The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols

by Nicholas Meyer

  “Precisely.”

  I knew the detective was looking at me. Holmes and I had recently seen such propaganda.

  “May I ask,” the detective inquired, as if reading my thoughts, “whether you are familiar with the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion?”

  The other raised his eyebrows. “I am not.”

  Holmes rose to his feet. “Watson, let us thank Mr. Zangwill for his time and for a most enlightening interview. We must be off.”

  Zangwill rose, as well. “Where do you gentlemen go next?” he inquired.

  Holmes turned to me.

  “Russia,” I informed him.

  6.

  MR. AND MRS. WALLING

  They seek him here, they seek him there,

  Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.

  Is he in heaven, is he in hell?

  That damned elusive Pimpernel!

  That insistent jingle lodged annoyingly in my brain throughout the first act of Baroness Orczy’s play concerning the secret identity of a foppish eighteenth-century lord who doubled on the sly as a daring adventurer, bent on liberating doomed French aristocrats across the Channel from the guillotine.

  I had better things with which to occupy my mind and, looking at him sitting next to me, suspected Holmes was of the same opinion. Juliet, to my left, was clearly enjoying the play, but I knew she, too, was preoccupied. I had related the substance of our meeting with her friend’s famous husband. It was the least I could do in view of the fact that it was through her offices that Holmes and I had made the connection with Israel Zangwill in the first place. Taking in what I told her of the encounter, she sensed events were likely to accelerate, but, true to her word, no remonstrance escaped her lips.

  We found ourselves at the performance of the highly touted Scarlet Pimpernel because Mycroft had chosen the New Theatre in St. Martin’s Lane for our latest assignation. Memories of the recent debacle at the Diogenes had rendered all of us skittish, and we agreed to reconvene on neutral turf.

  At the first interval, our trio congregated as arranged in the white-and-gold foyer, jammed amid playgoers, all chatting enthusiastically about the piece, with special emphasis devoted to the horses that galloped convincingly across the stage on treadmills. Many were happily reciting that cloying rhyme. I overheard talk to the effect that the Baroness was even now turning her play into a novel.

  “Brilliant choice of venue,” Holmes commented sourly. “Did our Irish friend review this claptrap? I can imagine his notice.”

  “Holmes, Shaw no longer reviews plays. Nowadays he writes them.”

  The detective grunted noncommittally at this news. Music, not theatre, was his passion. Notices for the play, I knew, were indifferent (“claptrap,” one critic had indeed written), but audiences evidently felt otherwise.

  “The safest place to keep a secret is in a crowd,” Mycroft remarked, as he succeeded in joining us. We jostled one another, trying to keep our drinks from spilling.

  “I’m going to collect my ice,” Juliet tactfully informed us. After she was out of earshot, Mycroft produced a bulky envelope and passed it to his brother.

  “Very well, you’ve convinced me,” he said. “Here are your passports and visas for France, Germany, Austro-Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Russia. You will travel as Mr. Gideon Altmont, and you, Doctor, as Colonel Rupert Morcar.”

  “Picturesque,” Holmes said.

  “You are journeying to Bessarabia to study the polyphonic motets of the Greek Orthodox liturgy at the Monastery of St. Basil.”

  “You’ve been reading Watson’s inflated accounts of my doings,” Holmes chuckled. “All motets are polyphonic, my dear Mycroft.”

  Mycroft looked briefly over his shoulder before resuming. “Your itinerary as far as Varna has been drawn up by Thomas Cook. At Varna you will change trains and proceed to Odessa in the Pale of Settlement—the Russian landmass to which Jews are restricted. From Odessa, there are no trains and precious few roads to Kishinev. You will be obliged to make your own way. Funds are on deposit at Rothschild’s. Kindly keep track of your expenses, and be mindful that His Majesty’s Government does not provide carte blanche. You are traveling second class. Such incidentals as tobacco and aperitifs will not be reimbursed.”

  “Typical,” the detective murmured. His tone suggested that he had anticipated such caveats, though the other affected not to hear this.

  “It may be cold even in warm-water ports like Odessa. Dress accordingly. And have your Mrs. Garnett send her invoice to me, poste restante,” he added, sensing I was on the point of broaching the topic, then went on, precluding any possibility of interruption, addressing his brother, “And remember this above all.” Here he lowered his voice, though in this throng there was hardly a need. I was mordantly expecting something from Polonius, but instead he whispered, “Should anything untoward befall either of you, His Majesty’s Government is unaware of your existence. They know of no Gideon Altmont or Colonel Morcar.”

  “And thus, I take it, our chances of paid interment in Highgate Cemetery, should the worst befall, you would characterize as remote.”

  Mycroft glared at his brother. “I find that remark in the worst possible taste.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes. Before you leave, I wish you to take tea tomorrow at the Savoy.”

  Yet another procrastination? I knew the thought occurred to both of us.

  “I never go there,” Holmes protested. “It’s always filled with Americans.”

  “You may well visit America one day,” his brother mused. “Doctor, did you not practice medicine in San Francisco once upon a time?”

  How he came to know this, I could not imagine.

  “In any case,” Mycroft Holmes said, ignoring my look of surprise, “it is Americans I am sending you to take tea with.”

  “We’ll never be able to book a table at this late date.”

  “I’ve taken the liberty of doing it for you. The D’Oyly Carte family was only too happy to oblige, in memory of your past services to their father.”*

  Holmes lodged a final objection. “We have a great deal to do before we depart.”

  “I promise you will find the conversation useful. They are a married couple, recently back from an extensive Russian tour.”

  “Oh?” We both perked up at this.

  “Mr. and Mrs. William English Walling. He is, I believe, a native of Kentucky.”

  Holmes frowned at this intelligence. “And why have the Wallings, so impressively named, visited Russia?”

  “Mr. Walling and his Russian-born, Jewish wife, one Anna Strunsky, are American radicals, much concerned with the plight of Russian Jews. Mrs. Walling, I am given to understand, is most becoming. We keep them under close observation.”

  “Is there anyone you don’t keep under close observation?” Holmes inquired.

  “No one, in fact. Here is their dossier.” He handed the detective a second, smaller envelope.

  I wondered at that point if there was also a dossier with my name on it. Was that how Mycroft knew of my American sojourn?

  Juliet returned with her ice. “I’ve wandered about as long as an unescorted woman decently could,” she informed us, ignoring our sour expressions as the bells recalled us for the second act.

  “I really see no need to remain here,” Holmes declared bluntly, and threaded his way to the lobby. I knew from Juliet’s look that she would be dismayed not to see the rest of the piece and offered her my arm. When I turned around, Mycroft, too, had vanished, no mean feat in his case.

  Juliet and I sat through another two hours of Sir Percy Blakeney captivating the audience, who tittered every time the baronet said, “Demme!” in his best blue-blooded drawl. All agreed that Fred Terry was splendid in the role and that the piéce de résistance was when the Pimpernel, trapped by the evil Chauvelin in a lonely Normandy farmhouse, brilliantly escaped capture at the last moment by flinging a fistful of pepper in that monster’s face, reducing him to a helpless s
neezing fit, during which our unhindered hero sauntered out the door to freedom and wild applause. I had no wish to spoil Juliet’s enjoyment by pointing out the absurdity of such a stratagem.

  * * *

  10 January. This morning I spent at the Royal Marsden, ordering my affairs and ensuring my surgical practice was seen to during my absence. Harris, always obliging (and no doubt hoping to purchase the practice on my retirement), undertook to see my general patients, and Mr. Brattler, a rising star in the department, would assume my duties in the operating theatre.* The Winslow boy’s tonsillectomy was now on the books for next Monday at eight. I sent his mother a note, apologizing for the abrupt shift in our arrangements, claiming my own indisposition as the reason.

  The night after the theatre had been a somber one. Juliet and I had by now achieved that special intimacy where words seemed unnecessary; looks and caresses sufficed. We knew the pattern of our marriage was about to undergo a significant alteration, but felt confident that neither time nor distance would fundamentally change our relations.

  When I left the hospital I traveled to Baker Street, where Holmes, in the act of packing—a surprisingly chaotic task, given his otherwise logical brain—broke off long enough to hand me the Walling-Strunsky dossier.

  “Tell me what you make of it,” said he offhandedly.

  “I am curious to know what a gentleman from Kentucky is doing in Russia,” I owned. “Peddling bourbon to the Cossacks?”

  Receiving no answer as the detective flung clothing about, I resumed my old chair, lit my pipe, and perused the file, marveling at Mycroft’s thoroughness.

  William English Walling proved to be a labor reformer and Socialist Republican (the designation was unfamiliar to me), from a wealthy Louisville family. He had been graduated from the University of Chicago, followed by Harvard Law School, after which he had moved to New York, where, in 1903, he had founded the National Women’s Trade Union League, whatever that was, but I had my suspicions. I couldn’t seem to escape the suffragist movement, I reflected dourly.

  About the woman called Anna Strunsky, far fewer facts appeared to be known. Born in Russia, she’d spent her childhood in New York before moving to San Francisco. Where and when or even if she’d married Walling were not specified. “Novelist” was the only other note attached to her file.

  “It seems straightforward enough,” I commented. “What there is of it.”

  “You surprise me.” Holmes sat on his battered valise to close it. “I’ve not been to America, but surely it excites one’s curiosity to learn that a gentleman of that Southern stamp has contracted a liaison with a foreigner? And a Jewess? And has uprooted himself so far out of his orbit as New York? Aren’t members of the Old South, as they clannishly term themselves, prone to clinging to their ancestral turf, their Mississippi châteaux? Does all this not occasion remark and proclaim Mr. Walling a most unusual specimen?”

  It nettled me that Holmes—Holmes, who had never set foot in America and might never do so (notwithstanding his brother’s offhand speculation*)—should think himself qualified to comment on the customs of that country’s population. It irritated me still more to think that he might well be onto something. The Wallings, on paper, at least, seemed a most unusual pairing. “Suggestive,” as the detective might term it.

  “Holmes, have you read anything about this part of the world except Uncle Tom’s Cabin?”

  His silence, punctuated by grunts to close the bag, intimated I had scored a point.

  * * *

  The Savoy, crowded as always, when we reached it, elicited a host of memories. I knew why Holmes had objected to meeting there. It was at the adjacent eponymous theatre, built to accommodate the genius of Gilbert and Sullivan, that a promising young soprano had had her throat cut in one of the most sensational cases Holmes had ever been called upon to solve. I mean to set down the details someday, but Holmes has consistently refused permission to do so.*

  Sir Arthur Sullivan, alas, has left us, but for all I knew, we could bump into his prickly collaborator at any moment. The hotel itself appeared a monument to Victorian stolidity while at the same time seeming effortlessly to embody a streamlined opulence. More sophisticated or knowledgeable critics than myself might have caviled at the mixture, but hoi polloi, especially the Americans, adored the place, intoxicated by its luxurious fittings and easy ambience, regularly crowding out the English who struggled to stop there.

  Tea was served in an atrium overflowing with floral arrangements and walled with mirrors, which had the effect of multiplying its opulence. We had arrived early and were shown to a pair of yellow silk divans with a low table of pink Carrara between them at the best location in the agreeable room.

  “Compliments of the management,” the smiling maître d’hôtel informed us. Part of the Savoy’s charm in the face of its splendor was the affability of its staff. Quite simply, they knew they were the finest, had nothing to prove, and were content to go about their business without affectation. The atrium fairly vibrated with animated chatter.

  Having ordered our tea, Holmes looked about him. “Three couples from Liverpool, two from New Mexico, one from Carlisle, that older pair from Brittany, a lone Italian widow from Umbria, and one gaucho from the Pampas, if I am not mistaken.”

  “Really, Holmes, you have outdone yourself! How on earth can you—”

  He chuckled.

  “My little joke, Watson. I’ve not the least idea. Except for the Americans,” he added. “Their loud voices give them away.”

  “Have I the honuh of addressin’ Mistuh Sherlock Holmes and Doctuh Watson?”

  The voice that posed this question was not particularly vociferous; quite the contrary, it was subdued, one might say “honeyed,” but definitely laced with an accent that proclaimed the speaker to be from the southern portion of the United States.

  Preoccupied by Holmes’s little prank, we had failed to notice the approach of a strikingly handsome couple. We scrambled to our feet to greet what we instantly understood to be Mr. and Mrs. William English Walling.

  “How do you do?” Holmes extended a hand, first to the lady and then her husband.

  Neither could be thirty years of age. Walling brought to mind the most dashing leading man imaginable in a West End melodrama. Well but not ostentatiously kitted out in Savile Row togs, the man was slender, erect, immaculately groomed, clean-shaven, and pale, with chiseled cheekbones, a firm mouth, and piercing dark eyes. He exuded a confident but not overbearing intelligence, like one who is accustomed to his own virtues but, like the staff of the Savoy, sees no need to trumpet them.

  His wife was an altogether different proposition. Mycroft had not erred in describing Anna Strunsky as “becoming.” I cannot remember how Scott described Rebecca in Ivanhoe, but this creature irresistibly put me in mind of that heroine. Simply put, Anna Strunsky was the most breathtaking woman I had ever seen. As I have no plans to share these memoranda, I need not censor my reaction. She was slender, but not so tall as her husband; her skin, in contrast to his pallor, was a dusky satin, denoting, perhaps, her Levantine origins. But it was her face that struck all who beheld it dumb with wonder. Patrons in the atrium could not help breaking off their talk and staring. Her chief features were large, luminous eyes of an unprecedented violet that gazed candidly at all within her field of vision. Like her husband’s, her hair was jet and lustrous, glistening as if jewels were embedded in her tresses. The contrast between that glorious dark crown and those radiant, heliotrope eyes, once seen, I feel certain, was never to be forgotten. Her nose likewise suggested the perfection of an Attic sculpture, perhaps the Venus de Milo, whose features I vaguely recalled from a picture postcard. Her vermillion lips completed the statue; bowlike, they were thick, with the lower drooped in a sensual pout.

  Holmes, towards whom I directed a sidelong glance, though avowedly unsusceptible to the charms of the female sex (with one notable exception*), seemed not immune in this instance. This I inferred from his reluctance to gaze a
t the lady too directly or too long, like one who fears staring at the sun.

  It was only when Anna Strunsky spoke that the spell was broken, for while the timbre of her voice was agreeably low, her speech was marked (marred is perhaps too strong a word) by a thick Russian accent that challenged all Olympian associations.

  “So pleased to meet you,” she said, offering me her hand.

  “Likewise, suh,” added her husband, facing me with a slight bow.

  Holmes gestured to the divans and asked if they preferred muffins or scones.

  “Muffins, if you please,” Walling answered for them.

  “Oh, English, dahlink,” his wife remonstrated, “I like better scones.” She then broke into a rapid patter which I judged to be Russian and which he seemed perfectly to comprehend. His middle name, I inferred, was his wife’s term of endearment for him.

  He answered her fluently in the same tongue, though his pronunciation still smacked of Kentucky rather than the Steppes of Central Asia. He was pleased to indulge her preference, and the order was changed.

  Holmes, having his own timetable, thanked them for agreeing to see us on such short notice.

  “I understand you all are goin’ to Russia,” Walling said, crossing his long legs. “We have just spent the better part of a year there.”

  “A year?” I could not help remarking.

  “We sail home the day after tomorrow on The Majestic.” Walling seemed pleased by the prospect.

  “He will write book,” his wife explained, daintily tearing off a fragment of scone. “Is called Revolution in Russia.”

  Walling smiled again and took her hand. What a strange pair they were. “We don’t yet know what it will be called,”* he temporized. “Events in Russia are still playin’ out.”

  “May I ask,” said Holmes, studiously stirring honey into his teacup, “how you, from America’s southern regions, come to be so interested in Russia? A year is such a long time,” he added. “Can it have anything to do,” he wondered aloud, “with the plight of Negroes in the United States?”