The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols Read online

  “I am not at liberty to say.”

  Holmes threw up his hands in exasperation. “Watson, we have been gulled.”

  “Holmes—”

  “It was turned over to our agent in Paris,” Mycroft conceded in his own tone of exasperation. “Does that satisfy you?”

  “It most certainly does not. Who turned it over?”

  Mycroft stared stonily at the younger Holmes.

  “Mycroft, these pages are arrant nonsense.”

  “Tell me why,” his brother demanded.

  Holmes collected himself much like a horse before essaying a series of jumps.

  “To begin with, what language do Jews speak? Amongst themselves,” he specified. “Hebrew?”

  Mycroft emitted a sound, something between a guffaw and a sigh. “Not for five thousand years—except in their liturgy,” he informed the detective. “To the degree Jews enjoy a common language, that language is Yiddish, a German polyglot with Hebraic interpolations. I read some Yiddish myself,” he added with evident satisfaction.

  “Yiddish,” Holmes echoed. “Thus a Jew from, say, Turkestan and one from Brazil, or London, for that matter, would be perfectly at ease communicating with one another in that language?”

  “They would, yes.”

  “Yet these pages, which purport to be the minutes of a surreptitious convocation of Jews, are set down not in Yiddish but in French. Why?” He shrugged. “A cabal of Jews writing for other Jews about global domination, in secret, employ French? French, which is generally conceded to be the language of diplomacy? Primo, that fact alone, I would hazard, is, to put it mildly, suggestive.”

  “But is it not possible the document is a French translation from the Yiddish?” I interposed. “Perhaps these notes were made by … a spy, or someone to whom he later passed on the original Yiddish for translation?”

  Mycroft favored me with an expression that was almost gratitude, but the detective shook his head, like one unconvinced.

  “It won’t do, Watson. Secondo,” he resumed, now inserting his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets and planting his feet akimbo. “Consider this article from the so-called Protocol labeled number eighteen, and remember, I cannot vouch for every word of my own translation. He hesitated briefly, scanning the sentence before reading it aloud: ‘The time has come for Jews to awaken and seize the reins of control, of industry, currency, and culture, to assert our dormant power to erase Goyim from the earth, to the everlasting glory of the Hebrew race.’”

  We sat in momentary silence, speechless at this chilling manifesto, while Holmes regarded us, passing a hand over his mouth.

  “Really?” His attenuated pronunciation of the word dripped with scorn. “A passage that totally incriminates its author, with the subtlety of Richard III forewarning the audience as to his schemes—and set down in a language all Europe can comprehend, at a meeting which is said to be secret? Mirabile dictu. Come now. It seems rather designed to implicate the fiends who feel conveniently bound to itemize not only their grand designs, but also the very motives which one would imagine had been understood and agreed among the participants long since. For that matter, why is this credo of malice not to be found in the very first Protocol? I remind you of chapter twelve in Alice in Wonderland.”

  Mycroft was equal to the challenge and quoted from memory: “‘Rule forty-two: All persons more than a mile high to leave the court,’” he supplied with a wary smile, suggesting older times between them, and adding, “‘It’s the oldest rule in the book.’”

  “‘Then it should have been Rule Number One!’” Holmes concluded the quotation triumphantly, tapping the page. “As this broad announcement of purpose should have been. Furthermore, I must observe, for a lengthy document that purports to be the minutes of a clandestine assembly, one can fully obtain all it has to state in three or four lines, or a page or two at most. The rest is interminable repetition of its improbable thesis, namely, world domination by the Jews. For that matter, why would these same Jews, whoever they might be, trouble to make an incriminating record of their nefarious plans?”

  “So you are suggesting this document is fraudulent,” Mycroft demanded.

  “What I’ve seen of it, and within my limited powers as a translator, certainly raises one’s suspicions. The best forgeries are too agreeable; they are eager to ingratiate themselves with the credulous. Like magic tricks, created for an audience that wishes to believe. This one seems specifically calculated to fulfill the darkest fears and expectations of those who harbor hatred of Jewry. And what of this?” the detective went on, pointing at some of the text in question with an extended little finger. “Here everything is in French except one capitalized word, ‘Goyim.’ From the sense of the text, it is obviously jargon for ‘nonbeliever’ or ‘gentile.’ Am I to believe that an allegedly formal document, such as this purports to be, deliberately if inexplicably composed in French, nonetheless slips into Yiddish when it most wants discretion? Who on earth, wishing to conceal his true meaning from unprivileged eyes, would be so foolhardy as to employ a word that ensures his authorship is identified?” He exhaled like one satisfied with his performance. “There is no cabal, only a canard. I think you may depend upon it there were no secret meetings of Jews. Manya Lippman, whoever she may have been, gave her life for nothing.”

  Mycroft sat back unhappily. “Ah, you see, but there were.”

  “Were what?”

  “Meetings. Of Jews. In Switzerland.”

  Holmes, who had resumed his self-satisfied stance at the window, now swiveled back in surprise. “What?”

  “Not secret,” Mycroft conceded, “but annual meetings nonetheless of Jews from all over the globe. In Basel,” he added gloomily.

  “Meetings,” Holmes repeated, with evident bewilderment.

  “Six years’ worth. You didn’t know? It’s hardly secret, Sherlock, but then you never read anything but the agony columns.”

  I could see the news had rather rocked my friend, though I was obliged to own I had on occasion glanced at something or other about these gatherings in The Daily Telegraph.

  “Under whose…” Holmes groped for the word. “… auspices have these Jewish gatherings been convened?”

  “They call themselves ‘Zionists,’ and they have been assembled by a charismatic Hungarian journalist, one Theodor Herzl. Their avowed purpose is to obtain a Jewish homeland, though what precisely their true aim may be is the issue at hand.”

  Holmes continued to shake his head.

  “I know that elsewhere the good Watson here has listed my knowledge of politics as feeble,* and perhaps it is, but I find it difficult to believe that some of the most powerful, not to say reputable, citizens of this sceptered isle, financiers and philanthropists—Baron Rothschild, the late Sir Moses Montefiore (formerly High Sheriff of London!), Sir Samuel Montagu, and the like are involved in anything like a global conspiracy. Are you suggesting these men—many of them captains and commodores of finance—are making common cause with the disciples of Karl Marx to somehow upend the world order? Bankers in league with Socialists? Such a Byzantine collaboration can only be the product of a disordered mind.”

  Mycroft studied his brother before answering.

  “I am inclined to agree. Certainly, to our knowledge, none of the men you have named were known to have attended any of these ‘congresses,’ though we have firm evidence some have contributed financial support. It is a disagreeable situation in which we find ourselves, but we must nonetheless understand what is going on and whether it affects the national security. There are unsettling implications outstanding,” he added after a fraction’s hesitation.

  “Such as?”

  Mycroft withdrew a paper from his breast pocket and unfolded it. “This is the text of remarks recently read into the record by the Right Honorable Member of Parliament for Oldham,” he began, and, putting on a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, read aloud, “The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populat
ions of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, have forsaken the faith of their forefathers and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among Jews is not new. From the days of Karl Marx here in London down to Emma Goldman in the United States, this worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality has been steadily growing. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the nineteenth century, and now at last…” Mycroft’s voice trailed off and he removed his spectacles. “Mr. Churchill goes on in that vein for some time.”

  “Churchill!” I exclaimed. “That publicity hound? Always boasting of his wartime exploits?”* As a veteran myself, with some claim to distinction, I found Churchill’s self-promoting antics especially repellant.

  “Mr. Churchill may be a publicity hound and his widowed American mother no better than she should be, having just married a man the same age as her son, but that does not alter the fact of young Churchill’s frightening eloquence. And that isn’t all.”

  “What more?” Holmes demanded. He sounded tired.

  Mycroft resumed that aspect of discomfort with which I was growing increasingly familiar. The effects of this peculiar document did not improve upon closer acquaintance.

  “As you know, the current…” Here he chose his words like one tiptoeing through a minefield. “… resident of a large house near the Mall was, in his youth, rather a spendthrift, who ran up considerable debts on both sides of the Channel.”

  Holmes turned paler than usual.

  “Are we speaking of a very large house? A large house at the end of the Mall?”

  “Just so.”

  Holmes passed a fretful hand over his mouth. “My understanding is that the obligations of that house’s proprietor were settled long since by a friend.”

  “Yes. A Jewish friend.”

  “Sir Ernest Cassel is surely a Catholic,” I protested. The wealthy banker’s long-standing friendship with the house’s “occupant” was common knowledge.

  “He converted in order to marry,”* Mycroft informed me in a tone that suggested that in his taxonomy, conversion didn’t signify. “And it is our understanding, Sir Ernest remains in possession of certain additional … obligations on the part of His—on the part of the resident of the large house near the Mall,” he concluded lamely.

  We sat in silence, punctuated by the ticks of a large clock whose sounds I had not noticed earlier. Holmes sat in his accustomed wing chair, whose upholstery, I now observed, was in need of serious repair. Horsehair resembling intestines now leaked from the right arm. Indifferent to the spillage, Holmes threw a lanky leg over a ragged antimacassar and was meditatively packing his charred cherrywood pipe with contents from the tin of Balkan Sobranie.

  “Surely the most immediate solution to the problem is to dispatch someone from the Foreign Offi—from the Diogenes to interview Herr Herzl and put these questions to him?” I offered.

  Mycroft regarded me unhappily.

  “Precisely what we did. Six months ago we dispatched an…” Again the careful selection of euphemism. “… emissary to interview Herr Herzl, as you term him, in Austria and put those very questions to him.”

  “And?” Holmes struck a match.

  “Alas, Herr Herzl dropped dead before the interview could take place.”*

  “Dropped dead?” Holmes and I exclaimed as one. I could see the detective’s interest now fully engaged. Forgetting to light his pipe, Holmes ignored the match until the flame singed his fingers, whereupon he hastily shook it out.

  “At the ripe old age of forty-four. They’re calling it heart failure,” Mycroft added in a tone devoid of inflection.

  “Do you suspect foul play?” the detective inquired, adopting the same diffident tone.

  “With what conceivable motive?”

  “Brother, you astonish me. I am asked to examine a set of documents which purportedly detail a Jewish plot to dominate the world (however amorphous the phrase, but let that pass); these documents are found in possession of one of your own, who died to deliver them; and finally you call my attention to an impassioned Jew who is yoking together annual assemblies of his coreligionists in Switzerland—and you ask me to produce a motive for his assassination?”

  “But your theory is that these papers are false,” I struck in.

  “No matter,” returned the detective, still facing his sibling. “If they serve to prompt the elimination of a forceful figure in Jewish affairs, they will have arguably served the purposes of their creators. It is sufficient for the credulous to learn that Jews have been ‘assembling,’ for whatever reason, to put Theodor Herzl in their crosshairs. By the same token,” he reasoned, “the murder of your intrepid agent may have been less to prevent her delivering these supposedly incriminating ‘protocols’ to you, than by killing her to convince you of their authenticity. Why else leave them in her possession after she was dead? Let us suppose for a moment,” he went on, “the Protocols are authentic, a record of a deadly and gigantic Jewish conspiracy, and somehow your agent manages to procure a copy. Desperate members of the cabal overtake her in London, where she is killed to prevent their infamous scheme from exposure.”

  “Yes…”

  “Then why leave the documents themselves in her possession? It makes no sense. Unless you grant my hypothesis that the papers are false and the unfortunate woman was slain to make them appear authentic—which the true perpetrators could not accomplish without leaving them on her person for you to recover and draw what mischievous conclusions you will. In Paris, your agent didn’t penetrate a Jewish conspiracy; she penetrated a conspiracy to implicate Jews—what for, or by whom, remains to be seen. As for Theodor Herzl—”

  “The subject is not Theodor Herzl,” his brother reminded him. “It is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

  “I think they are the same,” said Sherlock Holmes. “Regardless of motive: someone was willing to kill for them.”

  More clock ticks. Mycroft’s pudgy fingers drummed an impatient tattoo on the right arm of his chair. I could see my companion mentally regrouping. My tea was now stone cold.

  “Surely, Mycroft, if, as you say, Jews from all over the world attended one or more of these meetings, there must be several now here in England who were present?”

  “I was just coming to that,” Mycroft allowed, clearly pleased to be on firmer ground at last. “A colleague of yours at the University of Manchester was present at several of the annual meetings.”

  “A colleague of mine? What sort of colleague?”

  “A fellow chemist. Born in Russia, educated in Germany—all in all quite cosmopolitan. He took up his post as a lecturer at the university less than two years ago. His Majesty’s Government would look with favor on your speaking to him.”

  Holmes made a face.

  “It would be of inestimable help if His Majesty’s Government would supply its humble servant with the name of my chemist colleague in Manchester. It would serve to narrow my search, Mycroft.”

  Notions of dry wit were their specialty.

  “Ah, forgive me.” Mycroft fumbled for his engagement diary and tore off yet another page, similar in size and shape to that which he’d pressed into the detective’s hand the night before. Holmes took it and read—

  “Professor Charles Weizmann?”

  “Just so. Professor Weizmann will doubtless be able to answer some of your questions.”

  “Your questions,” Holmes corrected him in turn. They were forever at it.

  Mycroft ignored the gibe and heaved himself with an effort to his feet.

  “May I show these pages to my sister-in-law?” I asked as he neared the door.

  One hand on the knob, the other collecting his sturdy walking stick, Mycroft turned.

  “Mrs. Garnett? Why?”

  “Her French is excellent, and we have now mentioned
Russia three times in this conversation. It might do to have someone fluent in both tongues examine this. I take it Russian is not one of your six languages?”

  Mycroft hesitated. I could see the wheels spinning in that large head.

  “A woman’s place is in the home,” he stated as one who mournfully acknowledged this position was already under assault.

  “Manya Lippman wasn’t at home,” Holmes pointed out mildly. His brother flushed.

  “In any event, my sister-in-law works at home,” I added, in an attempt to placate him.

  “Your sister-in-law’s ménage is decidedly … unorthodox. That Bloomsbury pack.” Mycroft remained unconvinced as he remembered to remove and fold his spectacles.

  “Constance is an excellent translator. In three languages. Have you anyone at your disposal of whom the same can be said?” Without feeling the need to specify, I knew the thought crossed all our minds that Manya Lippman had been one of whom it could. And she had been disposed of.

  “Hmmm.”

  “I will assume full responsibility for them.”

  Mycroft briefly regarded Holmes, then myself.

  “I will retain the original. The rest are not to leave your sight.”

  “You have my solemn undertaking they will not.”

  “If you feel them to be in any jeopardy, you will destroy them.”

  “I shall.”*

  With no farewell salutation, Mycroft left the room and thudded downstairs.

  The detective and I were left alone. Without comment, he finally lit his pipe, tossed the match into the hearth, resumed his chair, and stared into space, emitting smoke puffs as if they were signals.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I am wondering which is preferable.”

  “Preferable?”

  “Yes. Is it preferable these atrocious pages prove authentic or fraudulent?”

  “Fraudulent, surely,” I said. The answer struck me as self-evident.

  The detective said nothing.

  Mrs. Hudson, anticipating my departure, returned with my coat, now comfortingly dry and warm. Now it was my turn to hesitate, my hand on the knob.