Fortunately, the baronet recovered the next day and provided the explanation himself.
‘For some reason I seem to be prone to receiving blows on the head,’ he said. ‘I have a thick skull, but every once in a while I get such a blow that even its walls cannot withstand the force. Sometimes, say about one out of three times, a complete amnesia results. I then revert to the state in which I was before I encountered white people. I am once again the uncivilised Wolf-Man. I have no memory of anything that occurred before I was fourteen years old. This state may last for only a day, as you have seen, or it may persist for months.’
‘I would venture to say,’ Holmes said, ‘that this readiness to forget your contact with civilised peoples indicates an unconscious desire to avoid them. You are happiest when in the jungle and with no obligations. Hence your unconscious seizes upon every opportunity, such as a blow on the head, to go back to the happy primal time.’
‘Perhaps you are right,’ the baronet said. ‘I would like to forget civilisation even exists.’
Later, when Holmes and I were alone, Holmes said, ‘The man is a fraud but a magnificent fraud, I’m convinced of that. However, he is in a sense not a liar. He truly belives that he is Mowgli, brother to the Wolves, the Black Panther, and the Brown Bear. In the beginning, he was a hoaxer, for profit, I’m certain. But he cast himself so thoroughly into the role that he became insane, descended into a madness reflecting Kipling’s world of The Jungle Book. It is, however a rather harmless insanity and one profitable for us.’
‘Holmes,’ I said, ‘I’ve been meaning to speak to you about this. Don’t you think that there’s extortion involved in this, a form of blackmail . . .’
He drew himself up and cut me off sharply.
‘Not at all! I am ready to begin the investigation, a sincere one to which I shall apply a lifetime of experience, the moment he gives the word.’
‘Which he is not going to do,’ I said.
‘We don’t know that,’ he said. ‘Besides, that’s his business.’
It took more than a month for us to get to Nairobi. During the journey, I had ample time to teach Nylepthah the English language and to get well acquainted with her. Before we reached the Lake Victoria railhead, I had proposed to her and been accepted. I will never forget that night. The moon was bright, and a hyena was laughing nearby.
The day before we reached the railhead, the baronet went up a tree to check out the territory. A branch broke under his feet, and he landed on his head. When he regained consciousness, he was again the Wolf-Man. We could not come near him without his baring his teeth and growling menacingly. And that night he disappeared.
Holmes was very downcast by this. ‘What if he never gets over his amnesia, Watson? Then we will be cheated out of our fees.’
‘My dear Holmes,’ I said, somewhat coolly, ‘we never earned the fee in the first place. Actually, we were allowing ourselves to be bribed by the baronet to keep silent.’
‘You never did understand the subtle interplay of economics and ethics,’ Holmes replied.
‘There goes Von Bork,’ I said, glad to change the subject. I pointed to the fellow, who was sprinting across the veldt as if a lion were after him.
‘He is mad if he thinks he can make his way alone to German East Africa,’ Holmes said. ‘But we must go after him! He has on him the formula for the SB.’
‘Where?’ I asked for the hundredth time. ‘We have stripped him a dozen times and gone over every inch of his clothes and his skin. We have looked into his mouth and up . . .’
At that moment I observed Von Bork turn his head to the right to look at a rhinoceros which had come around a tall termite hill. The next moment, he had run the left side of his head and body into an acacia tree with such force that he bounced back several feet. He did not get up, which was just as well. The rhinoceros was looking for him and would have detected any movement by Von Bork. After prancing around and sniffing the air in several directions, the weak-eyed beast trotted off. Holmes and I hastened to Von Bork before he got his senses back and ran off once more.
‘I believe I know where the formula is,’ Holmes said.
‘And how could you know that?’ I said, for the thousandth time since I had first met him.
‘I will bet my fee against yours that I can show you the formula within the next two minutes,’ he said, but I did not reply.
He kneeled down beside the German, who was lying on his back, his mouth and eyes open. His pulse, however, beat strongly.
Holmes spaced the tips of his thumb under Von Bork’s left eye. I stared aghast as the eye popped out.
‘It’s glass, Watson,’ Holmes said. ‘I had suspected that for some time, but I saw no reason to verify my suspicions until he was in a British prison. I was certain that his vision was limited to his right side when I saw him run into that tree. Even with his head turned away he would have seen it if his left eye had been effective.’
He rotated the glass eye between thumb and finger while examining it through the magnifying glass. ‘Aha!’ he exclaimed and then, handing the eye and glass to me, said, ‘See for yourself, Watson.’
‘Why,’ I said, ‘what I had thought were massive haemorrhages due to eye injury are tiny red lines of chemical formulae on the surface of the glass—if it is glass, and not some special material prepared to receive inscriptions.’
‘Very good, Watson,’ Holmes said. ‘Undoubtedly, Von Bork did not merely receive an injury to the eye in that motor-car crash of which I heard rumours. He lost it, but the wily fellow had it replaced with an artificial eye which had more uses than—ahem—met the eye.
‘After stealing the SB formula, he inscribed the surface of this false organ with the symbols. These, except through a magnifier, look like the results of dissipation or of an accident. He must have been laughing at us when we examined him so thoroughly, but he will laugh no more.’ He took the eye back and pocketed it. ‘Well, Watson, let us rouse him from whatever dreams he is indulging in and get him into the proper hands. This time he shall pay the penalty for espionage.’
Two months later were were back in England. We travelled by water, despite the danger of U-boats, since Holmes had sworn never again to get into an aircraft of any type. He was in a bad humour throughout the voyage. He was certain that the baronet, even if he recovered his memory, would not send the promised cheques.
He turned the glass eye over to Mycroft, who sent it on to his superiors. That was the last we ever heard of it, and since the SB was never used, I surmise that the War Office decided that it would be too horrible a weapon. I was happy about this, since it just did not seem British to wage germ warfare. I have often wondered, though, what would have happened if Von Bork’s mission had been successful. Would the Kaiser have countenanced SB as a weapon against his English cousins?
There were still two years of war to get through. I found lodgings for my wife and myself, and, despite the terrible conditions, the air raids, the food and material shortages, the dismaying reports from the front, we managed to be happy. In 1917 Nylepthah did what none of my previous wives had ever done. She presented me with a son. I was delirious with joy, even though I had to endure much joshing from my colleagues about fatherhood at my age. I did not inform Holmes of the baby. I dreaded his sarcastic remarks.
On November 11, 1919, however, a year after the news that turned the entire Allied world into a carnival of happiness, though a brief one, I received a wire.
‘Bringing a bottle and cigars to celebrate the good tidings. Holmes.’
I naturally assumed that he referred to the anniversary of the Armistice. My surprise was indeed great when he showed up not only with the bottle of Scotch and a box of Havanas but a bundle of new clothes and toys for the baby and a box of chocolates for Nylepthah. The latter was a rarity at this time and must have cost Holmes some time and money to obtain.
‘Tut, tut, my dear fellow,’ he said when I tried to express my thanks. ‘I’ve known for some time that yo
u were the proud father. I have always intended to show up and tender my respects to the aged, but still energetic, father and to the beautiful Mrs. Watson. Never mind waking the infant up to show him to me, Watson. All babies look alike, and I will take your word for it that he is beautiful.’
‘You are certainly jovial,’ I said. ‘I do not ever remember seeing you more so.’
‘With good reason, Watson, with good reason!’
He dipped his hand into his pocket and brought out a cheque.
I looked at it and almost staggered. It was made out to me for the sum of thirty thousand pounds.
‘I had given up on Sir Mowgli,’ he said. ‘I heard that he was missing, lost somewhere in deepest Africa, probably dead. Then I heard that that utter bitch, Countess Murdstone-Malcon, had managed to get to safety and civilisation. It seemed to me to be one of the ironies of fate, or of the vast indifference of nature, that she should survive and he die. But, Watson, he did surface eventually, he was in good health, and, most fortunate for us, he had recovered his memory!
‘And so, my dear fellow, one of the first things he did on getting to Nairobi was to send the cheques! Both in my care, of course!’
‘I can certainly use it,’ I said. ‘This will enable me to retire instead of working until I am eighty.’
I poured two drinks for us and we toasted our good fortune. Holmes sat back in the chair, puffing upon the excellent Havana and watching Mrs. Watson bustle about her housework.
‘She won’t allow me to hire a maid,’ I said. ‘She insists on doing all the work, including the cooking, herself. Except for the baby and myself, she does not like to touch anyone or be touched by anyone. Sometimes I think . . .’
‘Then she has shut herself off from all but you and the baby,’ he said.
‘You might say that,’ I replied. ‘She is happy, though, and that is what matters.’
Holmes took out a small notebook and began making notes in it. He would look up at Nylepthah, watch her for a minute, and record something.
‘What are you doing, Holmes?’ I said.
His answer showed me that he, too, could indulge in a pawky humour when his spirits were high.
‘I am making some observations upon the segregation of the queen.’
Mr Montalba, Obsequist
H. F. Heard
I nervously took a pinch at the bell-chain. From inside the house there answered a deep musical clang. ‘If you take a pinch then give you a knell,’ I tittered to myself. I always fall into puns when I’m nervous. I also always notice a number of irrelevant things—I noticed that the house was really in too good taste. The door was mahogany polished till it was like tortoise shell. Its rich tawnyness was framed in a beautiful mellow freestone, Naples yellow in tone, obviously too perfect in grain ever to have come from a quarry: the facade rose in perfect proportions right up to a balustraded cornice where, against a powder-blue sky, stood at decent intervals elegant high-shouldered urns. ‘A gentleman who is really well dressed,’ I quoted to myself, ‘always has on one thing that is old.’ The house was a brand-new piece of traditional art.
A sound made my eye come to earth. The door had opened. In it stood a man illustrating, better than the house, my remark. He was dressed in a morning suit made of the finest dove-grey worsted, a silver grey cravat at his neck, grey kid gloves on his hands. He had already remarked, ‘Please enter.’ I had done so and a coloured servant in a maroon livery had ‘relieved me’ of my hat and cane before I had my wits sufficiently about me to begin:
‘I’ve come . . .’
‘Only too pleased to show you,’ sheared off the body of my explanation and I found myself being ushered slowly down a long passage while, in contrast to our processional pace, a flood of the quickest and strangest ‘patter’ I’d ever heard poured voluminously into my ears.
‘This way to the Obsequarium.’
‘The what?’
‘Ah, you don’t know? Le mot juste, I think you must allow. It came to me in a moment, and with it I knew I could give le coup de grace to all competition. It’s patented, of course—as is, naturally, the process. But what’s a process without a name? Indeed, I believe that had I to choose to make my way with either the process or the name, I’d choose the name. Of course the process is fascinating to a technician and naturally one has the specialist’s interest. But how could the public? They want a word and what is more they demand a nan-descriptive word. Our profession is a key profession just because of that. We undertake’—the word was just a little raised—‘to make possible for people to mention the unmentionable. There’s where I saw my opportunity. The others were content to follow public taste or, if you will, pix-taste. I was the first to show that fashions could be made. If in finery, why not in funerals? The profession was clinging to the past. The black mourning tradition? What was all that but a confession of defeat—cover up everything, have the event at night, keep everything in the shadow. I was the first to say, ‘We solicit the closest inspection. We take the public fully into our confidence.’ Indeed, the time was overdue for a break with tradition. Morticians! Funeral Homes!! I know they meant well. But you know to what place the way is paved with good intentions. They wanted people to face up to death and be soberly bright about it. But these good fellows were more than a little out of date. I saw that. There’s now no need for the public to face up to death—at least, not to anyone else’s. Aeternitas settled that! You didn’t know about Aeternitas? Of course this is an age of specialization. Still Aeternitas did rather step over frontiers. It was a German invention. They used it, with considerable commercial success, at the big Berlin Zoo. How? “Take an inmate home. Have a permanentized pet.” There they lay, curled up in solid sleep—cats, dogs, lion pups, rare apes. The Zoo casualty list had been capitalized—a loss turned into a profit. The dead paid for the living. More, there wasn’t a limit to size—a beetle to an elephant, it was all the same. There wasn’t any taxidermy trickery about it. No, what you got was a real animal—so real that if you chose to cut it right through, you’d find cross-sectioned every bit of it, every organ. That, I own, was what set my mind on it. You know all that romance about hearts kept in gold cases and vases. Well, of course, you could have a piece—excuse my anatomical expertism—a piece of gristle, but a heart—No. But with Aeternitas—why, I saw at once there was the real thing, shapely, the plump curves, and hard—well, not as stone but as a good plastic—stand up to any amount of handling and quite a moderate amount of not too bitter tears without even losing its gloss. But why stop at hearts—why not go straight for wholes? Who’d carry a heart about in a vase when they could have the departed entire, sitting at home! Grim? No grimmer than a photograph! Grimness, gruesomeness? All that, I do assure you, is vieux jeu—the frisson of an age which had to be macabre faule de mieux. Aeternitas is the triumph of sanity and sanitation over false and musty romance. That was my first stroke. “Meet your dear one again at my reception parlour, and take him back home.” “Why leave him in the tomb when you may have him at the table?” From that it was only a step to parties.’ Mr. Montalba threw open the door at the end of the long passage along which he had discharged his soliloquy.
The chamber was large. Through high windows on the left a flood of golden light—far more mellow than our common-or-garden sun ever emits—poured, in slanting rays, onto a fine Persian carpet. It was possible to see through the window. The ground outside it sparkled smoothly snow-white.
‘Cosiness set in purity,’ whispered Mr. Montalba in my ear, ‘that’s what we want when we are’—he paused, not so much to get the word as to see that I did—‘adjusting to the new relationship.’
On the side from the window was a cheerful fireplace where logs which had reached a perfect glow of incandescence continued indefinitely to candesce. The appositeness was so obvious that he only waved a kid-glove hand towards it. Two fine Sheraton armchairs were drawn up each side of the hearth. Each was occupied, the occupants gazing meditatively at the glow.
> ‘Perfect lighting for a restful impression—the gentle flickering light gives a sense of peace without any solemn rigidity. You see, the smiles seem almost to play. We flatter ourselves on our smiles and feel they deserve the best of lighting to bring them out. Anything set would be worse than a droop. We aim at a quiet playfulness and I am sure you will agree that we have hit it. When the loved one returns home, permamently’—the word was stressed—‘we always arrange the home-coming. We have planned a series of “settings” to suit every purse, from the simplest “cosy-corner” just for one inmate to the family wing to be built on to mansions. We have just completed quite an ambitious design—the old family butler is seated in a small back room looking contentedly at some perfect rustless-steel replicas of the family silver, with his polishing cloth still in his hand. In the front room are the grandparents each side of the fire, with a few spare chairs for relations who drop in for a few moments—or come for good. Upstairs, at the piano, is their daughter, the charming consumptive, and turning her music, the young man who when she became permanent, for a while went quite to pieces, but now is perfectly recollected, composed. Keats would have found his Grecian Urn surpassed—“For ever will he love and she be fair.” In the room above is the nursery, presided over, as it should be, by the dear old family nurse brooding over the little angel in his crib and the two-year-old gazing with childish solemnity at the fire.’
‘I’m not the Press,’ I got out at last.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Mr. Montalba’s style changed in a twinkling. ‘Forgive me. We’ve only opened lately in this new mansion and of course we have roused much intelligent curiosity. I thought you were from a woman’s magazine. But,’ and he already had my fingers between two grey gloved hands, ‘you had come for an appointment? You have a dear one ready or nearly ready to be permanented? Oh, please, don’t start—yes, we like a little notice. Sometimes I drop around and make just a study or two from life—get the pose, you know. Many people make all arrangements with me—in advance. Then I can—how may I put it—avoid any awkward little hiatus.’
The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes II Page 16