Sherlock Holmes: The Quality of Mercy and Other Stories

by William Meikle

  Miss McGregor was halfway through the cheroot and had most of the way finished her second brandy before she started to talk, in a soft whisper, as if afraid to tell her tale out loud. “It started last week … really started, I mean, although I have thought for some time that I was being watched.

  “And it is always the same. Every night, just past midnight, I wake, and see a dark figure standing at the foot of my bed. I call out, I have even on occasion thrown a shoe, and threatened him with a pistol. But he never speaks back, in fact he scarcely moves. He just stands there, as if mocking me. Every night.”

  At that she started to sob again, and this time my urge to protect her grew too strong to ignore. I stepped forward and took her hand. She clung tightly to me, just for an instant, then pulled herself together.

  “I’m so sorry, Doctor Watson,” she said, lighting a fresh cheroot from the stub of the last. “But I do not know where else to turn.”

  Holmes finally spoke. “It may be that the police will help with a persistent intruder,” he said. “I shall have a word with Inspector Lestrade and …”

  Her eyes took on a hard glint that reminded me of the strength of character of the woman. “No, Mr. Holmes, you don’t understand. The police cannot help me in this matter. You see, he isn’t really there.”

  That brought Holmes up short. He looked at me, smiled and raised an eyebrow. “You are correct. I do not quite understand, Miss McGregor. Are you saying you are being visited by some kind of phantom?”

  The woman stared back at Holmes. “If you are going to patronize me, Mr. Holmes, I shall bid you good day.”

  She tried to stand, but I pushed her gently back in the chair.

  “I’m sure Holmes meant no such thing,” I said, and shot him a look to tell him to behave himself. He did not look in the least bit chastened.

  Miss McGregor looked up at me. “I shot him,” she said. “Twice, with Father’s service pistol. It had no effect. That was two nights ago. And last night he was back again, just standing there. Please help me.”

  Holmes looked bored.

  “Watson will sit with you tonight,” he said, taking me rather aback. “I am sure he will be able to get to the bottom of this quickly enough.”

  And with that we were dismissed. Holmes went to the window, lifted his violin and started to scrape his way through one of his interminable dirges. I knew from experience that I would get nothing further out of him for some time.

  I took Miss McGregor down to the scullery and made her some tea. We arranged that I would visit her that evening, and I would sit with her and watch—to attempt, as Holmes put it, to get to the bottom of the matter.

  I must admit, I felt like an awkward youth as I stood on the doorstep of the McGregor residence in Chelsea later that evening. Although I was ostensibly working, I was also acutely aware that I was calling on a rather fetching young lady, one that I admired greatly, and of whom I was growing increasingly fond. Butterflies I had scarcely felt since adolescence tumbled in my stomach as I rang the doorbell.

  She answered it herself.

  “I have sent the servants home for the night,” she said, showing me in to a most elegant parlor. “I thought it for the best.”

  I am afraid to say I stuttered, hummed and hawed my way through that first hour, but if she noticed, she was far too gracious to acknowledge it. She made me feel most at ease, and at first she took the lead in the conversation. We did not talk of the watcher by the bed, but of her trips to the Orient, and the adventures that had befallen her on her journeys. We discovered common ground in Afghanistan, and I found that we had tramped some of the selfsame hills, although she had not had to fight her way through rebel ambushes as I had.

  By the time it came around to eleven o’clock I felt most relaxed in her company and I like to think she was coming to feel the same about me. We had a snifter of some rather fine single malt before she showed me upstairs to her bedchamber.

  It was only then that she showed some signs of the nervousness with which I had been afflicted earlier. I took it for apprehension of the possible recurrence of her watcher, but I realized as I walked into the room that there was more than a touch of embarrassment at having a stranger in her room. I quickly took a seat in an armchair in the corner furthest from her bed, and assured her that I would stay awake.

  “All night, if that is what it takes.”

  She climbed into bed fully clothed and got under the covers. “You make smoke if you wish, Doctor,” she said. “It will not bother me.”

  She snuffed out her bedside lamp and I sat there in the darkness, watching over her as the night grew on.

  After some time her breathing changed to a more relaxed tempo, and a soft snore told me she had fallen asleep.

  I took her at her word and lit up a pipe. As I smoked, I mulled over her story. From what I knew now of her character, she was not a woman prone to flights of fancy, which made her tale of the nocturnal intruder all the more remarkable to my mind. I suspected foul play, an all-too-human agency intent on harming this fine woman. Sitting there in the dark it was very easy to conjure up ideas of skullduggery and conspiracy.

  I was so lost in this reverie that I almost did not spot the new moving patch of darkness that seemed to appear from nowhere at the foot of the bed.

  Three things happened at around the same time. Miss McGregor sat up in bed and pointed a pistol at the dark figure; I got out of the chair, heading toward the bed, unsure exactly what I intended to do and, most surprising of all, the curtain across the main window was abruptly swept open. Someone stood there holding a lamp.

  “Get him, Watson,” Holmes’ unmistakable voice shouted out.

  I used an old favorite rugger tackle, aiming for the dark figure’s upper thigh, knowing that my momentum would carry us both to the ground. I do not know who was more surprised; I, to find that my tackle met only thin air, or Holmes, when I tumbled in a sprawling heap at his feet a second later.

  Miss McGregor lit her bedside lamp.

  “I see you planned a flanking maneuver, Mr. Holmes,” she said, sarcastically. “Maybe now you will start to pay a bit more attention.”

  Holmes did not reply. He began a systematic study of the whole room. He remarked on two fresh bullet holes in the wall. He took a line of sight from the holes, back to the bed. “I suppose there is no doubt that you hit what you aimed for?” he asked.

  Miss McGregor nodded. “I am a fair shot, especially at this range. I put two bullets in his chest. They went straight through. You see the resulting damage on the wall.”

  Holmes rubbed his fingers over the bullet holes, nodded to himself, then went back to studying the room. Miss McGregor looked as if she wanted to speak further, but I put a finger to my lips to hush her. Interrupting Holmes now would serve no purpose other than to irritate him.

  He spent ten minutes doing a slow survey of the room while I sat awkwardly on the edge of Miss McGregor’s bed, smoking one of her cheroots. Nobody spoke until Holmes’ circle of the chamber came to a stop at the foot of the bed. He looked down at his feet and his eyes narrowed.

  “Where did you get this?” he said.

  Miss McGregor was initially at a loss as to his meaning, until Holmes pointed at the floor.

  “This rug,” he said. “Where did it come from?”

  “Tibet,” Miss McGregor said. “A monk made me a present of it on my departure, after I had stayed with them for several months while hunting plants in the foothills.”

  Holmes made for the door. “Bring the rug, Watson,” he said over his shoulder as he left the room. “We have work to do.”

  He was gone as quickly as he had come.

  “Is he always like this?” Miss McGregor asked me as I stood.

  “No,” I replied, deadpan. “Sometimes he’s rude.”

  The memory of her light laughter sustained me on the long trip back to Baker Street.

  I was glad of that memory, for it took my mind off the fact that the rug was bulky and
rather heavy, and there was no sight of any carriage to save me the effort of carrying it for several miles.

  Holmes showed no desire either to help or to engage in conversation, walking ten yards ahead of me the whole way back to Baker Street.

  It was almost three o’clock in the morning by the time we arrived in the apartments. I was tired, grouchy, and ready for the comforts of bed.

  Holmes had other ideas.

  He spread the rug on the floor in front of the fire, sat in his favorite chair, and looked up at me as he lit a pipe. “Tell me what you see, Watson.”

  To argue tiredness was futile. Holmes did not live in prescribed chunks of time, and when he got his teeth into something, it was best to go along with him, for he would only leave you behind when you failed to keep up.

  I looked down at the rug I’d carried for so many miles.

  The predominant color was red. The rug itself looked ordinary enough, aside from the fact that the design was intricate, the needlework obviously done by a craftsman of some skill. The design was of a series of interconnected boxes, woven in such a way that all perspective was lost every time your eyes strayed to a different part of the whole. Yellow and gold threads seemed to mark some kind of path through a maze, but I could not, in my tired and befuddled state, make any rhyme or purpose from it.

  “It’s a rug, Holmes,” I said. “I’ve seen a thousand like it in markets all over the Orient.”

  “Thousands, maybe,” Holmes said. “But few quite like this one, I will warrant.” He took a long puff from his pipe before continuing.

  “What we have here is a Mandala, and this one is quite a puzzle.”

  “Mandala? Isn’t that some fakir hocus-pocus?”

  Holmes shook his head. “I came across several of these during my sojourn among the Adepts,” he said “It is mainly a method for focusing the will. All such designs have an end purpose, a goal to be attained through their study. The trick here will be to discern the purpose without any prior knowledge whatsoever. This may well be a three-pipe problem, Watson.”

  “And you think it pertinent to Miss McGregor’s intruder problem?” I could not see how that might be the case, but Holmes would not have had me cart the rug all this way for no other reason than it might provide him with mental exercise.

  Holmes nodded and gave me a tight smile. “Solve one puzzle, and we will unlock the key to the other. I am sure of it. I am only unsure as to how long the task might take me.

  “In that case, Holmes,” I said, rising from the chair. “It has been a long, tiring, day and I need some sleep.”

  I left him to it.

  He was still in the same seat in the morning when I woke.

  He did not move from his seat when Mrs. Hudson brought up a breakfast tray.

  “It is part of the discipline,” he said. “I cannot eat or drink until I have completed the puzzle.”

  “That is the most stupid kind of discipline imaginable, Holmes,” I said. “As a medical man, I cannot sanction such …” I shut up. He had stopped listening to me, and once more had targeted his concentration on the rug. He was still there by noon when I had to leave for a consultation. Mrs. Hudson was distraught when I returned in mid-afternoon.

  “No breakfast, no lunch. He’ll make himself ill, again.”

  I promised her that I would try to get Holmes to look after himself better, but I knew in my heart that was a lost cause before it began. All I could do was try to ameliorate any damage he might do, and stop him if it looked like getting too serious.

  I went upstairs, fully intending to give him a harsh talking-to. He was standing by the window, his favorite pipe lit, and a huge smile on his face.

  “I have it, Watson,” he said. “I have the answer.”

  He came over and led me by the arm to stand over the rug.

  “It starts here,” he said, pointing at the yellow and gold threads that ran through the design. “It is a spiritual journey both inward and outward. The outer circle of fire symbolizes wisdom. The ring of eight charnel grounds represents the Buddhist exhortation to always be mindful of death, and the impermanence with which Samsara is suffused is designated within this flaming rainbow nimbus. A black ring of Dorjes circles the palace of the body to emphasize the dangerous nature of human life. And in the palace itself lies the answer to the riddle.”

  I laughed. “My dear Holmes, I understood barely a single word of what you have just said. But is this good news for Miss McGregor, or not?”

  Holmes clapped me on the shoulder. “It is indeed good news. You may bring Miss McGregor along this evening, when we shall put an end to her intruder once and for all.”

  3

  I was more than happy to oblige Holmes’ request for the presence of Miss McGregor, or Constance, as I was requested to call her during our carriage ride on my return journey to Baker Street. She professed some surprise that an old piece of carpeting could provide any kind of answer to her predicament, and I was unable to answer any questions, as I was as much in the dark myself.

  I found myself hoping for some interruption in traffic that might slow our progress and prolong my time alone with Constance, but it was not to be. We arrived back at 221B Baker Street just before nine in the evening.

  Mrs. Hudson was prepared for us, and we had a most enjoyable supper, finished off by some of her delectable scones. Holmes even managed to be polite to Constance, with no trace of his rudeness of the previous evening.

  Just after ten o’clock we settled by the fire with our smokes and a glass of brandy. I expected Holmes at that point to explain his thought processes and provide an explanation for Constance’s intruder. Once again, my old friend had other ideas.

  “Watson,” he said. “Could you please put out the lamps? Firelight will suffice for my purposes.”

  I did as requested. As I returned to the fireside and sat down in my chair, Constance took my left hand in hers and squeezed it gently. It was all I could do to keep my attention on Holmes.

  He got out of his chair and sat down on the floor, cross-legged, beside the rug. “What we have here,” he said, “is a set of instructions; a path to follow to complete a very specific task.”

  “Which is?” Constance asked. I squeezed her hand and once again put a finger to my lips, but Holmes showed no sign of being annoyed by the interruption.

  “I will come to that anon,” he said. “But first, I must ask for some quiet. This part requires concentration on my part if it is to be done correctly.”

  He placed a hand on each knee, palm upward, curled thumb and forefinger together on each, and started to chant, an extraordinary deep bass drone that echoed and reverberated around the room.

  “Om.”

  This went on for quite some time. Just as I was about to ask whether this was all some kind of elaborate prank at our expense, Constance gripped my hand harder. The air between Holmes and ourselves, and directly over the center of the rug, coalesced and darkened. As if from out of nowhere a dark figure, scarcely more than a shadow, started to take form. I heard Constance gasp, but could not spare the time to turn my head to look at her. The shadow was almost solid now, blocking out the light between ourselves and Holmes, who had started to chant even louder.

  The form of the thing in front of us was most definitely human in that it had the requisite number of arms, legs and heads, but there were no distinguishing features discernible; we stared into a block of blackness, as if looking down the shaft of a deep dark well.

  The figure raised a hand, reaching out … for Constance. Before I could move to help, Holmes shouted, his voice ringing authoritatively around us.

  “Dhumna Ort!’ ”

  The black shape fell apart into a myriad of separate shadows that dropped toward the rug and were dispersed in the firelight.

  “You may light the lamps,” Holmes said in a matter-of-fact voice. “The job is done.”

  After I had turned on the light again, Constance immediately took my hand. Holmes noticed, raised an eyeb
row and smiled, but said nothing. It was up to me to ask the obvious question.

  “I know you are dying to tell us, old man,” I said. “So what just happened?”

  Holmes got up and settled himself in his chair. He took his time lighting a fresh pipe, savoring his moment of triumph.

  “I said it was a set of instructions,” he said eventually. “And that is exactly what it was. What you saw was the end product of following the path laid out in the design. I created—or, rather, I recalled—a Tulpa, a thing of thought and will given form outside the mind.”

  “That is not possible, Holmes,” I said.

  “And yet, you saw it,” Holmes said softly.

  I was about to argue further when Constance squeezed my hand again. “I have heard of such things,” she said. “But I never thought to see one here in London.”

  Holmes pointed at the rug. “I suspect the previous owner was in the habit of studying the design most devoutly,” he said. “So devoutly that in attempting to finish the task he left a psychic imprint behind in the material, a part of himself that was trapped inside his unfinished meditations.”

  “And you brought it to completion,” Constance said softly, nodding as if she understood.

  “Exactly,” Holmes replied. “My own intensive training allowed me to successfully pierce the veil, bring the Tulpa completely to mind, and just as successfully banish it. You will be troubled no more, Miss McGregor.”

  Not long after Holmes’ exhibition, Constance decided she would like to return home. I managed to get a carriage willing to make the journey, and offered to accompany her, but she pleaded for some time alone.

  “You see, John … I can call you John, can’t I? … I knew the man who owned that rug. I knew him quite well. I even watched him die. And to see that … shadow … fall apart like that tonight? It feels as if I have watched him die all over again. I need some time to think.”