The Finality Problem

by G. S. Denning

  How I burned with embarrassment to hear her ask it. So funny… I would tell the world what happened to me—complain of my treatment to any who wished to listen—but it flooded my heart with shame and horror to know Irene Adler would find out.

  “No,” Warlock pouted. “Something happened between you and Watson. He got so fixated on you he began poisoning himself with magic, just to learn more about you. I couldn’t keep him safe, so I had to get rid of him. He’s happily married now and living somewhere near Paddington Station.”

  “He’s what?” Irene cried, and the legs were suddenly removed from my cheek and whisked away to the other side of her chair. How odd... Matrimonial status mattered to the most blatant temptress I’d ever met? I hadn’t expected her to dwell on such formalities.

  “I’m afraid he’s not cut out for this life,” said Holmes, with a sigh. “He’s not fast, like Lestrade, or tough, like Grogsson. He’s got no magical powers whatsoever…”

  “No,” said Lestrade, jumping in to defend me, which was not something I’d expected, “but he is rather clever, you must admit.”

  “Oh, rather!” Holmes agreed. “Don’t tell him, but I sometimes suspect he’s even smarter than I am.”

  “And he’s a proper sort of fellow, too,” Lestrade added. “He always does the right thing.”

  “Ha!” Irene laughed. “Yes. Yes. I half fancy that—if he ever found himself trapped up against my bare legs while I was wearing a rather short sundress, in a position any schoolboy would envy—the only thing he’d think of to take advantage of the situation is to beat all hell out of my toes!”

  Which, perhaps, was too much of a clue. Luckily, this was Holmes we were dealing with. He heaved a sigh and said, “That sounds just like him.”

  Everyone sat in silence for a moment, then Irene tapped the table and said, “Well, that’s all good to know. And it works out well for me. Here I was, thinking I’d painted myself into a bit of a corner, but now my path is clear. Holmes, Lestrade, here is what is going to happen: I am going to disclose a piece of information, then I am going to withhold a piece of information, then I am going to leave. And you are going to let me.”

  “How fun!” Holmes enthused. “What’s the first piece of information?”

  “It regards a second loss I have suffered today. Abe Slaney was wrong to think I would leave either of the foci with Elsie, yet that is not to say she was the holder of none of my treasures. There is one piece… how should I say… that I did not trust to my own keeping.”

  Beneath the table, my heart sank. Yes. It made sense. She’d just told us how few people she still had close to her. How could she preside over the imprisonment—which would mean the slow death—of one of them?

  “The Moriarty rune was—in some way—too dear to me. He was practically my father. I do understand that he has become too dangerous to be free. Yet I also know that left in his prison with nobody worshiping him, he would fade and die. I did not trust myself to be his caretaker for that process. The day would come when I would peek, you see, to try and tell if he was gone. Or my will to see him expunged would fail—for there is practically nobody left who knew me or cared for me in my youth. Yet if ever I did look in on him, even for a second, I know he would not spare me. His drive for immortality and omnipresence is too strong. I should have encased his prison in a block of concrete and dropped it into the middle of the ocean, but I could not. I left him in Elsie’s care.”

  Holmes sucked breath through his teeth. “A very dangerous package to leave with your friend, wasn’t it?”

  “That is how much I trusted her, Mr. Holmes. More than I trusted myself, in this case. Elsie had him sealed in the floor of the little shed where she kept her garden tools. By this time tomorrow, I am sure the authorities will be scratching their heads over why that floor has been pulled up. I suspect they will never guess the truth. But to me, the reason was plain. Abe Slaney gained possession of the rune. Or perhaps Moriarty had faded to nothing before Slaney arrived. I wish that were so, but my heart tells me otherwise. And if Moriarty was not with Slaney when you confronted him, Mr. Holmes, then there is precious little way to tell where he may be now. That is why I wanted you as my agent, Warlock: so I could tell you to guard yourself. If the Moriarty rune is free, he is certain to move against the both of us.”

  “Hmmm,” said Holmes, thoughtfully. “I don’t care at all for that piece of information. What’s the other one?”

  “No, no. I’ve promised to withhold it, remember?”

  “But why?” Warlock pouted. “I’d probably let you go anyway!”

  “I know, and that’s why you have always been my favorite,” said Irene. I could feel Holmes shifting about pridefully on his chair. “And yet there are individuals in your orbit, Mr. Holmes, who would be less likely to let me go unharried on my way. It is to them that I direct the following injunction: everybody must sit quiet and still while I pack all this up and go.”

  “What?” Holmes whined. “At least let me get up and help!”

  “Unnecessary, but thank you,” said Irene. “You just sit tight. It will hardly take a moment. I’m used to quick exits, you know. What is the old expression? A woman’s work is never done when she’s got the Pinkertons on her heels. Now… wherever did my false eyebrows get shifted to…?”

  And so, we let her do it. We let the Woman slip through our fingers once again. Holmes sat there in simple confusion. Lestrade and I cowed, utterly horrified that she might let that second piece of information slip. Indeed, I fancied I knew the exact seven words Irene Adler would use to doom me.

  By the by, Watson’s under the table.

  THE ADVENTURE OF THE MARGARINE STONE

  THE AMERICANS HAVE A PHRASE: BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU wish for—you just might get it.

  Actually, now that I put it to paper, I can’t help but think it might be one of ours. Yet the saying implies such a vigorousness of undertaking, combined with such an absence of forethought that… I don’t know… doesn’t it seem rather American?

  This is not to say Englishmen are immune to such folly, as I myself was to learn one Friday afternoon as I strolled down Baker Street. I had allowed my feet to carry me there upon an empty hour, once again. Ostensibly, I went because I wished to encounter Holmes or Mrs. Hudson, or some other figure from my bygone adventures, who might sweep me up into a new one. I knew this was true for, even though I had no present use for it, I’d brought my adventuring bag along. My adventuring bag was very similar to my medical bag. In fact, it was my medical bag. But when I had my pistol in there as well, to my mind it became my adventuring bag.

  Imagine my cold wave of horror when—glancing up from the toes of my shoes that I’d been staring at dejectedly—I realized I’d just gotten exactly what I wanted. Warlock Holmes stood not ten yards in front of me walking in my direction and staring straight at my face with a ghastly smile plastered across his features.

  I froze where I stood. What was my excuse, again? Had I ever concocted one? If he should say to me, “Hullo, Watson! What are you doing here? Saaaaaaay… you’re not disobeying my injunction about insinuating yourself into my life and business, are you?” what defense could I raise? I think I gave a little peep of alarm.

  Holmes’s grin did not falter. He looked right at me and exclaimed, “MOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!”

  To which I could only reply, “Erm… what was that?”

  He directed his next comment not to me, but to one of the trees on the other side of the street. “NEEEEEEEEEROOOOOOF!”

  He then turned sharply to the right, walked forward until the tips of his shoes touched the wall of the building that bordered the street, and noted, “MOE-MOE-MOE-MOE-NODUT!” He stood staring at the wall in apparent self-satisfaction for a few moments, then began opening and closing his mouth over and over, in the fashion of somebody who is utterly taken with the novelty of it.

  “Um… Holmes? Are you quite all right?” I asked. Apparently whatever I had to say was far less fascinating than the acti
on of his own teeth, for I was ignored. Nevertheless, I had come to my own conclusion anyway—that Holmes was definitely not all right. Yet as I drew closer, I came to a second, even stranger, conclusion.

  It wasn’t Holmes. I realized his skin—which I had at first deemed to be a bit too shiny, as that of a man who suffers from fever sweats—wasn’t really skin at all. The thing that stood before me was not my friend, but a hollow man of wax. The likeness was remarkable—one is tempted to say exact. Indeed, the best visual cue that this was not Holmes was when the automaton opened his mouth, so that one could see straight into the hollow cavity of his head.

  Well…

  That and one or two behavioral clues, I suppose.

  “NUUUUUUUUUUD!”

  I leaned in to examine him more closely—as did a number of Baker Street’s other residents, it must be said—and asked, “What are you? What is happening?”

  In response, he turned to me and gave me an inhuman grin. It pulled the corners of his mouth back as far as they could go, but the emotion was in no way mirrored by the glassy emptiness of his eyes. He then reached up to put one hand into my mouth, the interior of which he began to explore with much vigor and curiosity. Gasping, I reached up to slap his hand away. He slapped me back. Rather a heavy strike, as it turned out, for his wax arm was quite solid. The blow knocked me back a few steps and visibly deformed the side of one of his hands. He then lost interest in me, turned on his heel and headed back the way he had come.

  With a gasp of excitement, I realized his destination. The hollow man was headed directly back towards the door of 221B. Well… towards where I knew it must be. My head and stomach swam when I tried to look at it. I therefore resolved not to. Instead, a few brisk steps took me right up behind my waxen antagonist. He seemed to take no notice as I caught up the hem of his coat. After that, I had naught to do but close my eyes and let the gentle tug of this bizarre homunculus guide me home.

  Oh, how I thrilled to hear that familiar click and creak of my old street door opening! Then, the joyous moment my toe bumped that first stair. I dared not open my eyes, but I did not need to. Custom had taught me where to place my steps. Sqeeee-err-ka-reeeeek, went the third stair from the top. Finally, the clumsy fumbling of a lock gave me to know we had reached the door to my old rooms.

  Here, at last, I paused. I released the hem of the wax man’s coat and cautiously cracked one eye open. I knew Holmes was likely to have a number of nasty magical surprises for unbidden intruders. As I still possessed a whit of sense, I resolved not to become one. I therefore cleared my throat and called, “Holmes? It’s me, Watson. Is everything quite all right?”

  Even as I said it, the waxen man swung the door open, revealing a strange spectacle indeed. Several large brass hooks had been screwed into the ceiling of my familiar quarters. From these hung all the blankets from my old bed and a great quantity of black dressmakers’ muslin, dividing my old kitchen and sitting room into a labyrinth of mostly unseen corridors and rooms.

  Leaning against the nearest of these cloth barricades stood a second homunculus. This one was much smaller. His head was wax—built to resemble a young, freckled lad—but made with far less skill than the Holmes simulacrum. His wig was all off to one side. His limbs and torso were made of painted planks, like a cut-rate ventriloquist’s dummy. I’d have thought him nothing more than a doll, except that as the door opened, he turned to look up at me with hopeful surprise and began soundlessly flapping his mouth open and shut. Apparently, he lacked the other creature’s powers of… well… I suppose I have to call it “speech”.

  And there, in front of it all—framed in the open doorway—stood Holmes. He wore a wax-stained leather apron and an expression of surprise. He held a wax-smeared ink pen in one hand and several long strips of paper in the other. In his eye I detected just a little bit of horror to have been caught at… whatever this was. The expression lasted only a moment. Apparently, he decided to play it off as coolly as he could, for he favored me with a haughty sniff and said, “Ah. Watson. To what do I owe this unwarranted intrusion?”

  “Well, I was out for a walk, you see, when I encountered this… um…” I indicated the waxen Holmes.

  “I’ve been calling him Steve,” Holmes announced. “Hard to say why. It doesn’t seem right calling him Warlock as that’s what he’s supposed to call me, if he ever learns to talk.”

  A quick flicker of vexation crossed Holmes’s features. He then pressed one of the strips of paper against a nearby wall, wrote “Learn to talk” on it, crumpled it into a ball, and commanded, “Steve: open!”

  Steve turned to Holmes and obediently opened his mouth. Holmes chucked the little ball of paper in, then stood to wait with an air of expectation. Presently, Steve opined, “HEEEEEEEEURRRMOE!”

  “Damn,” grumbled Holmes.

  “My word! Is that how you give it commands?” I asked.

  “Hmm, yes. The whole thing is a variation on the ancient Hebrew golem—an entirely new version of my own devising. Brilliant, isn’t he?”

  “Well…”

  “MOO—MOO—MOO—HURGOP!”

  “…I don’t know about brilliant. He is quite singular. But, Holmes, why have you elected to create an animated wax version of yourself?”

  Holmes adopted an air of casual calm and, staring at his fingernails as if displeased with the state of their cleanliness, mentioned, “Simply because I expect—at any moment—” here he suddenly wheeled towards me, and stared from under his hawk-like brows with rakish intensity, “to be murdered!”

  He paused, as if waiting for somebody, somewhere, to say, “Dun-dun-DAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

  But all he got was my exasperated little sigh and a “Well, that’s not good news, is it?”

  “Not directly, I suppose. No. But it does show, Watson… it does show… well, I’ve still got it, haven’t I. Despite the fact that everybody’s leaving me and treating me like garbage, I’m still having wonderful adventures and maybe everybody ought to take a second look at old Warlock and admit he’s rather special!”

  “Hmm. So. Am I to gather I am not the only person to have left your circle recently?”

  “There may have been a slight altercation between Lestrade, Grogsson and myself.”

  “Oh?” I asked. “May there have?”

  “They may have come over to level certain unfair and unfounded accusations regarding the lack of care I have taken recently, combined with the number of crimes I have been committing and the corresponding level of danger that I be discovered, apprehended, and burned as a witch. Or worse: discovered, almost apprehended, and destroy humanity in the ensuing struggle. I was deeply offended by the subject, so I sent them away.”

  And there was the expected haughtiness, of course, but something else as well. Holmes’s sentence ended with just the tiniest tinge of guilt. It was this, more than anything else, that caused me to feel a sudden, cold horror.

  “Holmes… what do you mean ‘sent them away’?”

  “Only that they were being rather insistent, despite the fact that I made it known I did not wish to discuss the matter. I was having quite the row with Mrs. Hudson, you see, who keeps bringing up two place settings instead of one and making me sad. I really did not have the energy to deal with Grogsson and Lestrade as well. I told them and told them, but they would not respect my wishes, so I… er…”

  “Used magic?”

  “Minor teleportation!”

  “Holmes!”

  “I didn’t mean to, Watson. I just lost control for a moment, and it was done. Look, it’s a small matter. They are safe and sound in Dublin. Or Dubai. Or the planet Dunmicron IV near the Spixtar Nebula. I don’t know. Somewhere beginning with ‘D’. Probably not that last one, though, because I remember thinking they’d be all right making their own way back. And I’m sure it was somewhere with a breathable atmosphere. Though I do seem to recall it was a particularly foul atmosphere. Oh! Do you know what…? Detroit?”

  I shook my head. “Right. Wel
l. I don’t think I care for the direction this conversation has gone in. I’ll be honest, I rather expected, ‘Oh, hello, Watson, I’ve been making wax versions of myself ’ to be the lowest point, but no—”

  I was interrupted by Holmes’s smaller homunculus, pulling at the leg of my trousers.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaagh! What is he doing? What does he want?”

  Holmes shrugged. “Hard to say. Billy is not as adept at expressing his needs as Steve is. He’s an earlier effort.”

  “Yes, I can tell.”

  “I made him myself.”

  “Again, I can tell.”

  “Steve’s rough physical form was done for me by the French genius Tavernier. Billy… well… that was just me on a slow morning. I use him as a pageboy. Useful to have a page about, when one is at odds with one’s landlady.”

  Yet I disregarded the end of Holmes’s explanation. It’s just rather hard to concentrate, is all, with a tiny waxen boy tugging on your clothing.

  “I’m so sorry,” I told him. “I don’t understand you.” He looked up at me, his face a study in earnest hopefulness. Slowly, he drew one of his little wooden hands across his neck, then pointed it at his face.

  “What was that?”

  Again, his hand went across his neck, then back to his face.

  “You want me to kill you?”

  “Oh, Watson! Don’t be silly. Disregard the little fellow,” Holmes scoffed, interrupting Billy’s excited nods of confirmation. “The important thing, let us try and recall, is that I am about to be murdered!”

  “Fair point,” I admitted. “Do you have any idea by whom?”

  “Of course I do! By my new Watson.”

  “Your what?” I cried. “Holmes, do not tell me you’ve manufactured a murderous doppelganger of me out of wax!”

  You want me to kill you?

  “No. And let me just say, what a queer thing to suppose! No, no. This new Watson is not made of wax, he’s made of… Italian person. And he’s nothing like you. Which is rather the point. You see, I found myself somewhat out of sorts and making poor decisions. What I needed, I realized, was another living companion: a new Watson! But I was a bit reluctant to let myself have one, since the last time had ended so badly.”