The Seven-Per-Cent Solution Page 10

  “Too heavy,” he muttered, passing it to me. I put my hand inside it and knocked softly on the base. It gave out a muffled, hollow retort. “A false bottom !” I exclaimed, and set about pulling it up. In a matter of moments I had peeled back the inserted board, and there, beneath it, cunningly nestled amongst crumpled agony columns from the London papers, we discovered the true cache of cocaine and the syringe, which occupied a patch of red velvet in a small black box.

  Without a word we retrieved the hoard, including the bottled water, replaced the false bottom and the contents of the bag, and went upstairs together. Freud led me to a wash room on the first floor, and into the sink we poured all the liquid we had found. He pocketed the syringe and escorted me to the kitchen, where the maid, whose name was Paula, returned Toby to my charge and I left for Moriarty’s hotel.

  I must pause here and give some description of the city in which I found myself and in which I was destined to remain for some little time.

  Vienna in 1891 was the capital of an empire in the final decades of its flowering. It was as totally unlike London at the same period as the sea is unlike the desert. London, habitually damp, foggy, ill-smelling, and populated for the most part with people who spoke one language, bore no resemblance to the sunny and decadent centre of the Hapsburg Empire. Instead of a common tongue, the natives conversed in a polyglot derived, even as they themselves were, from the four corners of the Austro-Hungarian realm. Although these various nationalities tended to restrict themselves to separate quarters of the city, their territories frequently overlapped. It was an unusual day when one did not see Slovak pedlars hawking their handcarved wares to fashionable housewives, as a squadron of Bosnian infantry marched by towards the Prater for a review of the Emperor’s troops, while lemon-sellers from Montenegro, knifesharpeners from Serbia and Tyrolers, Moravians, Croats, Jews, Hungarians, Bohemians and Magyars all went about their daily business.

  The city itself appeared to grow in concentric circles with the cathedral of St. Stephen at the hub. Here one found the fashionable and oldest quarter of the town with the Graben, its busy street of shops and cafés, to the north of which, at Bergasse 19, dwelt Dr. Freud. Slightly to the left lay the Hofburg palaces, museums, and beautifully kept parks. Just outside these the ‘inner city’ ended. The walls that once defended the medieval Vienna had long since been tom down—at the pleasure of the Emperor—and the city spread far beyond them. Still their outline was preserved in the form of a wide boulevard that went by different names in several sections but was generally known as The Ring, and extended around the old quarter ending at the Danube canal, due north and due east of St. Stephen’s.

  The city, as I have noted, had outgrown the medieval set of boundaries represented by The Ring, and in 1891 even overflowed the Gürtel—an outer boulevard—some of which was still under construction and renovation when I was there. The Gürtel, whose course unevenly paralleled that of The Ring, stood, at its southwestern extremity, about halfway between St. Stephen’s cathedral and Maria Theresa’s Schönbrunn palace—the Hapsburg response to Versailles.

  Just north of Schönbrunn and slightly to the east, in the Fifteenth Bezirk, lay the Bahnof, or railway terminus where Holmes and I had arrived in Vienna. All the way across the city to the north-east in the Second Bezirk (across the Danube Canal), was situated a much larger railway yard in the midst of a predominantly Jewish sector known as the Leopoldstadt. It was there, Dr. Freud told me, that he had lived as a child when he first came with his family to the city.

  His present home was far more convenient professionally—(for Holmes was erroneous in one of his deductions: Freud was still practising medicine). It was close to the Allgemeines Krankenhaus, the great teaching hospital of Vienna, to which he had been formerly attached. He had served in the psychiatric department under a Dr. Theodor Meynert, a man for whom he had great admiration.

  Like Freud, Meynert was a Jew, but this was by no means a surprising feature in Viennese medical circles, which, Freud informed me, were very largely composed of Jews. They appeared to dominate much of the intellectual and cultural activity in the city. I had not met many Jews and so knew little about them though I may claim, for all that, to be reasonably free of the prejudice which usually accompanies ignorance. As I was to discover, Freud was not only a brilliant man and a cultivated one, he was also a good man, and as far as I am concerned (though I disagreed with some of his theories which I found frankly shocking), these virtues of his were of more moment than his faith—about which, by the way, he was himself uncertain. Not being a religious man myself, I was unable to rouse in my bosom any particular ire or yen for dogmatic controversy with a supposed heathen.

  I realise that I have digressed slightly from my description of the city and inexorably begun the resumption of my narrative, which is perhaps just as well. I did not learn about Vienna in one lump and there is no need for the reader to be confronted with a travelogue when an almanac will do. What parts and places of the city engaged my attention when I stayed there will shortly become apparent in any event.

  After leaving Toby with his unwilling chaperone, I proceeded down the Graben to the café Griensteidl, which occupied an inescapably prominent location in the middle of the street. There I was to rendezvous with Dr. Freud should the detective still be asleep.

  To call the Griensteidl a café is to do it a gross injustice, for it did not in the least resemble what Englishmen mean by the word. Cafés in Vienna were more like London’s clubs. They were the centre of intellectual and cultural exchange where a man might put in a pleasant day and never taste a drop of coffee. The Griensteidl boasted billiard tables, chess niches, newspapers, and books. Its waiters took efficient messages and set a fresh glass of water at your table every hour, whether you bought anything to eat or not. Cafés were where men met to exchange ideas, to talk, to read, to be alone. They were a good place for one to gain weight in, for the bill of fare included the most extravagant pastries, and it was a strong-willed patron who could resist their aromatic blandishments.

  Freud was at the Giensteidl (which, by the by, laid claim to being the most cultivated institution of its kind in the city), and a waiter directed me to his table. I ordered a beer and listened as he informed me that Holmes was still asleep, though it would be necessary to return to Bergasse 19 before long. We seemed, each of us, unwilling to plunge at once into the many questions and issues that needed resolution if we were to effect a cure, and it was then that Freud told me something of his background and of the present nature of his work. Cocaine, he explained, was more or less a side-line and not directly related to his present researches. He and two other physicians had become interested in the drug when they discovered its invaluable anaesthetic properties for use during eye surgery. Freud had been trained as a neuropathologist, with a background in localised diagnosis and electroprognosis—terms which were quite beyond the ken of a simple practitioner life myself.

  “Yes, I have come a long way—and by a circuitous route,” he smiled, “from mapping the nervous system to where I am now.”

  “You are an alienist?”

  He shrugged.

  “There is no formal designation for what I am now,” he responded. “As Herr Holmes has deduced. I am interested in hysterical cases, and for the most part they come to me—referred by their families—or I go to them, privately. Where my studies are leading I cannot say with certainty, but I am learning a great deal about hysterics, and what I call neurotics.”

  I was about to ask him what he meant by this last term and whether Holmes had been correct in assuming that some of his theories had been found unpalatable by the medical community, when he quietly interrupted and suggested that we return to our resident patient. As we threaded our way amongst the tables and knots of earnestly conversing artists and writers, he offered, over his shoulder, to take me along on some of his rounds so that I might see the people he treated, and their symptoms, for myself. I accepted with pleasure, and we began walking thro
ugh the bustling Graben and boarded a horse-drawn vehicle that ran on rails like a street-tram.

  “Tell me,” I said, when we were seated, “do you know an English doctor named Conan Doyle?”

  He pursed his lips in an effort to remember.

  “Should I?” he asked at length.

  “Possibly. He studied for a time in Vienna, specialising as an opthalmologist like your colleagues—”

  “Königstein and Koller?”

  “Yes. Perhaps they knew him when he studied here.”

  “Perhaps.” His noncommittal answer did not contain an offer to ask his two collaborators if they knew Doyle. Perhaps they were among the number who had chosen to cut him.

  “What is your connection with Dr. Doyle?” Freud asked, as if trying to dispel the impression of curtness in his reply.

  “Not a medical one, I assure you. Dr. Doyle has influence with certain literary magazines in England. He writes books more than he practises medicine nowadays, and it is to him that I am indebted for placing my own humble accounts of Holmes’s doings with the publishers.”

  “Ah.”

  We left the street-tram at the intersection of Währinger and Bergasse streets and headed east on foot to Dr. Freud’s home.

  No sooner had we stepped across the threshold than we were made aware of a terrible commotion upstairs. Dimly perceived as we raced past them were the maid, Paula, and a woman who was subsequently introduced to me as Frau Freud. At the time I barely noticed a girl of about five who was clutching the banister posts in anxiety. Later I was to become friends with little Anna Freud, but at the moment there was no time for introductions. Freud and I dashed into the room where Holmes was frantically pulling apart the carpet bag, his collar half-off and his hair disarranged by the energy of his efforts, coupled with the spasmodic jerkings of one whose muscles are no longer under complete control.

  Upon our entering the room, he spun round to face us with wild eyes.

  “Where is it?” he shrieked. “What have you done with it?”

  It required the efforts of both of us to subdue him, and what followed was a descent into a hell deeper and more awesome than the cauldron of Reichenbach I have tried to describe.

  Sometimes the hypnosis would work and sometimes it would not. Sometimes it could be achieved by giving Holmes a sedative beforehand, but this Freud was unwilling to do if there was a chance of achieving success without it.

  “He must not begin relying on the sedative,” he explained over a hasty meal, shared together in his study.

  Of course it was necessary that one of us stand guard constantly to see that Holmes did no injury to himself or to others during the time when he could not be held accountable for his actions. He grew to hate the sight of each of us, and of Paula as well, who, though he terrified her, nevertheless went about her business with determination and every outward appearance of good will and unconcern. Dr. Freud and his household could understand Holmes’s revilings and not take them to heart, painful and insulting though they might be, but his interminable abuse struck much more deeply into me. I had not thought him capable of such rhetoric or such vituperation. When I appeared in the room to keep him company and watch over him, he heaped on me such execrations as it pains me, even to this day, to recall. He told me how stupid I was, cursed himself for ever having tolerated the companionship of a brainless cripple, and worse. How I bore these taunts, jeers, and insults may best be imagined, but I was not sorry when, on the third day, he tried to rush past me into the corridor and I was obliged to knock him down with a blow made more powerful—I confess it—by the resentment that boiled up within me. I struck him so hard he lapsed into unconsciousness, which horrified me, and as I called for help, I literally beat my breast for the lack of control I had exhibited.

  “Do not dwell on it, Doctor.” Freud patted me on the arm after we had taken him to his bed. “Every hour that he remains unconscious increases our chances. You saved me from a session of hypnotism and, from what you describe, I am not certain it will work any longer.”

  That night Holmes awoke in a high fever and was delirious. As Freud and I sat by his bedside, each restraining the movement of his hands, he babbled of oysters overrunning the world and similar nonsense.* Freud listened with the greatest attention.

  “Is he fond of oysters?” he demanded of me during a quiet interval. I shrugged, too confused to answer accurately.

  During the night our watch was relieved by Paula, and once by Frau Freud. She was a most appealing woman, possessed, like her husband, of a pair of black, sad eyes, but also of a humorous, delicate mouth whose firmness suggested inner resources and quiet strength of character.

  At one point I apologised to her for the inconvenience and disruption Holmes and I had caused her household.

  “I too have read your accounts of Herr Holmes’s cases,” she replied simply. “It is well-known that your friend is a worthy and courageous man. He needs help now, as our friend did.” I assumed she referred to the unfortunate friend mentioned in Freud’s piece in The Lancet. “This time we will not fail,” she asserted.

  Holmes’s fever and delirium persisted for three more days, during which it was virtually impossible to get any nourishment inside him. It was exhausting to us—even when we had rested—to be around him, for his convulsive energy was enervating simply to watch. For six hours on the evening of the third day his twitchings and ravings were so alarming that I became convinced an onset of brain fever was imminent. When I expressed this view to Sigmund Freud, however, he shook his head.

  “The symptoms are very similar,” he agreed, “but I think there is no brain fever to be feared here. We are witnessing the final throes of the drug’s hold on him. His habit is being torn from his body. If he survives this, he will have reached the turning point on the road to recovery.”

  “Survives?”

  “Men have been known to the of it,” he responded shortly.

  I sat beside the bed and watched helplessly as the terrible spasms and shrieks continued unabated except for brief intervals that seemed to serve no other purpose than to renew his nervous energies. Towards midnight Dr. Freud insisted that I try to get some rest, pointing out that I could not possibly be of use to my friend in this, his greatest hour of trial. Unwillingly I returned to my own room.

  Sleep was impossible. Even had I not been able to hear the detective’s piercing screams and wails through the walls, the simple knowledge of the torture he was enduring was enough to keep me awake. Was it worth it? Was there no other way of saving him except by so severe a trial that he might the in attempting to live? I am not a praying man, and I sensed the hypocrisy of my gesture; nevertheless, I knelt and grovelled before the Creator of all things—whoever and whatever he might be—and begged him in the humblest terms that came to mind to spare my friend. I cannot say with certainty what effect my prayers had on Holmes; but they proved sufficiently distracting to ease me into a fitful sleep.

  On the fourth day following the onset of his fever and delirium, Sherlock Holmes woke, seemingly calm and with a normal temperature.

  As I entered the room, assuming Paula’s place, he eyed me with a mellow languor.

  “Watson?” he asked, in a voice so feeble that I should never have taken it for his. “Is that you?”

  I assured him that it was, drew up a chair next to the bed, examined him, and informed him that his fever had broken.

  “Oh?” His reply was listless.

  “Yes. You are on your way to recovery, my dear fellow.”

  “Oh.”

  He continued to stare at me, or rather past me, with a vacant expression and no seeming knowledge of where he was and no curiosity about how he came to be there.

  He did not object when I took his pulse, which was fearfully weak, but steady; nor did he resist the tray that Frau Freud herself brought up to him. He ate sparingly and only with much nagging encouragement. He apparently wished to eat, yet he had to be reminded the food was before him. This lethargi
c turn of events, following as it did his violent outbursts and fevered delirium, I found more sinister than anything that had preceded it.

  It was not to Freud’s liking, either, when he returned from his rounds and inspected his resident patient. He frowned and walked to the window through which could be seen the spires of St. Stephen—a view, by the way, he cordially loathed. I patted Holmes’s hand reassuringly and joined the Doctor at the window.

  “Well?”

  “He appears to have thrown off the addiction,” Freud said quietly, in a neutral voice. “He may of course resume it at any time. Such is the curse of enslavement to drugs. It would be interesting to know,” he added, with seeming irrelevancy, “how he became involved with cocaine.’

  “I have always known him to keep it about his rooms,” I answered truthfully. “He says he takes it because of boredom, lack of activity.”

  Freud turned and smiled at me, his features displaying the infinite and nameless wisdom and compassion I had noticed the moment I first set eyes on him.

  “That is not the reason a man pursues such a path to destruction,” he said softly. “However—”

  “What is it that worries you?” I demanded, trying to keep my own voice down. “You say we have weaned him from the fiend.”

  “Temporarily,” Freud repeated, returning to the window, “but we appear also to have weaned him from his spirit. There is an old proverb that suggests that the cure is sometimes more deadly than the disease.”

  “But what could we do?” I expostulated. “Allow him to poison himself?”

  Freud turned round again with a finger on his lips.

  “I know.” He patted my shoulder and walked back to where the patient lay.

  “How do you feel?” he enquired gently, smiling down at my friend. Holmes glanced up at him, and then his eyes glazed over, staring into nothingness.

  “Not Well.”

  “Do you remember Professor Moriarty?”

  “My evil genius?” The faintest trace of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.