The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols

by Nicholas Meyer

  “Times are changing, dearest,” she said, embracing me once more. “And you will have to change with them. It is a certainty women will get the vote. Edith’s mother was a doctor, you know. And she herself attended college.”

  I sniffed. “What in heaven’s name can the author of Barbarous Babe—wasn’t that the title of her novel?—have to do with Zionist Congresses in Switzerland?”

  “I daresay nothing,” she replied, “but she is married to the foremost Zionist in England.”

  “What?”

  “Israel Zangwill. Surely you’ve read him.”

  Of course I had, along with everyone else. “The Dickens of the Ghetto,” as Zangwill had been nicknamed. His prolific writings, his journalism, his essays, his humorous pieces had appeared for years in Jerome’s Idler magazine, in competition, I had to own, with my accounts of Holmes’s exploits in the Strand. Somewhere I’d heard that a play of Zangwill’s, The Melting Pot, was a success in New York, and though I’d not read it, I certainly knew of his novel Children of the Ghetto. I understood him to be a pacifist and a champion of the suffragette movement and had, from time to time, chanced to read articles of his on both topics. I seldom subscribed to his politics but confess I enjoyed his wit.

  But I had unaccountably missed his Zionism.

  “Where does your friend Mrs. Zangwill live?” I asked my wife.

  * * *

  9 January. Thus it was that the following morning, Sherlock Holmes and I paid a call on the famous author at his home at 24 Oxford Road, Kilburn, very much in the northern part of the city. As was his custom when in the exercise of his profession, Holmes had given no advance notice of his intention to visit. He sent in his card with the girl, and we waited on the steps, surveying the vicinity to pass the time. The detective looked about and commented, “I see the neighbourhood is slowly being taken over by the Irish.”

  Without troubling to take the bait and inquire as to how he reached this conclusion, I exclaimed, “Holmes, surely this errand will prove a pointless diversion. We are merely indulging your brother’s attempts at procrastination. And he may devise still further excuses in order to delay our departure.”

  “Possibly,” he allowed. “But Mycroft’s penchant for methodical preparation is not so easily dismissed. The tortoise has been known to outstrip the hare. And it must be said as well my work is seldom the lightning flashes of inspiration and intuition of which you remain so fond. As I’m sure you’ve learned by now, much of it involves drudgery, knocking on doors”—here he gestured with slender fingers to the blue portal behind us—“asking many questions, and taking accurate notes.”

  I took this to be another sly dig at my abilities, and was on the point of saying as much when the girl returned, bobbed a second curtsy, and brought us in to see the great man.

  Zangwill was ensconced behind a large antique desk that was in reality little more than an ornate table, having no drawers that I could see. Its surface was covered with foolscap and other papers and situated like an island, almost at the centre of the high-ceilinged room, whose four walls were crammed with all manner of books from top to bottom.

  The elegant man rose from his chair and came round to greet us. He was more slender even than my companion.

  “Mr. Holmes.” He smiled broadly, his intelligent brown eyes magnified behind a pince-nez.

  “It is an honor,” Holmes began, but the other halted him in mid-salutation with a palm raised outward.

  “Not a bit of it,” he protested. “Who has not read of your exploits and longed to meet England’s most famous detective? The honor is entirely mine!”

  His hair was dark and very curly, and the pince-nez straddled an enormous, beaky nose amid a florid countenance. Yet the total effect was not altogether displeasing. His posture was as sturdily erect as any officer’s in the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers.

  Then he turned to me, covering my hand with both of his. “Dr. Watson, I presume.” He grinned appreciatively at his own joke. “Behold the competition!”

  “Hardly.” I was annoyed to find myself simpering.

  The writer now gestured expansively to a pair of identical chairs. “I learn our wives are fellow soldiers in the cause of women’s equality.”

  “Well,” I harrumphed uncertainly. Seeing this was a topic about which I harbored some ambivalence, he changed the subject.

  “And I understand we have both been married for roughly the same length of time. If it is not indiscreet to compare notes,” he said with a laugh, “how are you, connubially speaking?”

  “Very well.”

  Our pleasantries, like a well run dry, seemed to have died out. Zangwill looked about in search of another conversational gambit.

  “May I offer you gentlemen a morning’s refreshment? Some tea? Mr. Holmes, are you about to favor me with any of your deductions?”

  “Alas,” the detective replied, “they are scanty. Your parents were born overseas, you spent your childhood somewhere in the south of England—Exeter?—later lived in the East End, and were, yes, I think, for a time a schoolteacher. You have a university degree, but not, I think, from either Oxford or Cambridge. And you are a father. Otherwise, I think, your career is a matter of public record.”

  Zangwill’s features widened into a grin. “Plymouth, not Exeter, but otherwise first rate. Splendid. Of course, I must not ask how you know all these things.”

  “It would be like asking a magician to explain his tricks,” Holmes concurred, smiling in turn. “Thank you for seeing us on such short notice. It is certainly a privilege to meet the author from whom I have learned so much about impoverished London.”

  “I describe what I see, even as you,” the other said, volleying the compliment. “Those places in the East End about which I’ve written were where, as you surmise, I spent my childhood. I have been fortunate to escape them.”

  Given his present comfortable surroundings, which included the broad Axminster beneath our feet, this was putting it mildly. Zangwill regarded Holmes expectantly. He was politely waiting to learn our errand.

  Perceiving this, the detective took the plunge.

  “I believe you were acquainted with the late Theodor Herzl,” he began.

  If this sentence startled him, Israel Zangwill concealed the fact.

  “Unhappy man. His death a senseless tragedy.”

  “You were close?”

  “At one time.” Zangwill sighed, and his characteristic good humor seemed to desert him.

  “Theodor Herzl changed my life,” he went on with feeling. “He turned up on my doorstep, the very same doorstep you gentlemen trod on just now, oh…” He cast his eyes towards the ceiling, doing mental arithmetic. “… perhaps ten years ago, bursting with dynamism. Possessed of an almost messianic energy and conviction. The man could simply not sit still. One might almost characterize him as a sort of Jewish Joan of Arc.”

  “And he spoke to you of the need for a Jewish homeland.”

  “He said we were a nation without a country, and for many years, I subscribed to this idea. I believe he hardly slept, so consumed was he by the mission he had assigned himself. He was constantly on the move, on and off every conveyance, traveling ceaselessly throughout Europe to Russia to England and back again.”

  “And you attended Zionist Congresses on that subject, convened by Herr Herzl in Switzerland?”

  Zangwill blinked, evidently surprised anew at Holmes’s knowledge. “Many. I believe Switzerland was chosen because of its neutral locale. I count his death a great loss, even though we were no longer in accord.”

  “Oh?”

  “What Theodor had in mind was a reconstituted Jewish state—after two thousand years!—to be located where it had originated.”

  “You are speaking of Palestine?”

  “Precisely, yes, Palestine. For a long while I agreed with him. My position, I must own, proceeded from a certain ignorance. I believed Palestine to be largely uninhabited.”

  “Uninhabited?” Holmes
echoed without inflection.

  Zangwill made a placatory motion with his hands. “Unoccupied, if that sounds better. I imagined a few scattered Bedouin, some camels, and little more. Believing that, Palestine made perfect sense to me. At the time,” he added, now pressing the tips of his fingers together in a gesture I recognized as characteristic of Holmes.

  “And later?”

  “Over the years and as the result of my reading, I was disabused of this naïve notion. Palestine is home to some six hundred thousand Arabs. Learning this, I proved utterly unable to wrap my mind around the prospect of attempting to displace such a number, as would inevitably be the case, should a vast Jewish migration occur there. If you wish to give a country to a people without a country, it is utter foolishness to allow it to be the country of two peoples. This can only cause trouble. The Jews will suffer, and so will their neighbours.”

  “I take it Herr Herzl was not of your opinion.”

  “Quite the contrary. Though successive Zionist Congresses discussed alternatives—Madagascar was mentioned, among others—Theodor became increasingly wedded to a Palestinian homeland and obdurate regarding alternatives. I myself championed the possibility of another location, one within the British Empire.”

  “Are you acquainted with Professor Charles Weizmann?” Holmes asked.

  Zangwill again seemed to marvel at the detective’s knowledge. “Yes, of course. His real first name is Chaim. We encountered one another several times in Basel. He is now at the University of Manchester, I believe. A chemist, as I recall?”

  “Just so. And what were the professor’s feelings in regard to the location of a Jewish homeland, do you know?”

  “He made no secret of it. We had no secrets,” Zangwill emphasized. “Chaim Weizmann was all-in-all in agreement with Theodor Herzl. As they saw it, the geographic nation of Israel had to be located in Palestine.” He shook his head and jumped up in agitation at the memory. “I, meantime, had arrived at a different conclusion. Assimilation!” Zangwill held up a rigid index finger. “That is the key to human survival! We must all blend or perish. America has the right idea,” he continued, “a melting pot of nationalities, mongrel races, and ethnic identities. I wrote a play about it.”

  “The Melting Pot,” I supplied.

  “Still running on Broadway in New York!” Zangwill fairly chortled. “Listen to this.” His fastidious manner momentarily cast aside, he rummaged excitedly among the clutter on his desk, and shortly flourished a piece of stationery. “From the White House! Received three days ago!” He cleared his throat and read, “Dear Mr. Zangwill, your play, ‘The Melting Pot,’ I shall always count among the very strong and real influences upon my thought and life. Sincerely, President Theodore Roosevelt. I mean to have it framed,” he concluded, flourishing the letter.

  “You are rightly proud of such an achievement,” Holmes said. “But to return for a moment, to Herr Herzl and a Jewish homeland…”

  “British East Africa, that’s what I had in mind. That’s what I tried to convince him to consider.” Zangwill let the president’s letter flutter among the others concealing his desk. “Uganda. But he would hear none of it, and as I could not bring myself any longer to embrace the Palestinian notion, we fell out. Herr Herzl was on fire. He couldn’t wait, and he could brook no faltering. I am not wedded to Uganda,” he added with a shrug of his shoulders. “But if there is to be a Jewish homeland, it must be somewhere where Jews are not dispossessing an indigenous population.”

  “It’s an old problem,” Holmes responded thoughtfully. “Your ‘melting pot’ has made short work of the American Indian.”

  “True,” the other allowed with a rueful expression.

  I did not say so, but it occurred to me Herzl’s argument for Palestine might be made on the same basis. Who, after all, had been first in the Holy Land?

  Plucking a small cambric handkerchief from his sleeve, Zangwill removed his pince-nez and polished the lenses energetically before replacing the glasses on the bridge of his nose and tucking the cloth back into its accustomed place. “America must be regarded as a work in progress.”

  “Like all humanity,” suggested the detective tactfully. “Can you tell me, or have you any idea, what prompted Herr Herzl’s obsession with the creation of a Jewish homeland? Jews, after all, have lived for two thousand years in all countries of the world.”

  “As it happens, I have a very clear idea of what drove him,” Zangwill answered. “It drives many of us, though not perhaps to an early grave. Have either of you gentlemen ever heard of Kishinev?”

  Holmes and I traded glances.

  “We have not.”

  Zangwill hesitated, then rose and drew from a cupboard beneath the bookshelves behind him an enormous rolled map, which he unfurled across his desk.

  “Kishinev is a village in Bessarabia, lately a province of Russia in the Pale of Settlement.” He pointed it out on the map of that country. “It is an unremarkable provincial town, roughly a hundred miles from glamorous Odessa…”

  “What an enormous country,” I realized.

  “Gigantic,” Zangwill affirmed. “The United States boasts four time zones; Russia spans eleven, were they to compute them.”

  “Kishinev,” Holmes repeated, his finger under the name. “What does ‘the Pale of—’”

  “Two years ago in Kishinev, a massacre of Jews took place. The town had a large Jewish population, but over the course of a mere two days, fifty were killed and over six hundred raped or wounded. More than a thousand Jewish homes were ransacked and destroyed.”*

  “The crimes keep getting bigger,” Holmes murmured.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nothing,” the detective assured him, his finger still hovering over the place.

  “Did you say six hundred?” I began.

  “Raped or wounded. Many burned alive. By their Christian neighbours. The carnage was horrific.”

  “Goyim,” Holmes murmured.

  Zangwill’s features once more registered surprise. “Just so. Such massacres are not uncommon in Russia. They are referred to as pogroms.”

  “Po…”

  “Pogroms. Kishinev was only the most recent and arguably most vicious. The authorities encourage them, using Jewish successes to egg on jealousies they augment with literature calculated to inflame Christians who have otherwise lived in harmony with their Semitic neighbours for generations. Pogroms have become a sort of steam governor for the enraged populace of a failed state.”

  “The conditioned reflex,” I heard Holmes mutter under his breath.

  “In this case, the murder of a Christian child was blamed on the Jews, who had allegedly used him in ritual sacrifice, pasting his blood above their door lintels during the ceremony we know as Passover. The blame didn’t vanish even when it was discovered the boy had been murdered by his own cousin. Rumors are hard to rectify, and prejudice difficult to undo.”

  Zangwill rolled up the map and replaced it as we resumed our chairs.

  “It was Kishinev that sent Herzl racing to Russia, trying to see the Tsar. He failed. But after the Kishinev pogrom he became ever more frantic on the subject of a homeland for European Jewry. I believe he actually confronted Kaiser Wilhelm personally during a visit to Jerusalem.”

  “But surely,” I said, “his concerns were limited to Russia. Such a thing could never happen in a modern European society.”

  Zangwill favored me with a penetrating expression.

  “You’re saying—correct me if I’m mistaken—that such a thing could not happen here?”

  Something in his tone gave me pause.

  “Yes, I suppose I am,” I conceded, beginning to feel uneasy without knowing why.

  Zangwill stared pensively into the middle distance.

  “You’re aware the coronation of Richard the Lionheart was celebrated at the time by massacring all the Jews to be found in England?”

  “That was a long time ago,” I objected.

  He inclined h
is head, allowing the point.

  “Are you gentlemen familiar with Saki?”

  “A Japanese rice wine?” Holmes responded.

  It seemed to me the writer suppressed a smile. “Saki,” he explained, searching his shelves, “is the nom de plume of a British writer of amusing, sometimes trenchant short stories, H. H. Munro. Hector Hugh,” he filled in the initials.

  “Regrettably, my work does not give me much time to read fiction,” Holmes explained in turn, a trifle embarrassed, I thought.

  Zangwill pulled a slender volume from the shelves and thumbed through it ’til he found what he was looking for. “This is a story by Saki called ‘The Unrest-Cure.’ In it Saki’s mischievous hero, Clovis, is playing a practical joke on a middle-aged couple named Huddle, whose complacency he wishes to…” He searched for the words. “… wishes to shake up.”

  Zangwill then read aloud from the book:

  “This very night is going to be a great night in the history of Christendom,” said Clovis. “We are going to massacre every Jew in the neighbourhood!” “But there aren’t thirty Jews in the whole neighbourhood!” protested Huddle. “We have twenty-six on our list,” said Clovis, referring to a bundle of notes. “Do you mean to tell me you are meditating violence against a man like Sir Leon Birberry?” stammered Huddle. “He’s down on our list,” said Clovis carelessly. “We’ve got some Boy Scouts helping us as auxiliaries.” “This thing will be a blot on the twentieth century!” exclaimed Huddle. “And your house will be the blotting pad. Have you realized that half the papers of Europe and the United States will publish pictures of it?”

  Zangwill gently shut the book. “It’s played for laughs,” he reminded us. “But beneath the laughter lurks another possibility, would you not agree?”

  “The possibility that under adverse economic conditions,” suggested Holmes, “and prompted by sufficiently persuasive propaganda masquerading as truth, ignorant folk might be brought to turn on neighbours with whom they have never quarreled before.”