True to his role – and aping Mycroft, I fear – Holmes ploughed forward through the crowd, scattering ladies and gentlemen left and right, trampling children, cocker spaniels and careless nursemaids beneath his feet with equal unconcern.
“The French authorities may well be right,” said Holmes. “England is too small to contain a criminal intelligence such as Professor Moriarty. What Mycroft says perplexes me, however. What possible interest could the Napoleon of crime have in the Suez Canal?”
“It is difficult to imagine,” I said without thinking. “A narrow strait through which the greater part of the world’s trade passes, carrying goods from India and South-east Asia to Britain and France. If a ship, or ships could be boarded and captured, just think of the contraband, the ransom.”
“That may be it, Watson.”
We headed north on Baker Street. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“A short way up the road,” the Mad Mogul at my side replied.
At 55–56 Baker Street, we turned into the photographic studios of Messrs Elliott & Fry, estab’d 1863, and climbed the stairs to the first floor. The premises consisted of an ample waiting room fitted out with red leather chesterfields and large glass chandeliers, a swinging double door, which marked the entrance to the Portrait Parlour, another one marked Strictly Staff Only, while a third door bore a legend that caught my eye immediately: Ladies Dressing Room. Far wider than the other doors, it had been designed to accommodate the enormous crinolines and bustles that had been so fashionable only twenty or thirty years before.
A pert young woman stepped forward from behind a desk to greet us.
“I would like to arrange a sitting,” said Holmes.
The young woman looked troubled. “Are you in town for long, sir?” she asked, glancing at his bizarre outfit, perhaps wondering whether he had arrived in Baker Street by camel or seated on a flying carpet, and might be returning to his country of origin by the same means of transport within the hour.
“I would like to do the thing as soon as possible,” Holmes replied.
While the receptionist went to check her appointments book, then disappeared into the Portrait Parlour, we took the opportunity to look at a vast display of photographs of the Great and the Good that were hanging from the waiting-room walls.
“What’s all this about, Holmes?” I asked. “I cannot imagine for an instant why you would wish to be photographed in that get-up.”
“It’s the perfect opportunity to test a principle, assist the French and help my brother,” Holmes replied.
“Which principle?” I said.
I could see no sense in dressing up as someone else to have one’s picture made.
“Lombroso’s,” he replied. “I was in Hatchards, Piccadilly, the other day, when I chanced upon the new, illustrated edition of his published treatise, L’Uomo Delinquente. Have you seen it? It posits the most ridiculous Positivistic theory about criminals. I quote: ‘The brain and the intelligence are inversely proportional to the size and the weight of the stomach, muscles and bones.’ Just think of Mycroft! He is the very opposite. He may be extra large, but his brain is unequalled in all the realm. Lombroso talks of atavism, as if the criminal were a throwback to primordial predatory instincts. Hm! Nothing could be so far removed from the man who published The Dynamics of an Asteroid in his youth, confounding the greatest minds in the field of pure mathematics …”
“You mean Professor Moriarty?”
“Who else?” said Holmes. “Lombroso has hit upon a method without considering the secret at the core of it. He illustrates his notions by reference to photographs of criminals he has examined. Well, Watson, let’s see what Messrs Elliott and Fry will make of me. I have a corollary notion of my own – though Shakespeare beat me to it – that ‘clothes maketh the man’. Dress up a murderer as a lord; he may be convincing, yet he remains a murderer. If we know him only as a lord in white ermine, there is no way of predicting what he may eventually do.”
I knew of Cesare Lombroso, of course. Was there a doctor in the world who didn’t?
“Just take a look at this one,” Holmes remarked, examining a portrait of a chap whom I had never heard of. “Observe the undulating brow, the infantile quiff of hair, the squashed potato of his nose, and that walrus of a moustache lounging on his upper lip. Lombroso would have classed him as a lowly confidence trickster, I have no doubt.”
I read a name beneath the portrait. “Arthur Conan Doyle, writer, it says here.”
“Never heard of him,” Holmes said as he moved on to the next one.
A man appeared very shortly and introduced himself to us as Mister John Joseph Elliott.
“I have a spare half-hour and can fit you in,” he said. “The receptionist came in, announced your names as Mister Holmes and Doctor Watson. When I turned back to the camera, my client had disappeared down the backstairs, taking my slideholder and a glass-plate negative with him.”
“What was he like, this man who stole his own shadow?” Holmes enquired.
Mister Elliott smiled. “It is a mechanical process,” he said. “Having seen so many individuals, I must admit, I have no memory for faces. Remember, too, that I see my sitters upside down through the lens of the camera.”
With no more a-do, we followed the photographist into the Portrait Parlour.
Holmes sat for far more pictures than I could have imagined, all of them in the “vignette” style, that is, showing only the head and the neck.
Mister Elliott had seemed disappointed when Holmes announced his purpose “head, no shoulders”, but he warmed to the task as the bearded potentate in the ridiculous pince-nez dictated precisely what he wanted. “Face front, eyes closed, eyes open. Left profile, chin up, chin down. The same sequence for the right profile. And, finally, the back of the head, which tells us more about a man than his dissembling face may wish to do.”
Seven photographs in all, and Mister Elliott retreated to the processing room with his bundle of glass negatives safe inside their slide-holders.
“We’ll need another set of seven,” said Holmes, as the photographist withdrew.
I imagined that he wanted to have my portrait taken, too, and I knew that Mary would be delighted. I was wandering around the large studio, examining a variety of painted backdrops. Here, we were in the country by a lake with swans; there, we were in a book-lined library with a writing desk, a clock and chair. Curtains and pillars seemed to play a large part in photography. Vases, too, a shelf of them in ascending order, small to large, together with a selection of banisters and balustrades of wood and plaster, which the artist could call upon as he felt fit. Then, suddenly, I heard a voice behind me.
“Where is he?”
The photographist was staring at Sherlock Holmes, who was sitting in the posing chair where previously the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had been seated.
“To whom are you referring?” Holmes returned with a smile, indicating the fine raiments of his brother’s disguise, which he had deposited on a chaise-longue.
Mr Elliott looked from Holmes to the clothes, then back again.
“Come, come,” said Holmes, “an experiment, forgive me. Now, if you would just repeat the sequence of poses exactly as before, we will waste no more of your time.”
There were no plans for a photograph of me, though I managed to persuade Mister Elliott to take my likeness when Holmes had finished with him.
Ten minutes later, we left the studio, our enterprise complete. Holmes was now wearing only his knickerbocker suit, having donated Mycroft’s fancy dress to Mr Elliott, observing that the cloak, fez, beard and pince-nez would serve more useful purpose there than anywhere else in London.
The photographist promised to have the proofs delivered on Thursday to 221b Baker Street.
Thursday came, and Thursday went.
The photographs had been delivered in a package that morning, but Mycroft did not present himself as the Sheik of Araby, Chief Sitting Bull, or any of the other ethnic costume
transformations that an indulgent minister would allow him.
It was Mrs Hudson’s half-day holiday, and Holmes was brewing tea on an enamelled Hungarian samovar, which some noble Magyar well-wisher had presented to him in remembrance of an investigation that had been successfully resolved.
“It is most unlike him,” Holmes remarked.
As the clock struck five, he reached for the telephone and made a call to Whitehall 1212.
“Have any corpulent corpses in foreign national costumes been found today?” he asked.
The duty sergeant reported that nothing of the sort had been reported, Mister ’olmes, then he passed the call on to another Whitehall number, which cannot be mentioned here in the interests of national security.
Mycroft was not in his office.
“There’s only one hope left,” said Holmes, as he dialled another number. “The Diogenes Club.”
The co-founder was, indeed, in his club, but another couple of minutes passed before he managed to reach the telephone in the hall from the billiards saloon.
“Mycroft,” Holmes pronounced in a tone of reprimand, “your tea is almost stewed.”
He listened for some moments, then said: “Very well, tomorrow, then.”
He dropped the telephone back on its hook. “He had forgotten entirely, if you ask me, though he made some lame excuse about rampaging Ethiopian privateers. Would you care to play mother, Watson?”
By which he meant would I serve the tea.
I served, of course, though I was certainly not in a motherly frame of mind. I had taken off the whole afternoon by the mean expedient of tacking a note to the surgery door, saying “Called out to an emergency.” The majority of my private patients were valetudinarians, their health was not the true cause of their problems. What mattered more to me was the loss of the consultation fees, which would help me to pay for the nursery. Mary had told me just the day before: I was to be a father!
I had persuaded myself that I deserved a half-day holiday, just like Mrs Hudson. But I had been expecting to partake of a fascinating conversation regarding atavism, positivism, Lombroso and photography. The one thing missing was Mycroft Holmes.
“Just one cup of chà and one cigar,” Holmes announced, “then you and I will examine the contents of that package on the table by the window.”
“Our photographs?” I asked, as I handed him his cup, and watched with horror as he dropped five cubes of sugar into the queer-coloured liquid.
“The very same,” he said, his eyes lighting up with amusement as I sipped my tea, then coughed and spluttered.
“Do you call this tea?” I said with disgust, and set my cup back on its saucer.
“It is called Woojeon,” Holmes said, labouring carefully over the pronunciation. “Hand-picked before the monsoons began last April, it is the finest first-flush green tea produced in the hills of North Korea. The natives call it chà, which differentiates it from the Chinese pronunciation of the same word, cha …”
“It really is rotten,” I protested. “Can’t we have a decent cup of Rosie Lee?”
“It is part of my latest experiment,” Holmes insisted. “I have been informed that there are four hundred and sixty-seven distinct varieties and blends of tea, and I intend to catalogue them all for forensic purposes. As you know, tea and tea leaves go together, but there are many other important characteristics that have never been adequately chronicled. How do the leaves dry at the bottom of an empty cup? What patterns do they form? How long does the distinctive aroma persist? Does the addition of one, two or more cubes of sugar alter the rate of desiccation? And so on,” he said with a wave of his long, bony fingers. “I feel pretty full, I must admit. I have been drinking tea all day.”
We smoked our cigars, and Holmes drank his cup of chà. “It is not to my taste either, Watson. But one must oftentimes suffer in the interests of science. Hand me the package, will you?”
I took the bulky envelope from off the table. It was inscribed with a florid “Elliott & Fry”, and the flap had been closed with an adhesive rosette in the shape of an orange dandelion. “It’s far heavier than I expected,” I said as I handed it to him.
“They are cabinets,” he said, laying the unopened package on the table, “larger than cartes-de-visite. I was thinking of using the imperial size at first, but the format is even larger, too expensive for the scheme I have in mind.”
“Scheme?” I said.
To be frank, I had almost forgotten that there was a purpose behind our expedition to the photographic studio, and that it had something to do with the security of the Suez Canal.
“We were speaking of eyes, noses and mouths the other day, as you will recall …”
“And Mrs Hudson spoke of dressing up a pig as a silk purse—”
“I am sure she was speaking metaphorically,” Holmes interjected. “And then we went to the photographic studio and had some studies made of the human physiognomy …”
“Your face, you mean?”
“Exactly, Watson. We have some of the most wonderful inventions of the nineteenth century at our disposal, yet we do not use them to the full. If I am correct, and I believe I am, we may have found an answer to Brother’s conundrum. Do you, by any chance, have your passport about you?”
“I have it here,” I said with a laugh. “I carry it in my medical bag out of habit, I suppose. One never knew at the start of a day in London whether we would end up sleeping in Ostend or Biarritz. You have such a habit of charging off …”
“May I see it?” Holmes asked. He held it up without opening it. “Is there any reason why I should not present myself at the customs in Alexandria or Aden, and claim that I am you?”
“None at all,” I began to say, then I saw where he was leading. “But with a photograph affixed …”
“Indeed, a photograph, taken in a specific fashion to reveal what makes each man himself, would mean that only one man – the man portrayed in the photograph – could use the document.”
“What use is that?” I asked. “If a man of unknown qualities were to present himself …”
“No man is of unknown qualities today, Watson. If a man is a spy, a government representative, or a known criminal, and if such people were systematically photographed in the manner that I hope to be able to demonstrate to you in a few moments, there would be little or no chance of his being able to get through the customs barriers without being recognised. If Lombroso were correct, and if there were a criminal type, an atavistic delinquent, the matter would be simpler, of course, but it hardly matters, thanks to another great invention of recent times.”
“Which one?” I asked.
He paused, and waved the passport at me before he gave it back. “Ernest Hummel’s telediagraph.”
“That’s new to me,” I said.
“By copying the original photograph on to shellac foil, the picture can be sent one hundred or ten thousand miles by telegraph.”
“I still don’t see it,” I said.
“More tea?” asked Holmes.
“No thank you,” I replied smartly.
“Imagine that a man presents himself at the customs in Dover. If doubts were raised about his identity or intentions, his picture could be transmitted to London – Scotland Yard, let’s say, New Scotland Yard as it will soon be – where a classified photographic Rolodex system of known faces could be kept. By referring to the most prominent facial features – the eyes, nose, mouth or ears – an identification could be made, and an order sent by telegraph to Ostend, Calais or Boulogne to have him arrested on arrival.”
“I see,” I said. “But where is the system in it?”
“It is a question of geometrics,” Holmes replied. “Did you note how close the camera was to my face? Exactly thirty-seven inches. Four footsteps, plus one inch. And the lens?”
I shook my head.
“A Vöigtlander Rapid Rectilinear Portrait. Which means?”
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“If such
a lens is used at such a distance, always and invariably, we can say that a triangle traced between the tips of the ears and the point of the nose will always correspond in that person, and no other. Equally, a triangle drawn between the centre of the pupils and the extreme point of the chin. Or between the corners of the mouth and the meeting of the eyebrows. ‘Biometric’ would be a suitable word for it, I believe …”
“Let’s examine the photographs and see,” I said, breaking in on his enthusiasm. I had understood what he intended about triangles, I think, but like Doubting Thomas I wished to stick my finger in the gaping hole and make certain.
Holmes picked up the package and broke the seal. Then he picked up a wooden ruler. “Do you have a pencil and paper?” he asked me, taking out one of the cabinet photographs.
I took out my silver propelling pencil and my pocket notebook. “What do I have to do?”
“Simply write down these measurements as I give them to you.” He laid the portrait on the table, laid the ruler on the photograph and said: “Corner of eye to corner of eye, 285 millimetres. Corner of eye to tip of the nose, 207 millimetres. We could take more measurements, using the lips or the chin, but these will do for the present purpose. Now, a profile,” he said, taking out another of the photographs. “Point of brow to tip of nose, then the distances from those two extremities to the tip of the ear lobe. If we chose the left profile instead of the right, the measurements would differ significantly.”
He gave me the distances, and I made a note of them.
“Why are you using the decimal system?” I asked.
“Surely you mean the metric system. It’s the only useful thing to have survived from the French Revolution,” he said. “I’m amazed it has not been universally adopted, allowing a fragmentation towards the infinitesimal with which the British inch cannot compete. Now, Watson, I want you to draw a T based on the longest measure in each case, then draw in the triangulation and cut them out – I have a pair of sharp scissors ready for the task. At that point, we may see whether our triangles accurately measure the distances in the other pictures in our sample.”
The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty Page 55