by J. R. Trtek
“Yes, I suppose they must have some reason for being.”
She smiled. “Is that another of Mr. Holmes’s stories you are working at?”
“Well, yes,” I replied. “Of course, it is one of my stories about his exploits.”
“Exploits in defence of British law,” she added solemnly.
“Not in all cases,” I said thoughtfully, looking down at my nearly completed manuscript. “I should rather say in defence of people rather than law. Indeed, in this instance I am writing about, Holmes—and I—most assuredly broke several statutes. I beg you, though, not to mention that fact to a soul.” I paused and then added, “You see, Holmes defends not so much the letter of the law as the spirit of justice.”
“He will take it upon himself to choose people over the law, as you just said, then?”
“Depending upon the particular people and the particular law, yes.”
We then spent more than another hour in each other’s quiet company. On two occasions, our silence was broken by the telephone, which I had begun to think of as yet another fellow lodger in Baker Street. The first person with whom I conversed was Stanley Hopkins, who requested I inform Holmes that Scotland Yard had nothing new of value in the Hope Maldon disappearance and asked that my friend ring him back promptly. The second was Diarmund Stephenson, who rang, he said, on behalf of only himself, for information about his missing friend. Regrettably, I was forced to admit I could offer nothing, a response which led to several minutes of my commiserating with the young man. It was just as the conversation ended—Irene Adler having since retired to her room— that Sherlock Holmes returned to 221.
“All aspects of my passage are arranged,” were the detective’s first words upon re-entering the sitting room, a message that turned my anxieties into fears. “Please excuse me while I assemble my things,” he said.
Before Holmes vanished into his room, I informed him of my telephone interviews with the inspector and the secretary.
“I shall ring up Hopkins presently,” my friend replied. “Perhaps I shall toss him a few unimportant items he may pursue; that should make him feel he is putting his time to some use. As for Stephenson, I should like you to personally cultivate that young man when he rings or calls again.”
“You think it likely he will?”
“I shall be greatly disappointed if he does not. He claims to be a good friend of Mr. Hope Maldon, and there is the chance that the latter may now try to contact Stephenson rather than Miss Adler. If that happens, we must know of it.” And with that comment, my friend strode into his room. I stared out the bow window, wondering what I should do now.
Within the hour, Holmes stood at the door to 221, prepared to depart. Beside him sat a large valise, his only baggage.
“Two agents will be outside at all times,” he told me in the company of Mrs. Hudson and Miss Adler. “I shall return as swiftly as possible and, in the interim, advise you all of my progress by telegram.”
“Will this bring us closer to finding Robert?” asked Irene Adler.
“I cannot say,” Holmes told her. “Your fiancé knows where you are. His first attempt at reuniting with you ended in tragedy, and we can only wait for him to seek you out here at Baker Street once more. If he does not, then it is we who must seek him out. That is, in part, why I travel to Paris,” he said. “To establish a trail from there.”
“Might we who remain do more than simply wait at 221?” I asked.
“I fear, Doctor, that the answer must be no. I have placed messages in all the agony columns; perhaps Mr. Hope Maldon will catch sight of one and act upon it. Whether that happens or not, your duty remains the monotonous but necessary one of sitting and waiting. In my absence, Watson, you shall, of course, be in full command. Act decisively, but do nothing rash. Be prudent, but do not allow that quality to paralyze. And,” he said, putting one hand on my shoulder, “above all, Watson—”
“To mine own self be true?”
My friend’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. For a moment, he stood speechless; then he slapped my back and gave a hearty laugh. “No, old fellow, no.” Turning his billycock hat round in his hand, he continued. “Adherence to that precept is part of your very character; you need no advice in that realm. No, what I was going to say was, at all costs avoid the use of force. If, heaven forbid, Girthwood attempts violence, do not meet it with your own. Do you promise me that, Watson?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Well, I am off to Paris,” said he as he strode out the door of 221.
“I hope this journey proves valuable,” I declared to him as we followed. “We can expect you to return to London, can we not?”
“Of course,” replied Holmes with a smile as a four-wheeler appeared round a nearby corner. “Never fear.” Then, taking my hand, followed by that of Miss Adler, and, finally, bowing to Mrs. Hudson, he turned and quickly walked off into the rush of Baker Street, toward the horse-drawn vehicle.
“I shall serve you two a good dinner of chicken soufflé tonight,” said Mrs. Hudson as she waved good-bye to the detective. “And a supper that will be at a civilized hour for a change.” We three re-entered 221, and then Miss Adler and I, together, ascended the stair to the sitting room.
At the landing, I turned to my fellow lodger. “I should expect you to desire your usual time alone,” I said. “Shall I retire to my quarters and leave you the sitting room, Miss Adler?”
“Doctor, I expected you to continue writing at your desk.”
“My work in that vein is finished for the day,” I said. “In truth, I feel rather weary and desire a nap. The sitting room is yours. Please instruct Mrs. Hudson to wake me should I fail to come down for dinner.”
“As you wish,” the woman said as I began to climb the stair. At my door, a sudden thought occurred to me, and I continued to the upper storey of the house. At that acme, I entered the lumber room, more sedately this time, and I navigated the maze of boxes holding Holmes’s old newspaper files, nearly stumbling over his rusting portable basin and now rarely used collection of chemical apparatus before I espied, in the far corner, the item I sought. Negotiating round several more boxes and an ancient, worm-eaten wooden chest, I reached the object of my search. The cobwebs that enveloped it were no match for me as I pulled the dull metal pole from its recess.
Stepping back to one of the few open spaces in the lumber room, I held it as one might a cricket bat and slowly made as if to swing it at some imaginary foe. The casual observer would expect it to be light, but the end was heavily weighted, a fact which had been crucial during the case in which Holmes had encountered it. And, I reasoned, in a moment of emergency, any potential weapon would be most welcome. I left the room with my prize and closed the door and then descended the stair to enter my own quarters, where I set the dusty aluminium crutch at my bedside.
“Better more weapons than fewer,” I told myself as I removed my coat, recalling also that Holmes’s riding crop still lay against a wall of the sitting room. And there was also the slightly bent fire iron at the hearth, I remembered, as I searched for my latest number of the British Medical Journal. It also occurred to me that Holmes had secreted a singlestick somewhere in his own room.
I found the copy of the Journal, placed it upon my bed, and sat down beside it. “And there is my revolver,” I whispered. My promise to Holmes aside, I glanced toward a corner of my room and saw the Eley Bros. ammunition box still there, undisturbed. “But only as a last resort.” I removed my shoes with some effort and then swung my still-clothed body onto the bed. It was there, with the Journal spread across my chest, that I awoke later to the sound of Mrs. Hudson knocking at my door.
I came quickly down for supper, apologizing to Miss Adler for my hastily assembled appearance, for I had feared Mrs. Hudson’s wrath should I have taken more time to prepare.
“You are as dashing as ever,” said Miss Adler in disagreement, and I fear I may have blushed while questioning her opinion. Any notice of my embarrassment
was quickly forgotten, however, as we both took interest and delight in the soufflé Mrs. Hudson had prepared. Following my customary look inside the sugar bowl, performed this time with an exaggerated self-conscious air meant to amuse my guest, Miss Adler and I resumed the threads of our afternoon discussion.
“I do rather prefer the name gossima to table tennis,” she said. “The latter is so uninspiring.”
“Yes,” I said, savouring our landlady’s knowledge of seasoning and spice. “Gossima is such an airy name—it recalls the word gossamer, does it not?”
“The game itself is hardly of that nature, Doctor. You said you had played often?”
“Oh, many times, and I became rather skilled at it, I must say. Some time ago, when I still resided here in Baker Street, I attempted to persuade Holmes to clear out an area in the lumber room, so that a gossima table could be placed there.”
“A request he opposed, no doubt.”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Mr. Holmes is not the one for games and sport.”
“He would agree with you,” I said. “But you both would be quite wrong. He is an expert at boxing and fencing, and he is skilled, if not recently practiced, in several Eastern arts of attack. Then, too, he has joined me for fishing expeditions now and then. He has also admitted to playing golf at least once, and I have seen him put down several opponents in lawn tennis. It was after the latter that I suggested gossima, you see, believing that if he enjoyed the one, he might wish to substitute the other on rainy days.”
“But he did not.”
“Alas, no, but for the feeblest of reasons.”
“Which was...?”
“Oh, he was somewhat fond of lawn tennis for itself, but he particularly enjoyed examining the court afterward to study and interpret the impressions made in the grass by the players and the ball. He searched in vain for analogous scuff marks after a single match of gossima at the house of an associate of mine, but he found nothing to satisfy him. That caused him to lose interest rapidly.”
“Hence, no gossima table at 221.”
“Regrettably, yes.”
“Well,” she said, placing her napkin upon the table. “Mr. Holmes would not be across the water yet, would he?”
“He is the one who can quote from Bradshaw’s,9 not I, but I do not believe he would be that far yet, no.”
“Doctor, would it alarm you if I said I should like to go out tomorrow?”
“Out? Where?”
“Just out. When we all went about—before Godfrey’s death—before, when I rode about in Bloomsbury, my spirits were very much lifted. I feel a prisoner here; please do not take offense at my statement, for I know I have made myself the prisoner.” She looked at me with grey eyes that, in their intensity, had oddly shed much of their grief and worry. “Do you believe I have stayed too much in that room above? Tell me truly.”
“I can hardly pass judgment on that.”
“Please, Doctor! I wish you to do so. Do you not think some excursion tomorrow would be a welcome relief to both of us?”
“It would, indeed, be a relief, but it also would be most unsafe.”
“We ventured out only recently,” Miss Adler replied. “For a time, I was alone.”
“You were escorted by at least three of Holmes’s agents,” I told her.
“You said earlier that Mr. Holmes himself discounts any further threat from Jasper Girthwood,” argued the woman. “What other obstacle is there to our enjoyment of a bracing spring day in London?”
“Perhaps we could entertain the thought,” I said, merely to forestall further discussion of the topic. “I believe, however, that it would be best to again have one or two agents along for protection.”
“Oh,” said Miss Adler with mild dejection. “Should it be thus, I do not know whether I should wish to go or not. I had in mind a pleasant outing, not a military expedition.”
“And I have in mind your safety.”
“Of course you do. With the terrible burden of responsibility you feel, what other perspective could you possibly entertain? Still, there were no mishaps in the street before, were there? We were not confronted. We were not threatened, were we?”
“No,” I reluctantly admitted.
“We are under no cloud. Tell me, Doctor, do you feel we are under a cloud at this moment, other than one of your own making?”
“Perhaps not,” I said at last, staring at my empty plate and feeling the warmth of a satisfying meal. “Certainly, I sense no such cloud at all when in your company. But would it not be unseemly?” I said, taking a different tack. “Forgive the directness of my words, Miss Adler, but your husband has been dead less than twenty-four hours.”
“Do you see any black, other than my neckband?” the woman asked sharply, raising her arms to display the pale blue of her gown, the same one she had worn when I first saw her in the sitting room. “There is none, is there? I suppose you have probably silently questioned my apparent lack of grief, have you not?”
“Miss Adler, I—”
“Have you not?”
I gave an embarrassed nod.
“Recall that I have wished to be addressed not as Mrs. Norton, or now Widow Norton, but rather as Miss Adler. Godfrey was my husband in the eyes of the law but not in my heart—not for many years. I regret his death, yes, as I would regret that of any person, but I do not mourn him any more than I do the countless others who passed on that very same day.”
“I was thinking of propriety, madam,” I stammered.
“We have already passed into a new century, Dr. Watson, one that may choose not to carry the baggage of its predecessor. Do not become too chivalrous for my sake, or else you will find yourself living in one of your friend’s romances rather than merely reading from its pages.”
“I shall consider it,” I said curtly, masking my uncertainty as to how I might proceed with a woman speaking in such a temper. I felt rescue at hand when Mrs. Hudson appeared to clear our table.
“Dr. Watson and I were discussing the wisdom of going out tomorrow,” Miss Adler said boldly to our landlady. “What might you think of such a suggestion?”
“Oh, it would be wonderful,” Mrs. Hudson replied as she gathered up the plates. “In truth, I had considered putting the same to you only this evening, but here you’ve gone and thought of it yourselves.”
“This man of the house believes it may be unsafe,” Miss Adler declared.
“Why, no. The dear needs some air, Dr. Watson. Surely a man in your profession can see that? Where’s your power of diagnosis, sir?”
“Miss Adler’s fiancé might arrive here at 221 at—”
“Any moment,” said Mrs. Hudson. “Yes, that he might. And if he does, do you not think that I and Mr. Holmes’s men can do what is right?”
“Of course you can,” I said with some irritation.
“Bear in mind, Doctor, that my service to Mr. Holmes is longer than yours and uninterrupted, save for his own absence after that Professor Moriarty business.”
“I, of course, have full confidence in you,” I replied coldly, taken aback by the landlady’s boldness and stung by her implied assertion of superiority. Moreover, I sensed a conspiracy between the two of them. “Trust is not the issue.”
“Then take the lady out,” insisted Mrs. Hudson.
Inwardly I fumed, yet at the same time, I found myself caught in wonder at Miss Adler’s odd turnabout in attitude. From a self-imposed confinement, she now proposed to tour the byways of London. There was a purpose here, and it occurred to me that only a bluff might tip her hand. And so I determined to change my own course as well. “Then I yield. I should be pleased to take her out,” I said impetuously, “if that is what she wishes.”
“You agree?” said my fellow guest, her manner transformed at once into that of sweet, feminine joy.
“Will it be breakfast tomorrow at your usual time then, Doctor?” asked Mrs. Hudson as she left the sitting room.
“Yes,” I said, without look
ing at her, questioning at once what I had done and wondering what Holmes would think of my impromptu gambit. “That will suit.”
Miss Adler guided our remaining conversation to the subject of the next day’s itinerary, and by the time I scattered the coals in the sitting room hearth we had agreed to include a walk along the Embankment, a meal at Simpson’s, and a tour of the City.
“Bart’s would not be far,” I suggested as I escorted her up the stair.
“That is a hospital, is it not?”
“St. Bartholomew’s Hospital,” I told her. “It is joined to the University of London, where I took my degree.”
“I should be so glad to view the place where your professional career began.”
“Oh, Bart’s is the site of a personal beginning as well.”
“It is?”
“Yes,” I replied, stopping at her door. “It was in the chemistry laboratory there that Holmes and I first met.”
“Indeed! Well then, we certainly must add it to our list of sights. Dr. Watson,” she said, stepping toward me, “I do thank you so much for acceding to my wishes concerning tomorrow. You truly are the most understanding and generous of men.”
“That view may be questioned,” I said. “I believe I question it myself.”
“While modesty is a virtue, self-incrimination is not.” She clasped my hand. “You give me a wonderful gift, and I do so look forward to it all. I wish the sun would set this moment, only to rise an instant later, so that we might begin at once.”
Looking at her face and her hair, I was half tempted to believe that she was capable of working such an astronomical miracle. Uncertain of any other comment I might make, I followed the only course that came to mind. “Good night, Miss Adler,” I said, applying gentle pressure to her hand before letting go. “Good night,” I repeated and then quickly retreated to my own room. I prepared for bed, once more picked up the British Medical Journal, and made certain my old service revolver—unloaded—lay nearby at the ready. Then, extinguishing the light, I proceeded to bed, where I lay awake for some time, contemplating my own lack of self-confidence. Sometime before midnight, I heard Mrs. Hudson’s stately tread on the floor below as she retired for the night. For several minutes more, I thought of Holmes’s room—vacant, as it must have been during my friend’s long absence following his duel with Professor Moriarty. At last I felt the first gentle tugs of sleep and sometime in the night dreamt it was I who had faced that late master of Continental crime, locked in deadly hand-to-hand struggle there above the roaring torrent of some Morphean Reichenbach.10