The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories: The Return of Sherlock Holmes, His Last Bow and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (Non-slipcased edition) (Vol. 2) (The Annotated Books)

by Doyle, Arthur Conan

  “I think a first-class surgeon should see him,” said I.24

  “For God’s sake, no!” cried Bennett. “At present the scandal is confined to our own household. It is safe with us. If it gets beyond these walls it will never stop. Consider his position at the University, his European reputation, the feelings of his daughter.”

  “Quite so,” said Holmes. “I think it may be quite possible to keep the matter to ourselves, and also to prevent its recurrence now that we have a free hand. The key from the watch-chain, Mr. Bennett. Macphail will guard the patient and let us know if there is any change. Let us see what we can find in the Professor’s mysterious box.”

  There was not much, but there was enough—an empty phial, another nearly full, a hypodermic syringe, several letters in a crabbed, foreign hand. The marks on the envelopes showed that they were those which had disturbed the routine of the secretary, and each was dated from the Commercial Road and signed “A. Dorak.” They were mere invoices to say that a fresh bottle was being sent to Professor Presbury, or receipts to acknowledge money. There was one other envelope, however, in a more educated hand and bearing the Austrian stamp with the postmark of Prague. “Here we have our material!” cried Holmes, as he tore out the enclosure.

  Dog and man were rolling on the ground together, the one roaring in rage, the other screaming in a strange shrill falsetto of terror.

  Howard Elcock, Strand Magazine, 1923

  HONOURED COLLEAGUE,—

  Since your esteemed visit I have thought much of your case, and though in your circumstances there are some special reasons for the treatment, I would none the less enjoin caution, as my results have shown that it is not without danger of a kind.

  It is possible that the Serum of Anthropoid would have been better. I have, as I explained to you, used black-faced Langur25 because a specimen was accessible. Langur is, of course, a crawler and climber, while Anthropoid walks erect, and is in all ways nearer.

  I beg you to take every possible precaution that there be no premature revelation of the process. I have one other client in England, and Dorak is my agent for both.

  Weekly reports will oblige.

  Yours with high esteem,

  H. LOWENSTEIN.

  Black-faced langur.

  Lowenstein! The name brought back to me the memory of some snippet from a newspaper which spoke of an obscure scientist26 who was striving in some unknown way for the secret of rejuvenescence and the elixir of life.27 Lowenstein of Prague! Lowenstein with the wondrous strength-giving serum, tabooed by the profession because he refused to reveal its source. In a few words I said what I remembered. Bennett had taken a manual of Zoology from the shelves. “ ‘Langur,’ ” he read, “ ‘the great black-faced monkey of the Himalayan slopes, biggest and most human of climbing monkeys.’ Many details are added. Well, thanks to you, Mr. Holmes, it is very clear that we have traced the evil to its source.”

  “The real source,” said Holmes, “lies, of course, in that untimely love affair which gave our impetuous Professor the idea that he could only gain his wish by turning himself into a younger man.28 When one tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it. The highest type of man may revert to the animal if he leaves the straight road of destiny.” He sat musing for a little with the phial in his hand, looking at the clear liquid within.29 “When I have written to this man and told him that I hold him criminally responsible for the poisons which he circulates, we will have no more trouble. But it may recur. Others may find a better way. There is danger there—a very real danger to humanity. Consider, Watson, that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives. The spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be the survival of the least fit. What sort of cesspool may not our poor world become?” Suddenly the dreamer disappeared, and Holmes, the man of action, sprang from his chair. “I think there is nothing more to be said, Mr. Bennett. The various incidents will now fit themselves easily into the general scheme. The dog, of course, was aware of the change far more quickly than you. His smell would ensure that. It was the monkey, not the Professor, whom Roy attacked, just as it was the monkey who teased Roy.30 Climbing was a joy to the creature, and it was a mere chance, I take it, that the pastime brought him to the young lady’s window.31 There is an early train to town, Watson, but I think we shall just have time for a cup of tea at the Chequers before we catch it.”32

  “AS TO YOUR DATES, THAT IS THE BIGGEST MYSTIFICATION OF ALL”

  THE RELEVANT dates for “The Creeping Man” may be summarised as follows:

  Nine-Day Cycle of Dosages Description

  Thursday, July 2, 1903 First attack noted.

  Saturday, July 11, 1903 Second attack noted (nine days later).

  Monday, July 20, 1903 Third attack.

  Wednesday, July 29, 1903 Unnoted attack.

  Friday, August 7, 1903 Unnoted attack.

  Sunday, August 16, 1903 Unnoted attack.

  Tuesday, August 25, 1903 “Period of excitement” noted on Wednesday, August 26, 1903.

  Thursday, September 3, 1903 Attack noted. Bennett describes the attack as occurring on the 4th; since the incident occurred at 2:00 A.M. on the 4th, the dosage occurred on this date.

  Saturday, September 12, 1903 Anticipated day of attack (that is, nine days after September 3, 1903).

  Other relevant dates involved in the case:

  Date Description

  Saturday, September 5, 1903, or early Sunday, September 6, 1903 Edith Presbury’s bed chamber is visited by Professor Presbury.

  Sunday, September 6, 1903 Bennett calls upon Holmes.

  Monday, September 7, 1903 Holmes and Watson visit “Camford” to observe Professor Presbury; Holmes advises Bennett that “next Tuesday” (presumably Tuesday, September 15, 1903) will mark a crisis.

  As will be evident from the above, the exact nine-day cycle does not explain all of the date references. For example, the episode described as occurring on September 5, 1903, could have been the aftermath of a dosage actually taken on September 4, and Bennett was careless in describing the 2:00 A.M. attack as occurring on the 4th when it actually occurred in the early morning of the 5th. Or perhaps Presbury was not punctual about taking the drug on the date of delivery. However, even allowing some “slippage” in the intervals does not explain why Tuesday, September 15, 1903, has any relevance.

  1 “The Creeping Man” was published in the Strand Magazine and in Hearst’s International Magazine in March 1923.

  2 “Is there not something a little odd about this?” asks Catherine Cooke, in “ ‘The Singular Facts Connected with Professor Presbury.’” “Surely throughout most of the canon it is Watson who wants to publish and Holmes who discourages and forbids him or who pours scorn on those accounts which do see the light of day? Why then this sudden change?”

  3 “We”? Is this the editorial “we”? Does Watson here refer to Arthur Conan Doyle and himself? Or is this a statement that Holmes and Watson consulted regarding publication? If the latter, then this may be taken as confirmation that Holmes was alive and well in 1923, twenty years after the events of this case and nine years after the events of “His Last Bow,” the last recorded case of Sherlock Holmes.

  4 Watson is being too modest. In “The Blanched Soldier,” generally given the date of January 1903, Holmes remarks, “Speaking of my old friend and biographer . . . Watson has some remarkable characteristics of his own, to which in his honesty he has given small attention amid his exaggerated estimates of my own performances.” Yet Dorothy L. Sayers sees more than meets the eye in Watson’s assessment of his “humble rôle,” and she wonders whether his soliloquy might be a subtle expression of bitterness at Holmes’s treatment of him through the years. In “Dr. Watson, Widower,” she observes that Watson seems hurt at being considered “a mere convenience, like the fiddle and the old pipe, to be picked up or cast aside as Holmes’s fancy took him. His faithful heart was really wounded.” For further evidence she points
to “The Mazarin Stone” (thought to have occurred in 1903, the same year as “The Creeping Man”), in which Watson distances himself from his old friend, plunging himself into his practice and bearing “every sign of the busy medical man.” “When the call comes,” Sayers writes, “he answers it, but not quite with the old alacrity. ‘Was it for so trivial a question as this that I had been summoned from my work?’ he asks himself, with a touch of bitterness. . . . Never before had he resented an intrusion on his ‘work.’ ”

  5 Watson is now living, one assumes, with his wife (see “The Blanched Soldier,” note 5, for a discussion of which wife).

  6 The original title of A Study in Scarlet. There Holmes remarks, “There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.”

  7 Watson coyly hides the location of the tale, and scholars have debated whether “Camford” is Cambridge or Oxford. Without expressing his reasoning, T. S. Blakeney asserts flatly that this is a “transparent alias” for Cambridge. Nicholas Utechin concludes that it is Oxford, on the basis of Holmes’s familiarity with the Chequers inn and the train schedules. Other observations and arguments are noted below.

  8 N. P. Metcalfe uses this statement to build a case for Camford as a stand-in for Oxford. According to his research, Cambridge had no Chair of Comparative Anatomy in 1903, the closest approximation being a Chair of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy. At Oxford, however, there was an appropriately labelled post: the Linacre Chair of Comparative Anatomy, so named in 1893, in a change from its original designation, the Linacre Chair of Human and Comparative Anatomy. In 1903 the post was held by by W. F. R. Weldon, M.A., and it is he whom Metcalfe targets as the real Professor Presbury.

  Jonathan McCafferty dissents, recalling that Watson frequently changes details in order to obscure the identity of Holmes’s clients and would certainly have altered the name of the professorship. He selects Cambridge as the location, declaring that Professor Presbury was in fact Alexander MacAlister, professor of anatomy at Cambridge from 1893 to 1919.

  9 That is to say, the East Central postal district of London.

  10 What, asks Barbara Roisman Cooper astutely, is “illiterate handwriting”? A person who is illiterate is unable to read. “If the writer were illiterate,” Cooper continues, “how could he write? What does ‘illiterate handwriting’ look like?” Presumably, Watson meant to write “illegible.”

  11 A small metal or rubber tube, used to drain fluid from the body or to administer medicine.

  12 Rheumatism of the lumbar muscles in the lower back, frequently caused by a muscle strain or a slipped disk.

  13 A psychiatrist; from the French aliéné, meaning insane.

  14 D. Martin Dakin, who expresses doubt about the “Canonicity” of the tale, nonetheless defends the seeming incongruity of Miss Presbury’s calling Mr. Bennett “Jack” instead of his given name, Trevor. Dakin writes that this particular reference “cannot be taken as evidence against the story, in view of Watson’s notorious carelessness about Christian names, including his own. . . . It could plausibly be argued that Miss Presbury had a pet name for her man, just as Effie Munro had [in ‘The Yellow Face’], and as many authorities consider Mrs. Watson had [‘James’ in ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’].”

  15 The American third floor, that is.

  16 The word “lunatics,” after all, comes from the Roman belief that the moon affected mysterious changes in certain people, driving them to the point of madness when it was full.

  17 See “The Sussex Vampire,” note 16. Several scholars point to Holmes’s favourable recollections of the Chequers as an indication that Camford was the site of Holmes’s own university.

  18 This is the second time Watson has responded to Holmes with, “We can but try,” the first being in “Thor Bridge.” Alan Olding suggests that Holmes is referring to two popular poems. The first, “Against Idleness and Mischief,” was a popular children’s rhyme by hymn writer Isaac Watts (1674–1748), published in his Divine Songs for Children (1715). A paean to industriousness, the poem exhorts, “How doth the little busy bee / Improve each shining hour / And gather honey all the day / From every opening flower!” Lewis Carroll later parodied the poem in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, depicting a disoriented Alice, in an attempt to remember the lines, reciting instead, “How doth the little crocodile / Improve his shining tail, / And pour the waters of the Nile / On every golden scale!” As to the second part of Holmes’s statement, “excelsior” is Latin for “ever upward.” (It is the official motto of the state of New York.) In the poem “Excelsior” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), a young man travels through the Alps and, though warned away by those he meets, continues determinedly onward in what what turns out to be a doomed attempt to navigate the pass. “ ‘Oh, stay,’ the maiden said, ‘and rest / Thy weary head upon this breast!’ / A tear stood in his bright blue eye, / But still he answered, with a sigh, / Excelsior!”

  19 In another attempt to prove the true location of Camford, Gavin Brend writes that “colleges in rows, on the whole, suggest Oxford.” N. P. Metcalfe is noncommittal, suggesting that the row of ancient colleges could be found either on High Street at Oxford or at King’s Parade and Trinity Street in Cambridge.

  20 As observed by William S. Baring-Gould, Mercer is another member of that “small, but very efficient, organization” of Holmes’s informants. Its members include Shinwell Johnson (“The Illustrious Client”) and Langdale Pike (“The Three Gables”).

  21 Holmes’s “August 26th” should be the 25th, if the nine-day cycle applies. And why “next Tuesday,” which does not fit the cycle at all? The relevant dates and the confusion in Watson’s records are examined on page 1665.

  22 In “The Missing Three-Quarter,” Holmes calls the university of the adventure “this inhospitable town.” Because Watson records “The Missing Three-Quarter” as occurring in Cambridge, it seems very unlikely that “The Creeping Man” could occur there.

  23 Throughout this case, Holmes appears surprisingly indecisive. First, he tells Bennett that he and Watson will return to London in the afternoon after their frustrated attempt to speak with the professor, yet they do not do so. Then, while ensconced in the hotel’s sitting room, Holmes announces that “I should not expect any fresh developments until next Tuesday. In the meantime we can only . . . enjoy the amenities of this charming town.” By morning, he has changed his mind once again, this time declaring that he and Watson will depart for London and then come back next Tuesday. “These are clear evidences of vacillation,” remark W. S. Bradley and Alan S. J. Sarjeant. “No reasonable hypothesis can give logic to such an on-again, off-again sequence.” Bradley and Sarjeant, pursuing to extremes their hypothesis that Holmes was a woman, conclude that this vacillation is a symptom of (Ms.) Holmes’s menopause.

  24 “This is a startling admission,” observes Dr. Robert S. Katz, and it proves that Watson—himself a first-class surgeon—is uncertain about the proper course of action. To Katz, this is a telling sign of the gravity of the situation: “No highly trained surgeon would willingly make such a statement about himself in a published account unless something was very wrong indeed.”

  25 The langur is any of several species of leaf- and fruit-eating Asian monkeys with long tails and bushy eyebrows. The “black-faced Langur” would be the tree-dwelling Hanuman langur, or the sacred monkey of India, named after the Hindu monkey-god Hanuman. Monkeys of this genus have long, slender limbs; grey, black, or brown fur; tufts of hair atop their heads and around their faces; and black ears, faces, feet, and hands. They travel in packs of twenty or thirty and, regarded with reverence throughout India, roam unmolested through villages and temples, often raiding crops or stores.

  26 J. C. Prager and Albert Silverstein identify Lowenstein as Eugen Steinach (1861–1944), a Viennese physiologist who purportedly coined the word “hormone.” In 1912, Steinach’s research led him to implant sex
glands from female guinea pigs into male guinea pigs, and vice versa. The female guinea pigs began displaying male sexual behaviour, and the males female sexual behaviour, leading some to theorise that the glands secreted substances that might account for homosexuality. Further research identified the secretions as the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen but concluded that hormone injections have no lasting effect on sexual orientation.

  Steinach’s investigations into the physical bases of sexuality were unfortunately eclipsed by his repeated attempts to develop methods for sexual rejuvenation. A tireless self-promoter, he earned the reputation of a “quack” in the contemporary press, and it may be one of these earlier accounts that Watson remembers having read. Later historians have labelled Steinach a scientific pioneer, and Prager and Silverstein argue that the brilliant researcher was duped by Presbury into believing that his “honoured colleague” would assist him with legitimate research into the effects of the serum.

  27 In investigating Lowenstein’s efforts, Alvin E. Rodin and Jack D. Key, in their Medical Casebook of Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle, comment upon the work of French physiologist Brown-Séquard (1817–1894), who somewhat damaged his distinguished reputation by attempting to invent the elixir of eternal youth. In June of 1889, already recognised for having discovered the importance of the spinal cord, Brown-Séquard announced—to much sensation in the Parisian and London journals—that he had injected himself with the testicular secretions of guinea pigs and dogs, and felt “rejuvenated” as a result. Among other findings, he reported that he was now able to engage in sexual relations with his new, younger wife, whereas previously he had found his capabilities limited. Brown-Séquard did not, however, end up prolonging his life in any meaningful way, and Rodin and Key note that injections of water alone have achieved similar results. “Even in the decade when ‘The Creeping Man’ was published (the 1920’s),” they write, “medical fadism and quackery included transplanted monkey glands as well as extracts for rejuvenation.”