The Seven-Per-Cent Solution Read online

  It was still early in the morning when I stepped out onto the familiar stretch of pavement before 221B and paid the cabbie. I sucked in the morning air vigorously, for all that it was still rather damp, and rang the bell. The door was opened almost at once by our land-lady, Mrs. Hudson. She seemed gratified beyond words to see me.

  “Oh, Dr. Watson, thank heavens you’ve come!” she exclaimed without preamble, and astonished me by taking the sleeve of my coat and pulling me into the area way.

  “What is it—?” I began, but she cut me off with her fingers on her lips and looked anxiously up the stairs. Holmes’s ears were of the keenest, however, and it was soon evident our brief exchange had been to some extent overheard.

  “Mrs. Hudson, if that gentleman answers to the name Professor Moriarty,” a shrill voice that was none the less recognisable as his called down from above, “you may show him up and I will deal with him! Mrs. Hudson?”

  “You see how it is, Dr. Watson,” the unhappy landlady whispered in my ear. “He’s got himself barricaded in up there; won’t take his meals, keeps the shutters closed all day—and then he steals out at night, after I’ve bolted the door and the slavey’s in bed—”

  “Mrs. Hudson—!”

  “I’ll go up and see him,” I volunteered, patting her reassuringly on the arm, though in truth I did not feel particularly confident. So there was a Professor Moriarty, at least in Holmes’s fancy. I mounted the seventeen well-trod steps to my old lodgings with a heavy heart. What a noble mind was here overthrown!

  “Who is it?” Holmes enquired from the other side of the door when I knocked. “Moriarty, is that you?”

  “It is I, Watson,” I responded, and when I had repeated this several times, he at length consented to open the door slightly and peered at me strangely through the crack.

  “You see it is only I, Holmes. Let me enter.”

  “Not so fast.” His foot jammed against the base of the door. “You may be he disguised. Prove you are Watson.”

  “How?” I wailed, for I had no idea, in truth, what it would require to satisfy him of my identity.

  He thought for a moment.

  “Where do I keep my tobacco?” he demanded abruptly.

  “In the toe end of your Persian slipper.”

  This answer, given so punctually, appeared to allay his suspicions to a degree, for his voice softened slightly.

  “And my correspondence?”

  “Is affixed to the mantel with a jack-knife.”

  He grunted an affirmation.

  “And what were the first words I ever spoke to you?”

  “ ‘You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive’. For heaven’s sake, Holmes!” I pleaded.

  “Very well, you may enter,” he replied, satisfied at last. He removed his foot from the door, opened it slightly, and vigorously pulled me in. The moment I had stepped across the threshold he closed the door behind me and threw several bolts and locks, none of which had ever been attached during my residence. I watched, transfixed, as he proceeded with these operations and then put his ear to the panel, listening for I knew not what. Finally, he straightened up and turned to me with an extended hand.

  “Forgive me for doubting you, Watson,” he said with a smile that was very like his own. “But I had to make sure. They will stop at nothing.”

  “The Professor’s gang?”

  “Precisely.”

  He led me into the room and offered me tea which he had evidently brewed himself, using for the purpose the bunsen burner from amidst his chemical apparatus on the deal table and a large beaker.I accepted a cup and sat down, looking about me, as Holmes went about pouring. The place was much the same as it had been when I shared it with him—it was as untidy as always—but the shutters and windows were bolted, and the shutters themselves were not the ones with which I was familiar. They were new, constructed, as far as I could judge, of heavy iron. These and the many locks on the door were the only visible signs of alteration.

  “Here you are, old man.”

  From his chair by the fire Holmes’s arm jutted out as he passed me my teacup. He was wearing his dressing-gown (the mouse-coloured one) and his bare arm protruded as he reached over.

  It was a battlefield of puncture marks.

  I will not detail the rest of that painful interview; its substance can be easily gleaned and it would cast an unworthy shadow on a great man’s memory for me to relate what effects this horrible drug had produced upon his faculties.

  After an hour I left Baker Street—being admitted to the outer world with almost as many precautions as I had been taken in from it—seized another cab, and returned to my own residence.

  There, still reeling with the shock of Holmes’s mental collapse, I encountered a disagreeable surprise. The girl, upon my entering, informed me that there was a gentleman waiting to see me.

  “Didn’t you inform the gentleman that Dr. Cullingworth was taking my rounds this morning?”

  “Yes, I did, sir,” she answered, ill at ease, “but the gentleman insisted on seeing you, personally. I didn’t like to close the door on him, so I let him wait in the consultin’ room.”

  This was really too much, I thought with rising irritation, and was about to say so when she came forward timidly with the salver in her hand.

  “This is his card, sir.”

  I turned over the piece of white cardboard and shuddered, the blood turning to ice in my veins. The name on the card was that of Professor Moriarty.

  * * *

  * All this tallies more or less with Watson’s account of Holmes’s opinion regarding Moriarty as set down in ‘The Final Problem’. N.M.

  † Shag. A cheap, strong tobacco favoured by Hohnes. Shag refers to the cut of the blend as well. N.M.

  CHAPTER II

  Biographical

  FOR THE BETTER PART of a minute I gazed stupidly at the card, and then, conscious of the girl’s presence, thrust it in my pocket, handed her back the salver, and went past her into the consulting room.

  I did not dare think. I did not want to think. I was incapable of thought. Let this—this gentleman, whoever he was, and whatever he called himself, explain matters to me if he could. I had, for the moment, no intention of speculating any further.

  He rose at once as I opened the door, a small, shy personage in his sixties with his hat in his hand and a startled expression on his face that quickly subsided into a timid smile when I had introduced myself. He extended a thin hand and took mine briefly. He was dressed well though not expensively, with the air of a professional man who is nevertheless unused to the hurly-burly of the real world. He belonged in a monastery, perhaps, where his myopic blue eyes would have no other business than to pore over ancient parchments and decipher their meanings. His head added to the monkish impression I had formed of his nature, for it was almost totally bald, with a few delicate wisps of white-grey hair circling the back and sides.

  “I hope I have not inconvenienced you by occupying your consulting chamber,” he was saying in a quiet but anxious voice, “only my business is of the most urgent and personal nature and it was you, not Doctor—ah—Cullingworth that I wished to—”

  “Quite so, quite so,” I interrupted with an asperity that I could see was startling to him. “Pray tell me what is the matter,” I went on in a softer tone, and motioned him to sit down again as I drew up a chair opposite.

  “I don’t quite know how to begin.” He had the disconcerting habit of turning his hat round and round in his hands as he spoke. I tried to imagine him as Holmes had described him—a brilliant and diabolical fiend, sitting motionless at the centre of every evil web of conspiracy spun by Man. His appearance and attitude were not helpful.

  “I have come to you,” the Professor resumed with sudden energy and decision, “because I know from reading your accounts that you are Mr. Sherlock Holmes’s most intimate acquaintance.”

  “I have that honour,” I acknowledged gruffly, with a perfunctory inclination of my head. I w
as determined to be on guard, for though I judged his appearance to be innocuous I made up my mind that he would not deceive me by it.

  “I am not sure how to say this,” he went on, twisting his hat round, “but Mr. Holmes is—well, I suppose persecuting me is the only word to describe it.”

  “Persecuting you?” I ejaculated.

  “Yes,” he agreed hastily, starting again at the sound of my voice, though not apparently recognising its emphasis. “I know it sounds absurd, but I don’t know how else to put it. He—well, he stands outside my house at night—in the street.” He stole a glance at me to see what reaction, if any, my features revealed. Satisfied that I was not about to erupt with indignation, he continued.

  “He stands outside my house at night—not every night, mind you—but several times a week. He follows me! Sometimes for days on end he dogs my footsteps. He doesn’t seem to mind my being aware of it. Oh, and he sends me letters,” he added as an after-thought.

  “Letters?”

  “Well, telegrams, really; they’re only a sentence or two. ‘Moriarty, take care; your days are numbered.’ Things like that. And he has seen the headmaster about me.”

  “The headmaster? What headmaster do you mean?”

  “Headmaster Price-Jones, at the Roylott School where I hold the position of mathematics instructor.” He had named one of the lesser known public schools in the area in West London.

  “The headmaster called me in and asked me to explain Mr. Holmes’s allegations.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “I said I was at a loss to explain them; I said I didn’t know what they were. So he told me.” Moriarty twisted round in his chair and screwed up his blue eyes in my direction. “Dr. Watson, your friend is persuaded that I am some sort of—” he groped for the words—”criminal mastermind. Of the most depraved order,” he added with a helpless shrug, throwing up his hands. “Now I ask you, sir: in all honesty—can you see in me the remotest trappings of such an individual?”

  There seemed almost no point in saying I could not.

  “But what is to be done?” the little man pursued with a whine. “I know that your friend is a good man—all England resounds with his praise. But, in my case, he has made some ghastly mistake and I have become his unfortunate victim.”

  Lost in thought, I said nothing.

  “The last thing in the world that I would wish is to cause him any embarrassment, Doctor,” the whine persisted. “But I am at my wits’ end. If something is not done about this—this persecution, what other alternative have I than to turn the matter over to my solicitor?”

  “That will not be necessary,” I responded at once, though in truth I had no idea what course of action to follow.

  “I sincerely hope it will not,” he agreed. “That is why I have come to you.”

  “My friend has not been well,” I answered, feeling my way. “This action is no part of his normal behaviour. If you had known him when he was in health—”

  “Oh, but I did,” interrupted the Professor, to my vast surprise.

  “You did?”

  “I did indeed, and a most engaging young man he was, was Master Sherlock.”

  “Master Sherlock?”

  “Why, yes. I was his tutor—in mathematics.”

  I stared at him open-mouthed. From the expressions succeeding one another across his own countenance, I gathered he had somehow assumed I knew this. I said I had not and begged him to tell me all about it.

  “There isn’t much to tell.” The whine in his inflection was becoming disagreeably pronounced. “Before I came down to London—this was years ago, after university—”

  “You didn’t by chance write a treatise on the Binomial Theorem?” I interrupted.

  He stared at me.

  “Certainly not. Who has anything new to say about the Binomial Theorem at this late date? At any rate, I am certainly not the man to know.”

  “I beg your pardon. Please continue.”

  “As I was saying, I left the university and accepted the position of tutor in mathematics in the home of Squire Holmes. There I taught Master Mycroft and Master Sherlock—”

  “I apologise again for interrupting you,” I said, with great excitement, for Holmes had never spoken of his people to me in the entire period of our acquaintance. “Where was this?”

  “Why, in Sussex, of course, at the family seat.”

  “The family was from Sussex?”

  “Well, not originally. That is, the Holmes clan hailed from there, yes, but the Squire was a second son, never due to inherit the estate at all, by rights. He and his family lived in North Riding—in Yorkshire—that’s where Master Mycroft was born. Then the Squire’s elder brother died, a widower without issue, and Master Sherlock’s father moved his family into the old estate.”*

  “I see. And that is where you met Holmes?”

  “I taught both boys,” Moriarty replied with more than a touch of pride, “and brilliant lads they were, too, both of ‘em. I should have liked to go on, only—” he hesitated, “then came the tragedy—”

  “Tragedy, what tragedy?”

  Again, he favoured me with a bewildered glance.

  “Don’t you know—?”

  “Know? Know what, man? Good heavens, speak plainly!” I was on the edge of my chair with excitement. These details were so new to me that I fairly forgot the Holmes of the present and his grave troubles in my eagerness to satisfy my own curiosity about the Holmes of the past. Every word this little man uttered on the subject proved more astounding than the last.

  “If Master Sherlock hasn’t told you about it, I don’t know that it is for me to—”

  “But, see here—”

  I could not convince him. He took the view that it was a professional confidence of sorts and nothing I could say on the subject would change his mind. The more urgently I pressed him the more reticent he became, until at last, deaf to my entreaties, he rose and looked about for his blackthorn.

  “Really, I have said all that I came to say, he insisted, avoiding contact with my eyes as he groped about for the stick. “You really must excuse me—no, I cannot and will not be indiscreet in this matter. I have told you all I can, and I leave it in your hands to resolve this—this dilemma.”

  He departed with a resolve for which I should scarcely have given him credit. Timidity was suddenly overcome by an anxiety for egress, and Professor Moriarty took his leave, allowing me to ponder my next move. Considering these tantalising references to Holmes’s past, replete with obscure tragedies—I privately felt that what the Professor viewed as tragic might to myself appear merely sad, his being, as I suspected, an overly sensitive nature. But I had no time for these avenues of thought, however, so engrossed was my mind with the present predicament of Holmes’s collapse and Moriarty’s veiled threat (understandable under the circumstances, it grieved me to admit) of calling in his solicitor. This was to be avoided at all costs. Holmes’s was a high-strung nature (I had known him to collapse before, though not, indeed, as a result of cocaine), and such an exposure was unthinkable.†

  Rather, what he needed, I decided upon reflection, was therapy. His terrible habit must be broken, and for this I needed some kind of assistance, past experience having shown me that I was not capable of stemming his addiction with my own meagre resources and knowledge. Indeed, if I was correct, what I had scarcely managed before would prove quite impossible now. During the intervening months when our contact had been of the slightest, the fatal compulsion had increased its attractions tenfold, so that now he was more in its awful grip than he had ever been. If I had been unable to help him break that grip before, when it was but a momentary grasp, how should I prevail now that it had become a stranglehold?

  I looked at my watch and noted that it was almost two. With the better part of the day gone, it would be foolish to resume my practice, for Mary would be returning from Mrs. Forrester’s at five and it was my intention to be at Waterloo by then to meet her.
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  In the meanwhile I would go to Bart’s and seek out Stamford’s advice—not telling him, of course, the entire truth—but setting the problem before him as belonging to one of my own patients.

  Stamford, it may be recalled, had been a dresser under me at Bart’s when I was studying at the University of London back in ‘78. Since then, he had gone on to take his own degree at the same august institution and was now a physician on staff at the old hospital where, so many years ago—in the chemical laboratory—he had first introduced me to Sherlock Holmes. He did not know Holmes well and had only brought us together when he learned we were each of us desirous of finding and sharing good rooms at a reasonable price. I did not intend to allude to Holmes today if I could help it.

  Once again I set out from my home, this time with some bread and cold ham, supplied by the girl, which I wrapped in paper (over her protestations) and stuffed in my pocket as I had seen Holmes do so often, when, being engaged upon a case, he had no time for a more conventional repast. The memory caused a pang in my breast as I climbed into a cab and started off for Bart’s on my dismal errand.

  It has been wondered at by contemporary scholars that Holmes and I were so fond of cabs, which admittedly were dear, when the Underground was to be travelled for considerably less. As long as I am clearing up mysteries, I may say that though the Underground was less expensive than the horsedrawn vehicles we favoured, and though it was in some instances definitely faster, it is also true that the lines were not completed and in many cases did not take us where we wished to go.

  But the real reason we did not use them when we could avoid it (and ‘we’ here is meant to include most gentlemen of means) was that the Undergrounds at that time were a hell beneath the earth. Steam-driven, filthy, sulphurous, and dangerous, they were unreliable when they were not lethal and no fit place for a human who could afford another mode of locomotion. People who were forced to use them inevitably suffered lung ailments, and my practice, which bordered on the railway, saw many workmen, builders and maintainers of that subterranean network of trains, who may be said to have literally given their lives so that Londoners today might enjoy the safest and most modem system of cheap transport in the world.