Thirty-Nine Steps from Baker Street

by J. R. Trtek

  Out of deference to my yet unmet host, I declined the armchair and took one of the other two, which were spare and somewhat rickety. I looked down at the table, upon which sat two Law Lists, a directory of London and a tall pile of shipping journals.40 A large calendar hung on the wall, whose paper was dark with grime. The calendar was flanked by an old photograph of the court of a livery company41 and a bad print of some dignitary.

  “It is the 1st Earl Stackpile,” said Holmes, looking at the portrait.

  “The one who was Lord Chancellor so long ago?”

  “Yes, Watson.” My friend touched his finger to the picture frame. “You may recall my trifling and unsuccessful investigation for his son, who later succeeded to the earldom.” Holmes smiled.

  “I do not remember the matter.”

  “It was a breach-of-promise case, and one in which I failed quite miserably,” declared Holmes. “Ah, the trials of my inexperienced youth.”42

  I suddenly became conscious of a musty aroma and looked at the empty grate, where a pile of spent cigarettes lay.

  “How long will we be in this rabbit-warren, do you think?” I asked.

  “It depends on how good a student you turn out to be,” came a high-pitched voice from behind, and I turned round to behold a short man bending under the weight of the thick books he carried. “However, as rabbit-warrens go, this one does offer a few amenities.”

  Embarrassed, I rose awkwardly, but the stranger smiled and motioned for me to sit back down.

  “You’ll need pencil and paper, which I have in abundance. Good day, Mr. Holmes,” he said amiably to my friend.

  “My associate Dr. Watson,” said Holmes, who nodded and sat in the chair opposite me. “And Watson, this is the encyclopaedic Mr. Macandrew.”

  The man ceremoniously bowed and then dumped his books upon the table and reached into a drawer, extracting a ream of foolscap43 and several pencils.

  Holmes took a deep breath and stared at me with amusement.

  “Well, gentlemen,” said Mr. Macandrew, “we shall now review the basic principles of codes and ciphers…”

  “Those last rules were rather simple and clear, of course,” I recalled to Sherlock Holmes that evening in his spare Camberwell44 flat, where he dwelt as Altamount when in London. “Use of the words hot or cold negates the sentence immediately following, whereas either calm or quiet means it is the preceding sentence that should be taken opposite its original meaning. That completes Mr. Macandrew’s list, does it not?”

  “It does indeed,” said my friend. He glanced to either side as the other three men smiled at me.

  “Time hasn’t blunted your edge, Doctor,” remarked Steiner.

  “No, indeed,” agreed Hollins. “That’s what I told the three of you, isn’t it? Dr. Watson will catch on immediately, I said. Just like in the old Baker Street days. Quite different from our time with old Macandrew, eh?” he said to Steiner.

  “It took us nearly a week to get it all straight, didn’t it?” said his compatriot.

  “Good job, sir,” interjected Jack James, who stood beside me, arms crossed. “You’re ready to send in code with the best of them, I figure.”

  “I do not dispute that evaluation,” said Holmes. “And, Watson, you have memorised the addresses to be used in contacting Sir Walter?”

  “Of course.”

  I leaned back in my chair, one of four placed round a small table in the dimly lit room, and rubbed my eyes. “Much of the work you do in your new avocation of espionage seems more in the fashion of a bank clerk’s routine.”

  “So it often appears to me as well,” replied Holmes. “But, as with detection, routine is the commonplace that breathes vitality into the enterprise.”

  “Another line worthy of inclusion in your book?”

  “Hum,” said my friend. “It has possibilities, has it not?”

  Holmes pushed his chair slightly away from the table.

  “And so,” he said to Steiner and Hollins, “you two will journey to Von Bork and inform him of my supposed visit to Scapa Flow.”

  “That we will, sir,” replied Hollins.

  “Sooner rather than later, if you can,” Holmes directed.

  “We’ll leave for the Essex coast at first light tomorrow,” declared Hollins.

  “You don’t want us to just send him a telegram in German code, if we can remember how to do so?” asked Steiner. “That would reach him sooner.”

  “I desire soon but not too soon,” said Holmes. “I wish to be well on my way before Von Bork knows I am leaving. Though he appears to trust us, I do believe he occasionally has us watched, at the insistence of his superiors.”

  “The Baron Von Herling whom we saw earlier today, you mean?” I asked.

  “Yes. The baron often visits Von Bork at that gabled seaside house, and I suspect he has ordered all of us—myself, James, Hollins, and Steiner—to be quietly observed from time to time. That has been one reason why Altamount has not desired to be seen too often in your presence, Doctor.”

  “And you got nothing from following Von Herling earlier today, sir?” Hollins asked.

  “Nothing of substance, other than an address in the City,” replied Holmes. “Quite possibly I will have you and Steiner look around those premises in a few days. It was more important, of course, to get the doctor to Mr. Macandrew for his instruction.”

  “But you were explaining, Mr. Holmes, why you did not wish us to telegram Von Bork that you were leaving for Scotland,” said Steiner.

  “Yes,” declared Holmes. “I do not wish to have a German agent observe me board a train bound for Galloway when Scapa Flow was the supposed destination. By the time word gets to Von Bork of my trip, there will be no opportunity for him to trace my movements; I will already have left, and once on my way, most difficult to track.”

  “As difficult to track as Hannay?” I posed.

  Holmes sighed.

  “Hannay may prove a true challenge,” he admitted. “We can only hope that our abilities will exceed his skills—and those of the Germans.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then Holmes said the Steiner and Hollins, “I suppose you two may go now. See them out, if you will, Jack.”

  James led the pair of agents from the flat, which was located just off Coldharbour Lane. As we heard the young American close the door, Holmes leaned back in his chair, the look in his eye one of appraisal as he considered me.

  “You do feel up to this, old fellow?” he asked. “Beyond the façade of bravado, that is.”

  “Well, it is more than a decade since I have been on the scent,” I remarked. “I have not had the two years of recent practice that you have enjoyed in getting back into harness.”

  “I should not refer to the experience entirely in terms of pleasure. As you have remarked, this spying business has some of the elements of detection, but only some.”

  “I understand. Nonetheless, I believe this is something I can do. Certainly, I know it is something that I want to do. Indeed, something that I must do.”

  “I understand the impulse.”

  I studied my friend as he gathered up the papers on which he had written examples of code work for my benefit.

  “Do you miss Baker Street?” I enquired as I looked about the sparsely furnished flat.

  “I think of it now and then.”

  “You have not returned to our former digs?”

  “Not recently,” Holmes replied quietly. “But then,” he said, “our final visits to 221 were not happy ones, were they?”

  “You do not still blame yourself for—”

  “But I have had my bees,” the detective asserted. “They have allowed my mind to focus—until that focus had need to turn toward my duel with Von Bork.”

  “That is a somewhat one-sided combat, though, is it not?” I said, understanding my friend’s unspoken desire to change the subject of our conversation. “And the man is not even aware that he is engaged in a struggle with you.”

  Holme
s shrugged. “Perhaps it is not a fair fight,” he admitted.

  “It can hardly be fair if you are one of those contesting it.”

  My friend gave a wan smile. “As always,” he said, “you overestimate my capabilities and achievements.”

  “Someone must,” I replied. “You, after all, underestimate them more often than not.”

  “I believe my assessments to be objective. That is how you have always portrayed me, is it not: objective, rational. And detached.”

  We looked at one another for a moment, and then I glumly nodded.

  “Holmes, if I have ever slighted your—”

  “In truth, I am rather glad that you have on occasion misrepresented me, Watson,” he said softly, with a smile I recognised as disingenuous. “Those who have read your little entertainments have obtained from them a somewhat incorrect notion of my character, making my foes more prone to misjudge me.”

  “And so you grant that my stories have some redeeming value,” I declared puckishly.

  “To the extent that they confer a subtle advantage upon me vis-à-vis my enemies, my answer is yes. And then, too,” he added as his expression became one of earnest sincerity, “you have allowed me to see myself as others no doubt see me. An ounce of self-realisation is precious indeed.”

  “Well, they’re off,” said Jack James, returning to the sitting room.

  The young man made as if to continue speaking and then stopped as he noticed Holmes’s expression. The detective looked up at the American, his visage suddenly changed, and James resumed.

  “I take it I’m to ferry the doctor to his plane tomorrow morning?” he asked cautiously.

  “If by ‘morning’ you mean that period of time commencing at midnight, then yes, you are correct, Jack,” said Sherlock Holmes. “Dr. Watson must be at Hulton before dawn.”

  James whistled. “How far is that, Mr. Holmes?”

  “Something like thirty miles, I believe, as the crow flies.”

  “Well, we won’t be flying to get there,” said the American. “And I’ll have to watch it in the dark, for we’ll be leaving in the middle of the night.”

  “Yes,” said Holmes. “You will. Oh, and Jack?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “By the time you return to London, not only the doctor but also Steiner, Hollis, and myself will have departed town. As the only one left here in London, and unchaperoned as you will be, please do not—”

  “Get involved in another brawl over a girl,” said Jack James. “Yes,” he declared. “I’ll be good this time. I promise.” The young man smiled at me and motioned toward his right cheek, which I now noticed carried the mark of a bruise nearly healed.

  “Just see that you keep that promise this time,” insisted Holmes with a wan smile. He turned toward me. “Well, Watson, you must return to Queen Anne Street in order to gain at least a few hours of sleep. And you, Jack, need to be turning in as well.”

  Holmes then informed young James as to the time he should come round to fetch me for the trip to Hulton, and he also gave me final instructions concerning what items I should pack for my journey. The detective then rose from the table, prompting me to do the same.

  “May you encounter few impediments,” Holmes wished as we slowly walked toward the door of his flat. “However, some will undoubtedly arise.”

  “The first will be my housekeeper, and then the cook,” I said cheerfully. “I am certain the former has been puzzled by my suddenly irregular hours, and the other recently inconvenienced, no doubt. This journey will throw both into a state of complete disarray, I fear.”

  “One is advised to have servants who can roll with the punches, as we once said in the boxing ring.”

  “Yes, as it was true of landladies,” I said, immediately regretting the words. “It is always best if they can bear the inconvenience without complaint,” I added quickly.

  “Indeed,” Holmes said somewhat mournfully. “Indeed it is.”

  With some awkwardness, we spoke no more during the final few steps toward the door. I nodded, as if to silently mark an end to my visit, and extended my hand to a friend of more than three decades.

  “We will next meet in Scotland, then?” I said.

  “That is my hope,” Holmes replied, taking my hand as we bade one another farewell for the moment. “What is vital, however, is that one or the other of us meet Hannay—alive—in Scotland or elsewhere.”

  I followed Jack James along the corridor and out the door at the rear of the building. Moments later, on another street, we boarded the now familiar taxicab.

  “Would you mind just a bit of a detour before dropping me in Queen Anne Street, Jack?” I asked.

  “Anything you want, Doctor, as long as I can get you home at a decent hour. I think Mr. Holmes wants you well rested for tomorrow.”

  “I shall be fine. Go north if you will, and cross the Vauxhall Bridge.”

  “That’s the way we’d be going in any case, sir, to get you home.”

  “Yes, but keep going until you find Oxford Street and there turn east, if you will.”

  “As you command, Doctor.”

  In the deepening night, we proceeded across the river, reaching Grosvenor Place before skirting the east end of Hyde Park and then turning into Oxford Street.

  “Baker Street will come up presently,” I said. “Turn left into it, please, Jack.”

  The young American did as requested, and suddenly I found myself once more on the familiar ground where Holmes and I had shared lodging for so many years. I had no doubt that time had altered the neighbourhood slightly, though perhaps many changes were likely swallowed up by the night, so that I did not notice them at this hour.

  “Slow the motor now, please.”

  The vehicle crawled along Baker Street, and in the gloomy distance I saw the object of my fancy.

  “Pull over, if you will,” I directed.

  The young man gently veered into the kerb, and we stopped just short of a house whose fanlight I recognised at once. The number was less easily perceived, but I knew what it read: 221.

  Jack James sat patiently behind the wheel as I slowly emerged from the taxicab and set foot on the old pavement for the first time in several years. A small group of boys, all of them no doubt born after I had left this place, ran past and on into the darkness—one of them laughed and called me his old uncle. A young couple beneath a street light smiled at the comment, and I grinned as well to indicate I had taken no offense at the remark.

  Then I walked slowly up to the door whose threshold I had crossed countless times in what now seemed some other life. I paused before it, thinking I might witness Holmes and myself suddenly bursting forth from the house and out into the evening to unravel some mysterious enigma, uncover a hidden identity, or expose another nefarious cabal.

  Idly, I began to wonder who inhabited this place now, all the while wishing that the house walls might still harbour the faint spiritual remnant of those they had sheltered for so long. A faint noise came from within, puncturing my reverie, and I slowly stepped away from the house, turned round, and strode back to the taxi.

  “You don’t want to stay longer, Doctor?” asked Jack. “I’m happy to just wait here.”

  “No,” I said hoarsely as I slammed the taxi door shut. “I take it you can navigate to Queen Anne Street from this address?”

  “I can,” said the young man. “I can, even in the dark, for I’ve driven here many times before, sir.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes,” Jack replied. “Mr. Holmes regularly has me bring him here, you see. Just to sit and look at the place, much as you did.”

  “Ah,” I whispered, with bittersweet thoughts in my mind.

  As our vehicle pulled away from the kerb, I did not turn to look at 221 as it passed. Instead, I forced my thoughts in the direction of the morrow, when I should take to the sky for the first time in my life and be off in pursuit of Richard Hannay. Sitting in the darkness of a rumbling taxicab, I willed myself to embra
ce this new chapter, ending what I now realised had been an unconscious and unintended purgatory, years in duration.

  * * *

  25 A large natural harbor in the Orkney Islands of Scotland, Scapa Flow served as chief base for the British Navy during the First and Second World Wars, before being closed in 1956.

  26 In novels written by John Buchan, Blenkiron is portrayed as a highly competent American agent. This comment in Watson’s narrative suggests that he was that and much more.

  27 In this instance, Bullivant apparently has a key to Safety House and can let himself in. However, when meeting earlier with Watson, Blenkiron, and the Holmes brothers, he must ring to be admitted. There is no explanation in the text for this seeming inconsistency.

  28 It cannot be known for certain, but this is likely a reference to the prime minister, H. H. Asquith, one of whose nicknames was Squiffy, a nod to his fondness for drink. “Squiddy” appears to represent Watson’s fictionalization of the sobriquet.

  29 It is likely that Magillivray is referring to his role in events that are portrayed in the partly fictionalized novel The Power-House by John Buchan. If so, then the barrister mentioned is almost certainly Edward Leithen, who was the protagonist of that and other Buchan novels.

  30 “Curriculum vitae,” or résumé.

  31 The Matabele Wars pitted the British South Africa Company against the Ndebele people, whom the British called the Matabele. These conflicts raged between 1893 and 1897 in the region once known as Rhodesia and which is now the country of Zimbabwe. Since Hannay was thirty-seven years old in 1914, he must have been a combatant while still in his teens.

  32 Galloway is a region of southwest Scotland.

  33 In his memoir, Watson probably meant Halton, a village in Buckinghamshire, northeast of London, where the Royal Flying Corps’ No. 3 Squadron was deployed at the time. Halton is now the site of one of the largest Royal Air Force stations in Britain.

  34 Section 5 refers to that British intelligence group devoted to domestic counter-espionage and known in the public imagination as MI-5. Oddly, that is the very group which seemingly should have been in command of the search for Hannay in the first place. That Bullivant and company were involved in the hunt instead, that no other agents were available, and that matters needed some “finesse” suggests that bureaucratic and legal boundaries were overstepped in this affair, for it would appear that Bullivant was actually in Section 6, whose charge was espionage abroad. Watson’s memoir offers no further explanation.