“And be sure, when next you see Director General Rachkovsky, to present the compliments of Professor James Moriarty.”
“James Moriarty,” he echoed her.
Holmes offered a cigarette to Mrs. Walling, and this time she accepted.
10.
UNFORESEEN
“It is now a race to escape this country with ourselves and the proof intact,” Sherlock Holmes informed Mrs. Walling and myself, while traveling at a crawl atop an ox-drawn hayrick as we struggled to make our way three hundred miles back to Odessa. Our present mode of transportation did not provide cause for optimism. Such conveyances were the norm in this backward part of the world, and our recourse to the phlegmatic peasant who negligently guided the animal and his wagon was by no means unusual. I had suggested sharing a barge on the River Bic as arguably faster, but Mrs. Walling cautioned that the river was where our pursuers would look first. Holmes deferred to her reasoning but reminded us, “We are booked aboard the Orient Express, departing the second of February from Varna. If we miss that connection we are stranded next door to Russia and exposed for the next ten days until the train’s return.”
“They will be scouring the country for us regardless,” I remarked gloomily.
“You said it yourself, Watson, it is a very big country, and I’m not so sure they will be immediately on the qui vive.”
“Why on earth not?”
“Because, my dear fellow, I think it possible that Pavel Krushenev may be reluctant to report our encounter to the authorities. It will almost certainly prove awkward for him.”
“The same may not be true of Vladimir,” I insisted. The look of pure fury with which the Cossack favored us as we stepped over his massive, trussed-up form during our flight was one I shall not soon forget. “Should that man lay eyes on us again, I would not wager a brass farthing on our odds of survival.”
“Vladimir will do as he’s told. Such men always do,” Holmes reasoned. “But assuming, with Falstaff, the better part of valor to be discretion, let us give your scenario the benefit of the doubt, Watson. They have unleashed the hounds. But for whom are they baying? Not Colonel Morcar. Nor Gideon Altmont. Not even for Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, but”—and here he could scarcely suppress a chortle of satisfaction—“for a Professor Moriarty. They are searching a haystack for a nonexistent needle.”
“A haystack is where we happen to be,” I reminded him.
Throughout this exchange, Mrs. Walling remained studiously silent, seemingly lost in her own thoughts. I could see that an alteration had taken place in her relations with the detective. It was clear to me that while she rejoiced in our success and indeed had contributed to it, she was deeply troubled by the methods he had employed to achieve it.
Presently, in an effort to narrow the gap between them, I attempted to make conversation.
“Holmes, where did the pepper come from?”
“In Ruminsky’s, while you were busily disposing of your vodka supply on the floor, I was helping myself to the contents of that ceramic pot on the table. Incidentally, I’ve revised my opinion of The Scarlet Pimpernel entirely.”
It seems Holmes hadn’t left the theatre that night but had witnessed the end of the play. I had to own I now agreed with him completely.
“And however did you learn about the girl?”
“The girl?” I knew by his expression he was thinking of Rivka Nussbaum, the wool merchant’s catatonic daughter, but as he understood my question, his physiognomy reassumed its accustomed configuration.
“Oh, that girl.” He cast a sideways look at Anna Walling. “The Jewess who broke Krushenev’s heart and turned him into a goader of rapists? That was a long shot, I confess. What you would call ‘a guess,’ Doctor. I merely took a leaf from our Viennese friend.”
“What Viennese friend?” Mrs. Walling abruptly demanded, joining our talk at last. Holmes and I exchanged glances. He was, I think, eager to reestablish a connection with her.
“A certain physician with whom I became acquainted some years ago in Austria. Beyond question a genius, though he holds some outlandish views, many of which, I suspect, may prove to be mistaken.”
The paradox drew her in.
“How can he lay claim to genius if his views are mistaken?”
Holmes lay back and stared at the sky, his hands clasped behind his head.
“He is by way of being a cartographer.”
“Cartographer?” I could not help repeating. I had not thought of our friend in this fashion and never heard Holmes so describe him.
My companion shrugged where he nestled on his bed of straw. “A mapmaker of sorts, yes. To my knowledge he is the first nonartist to discover and set foot on a hitherto unknown and unexplored continent.”
Mrs. Walling frowned. “Which continent?”
Holmes continued to gaze with dreamy abstraction at the cerulean canopy above. All was silent save the creaking of cart wheels, punctuated now and again by gaggles of what I took to be Russian geese honking in formation overhead.
“The Land of the Unconscious.”
“The Un—?”
“—conscious. And if his subsequent maps of that strange place should subsequently be proved in error, does anyone still remember or care that Columbus thought he was in India? The error pales to insignificance compared to the discovery itself. At all events,” the detective resumed before his argument could be addressed, “our friend has altered the way in which I find myself thinking about people and their motives. Working backward from Krushenev’s hatred of Jews, I wondered if there mightn’t be some personal origin for his foaming animus. Yes, I grant you, a lucky guess.”
Mrs. Walling said nothing to this. Holmes stuck a piece of straw in his mouth and continued to study the sky as silence reigned. I had begun to suppose him asleep when he spoke again.
“We must change wagons and avoid inns and public places until we reach Odessa, where the population will absorb us. Sleeping in barns may be preferable to stopping at inns. Speaking of which, Doctor, your new hat is a sight and will attract notice. And what is worse, Mrs. Watson will never forgive you for so neglecting her gift. Give it here.”
I removed my grey homburg and handed it to my friend, who spent some minutes plucking off bits of hay and brushing the felt with his sleeve before returning it.
“Better,” he declared, and went back to gazing upwards.
“Anything else?” Mrs. Walling asked without regarding him.
“Yes. Traveling as a trio is conspicuous. We must separate.”
Now it was Mrs. Walling and I who exchanged glances.
“Separate?” she repeated.
“Before we reach Odessa. It’s much the safest course. You and Dr. Watson will journey together as man and—together,” he amended. “Two is far less remarkable than three, especially if one is a woman. I will continue alone, as I am carrying and must be responsible for Krushenev’s confession.” He tapped his breast pocket. “Our tickets have already been purchased; it only remains to specify and confirm dates. We will board the Orient Express at Varna on the second, but travel in separate cars. Once in Paris, it should be safe to reunite for the final portion of our journey.”
“You seem quite sure of yourself,” Mrs. Walling observed, still without looking at him.
Holmes had the decency to blush.
“I may seem sure,” was the best he could manage.
* * *
29 January. This indeed was the plan we followed. It cannot be said that spending three successive nights in as many barns was particularly edifying, but at least, as old campaigners, Holmes and I might claim to be accustomed to such experiences. The same could not be said for Mrs. Walling, who nevertheless endured the deprivation of proper shelter or comfort without a murmur of complaint.
* * *
31 January. In this fashion, festooned with straw bits and pieces clinging to our well-worn clothing, we entered Odessa. The last sight I had of Holmes was that of a rail-thin, unshaven indi
vidual, slinking off into a souk near the City Garden, carrying a small, battered valise. Odessa had begun to regain its laissez-faire character as life returned to normal in the weeks following the suppression of its ill-fated insurrection. Civil authority had been allowed to reassert itself. This was probably a pragmatic as well as strategic consideration on the government’s part, though I was not to learn the reason ’til Varna: with the latest Russian defeat at Mukden by the Japanese, and martial law still in effect in St. Petersburg itself, troops could not long be spared in provincial capitals.
Where Holmes stayed in Odessa, I had no way of knowing. Mrs. Walling and I registered under the names on our passports at the overcrowded Hotel Esplanade, where we were obliged to share a single room. The detective had been correct, foreseeing a couple would attract less notice than a trio. The management offered no demur. Assuming Holmes would make his own arrangements, I employed the services of the obliging concierge to confirm places for Colonel Morcar and Miss Sophie Hunter on the Orient Express from Varna to Paris on the second of February.
Sharing a room with Mrs. Walling cannot be described as less than awkward. We stood silent in the tiny lift as the bellman, carrying what remained of our luggage, escorted us to something like a garret on the fourth floor with not even an ocean view to commend it. We did our best to preserve decorum, but, having spent three nights in as many barns, we had by this time few secrets from one another. Mrs. Walling’s first order of business was a hot soak, procured by means of a procession of bellmen pouring the contents of steaming kettles into a large copper hipbath located improbably in the middle of our room. I stood with my back to this procedure for what seemed the longest time, listening to a succession of sensuous sighs as Mrs. Walling took her well-deserved ease. Later, all too aware of her proximity, I gave myself a clumsy sponge wash. Poor Juliet! Pork sandwiches were then brought up to the room as a collation, but we both declined the offer of a vodka accompaniment. Afterwards I insisted Mrs. Walling take the bed and undertook to sleep on the settee. She more sensibly pointed out that her smaller frame was better suited to that place, insisting I occupy the bed, as my bulk would never fit comfortably anywhere else. Considerably embarrassed by these mechanical considerations and the circumstances which prompted them, we confined our conversation to perfunctory monosyllables and averted eyes until we were both decently under the covers (I using the coverlet and she the bedding), and the lights extinguished. In the darkness, each knew the other was awake.
“You have been with Sherlock Holmes for a very long time.” Her voice came softly in the gloom. We were situated across the room from each other, but in the dark she sounded close by. Her sentence was neither a statement nor a question.
“You make it sound as though I were his factotum,” I responded more tartly than I’d intended.
“Sorry. I only meant that you know each other very well,” she said in the same quiet voice.
“That is so.”
There was another silence. But I knew the conversation wasn’t over.
“Do you approve of what he did?”
“To what are you ref—?”
“You know perfectly well. I’m speaking of Kishinev. He tortured that man.”
“I wouldn’t call it that.”
“What would you call it?”
To my consternation, I found myself unable to answer. Holmes’s actions had shocked us both.
“My friend is the best and wisest man I have ever known,” I replied at length. “But every man has his limits, and our encounter with Rivka Nussbaum surpassed them. If he did what he did, it was because he couldn’t think of anything else. It was imperative we obtain that confession.”
“What confession obtained under duress can be relied upon?” she demanded. “People will say anything in fear of their lives.”
Again, I had no answer for that line of reasoning and fell back on what I knew instead of addressing it. “So much depends upon the hoax of the Protocols being exposed. Many, many lives may hang in the balance. You better than I know what took place two years ago in Kishinev. Nussbaum and his family were but one example.” And though I knew better than to mention it, Manya Lippman was another.
In the darkness, I sensed her considering my logic.
“So,” said she at length, “the ends justify the means.”
Like many of her sentences this night, it was hard to tell if it was a statement or a question.
“If the ends don’t justify the means,” was all I could think to reply, “what the devil does? Can you truly state with confidence Holmes did the wrong thing?”
She could not. Once more silence descended like a curtain between us. What next popped out of my mouth I cannot explain, but neither can I deny I said it.
“What happened between you and Sherlock Holmes?”
I heard something like a sharp intake of breath that was in turn succeeded by another pause before she responded quietly:
“Nothing, really.”
* * *
2 February. Following the bone-crushing journey on the desiccated milk train from Odessa, I heaved a sigh of relief when we alighted at Varna, having crossed into Romania with little interest and no impediment at the frontier. Whether Krushenev had or had not sounded the alarm, the Okhrana was nowhere in evidence.
“Don’t be overconfident,” Anna Walling cautioned me. “Borders and customs of all kinds are permeable hereabouts, and we’ve already established that agents of the Russian secret police operate freely in other countries. We are not yet out of harm’s way. I wonder if we ever will be,” I heard her add under her breath.
At the telegraph we both sent wires couched in euphemisms, mine to London, hers to New York. “All’s well that ends well,” ran mine. How I longed to see my own dear girl again.
And with what joy that afternoon did we reboard the sumptuous Orient Express, relishing every inch of her polished Italian walnut paneling, her inlaid marquetry, her gleaming Sheffield cutlery, Waterford tableware, and smartly uniformed attendants, all poised to cater to our every whim! It is a routine trip the train makes every ten days, an ordinary undertaking perhaps from her point of view, but from ours, nothing less than a luxurious voyage to freedom.
It is a fact known to soldiers that during the crisis we hold ourselves together. Duty prompts us to feats of endurance, heroism even, of which we might normally prove incapable. It is only when the crisis has passed, when we have risen above and stretched ourselves beyond what we would have believed possible, that we feel free to collapse. I am no longer a young man, and the time spent on the run on foreign soil, in imminent danger of capture under circumstances where my own people would not deign to lift a finger on my behalf (not to mention other complications I had witnessed), and the continued deprivation of a uxorious existence to which habit and inclination now disposed me—all these, I say, combined to exhaust me. Even the confined space of our compartment—(and the urbane staff of the Orient Express did not lift an eyebrow at our joint occupation of same)—failed to trouble either of us.
Though still daylight, we requested Jean-Claude (the porter whom I remembered from our previous trip and who gratifyingly recalled me in return) to convert our cushions into sleeping berths. Mrs. Walling, having long since perceived my leg injury, offered me the more accessible lower berth, but I now gallantly insisted on allotting her the more comfortable place. It was a decision I would come to regret.*
“I shall nap ’til supper, if you’ve no objection,” I told her, contriving to hoist myself aloft.
“Nyet. Perhaps I do same, but not sure I sleep.” Her thick Slavic accent was returning. I suspected it was some sort of instinctive camouflage.
As the sun set before us, turning the sky rose-pink through our window, I clambered between those sweet-smelling, crisp, ironed white sheets and slept like a dead man. My last conscious thought was wondering where on the train Holmes was. Even a distant thudding failed to rouse me.
When I awakened, Anna Strunsky Walling wa
s nowhere to be seen.
At first I had no idea where I was and looked stupidly around trying to remember, startled to find a ceiling so close above my head. In my hazy state I was tempted simply to drift back to sleep, but it was slowly borne in upon me that I was on a train and that we were slowing. Craning my neck, I peered out the window, blinking at the dim light—for all I knew it was dawn and I’d slept the night through. I thought abruptly to consult my watch, according to which I realized, with some relief, we must be pulling into Bucharest, having traveled less than a hundred and fifty miles from Varna. I had been asleep little more than two hours and did not yet realize anything amiss.
“Mrs. Walling?”
There was no response from the lower berth, which, when I craned down to look, proved to be empty, as were the lavatory and shower, when I knocked on and then tried the swinging open door. The colourful woolen shawl my traveling companion had worn since purchasing it in the souk at Odessa was nowhere in evidence. Perplexed but not yet alarmed, I splashed some water on my face from the pewter basin, then brushed and adjusted my clothing, with the intention of making my way to the nearest dining car. Perhaps she was taking tea. And perhaps I’d see her there with Holmes, though we had agreed to ignore one another.
I found the porter at the end of the car, head down, having presumably nodded off.
“Jean-Claude, have you seen Miss Hunter?”
The man who looked up was not Jean-Claude.
“Jean-Claude is off duty,” the unfamiliar porter explained. The name “Miss Hunter” and my description meant nothing to him. He had not seen any woman since coming on duty over an hour ago.
“Perhaps she’s having supper,” I said.
He considered this.
“The dining cars do not open ’til after Bucharest.”
Frowning, I grunted something by way of reply and continued backward to the next car, where one compartment, whose shades were drawn, proved to be occupied by an amorous honeymoon couple. At least I assumed they were honeymooners.
The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols Page 16