The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols

by Nicholas Meyer

  It was after two when Mrs. Hudson opened the door for me at Baker Street. I was breathless and frozen, but at least not wet, for the rain had finally let up.

  “Is he waiting for me?” I asked as I handed her my coat.

  “Yes, he’s upstairs and—”

  I had no time to hear the rest of the sentence, but hobbled up the seventeen steps to 221B and found the door ajar. Conscious only of my tardiness, I entered, not troubling to ponder this anomaly.

  A tall gentleman with what I should describe as a messy Vandyke and the thickest pair of spectacles I had ever seen turned to face me. He peered in my direction through what appeared to be the green-tinted bottoms of Burgundy wine bottles.

  “Ah, Dr. Watson.” He greeted me with an almost indecipherable accent. It was all I could do to recognize my own name.

  I was, however, not taken in. The detective had played this game too often.

  “Really, Holmes, at your age, I would think you are beyond this schoolboy practice of theatrical disguises, and your attempt at a Russian accent, if I may say so, is lamentable. Kindly remove that getup and those ridiculous glasses. You’ll do yourself an injury sooner or later if you don’t discard them.”

  “Watson, may I present Professor Charles Weizmann, senior lecturer in chemistry from the University of Manchester?” Holmes chuckled behind me.

  To say that I was mortified is rather to understate the case, but Professor Weizmann appeared in no way put out. On the contrary, the whole episode seemed to provide him boundless amusement, and he took my error in good part.

  “To be mistaken for Sherlock Holmes,” said he in his almost impenetrable speech, laughing heartily, “may be the high point of my career. I cannot wait to tell Vera!” By whom I assumed he referred to his wife. The professor held out a large hand, stained with what I took to be the by-products of his laboratory handiwork.

  “We were just about to take some sherry,” Holmes informed me, walking to the deal table that contained his own odiferous chemical supply and, in addition, his stock of spirits. “Would you care to join us?”

  “I think I’d better,” said I, attempting to regain my composure and sinking into the green chair with the extruding horsehair.

  “I went up to Manchester by train, as you know,” Holmes explained, generously pouring out the amber liquid. “A curious place,” with a nod to our guest, “if I may say so. Nothing but factories belching smoke to blot out the sun, accompanied by the omnipresent din of steam-driven machinery. I took a room for the night near the university and boned up on Professor Weizmann,” to whom he offered a second inclination of the head. “Learning from the porter where he would be lecturing this morning, I attended, sitting in the top tier of the auditorium, introducing myself afterwards and explaining something of my errand.

  “As it happened, by happy coincidence, the professor was due to catch a train to town for a conference at the London Polytechnic, and so it made sense to travel back together. I’ve offered him your old bed for the night to help him economize. I take it you’ve no objections?”

  “None whatever,” I was relieved to say, and hoisted my glass in his direction. “What are you working on these days, Professor?” I was eager to make amends for my grotesque blunder and thought to take an interest in his career.

  “Acetone,” came the heavily accented answer.

  I glanced at Holmes, whose eyes twinkled merrily. He was still convulsed by my mistake.

  “Acetone?” I repeated, determined to make up lost ground. “Isn’t that paint thinner?”

  “It has many uses,” Weizmann allowed. “The human body produces and disposes of it naturally, but it has agricultural and cosmetic benefits as well. Currently I am working on an acetone-butanol-ethanol fermentation process of my own devising with a view to production on an industrial scale.”

  He might as well have been speaking Chinese. All I could pluck from it was “Industrial? Whatever for? How much paint thinner do we need?”

  The professor shot Holmes a look. The detective nodded, and he turned back to me. “Acetone is required for the creation of cordite.”

  “Cordite?” I regarded them both with astonishment. “As a substitute for gunpowder? Why on earth are we talking about gunpowder? All Europe is at peace.”

  “Asia is not,” the professor replied, finally seating himself and crossing his legs. “In point of fact, revolution has broken out in Russia.”

  I stared at Holmes.

  “When?”

  “Today, in fact,” the detective replied equably. “We’ve had the news via telegraph. It will doubtless be in all the evening papers.”

  Revolution. Constance had alluded to the possibility yesterday.

  “In the port of Odessa.” Weizmann took up the story. “Sailors aboard the battleship Potemkin apparently have mutinied and murdered their officers.* The latest word is that the citizens of Odessa have gone over to the mutineers, supplying them with food in some manner of small boat brigade. If the rest of the fleet joins the rebellion, it could spread inland and become a full-fledged revolution. Other nations, such as Germany, may attempt to exploit the situation, but Russia, you may know, has entangling alliances with both France and England, so theoretically the thing could soon get out of hand.”

  “You seem very well versed in politics for a chemistry professor,” I noted with confusion.

  “And if the revolution does spread,” he went on, addressing Holmes, “you may be sure the blame will fall upon the Jews.”

  “Ah.” Suddenly pieces began to fall into place. I couldn’t see the picture, but I was starting to make out the frame.

  “Why not tell Dr. Watson what you have conveyed to me about Theodor Herzl and the Zionist conferences in Basel?” Holmes suggested, sitting at last and putting up his feet, hands clasped behind his head.

  Weizmann took another sip of sherry.

  “Anti-Semitism is a familiar aspect of life in Russia, where I was born,” he explained. “Jews are natural scapegoats, usually resented for their business acumen, but rather than state this openly, they accuse us instead of ridiculous obscenities such as requiring the blood of a Christian child to celebrate our holy days.”

  “The blood of—?”

  “Russia is a primitive place,” Professor Weizmann continued. “Legends and superstitions take easy root and proliferate. The Tsar in photographs may appear an identical twin to his first cousin, your Prince of Wales—recall they are in fact both grandsons of Queen Victoria—but there the resemblance ceases. The Tsar is ignorant and backward, entirely ruled by his equally uneducated wife, who surrounds herself with mad holy men and allows them to make policy. When the Great Houdini performed for their court a year ago, he stupefied one and all by causing the Kremlin bells to ring, which they had not done in a hundred years. The Tsar, followed by his entourage, genuflected, trembling, and crossed himself, praising Houdini for a saint.” Weizmann’s amusement was magnified by his glasses. “He would have been appalled to learn the Great Houdini turns out to be another Jew, Ehrich Weiss, a rabbi’s son from Budapest,” he added, with what I took to be more than a touch of pride. “Nicholas is quite content to let Jews shoulder the blame for Russia’s primitive conditions, her lack of contact with the outside world, absence of railways, electricity, paved roads, food supplies, manufactured goods…”

  The chemist paused for another sip of sherry. Holmes’s eyes were closed, not in sleep, I knew. This was his attitude of strictest attention.

  “Theodor Herzl, about whom I gather you have already heard, was concerned about the persecution of our race—not just in Russia, but over the centuries and throughout Europe as well. He realized that through an accident of history”—he shrugged—“or perhaps a history of accidents, to be more precise, Jews are a nation without a country.”

  “A nation in need of a country,” Holmes supplied, without opening his eyes.

  “Just so. A country of our own. This is the Zionist goal. Successive congresses have gr
appled with the mechanics of this question. Where would this country be? How could the territory be obtained? From whom? And of course, who would pay for such a country and who would populate it? Can you imagine the cacophony of a convocation of Jews as they fall to debating such questions?” He eyed us, evidently reconsidering his own query. “No, of course not. It would be like eavesdropping on a rabbinical discussion of the finer points of the Talmud. A Jewish homeland. It was this cause to which Theodor Herzl devoted his life’s blood.”

  “Until his sudden death,” Holmes interjected.

  “Precisely. Sudden and most regrettable. I have attended all the conferences but one,” Weizmann informed us. “Most regrettable—and most mysterious,” the professor echoed, swallowing the last of his sherry.

  “Have you any reason to suspect his death was … unnatural?” the detective inquired softly, eyes still shut.

  Unlike Mycroft, Weizmann seemingly did not feel the need to address the question of motive.

  “Herzl had already been diagnosed with a heart ailment,” he said. “But the two possibilities are not mutually exclusive. As a chemist, I need not tell you there are many ways to make a death look perfectly natural. The fact that a diathesis* had been established might have eased the task. And as you are doubtless aware, the Russians have the reputation of being the most accomplished poisoners since the Borgias.”

  In the silence that followed, I attempted to digest so much that had been said. A revolution was taking place half a world away. Events were unfolding that, if the nearsighted chemist enjoying Holmes’s sherry was correct, could conceivably drag the rest of Europe into a conflagration in which massive quantities of British gunpowder might well be required.

  In fact, Holmes and I had been involved years earlier in an effort to prevent such a conflagration. Holmes had remarked at the time that our success had likely merely postponed it.*

  Beside these grim realities, the Protocols looked more farfetched than ever. The Zionist Congresses, if Weizmann was to be believed, had nothing whatever to do with schemes of world domination but rather with the understandable yearning of a long-dispossessed people for a homeland. Had that goal been worth a woman’s life?

  “Tell Dr. Watson about the prime minister,” Holmes prompted the chemist.

  I looked from one to the other.

  “What prime minister?”

  “The present one. Arthur Balfour.”

  I could not keep the surprise from my voice. “Where does Balfour come into this?”

  Weizmann smiled modestly behind those improbable glasses. “In addition to being Prime Minister, Sir Arthur is also the MP for Manchester East, which is how we first became acquainted. I have the honor to call Sir Arthur my friend. Doubtless my current work on behalf of the British government in the possible future mass production of acetone plays some role in this. But I have had occasion to discuss the—what shall we call it?—the Jewish Question more than once with Sir Arthur.”

  Every word this remarkable man spoke was more intriguing than the last.

  “And what is Sir Arthur’s view?”

  The professor hesitated then tossed his shoulders, as much as to say, In for a penny …

  “He will not state so publicly at present, but Sir Arthur has assured me His Majesty’s Government would look with favor on the creation of a Jewish homeland.”

  “In Palestine,” Holmes added quietly.

  “He won’t say it publicly,” the professor repeated. “And of course, not everyone shares this opinion. About Palestine, I mean. Many who have attended the conferences have found the idea of a homeland carved out of the Middle East impractical and are advocating other locations. Madagascar, for example.”

  “Have you formed an opinion?”

  The professor turned to Holmes. “Would you trade London for Saskatchewan?” he inquired, smiling.

  Holmes saw that by this point I was reeling.

  “Watson, we have flooded your brain with data, but surely you have some information of your own to communicate?”

  I confess I was relieved to find myself away from murky world politics and on the firmer ground of my own recent experiences. Methodically, therefore, I laid out what Constance and I had uncovered, showing both men my handwritten copies of the two initial texts Constance and I had compared.

  Weizmann listened with gravest attention, but he was not surprised to learn of the Protocols.

  “They were published in a Russian newspaper,” he informed us.

  Holmes sat up, eyes open and shining at this intelligence.

  “Ah, the key!” he exclaimed. “The missing piece. You recall that Cuvier insisted that from a single bone it was possible to infer the entire skeleton.”

  Holmes picked up the two handwritten passages I had copied and now accorded them serious scrutiny.

  “You are learning, Watson! This news explains these seemingly superfluous word changes, so keenly noted by you.”

  I tried to conceal the pride I felt at this bouquet. For years, Holmes had twitted me that I saw but did not observe. And only this morning (while a revolution was taking place in Russia!) Constance had told me I scintillated. What a day!

  “How so?”

  “Because, dear man, the French version of the Protocols was not made from Monsieur Joly’s original tract about Machiavelli and Montesquieu. Rather it now appears that what Mycroft showed us was the French translation of a Russian text. It was a previous translator’s word choice that accounts for ‘noxious’ instead of ‘odious’ and so forth. Professor, what was the name of the newspaper that printed these Protocols?”

  Weizmann shrugged apologetically. “It was several years ago, one of many hate sheets that flourish in Russia.”

  “Which has now appeared in Paris in French,” Holmes noted gravely.

  “Holmes, this is clever,” I allowed, but still feeling duty bound to “scintillate,” I had to ask: “But how can you ascertain that the translation Mycroft gave us was made from Russian and not some other tongue?”

  “Elementary, Doctor. The proof that you missed is the singular substitution of the word ‘tsar’ for ‘emperor.’ Whoever was behind the version you were given was writing the Protocols for a Russian readership. QED.”

  The professor squinted from one to the other of us. “Was Theodor Herzl assassinated?” he demanded.

  Holmes chose not to answer. “May I pose a final question?” the detective asked instead.

  The professor took the evasion in stride. “You may pose it.” His inflection implied that no answer was guaranteed on his part.

  “Your accent, as I hear, is Slavic with an overlay of the Teutonic.”

  “That is not a question,” the other responded, smiling.

  “Yet your name is Charles, which is neither Russian nor German.”

  This time the question was at least implied.

  “Very good, Mr. Holmes. Some find my first name difficult to pronounce, so I anglicize it. My first—I do not say Christian—name is Chaim.”*

  “Chaim,” the detective repeated, striving to mimic his guttural pronunciation.

  “In Hebrew it means ‘life.’”

  Outside, searching for a taxi, I wondered aloud how Houdini had caused the silent Kremlin bells to ring for the Tsar.

  “Very simply,” Holmes replied. “He had a confederate with a silenced Mannlicher carbine and sighting scope shoot at the bells from a place of concealment, perhaps a nearby vacant flat. It had to be a carbine,” he added. “They couldn’t have taken a larger weapon apart to conceal it in their luggage.”

  I stared at my companion. “You know this?”

  He shrugged. “I deduce it.”

  5.

  CAIN AND ABEL

  Constance Garnett and I toiled the rest of the day in her windowless cubicle in the museum (charitably referred to as an office), wrestling through those interminable tracts, each more tedious than its predecessor, until closing time. At one point, in an effort to jolt myself awake, I beg
an to light a cigarette. “Please don’t,” my collaborator implored. I sighed, and replaced the tobacco in its pewter case, and we resumed our labors. Joly’s Dialogue had the dubious merit of being authentic, and one could understand his rage at the cartoonish Louis Napoleon and his Graustarkian* pretensions, but alas, Joly was no writer, and his prose, so dense and repetitive, made me wonder if anyone beside the emperor’s censors could have actually finished reading his screed.

  By contrast, the twenty-four Protocols had the defect of not only repeating much of Joly’s tendentious ideology (in many instances, word for word), but yoking them to an obnoxious thesis ad nauseam. The idea that somewhere in Mycroft’s possession were three hundred more pages like these was too dreadful to contemplate—their bile only eclipsed by their invincible dullness.

  “And what have we to show for all our exertions?” Constance demanded, pushing ineffectually at the fugitive strands of her unruly hair as the clock inched towards five.

  “We have shown beyond a reasonable doubt,” I responded, addressing in my mind a phantom jury and employing pleasing legal phraseology, “that in all likelihood the bulk of these wretched Protocols has been, as you so perspicaciously discerned, filched from Maurice Joly with the seemingly random substitution of synonyms strewn higgledy-piggledy throughout. You will be compensated for all your work,” I reminded her.

  “I can’t imagine how,” she responded drily.

  It was dark by the time the custodial staff watched with ill-concealed impatience as Constance locked her closet—for it was little more than that—and we were herded, along with others equally reluctant to quit the precincts, towards the main entrance. Outside I was accosted by a telegraph boy on his bicycle, who pulled up to the museum gates even as they were being swung shut and locked behind us.

  “Watson?” he read off his envelope. “John Watson? Dr. John Watson?”

  “Yes,” I conceded warily. Was I about to receive a communication from my wife?

  The lad handed me the envelope with my name scrawled on it and the British Museum denoted below as the address. With a sudden premonition, I knew before opening it whence it came.