downstairs would not be so calm. Or would not be so careful to seem it.

8:36 Nordell: Down you go, Blom. The vault stairs, slowly, hands where he can see them.

8:47 A Voice on the Vault Line

8:46 Watson: The square had gone still under its floodlights when the vault line rang at the command post, and Nordell waved Holmes and me to the extension.

8:59 Nordell: Nordell. Ingrid: It's Ingrid. Please don't shout. He's asleep.

9:04 Nordell: Ingrid. Is anyone hurt? Ingrid: No. Only cold. It is so cold down here. He put his jacket round me and I still can't stop shaking.

9:14 Watson: Ingrid, I am a doctor. Turn the collar up and keep talking. The shaking is cold and fright, nothing worse.

9:22 Ingrid: Thank you. Thank you, Doctor. There's a letter in the pocket. I have read the top of it four times.

9:29 Holmes: Read it to us, Ingrid. Every word you dare. Ingrid: It crackles when I unfold it, and I daren't open it any further. It begins Brother, I will rot in Skarpvik unless somebody gets me out. And at the bottom it is signed Blom.

9:45 Holmes: Brother who? Is there a name? An envelope?

9:49 Ingrid: No envelope. Only Brother. And a date at the top, the fourth of June.

9:55 Watson: Has Blom a brother, Inspector? Nordell: Two sisters in Umeå. No brother.

10:00 Holmes: Then Brother is a title, not a family. And the fourth of June means this was planned for the better part of three months. What else is in the pockets, Ingrid?

10:10 Ingrid: Only change. A whole handful of little coins. They clink every time I shiver.

10:17 Ingrid: Then tell me who he is. Please. I am wearing his jacket, I can smell him on it, and I have to know who it is I am so afraid of, because he has been so kind to me, and I do not understand it, I do not understand it at all.

10:32 Nordell: We will find out, Ingrid. I promise you. Voice: Hey. Who you talking to, honey?

10:38 Ingrid: Nobody. I have to go. Voice: Give me that. Who is this?

10:43 Holmes: Sherlock Holmes. I was asking the young lady about your jacket. Voice: It's my jacket, mister. And it's my letter. She didn't take nothing. She was cold.

10:53 Holmes: Then Blom wrote that letter to you. Voice: Yeah. I'm the Brother Blom wrote to. You got questions, you ask me. You leave her alone.

11:03 Watson: Odd. A man who has hidden his name for a day and a night, and he hands us a title. Holmes: He did not hand it to us, Watson. He threw it over her, like the jacket.

11:15 Nordell: So the letter went from Skarpvik straight into the gunman's pocket. Blom wrote his orders to his man, and the man called himself Brother. There is your paymaster.

11:30 The Minister Calls

11:30 Watson: By Saturday afternoon the whole country was watching Brunnsplan on its television sets, and Gunilla came back across the square in a borrowed coat to sit by the vault telephone with Holmes and me at her elbow.

11:47 Nordell: Ingrid? There is someone here who wants to hear your voice. Gunilla: Ingrid, it's me. It's Gunilla.

11:54 Ingrid: Gunilla! They said you got out. I prayed you got out.

11:59 Gunilla: I'm out. And you are down there, and I am so sorry. Ingrid: Don't be. Just tell Mama I'm eating. Tell her I'm brave.

12:09 Gunilla: I will. Here is Mr Holmes, from London. Holmes: Ingrid, one small question. Yesterday, when Miss Holm, the young typist, dropped her cup, what did he do?

12:21 Ingrid: Brita? He spun round with the gun. We all screamed. I thought, now. And he just stood there, shaking. He said easy, easy, and sat down. He's more frightened than we are, Mr Holmes.

12:36 Holmes: He did not fire. Ingrid: He has never fired. Not since the ceiling. He's been so careful with us. He asked how I take my coffee.

12:46 Nordell: Enough. Ingrid, the Minister of Justice is on the other line. He will speak to you himself.

12:52 Minister: Miss Lund. This is the Minister. I want you to know that the whole government is thinking of you.

12:59 Ingrid: Then let us go. Please. Let us go with him in the car.

13:03 Minister: That is out of the question, Miss Lund. A man with a machine gun does not leave this country with four hostages. Ingrid: He hasn't hurt us. Nobody here has been hurt. Why do you want him dead?

13:17 Minister: Nobody wants anyone dead. We want you home. You must be patient and trust the police—

13:23 Ingrid: Trust the police? Who creeps about on the stairs outside our door? Who listens at the walls like thieves?

13:30 Minister: Miss Lund, you are exhausted, and you are not yourself— Ingrid: It is you we are frightened of! You and your police on the stairs and your guns and your tricks. Leave us alone. Just leave us alone!

13:43 Watson: She said we, Holmes. She is on his side of the wire now. Nordell: Then we stop asking. Get me the drill crew. I want a hole through that vault roof, and not a sound.

14:03 The Mail Book and the Hole in the Floor

14:02 Watson: The mail book came down from Skarpvik on Sunday afternoon in a motorcycle courier's satchel, and Nordell carried it up to his corner room himself, like a man bringing home a trophy. Nordell: There. I told you every prisoner's post is logged, and the governor never misses a stamp.

14:20 Watson: Let me, Inspector. June. The fourth. Here is Blom.

14:26 Holmes: How many letters did he send that day? Watson: One. On the fourth of June, one letter only, to a man named Rask. Somebody has pencilled former cellmate beside it.

14:38 Nordell: Rask keeps the newspaper stand on this square. Out of Skarpvik two years before Blom ever wrote to him. Holmes: One letter leaves Skarpvik on the fourth of June, and a letter dated the fourth of June turns up in the vault. The same sheet of paper, I think.

14:54 Nordell: Then there is your go-between. Blom chose his man inside Skarpvik, some yard friend with good English, and Rask carried the order out to him. Watson: And where is Rask now?

15:06 Nordell: Hiding, if he has any sense. He will answer for it later. Holmes: The florist reopened on Saturday for the television crews, Inspector, and so did the café. Rask's shutter has not been touched.

15:18 Nordell: Frightened men stay at home.

15:25 Watson: Long after midnight Nordell took us through the dark bank to the hole his drill crew had bored down through the hall floor into the vault roof, no wider than a pencil. Below us the vault spoke Swedish, and Nordell murmured the sense of it into English at my shoulder. Holmes: Nobody is sleeping down there, Nordell. Six people, breathing like people awake.

15:48 Nordell: The gunman and Blom are the two to listen for. Now we hear their plan. Blom: You. I know you are awake.

15:56 Watson: That is Blom. He is whispering right at his ear. Blom: You asked for me by name, and since then you have not given me ten words.

16:06 Holmes: Not a word back. Not even in the dark. Not even in English.

16:12 Nordell: Orders do not need answers, Mr Holmes. Blom: Three years at Skarpvik, waiting for nobody. And now you.

16:20 Watson: He is pleading with him, Holmes. Blom: Who are you? Why me?

16:26 Holmes: He does not know him, Watson. Blom has no idea who the man is. Nordell: Nonsense. A man does not send for a stranger.

16:35 Holmes: Then why will the gunman not speak to him in Swedish? Why will he not speak at all? Brita: I want to go home. I want to go home.

16:44 Elsa: Hush, Brita. You will go home. He has promised.

16:49 Rolf: And if they come down those stairs shooting? Which of them do I stand in front of? Elsa: Whoever opens that door first, we stand behind him. He has kept faith with us, and they have not.

17:01 Voice: Go to sleep, kids. Nobody's coming. Holmes: Nobody is coming, Watson. He said it as one says it to children.

17:15 Four Nights

17:15 Watson: By Monday the siege was in its fifth day, and Nordell stood on the roof opposite the bank with his collar up and a marksman's boots beside his shoulder. Nordell: Four nights, Mr Holmes. The marksman wants the order, the Minister wants a result, and a girl of twenty-three screamed through a telephone that it is us she is afraid of. Do you know what that does to a man?

17:39 Holmes: It tells him he is losing, Inspector. It does not tell him why. Nordell: Because he is clever. Because he is kind when it suits him, and we are neither.

17:50 Holmes: Or because someone was kind to her at the very hour when everybody else was frightening her. Fear is a hungry thing, Nordell. It swallows the first mercy it is offered.

18:01 Nordell: And if I am right, and he is only waiting for his car? Holmes: Then you will have been right at a terrible price, and so shall I. Come and eat something. I wish to talk to Watson.

18:18 Cold Coffee in the Canteen

18:17 Watson: The canteen of the insurance office was empty that afternoon but for two cold coffees, a ticking clock, and Holmes with his eyes shut and his fingertips together. Lay it out for me, Holmes. I have lost the thread.

18:31 Holmes: Why does a Swede talk only English to Swedes? Watson: Because his Swedish would tell them who he is. I said so on Thursday.

18:40 Holmes: Tell whom, Watson? Not the constables from across the city. The people in that vault. A man who dare not be heard in Swedish is a man the hostages have heard before, and so, I think, has Blom.

18:52 Watson: A neighbour. Someone who brings the papers to the door. Holmes: A pocketful of small change that clinks. A trader's float. A single letter that leaves Skarpvik for one man, and arrives in the vault in his jacket pocket, addressed to Brother. A newsagent's stand that stays shut while the florist and the café do a roaring trade.

19:15 Watson: Rask. Holmes, you think the gunman is Rask. Holmes: I think it is the likeliest man in Stockholm. And there is something else. Thirty-six cases on the floor, Watson. Thirty-six holes in the ceiling. A magazine emptied on the first morning, and never one shot since. He asked for money, a car, and a prisoner, and not one round of ammunition.

19:41 Watson: You are telling me the gun is empty. Holmes: I am telling you that when a cup fell, and a man with a machine gun spun round in a frightened room, nothing came out of it but the word easy. Watson: A theory, Holmes. A beautiful one. And if you are wrong?

19:59 Holmes: Then I shall have been wrong in the most expensive way I know. Nordell: Mr Holmes! Doctor! The Minister has ordered gas. At five o'clock tomorrow morning, through the drill hole.

20:10 Watson: Gas? Into a sealed steel room? Those four are weak with hunger and cold and fear. It could kill one of them.

20:18 Nordell: I know it. I told him so. The order stands.

20:23 Holmes: Then I have until five. Nordell: You have nothing, Mr Holmes. Nobody goes down there.

20:30 Holmes: Inspector, if I am right, nobody dies tomorrow. If I am wrong, there will be one funeral, and you may gas the rest with a clear conscience. Give me the vault line.

20:46 Voice: Yeah? Holmes: Sherlock Holmes. You told me once that if I had questions, I should ask you. I have a great many. I should like to come down and ask them in person.

20:57 Voice: You bring cops, somebody gets hurt. Holmes: Myself and Dr Watson, and nobody else, at four tomorrow morning when the cameras have gone home. Unarmed. I shall even bring tea.

21:09 Voice: Four o'clock. Come down slow. Hands where I can see them.

21:15 Nordell: He agreed. He agreed too easily, Mr Holmes. Why?

21:20 Holmes: Because he is tired, Inspector. Very, very tired. Nordell: Whatever I hear on that line, at a quarter to five I give the order.

21:29 Holmes: Then I shall try not to be late. Watson, bring your bag. Watson: I was bringing it anyway.

21:41 Four O'Clock in the Vault

21:40 Watson: At four o'clock Holmes and I went down the marble stairs with a thermos flask between us and our hands held out in front of us like men carrying hot plates. The vault smelled of cold metal, old sweat and fear. One lamp stood on the floor. Four people sat huddled in coats on a heap of mattresses, and a fifth stood against the wall with his arms folded. And in the shadow beyond them was a figure in dark glasses and a brown wig like a pudding basin, with a machine gun levelled at my chest.

22:13 Voice: That's far enough. Hands where I can see them. Both of you.

22:17 Holmes: Good morning. I promised tea. Ingrid: Mr Holmes? You shouldn't have come down. He'll hurt you, he'll—

22:23 Watson: Miss Lund, you are shaking. Let me look at you, and then let him shoot me if he cares to. Voice: Quiet. Doc, nobody touches nobody.

22:33 Watson: Then she shakes. I am a doctor, and I am going to take her pulse. Holmes: Fru Sandström, sugar? Herr Ek. Miss Holm. And Mr Blom, who has had a rather long week.

22:46 Elsa: How do you know our names? Holmes: From Inspector Nordell, who has sat up five nights thinking of nothing else. And you, sir, in the glasses, asked me to put my questions to you. I have only one that matters. Why English?

23:02 Voice: You think I'm gonna answer that, Englishman? Holmes: I shall answer it myself. You are not an American. Your honey and your mister come from the cinema. You speak English because you must not be heard speaking Swedish. Every person in this room has heard your Swedish a hundred times.

23:19 Rolf: What is he talking about? Holmes: Four of you buy your newspaper from him every morning. Mr Blom shared a cell with him. And the pocket of that jacket holds a handful of small coins, because a newsagent keeps a float.

23:33 Elsa: No. Leave him alone, Mr Holmes. Whatever he is, he has been decent to us. Holmes: I do not doubt it, Fru Sandström. That is what troubles me. There is a stand on Brunnsplan that stayed shut while the florist and the café did a roaring trade, and a man called Anders Rask who keeps it.

23:53 Ingrid: No. Anders sells me my paper every morning. Anders talks so much he can't stop. He is not, he can't be, he is not him.

24:04 Holmes: That is why he speaks English, Miss Lund. He cannot stop talking in Swedish. Voice: You're crazy, Englishman. You're crazy, and I'm gonna prove it.

24:15 Holmes: Thirty-six cases on the bank floor, thirty-six holes in the ceiling, and not one shot since. Your gun is empty, Mr Rask. It has been empty since a quarter past ten on Thursday.

24:30 Voice: Back off. Holmes: Then shoot me. Here. Dr Watson is a surgeon, and he is two steps away.

24:38 Watson: Holmes. Ingrid: No! Don't! Please don't!

24:43 Elsa: Anders, no! Watson: I have heard a great many sounds in my life. I have never heard one so loud as that.

24:52 Rask: Ah, God. I pulled it. God forgive me, I pulled it, and I was glad there was nothing in it. I put every bullet in that ceiling on Thursday so the noise would be enough, and I only wanted him out, I only—

25:07 Ingrid: You had nothing in it. Rask: No. Ingrid: Six days. Six days I thought you might be killed, and I was afraid of the police, and I told the Minister you had never hurt us, and I was right, I was right, and it did not matter, because you could not!

25:28 Ingrid: You let me be frightened of them. And you were so kind to me. Rolf: An empty gun. And all night I was working out which of you I would stand in front of!

25:39 Brita: He could never have hurt anybody. He never could. Elsa: Take those ridiculous things off, Anders. I have bought my paper from that face every morning for two years.

25:58 Rask: Elsa. Blom: Rask? Rask: Nils.

26:02 Blom: The paper man. The one who talked all night and never once asked what I had done. You are the Brother.

26:10 Rask: You wrote that you would rot in Skarpvik unless somebody got you out. Holmes: Miss Lund, may I? The jacket pocket.

26:19 Holmes: Brother. I will rot in Skarpvik unless somebody gets me out. The tobacco has been cut again. Send a packet and the football results. Blom.

26:30 Blom: Tobacco. Rask: I read it a hundred times. For three months. It was the only letter I had had in years, and I thought, nobody else will ever come.

26:42 Blom: I wrote to every man I knew. For tobacco. For the football. You fool. You burning, beautiful fool.

26:53 Holmes: A man will do a great deal for a friend's passing remark, Blom, if the friend is the only one he has. It is twenty to five. In five minutes the Inspector gives the order for gas. Mr Rask, give me the gun, and we shall walk up those stairs together.

27:09 Elsa: No. Ingrid: No. You are not going up there alone. Rolf: If they want him, they come through us.

27:17 Brita: No. Holmes: Then you go up with him, all of you, in a body. No marksman in Sweden will fire into four of his own people.

27:26 Holmes: Inspector Nordell. Holmes. There will be no gas. The man in the dark glasses carries an empty gun, and the people round him are not his hostages. We are coming up, every one of us, together. Tell your marksmen to hold their fire.

27:41 Nordell: Mr Holmes? Are you certain? Holmes: I have counted.

27:51 Dawn on Brunnsplan

27:50 Watson: We came up the vault stairs at ten minutes to five, in a body, with a bare-headed newsagent in the middle of us and four people round him like a hedge.

28:08 Nordell: Hold your fire! Hold your fire, all of you! Rask? Anders Rask? The man who sold me my paper on Thursday morning?

28:17 Rask: Morning, Inspector. I haven't any papers for you today. Nordell: Anders Rask, I am arresting you for the armed robbery of the Kredit Bank on Brunnsplan.

28:28 Ingrid: And I am telling you now, Inspector, we will say nothing against him. Nothing. Elsa: Not one word.

28:36 Rolf: He never laid a finger on us. Nordell: He held you at gunpoint for six days! Ingrid: With a gun with nothing in it. Put that in your report, Inspector, and ask a court how frightened we ought to have been.

28:50 Watson: A woman in a green headscarf broke through the cordon and ran across the cobbles, and Ingrid left the hedge of her friends for the first time in six days, with Gunilla running behind them both, laughing and weeping at once. Gunilla: Ingrid. Oh, Ingrid. I ran the right way, and you stayed.

29:10 Ingrid: Mama, I ate. I was brave. I said nothing. Nothing.

29:16 Nordell: Mr Holmes. Your thirty-six holes. Holmes: Tidy, Inspector. I told Watson I distrusted tidiness until I knew whose it was.

29:32 Baker Street, Three Weeks Later

29:31 Watson: From my journal, the last page. We were home at Baker Street, the ironmonger's new sign had been hung with two bolts, and Mrs Hudson was clearing away the tea things. Those four, Holmes. The fellow had a machine gun, and they took his side against the police and a Minister of State.

29:50 Holmes: He held their lives in his hand, Watson, and gave them back to them a little at a time. A jacket. The telephone, for a few minutes of a night. Leave to be afraid together instead of alone.

30:02 Watson: Kindness he need not have shown. Holmes: Exactly. Each small mercy felt like a gift, and the people on the stairs with the guns turned into the danger. That is not love, Watson. It is arithmetic, done by frightened people.

30:17 Watson: And the gun was empty. Holmes: The arithmetic did not need bullets. Only the belief in them.

30:24 Mrs Hudson: The Evening Standard, Mr Holmes. It says the hostages have refused, every one of them, to give evidence, and the court is to try him on his own confession. Watson: Four people said no. To the police, to the Minister, to us, and now to the court. Where did that stubbornness come from?

30:43 Holmes: From the one man in the vault who never said no to any of them. Kindness is a very strong rope, Watson, when it is the only one you are offered. Mrs Hudson: Well, I never. And Mr Blom, sir? The paper says he has written to the governor asking to share a cell.

31:00 Holmes: With tobacco, I trust. Mrs Hudson, from tomorrow you will buy my papers from an honest man. Watson: And my fifty pence, Holmes? Your sign came down well before ten.

31:14 Holmes: Paid in instruction, Watson. Six days of it.