Richard Brown expands upon Brown-Séquard’s results, explaining that his method became known as “organotherapy” and was recommended in the United States as a treatment for epilepsy, cancer, cholera, tuberculosis, leprosy, and other infirmities. In the 1890s, testicular extract sold in New York for $2.50 per twenty-five injections, with a special syringe costing another $2.50. “These were sent by mail to any distance in the U.S.A., complete with directions,” Brown reports. “Whether or not they were sent in wooden boxes is not stated, but they would need some form of protection to send glass vials and syringes by mail in the 1890s, and wood seems most likely.”
28 In “The Rehabilitation of the Creeping Man,” Charles A. Meyer makes the startling assertion that Holmes totally misunderstood the case and that Presbury suffered from Tourette syndrome, which has symptoms very similar to those exhibited (Meyer notes the twitching of Presbury’s nose, the raising of his brows, the grimacing, the grunting, the throat clearing, the hissing, the clipping and yipping and yelping, and the obscene eruptions, as well as his unusual gait and partial amnesia). He had succeeded in masking his disease for many years, but the stress of the love affair brought pronounced occurrences. Searching for a biochemical cure, the professor began taking the drugs to suppress his symptoms.
Not content with that interesting hypothesis, Meyer presents another, in “The Real Creeps in ‘The Adventure of the Creeping Man.’ ” He asserts that “Bennett” (in actuality a man named Jack—see note 14, above) and Edith Presbury plotted to prevent Presbury from marrying Alicia Morphy and so depriving Edith of her inheritance. They poisoned Presbury slowly with dopamine, producing the observed symptoms.
Still another “deconstruction” of the facts of Watson’s narrative is presented in “The Original Holmes,” by Tsukasa Kobayashi and Akane Higashiyama. The authors propose that the facts of the case are that Presbury had committed a number of murders in order to acquire male testicles, which Lowenstein made into a serum of testosterone to use on himself. He first tested the drug on Roy.
29 Might not Holmes be speaking of himself, in regard to a different sort of drug? “Past events may well have returned to Holmes,” Paul Singleton writes, “as ‘he sat musing for a little while with the phial in his hand, looking at the clear liquid within.’ Cocaine, in its liquid form, is also clear.”
30 Some scholars are wary of Holmes’s fantastical deductions and prefer more realistic solutions to the puzzle. Dr. Samuel R. Meaker is one of these sceptics, flat-out proclaiming Holmes “wrong in assuming that treatment with monkey-serum could make a human being behave or smell like a monkey.” Instead, Professor Presbury may have been experiencing a psychosomatic reaction to the extract, merely imagining that he was being induced into monkey-like behavior. Meaker explains that the dog did not pick up on any animalistic scent but only behaved “as any sensitive dog might do to a weird and apparently hostile change in its master’s conduct.” In Meaker’s hypothesis, Watson was on a truer path than Holmes when he ventured, “Speaking as a medical man, it appears to be a case for an alienist.”
31 “We are left to speculate about what happened later,” observes science- fiction master Poul Anderson. “With the supply cut off, the professor doubtless reverted to normal. Watson implies as much when he writes about preserving reticence and discretion. Let us hope that Presbury either won his bride in spite of everything and they were happy together, or he found the serene acceptance proper to old age.”
32 This is yet another of the Case-Book adventures that D. Martin Dakin finds reason to doubt. He dismisses the obscuring of “Camford” as “the transparent device of a second-rate writer,” charging that university settings have already been better depicted in “The Missing Three-Quarter” (which Dakin declares to have taken place in Cambridge) and “The Three Students” (Oxford). The aborted meeting with Professor Presbury, he continues, seems palely reminiscent of Holmes and Watson’s encounter with Dr. Leslie Armstrong in “The Missing Three-Quarter,” and its outcome less justified. Although swayed by Watson’s typically pragmatic diagnosis of lumbago and Holmes’s “delightful” telegram summoning Watson to his side, Dakin on the whole stands firmly against the authenticity of “The Creeping Man,” labelling it “fantastic and more reminiscent of Dr. Jekyll or the Werewolf than a Holmes case.”
THE ADVENTURE OF THE LION’S MANE1
The principal question for the student of “The Lion’s Mane” must be why Holmes wrote it. While the case has the appearance of a crime, Holmes solves the mystery merely by recollecting that he has read the true explanation in a book. In fact, there is no crime at all. The tale is noteworthy, however, because it is the Canon’s only depiction of Holmes’s retirement. July 1907 sees Holmes in residence in Sussex, and the story gives many clues as to the location of Holmes’s last known home (where readers long to believe he still lives). Maud Bellamy, whose fiancée is the victim of the alleged crime, is a singularly attractive figure, and some suggest that Holmes had “feelings” for her. Appealing as that notion may be, we can only speculate, for there is no mention of her in “His Last Bow.”
IT IS A most singular thing that a problem which was certainly as abstruse and unusual as any which I have faced in my long professional career should have come to me after my retirement, and be brought, as it were, to my very door. It occurred after my withdrawal to my little Sussex home, when I had given myself up entirely to that soothing life of Nature for which I had so often yearned during the long years spent amid the gloom of London.2 At this period of my life the good Watson had passed almost beyond my ken. An occasional week-end visit was the most that I ever saw of him.3 Thus I must act as my own chronicler.4 Ah! had he but been with me, how much he might have made of so wonderful a happening and of my eventual triumph against every difficulty! As it is, however, I must needs tell my tale in my own plain way, showing by my words each step upon the difficult road which lay before me as I searched for the mystery of the Lion’s Mane.
My villa is situated upon the southern slope of the Downs, commanding a great view of the Channel. At this point the coast-line is entirely of chalk cliffs, which can only be descended by a single, long, tortuous path, which is steep and slippery. At the bottom of the path lie a hundred yards of pebbles and shingle, even when the tide is at full. Here and there, however, there are curves and hollows which make splendid swimming-pools filled afresh with each flow. This admirable beach extends for some miles in each direction, save only at one point where the little cove and village of Fulworth break the line.
My house is lonely. I, my old housekeeper,5 and my bees have the estate all to ourselves. Half a mile off, however, is Harold Stackhurst’s well-known coaching6 establishment, The Gables, quite a large place, which contains some score of young fellows preparing for various professions, with a staff of several masters. Stackhurst himself was a well-known rowing Blue7 in his day, and an excellent all-round scholar. He and I were always friendly from the day I came to the coast, and he was the one man who was on such terms with me that we could drop in on each other in the evenings without an invitation.
Towards the end of July, 1907, there was a severe gale, the wind blowing up-channel, heaping the seas to the base of the cliffs and leaving a lagoon at the turn of the tide. On the morning of which I speak the wind had abated, and all Nature was newly washed and fresh. It was impossible to work upon so delightful a day, and I strolled out before breakfast to enjoy the exquisite air. I walked along the cliff path which led to the steep descent to the beach. As I walked I heard a shout behind me, and there was Harold Stackhurst waving his hand in cheery greeting.
“What a morning, Mr. Holmes! I thought I should see you out.”
“Going for a swim, I see.”
“At your old tricks again,” he laughed, patting his bulging pocket. “Yes. McPherson started early, and I expect I may find him there.”
Fitzroy McPherson was the science master, a fine upstanding young fellow whose life had been crippled by heart troubl
e following rheumatic fever. He was a natural athlete, however, and excelled in every game which did not throw too great a strain upon him. Summer and winter he went for his swim, and, as I am a swimmer myself, I have often joined him.
At this moment we saw the man himself. His head showed above the edge of the cliff where the path ends. Then his whole figure appeared at the top, staggering like a drunken man. The next instant he threw up his hands and, with a terrible cry, fell upon his face. Stackhurst and I rushed forward—it may have been fifty yards—and turned him on his back. He was obviously dying. Those glazed sunken eyes and dreadful livid cheeks could mean nothing else. One glimmer of life came into his face for an instant, and he uttered two or three words with an eager air of warning. They were slurred and indistinct, but to my ear the last of them, which burst in a shriek from his lips, were “the Lion’s Mane.” It was utterly irrelevant and unintelligible, and yet I could twist the sound into no other sense. Then he half raised himself from the ground, threw his arms into the air and fell forward on his side. He was dead.
McPherson threw up his hands and, with a terrible cry, fell upon his face. Stackhurst and I rushed forward.
Howard Elcock, Strand Magazine, 1926
My companion was paralysed by the sudden horror of it, but I, as may well be imagined, had every sense on the alert. And I had need, for it was speedily evident that we were in the presence of an extraordinary case. The man was dressed only in his Burberry overcoat,8 his trousers, and an unlaced pair of canvas shoes. As he fell over, his Burberry, which had been simply thrown round his shoulders, slipped off, exposing his trunk. We stared at it in amazement. His back was covered with dark red lines as though he had been terribly flogged by a thin wire scourge. The instrument with which this punishment had been inflicted was clearly flexible, for the long, angry weals curved round his shoulders and ribs. There was blood dripping down his chin, for he had bitten through his lower lip in the paroxysm of his agony. His drawn and distorted face told how terrible that agony had been.
I was kneeling and Stackhurst standing by the body when a shadow fell across us, and we found that Ian Murdoch was by our side. Murdoch was the mathematical coach at the establishment, a tall, dark, thin man, so taciturn and aloof that none can be said to have been his friend. He seemed to live in some high, abstract region of surds9 and conic sections,10 with little to connect him with ordinary life. He was looked upon as an oddity by the students, and would have been their butt, but there was some strange outlandish blood in the man, which showed itself not only in his coal-black eyes and swarthy face, but also in occasional outbreaks of temper, which could only be described as ferocious. On one occasion, being plagued by a little dog belonging to McPherson, he had caught the creature up and hurled it through the plate-glass window, an action for which Stackhurst would certainly have given him his dismissal had he not been a very valuable teacher. Such was the strange, complex man who now appeared beside us. He seemed to be honestly shocked at the sight before him, though the incident of the dog may show that there was no great sympathy between the dead man and himself.
“Poor fellow! Poor fellow! What can I do? How can I help?”
“Were you with him? Can you tell us what has happened?”
“No, no, I was late this morning. I was not on the beach at all. I have come straight from The Gables. What can I do?”
“You can hurry to the police-station at Fulworth. Report the matter at once.”
Without a word he made off at top speed, and I proceeded to take the matter in hand, while Stackhurst, dazed at this tragedy, remained by the body.11 My first task naturally was to note who was on the beach. From the top of the path I could see the whole sweep of it, and it was absolutely deserted save that two or three dark figures could be seen far away moving towards the village of Fulworth. Having satisfied myself upon this point, I walked slowly down the path. There was clay or soft marl12 mixed with the chalk, and every here and there I saw the same footstep, both ascending and descending. No one else had gone down to the beach by this track that morning. At one place I observed the print of an open hand with the fingers towards the incline. This could only mean that poor McPherson had fallen as he ascended. There were rounded depressions, too, which suggested that he had come down upon his knees more than once. At the bottom of the path was the considerable lagoon left by the retreating tide. At the side of it McPherson had undressed, for there lay his towel on a rock. It was folded and dry, so that it would seem that, after all, he had never entered the water. Once or twice as I hunted round amid the hard shingle13 I came on little patches of sand where the print of his canvas shoe, and also of his naked foot, could be seen. The latter fact proved that he had made all ready to bathe, though the towel indicated that he had not actually done so.14
And here was the problem clearly defined—as strange a one as had ever confronted me. The man had not been on the beach more than a quarter of an hour at the most. Stackhurst had followed him from The Gables, so there could be no doubt about that. He had gone to bathe and had stripped, as the naked footsteps showed. Then he had suddenly huddled on his clothes again—they were all dishevelled and unfastened—and he had returned without bathing, or at any rate without drying himself. And the reason for his change of purpose had been that he had been scourged in some savage, inhuman fashion, tortured until he bit his lip through in his agony, and was left with only strength enough to crawl away and to die. Who had done this barbarous deed? There were, it is true, small grottos and caves in the base of the cliffs, but the low sun shone directly into them, and there was no place for concealment.15 Then, again, there were those distant figures on the beach. They seemed too far away to have been connected with the crime, and the broad lagoon in which McPherson had intended to bathe lay between him and them, lapping up to the rocks. On the sea two or three fishing-boats were at no great distance. Their occupants might be examined at our leisure. There were several roads for inquiry, but none which led to any very obvious goal.
When I at last returned to the body I found that a little group of wandering folk had gathered round it. Stackhurst16 was, of course, still there, and Ian Murdoch had just arrived with Anderson, the village constable, a big, ginger-moustached man of the slow, solid Sussex breed—a breed which covers much good sense under a heavy, silent exterior. He listened to everything, took note of all we said, and finally drew me aside.
“I’d be glad of your advice, Mr. Holmes. This is a big thing for me to handle, and I’ll hear of it from Lewes17 if I go wrong.”
I advised him to send for his immediate superior, and for a doctor; also to allow nothing to be moved, and as few fresh footmarks as possible to be made, until they came. In the meantime I searched the dead man’s pockets. There were his handkerchief, a large knife, and a small folding card-case. From this projected a slip of paper, which I unfolded and handed to the constable. There was written on it in a scrawling, feminine hand: “I will be there, you may be sure.—Maudie.” It read like a love affair, an assignation, though when and where were a blank. The constable replaced it in the card-case and returned it with the other things to the pockets of the Burberry. Then, as nothing more suggested itself, I walked back to my house for breakfast, having first arranged that the base of the cliffs should be thoroughly searched.
Stackhurst was round in an hour or two to tell me that the body had been removed to The Gables, where the inquest would be held. He brought with him some serious and definite news. As I expected, nothing had been found in the small caves below the cliff,18 but he had examined the papers in McPherson’s desk, and there were several which showed an intimate correspondence with a certain Miss Maud Bellamy, of Fulworth. We had then established the identity of the writer of the note.
“The police have the letters,” he explained. “I could not bring them. But there is no doubt that it was a serious love affair. I see no reason, however, to connect it with that horrible happening save, indeed, that the lady had made an appointment with him.�
�
“But hardly at a bathing-pool which all of you were in the habit of using,” I remarked.
“It is mere chance,” said he, “that several of the students were not with McPherson.”
“Was it mere chance?”
Stackhurst knit his brows in thought.
“Ian Murdoch held them back,” said he. “He would insist upon some algebraic demonstration before breakfast. Poor chap, he is dreadfully cut up about it all.”
“And yet I gather that they were not friends.”
“At one time they were not. But for a year or more Murdoch has been as near to McPherson as he ever could be to anyone. He is not of a very sympathetic disposition by nature.”
“So I understand. I seem to remember your telling me once about a quarrel over the ill-usage of a dog.”
“That blew over all right.”
“But left some vindictive feeling, perhaps.”
“No, no; I am sure they were real friends.”
“Well, then, we must explore the matter of the girl. Do you know her?”
“Everyone knows her. She is the beauty of the neighbourhood—a real beauty, Holmes, who would draw attention everywhere. I knew that McPherson was attracted by her, but I had no notion that it had gone so far as these letters would seem to indicate.”
“But who is she?”
“She is the daughter of old Tom Bellamy, who owns all the boats and bathing-cots19 at Fulworth. He was a fisherman to start with, but is now a man of some substance. He and his son William run the business.”
Bathing-cots.
A Hundred Years Ago
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) Page 105