The Seven-Per-Cent Solution Read online

  No Underground connected Baker Street with Bart’s—in 1891, Baker Street was nowhere near the length it is today—and so a cab was not an extravagance but a necessity (unless one considered the omnibuses, but they had their own imperfections).

  St. Bartholomew’s must rank as one of the oldest hospitals in the world. Its twelfth-century structure was erected on Roman foundations, supposedly by Henry I’s jester, Rahere, who, on a pilgrimage to Rome caught sick and swore—if he should recover—to build a great church in London.‡ I do not know if the tale is true, but Bart’s did begin as a church and remained one until Henry VIII annexed it in the name of the Crown and then proceeded (as he did elsewhere) to destroy much of the ecclesiastical portions of the building, suffering the hospital itself to be only slightly altered in the transition. Until some twenty years before I studied at Bart’s, the great Smithfield Market with its huge slaughterhouses was close by, and the stench of dead animals was said to quite overpower every other odour for miles around. I am glad that before I ever arrived the live market and slaughterhouse had been disbanded, and, where animals once shrieked their death agony and blood ran thick in gutters, a number of goodly public houses and shops had risen in its place. I am told it is more or less unchanged to this day but I have not returned to Bart’s this last fifteen years.

  When I entered its portals in my cab that April 25th, however, I thought not of the ancient building’s lineage, nor did I halt to peruse the hodgepodge of architectural additions and encrustations that alternately delight and infuriate the eye. I paid off the cab and went straight into the Pathological Department and sought out Stamford.

  My journey took me through a veritable labyrinth of corridors and turnings, forcing me to ask directions several times, so long had it been since I last threaded the maze. There was no reeking odour of Smithfield now. Instead, my nostrils were assailed by the pungent fumes of carbolic and alcohol, nothing new to them, since those twin harbingers of the medical profession accompanied me daily on my rounds. None the less, their concentration was admittedly great here at Bart’s.

  Stamford, it developed, was giving a lecture, and I was obliged to take a seat at the back of the high-tiered auditorium and wait for him to conclude. It was hard, indeed, to concentrate on his words—something about circulation, I fancy, though I am not prepared to swear to it—so distracted was I with my own purposes. Nevertheless, I do recall looking down at him, standing on the rostrum as though he owned it, and remembering how long it had been since he and I sat in these very seats and listened to yet another revered curmudgeon dinning these same facts into our own thick skulls. Stay, was Stamford not already beginning to resemble that curmudgeon? Whatever was his name?

  When the talk was finished I strode down to the front and called to him as he neared the door.

  “Great heavens, it’s Watson!” he cried, stepping over to me at once and vigorously wringing my hand. “What on earth brings you to Bart’s on this of all days? Heard my talk, did you? I wager you didn’t think I could remember all that foolishness. Have you?”

  And so he chattered on for several minutes, and, taking me by the arm, led me through additional sections of labyrinth to his own office, which was spacious but cluttered with the double paraphernalia of a physician who is also a teacher. Stamford had a jolly way with him as a youth and it pleased me to see that he still rattled on as mindlessly as ever. He had aged gracefully, and possessed the same old good-humoured air without his previous plumpness; his harried professional manner also became him—it gave him something to joke about, and yet he was sufficiently busy so as not to be wholly distracted by his propensity for being ‘clever’, as he put it.

  I let him ramble away for a decent interval, supplied him with details of my own life, my marriage, budding practice and so forth, and dealt as best I could with the inevitable queries about Holmes.

  “Who would have ever thought you two would hit it off so splendidly?” he chortled, and offered me a cigar which I accepted. “And you—you’ve become almost as notorious as he! What with your accounts—’Study in Scarlet’, ‘Sign of the Four’—you’ve a real gift for telling a tale, Watson, and a flair for titles, too, I’ll be bound. Tell me, now we are quite alone and I’ll never breathe it to a soul—can your friend and mine, can old Holmes really do all the things you’ve said he does in those accounts of yours? Truly now! “

  I answered coldly that in my opinion Sherlock Holmes was the best and wisest man I had ever known.

  “Quite, quite,” Stamford rejoined hastily, perceiving at once his want of tact. Then he leaned back in his chair. “Who’d’ve thought it? I mean I always knew the man was clever but I’d no idea— ! Well, well, well.” He seemed at last to realise that I had come to visit him with some definite end in view, and he now turned his attention to it. “Was there something I could do for you, old man?”

  I said there was, and, collecting myself, briefly outlined for him the case history of a patient in the thrall of cocaine, alluding tactfully to the fantasies that accompanied the heavier stages of the addition. I asked him what steps could be taken to cure the man of his suffering.

  Stamford, to do him justice, listened to me with perfect attention, his hands on his desk, smoking in silence, as I unfolded the details.

  “I see,” he said, when I had done. “And tell me, do you mean to say that the patient himself is not aware of the origins of this feeling—that someone is out to do him harm? He does not understand that this delusion is fostered by the drug he persists in using?”

  “Apparently not. I believe it has got to the stage—if this is possible—when he is no longer aware of taking the cocaine at all.”

  Stamford shot up his eyebrows at this, then blew air soundlessly out of his cheeks.

  “I will be candid with you, Watson. I don’t know if that is possible or not. In point of fact,” he continued, rising and coming around his desk to me, “the medical profession knows very little about addiction of any kind. Yet, if you have kept up your reading, you are aware that at some point in the not-too-distant future, such drugs as cocaine and opium are likely to be declared illegal without perscription.”

  “That will scarcely be of any use to me,” I cried bitterly. “By that time my patient may well be dead.” The thought caused my voice to rise in a manner that attracted his attention. I must be more off-hand.

  Stamford studied me for a moment, and I withstood his scrutiny as best I could. Then he returned to his chair.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Watson. If you were able to convince your—your patient that he must place himself totally under your supervision and care—”

  “Out of the question,” I interrupted, managing casually to wave my cigar about.

  “Well, then—” he threw out his hands in a helpless gesture. “Wait a bit, though,” he rose from his chair again. “There was something here that might be of use to you. Now where did I put it?”

  He began rummaging about the office, carelessly disturbing piles of papers and causing a deal of dust to rise about us. With another pang I was reminded of Holmes’s own chaotic filing arrangements at Baker Street, where finding a reference or looking up an old case was likely to send both of us coughing into the street for an hour or two while dust settled.

  “Here it is!” he exclaimed in triumph, and he heaved himself erect from a floor-level cabinet by the window, holding in his hands a copy of The Lancet.

  “This is march,” he said, handing it to me and catching his breath. “Have you seen it?”

  I said I had not, my practice was keeping me so busy, but I believed I had it at home.

  “Well, take this with you anyway in case you’ve misplaced your copy,” Stamford insisted, pressing it into my hands. “There’s a young chap—in Vienna, I think it is—at any rate, I didn’t have time to read the whole thing, but it seems he’s involved in conducting cocaine cures. I can’t remember the name but it’s in there somewhere and maybe he says something that can be
of help. I’m sorry, old man, but I’m afraid it’s the best I can do.”

  I thanked him profusely and we parted with many promises on both sides to dine together in the near future, to introduce one another to our wives, and so forth. We had neither of us the slightest intention of carrying out these extravagant proposals, and my heart was in my boots as I set out for Waterloo. I had no more faith than Stamford that the little piece in The Lancet could save my friend and bring him back from the abyss into which he had fallen. Little did I dream, as I set off to meet my wife, that for the second time in ten years, Stamford—priceless, invaluable Stamford!—had answered my prayers, and Holmes’s.

  * * *

  * This statement would seem to reconcile the opposing views of the late W. S. Baring-Gould, who, in his biography of Holmes, postulated his Yorkshire background, with those of Trevor Hall who more recently contended that Holmes was born and reared in East Sussex. Baring-Gould also informs us that Moriarty tutored Holmes in mathematics. How he came by this crucial piece of intelligence – without access to the present MSS – he does not explain. N.M.

  † Watson mentions two instances of such a collapse, in ‘The Reigate Squires’, and in ‘The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot’. N.M.

  ‡ For a detailed description and history, see Michael Harrison’s excellent volume, In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes, Drake. N.M.

  CHAPTER III

  A Decision is Reached

  “JACK, DEAREST, whatever is the matter?”

  These were my wife’s first words to me as I handed her down from the train at Waterloo. There was between us a great spiritual bond which had first manifested itself the night we met, three years before.*

  Drawn together by circumstances in a tangled skein of people and events that included escaped convicts, Andaman Island savages, retired and ruined army officers, the Great Mutiny and the fabled Agra treasure, we two had stood together in the darkness that awful night on the ground floor of Pondicherry Lodge, whilst Sherlock Holmes and the housekeeper had gone upstairs with Thaddeus Sholto and there discovered the body of his unfortunate brother, Bartholomew. On that ghastly occasion, without a word being spoken—without, in fact, our knowing one another at all—our hands had instinctively groped for one another’s in the gloom and clasped. Like two frightened children, we sought at the same time to comfort one another, so quick was the sympathy between us.

  That lively and intuitive understanding persisted until the day of her death. Certainly it was in evidence when she stepped off the train that evening in April and gazed anxiously into my face.

  “What is it?” she repeated.

  “Nothing. Come, I will tell you when we are at home. Is this all your luggage?”

  And so I diverted her attention for the moment as we threaded our way through the crowded station, weaving in and out amongst trunks, portmanteaux, bellowing porters, and parents endeavouring to keep track and control of squalling offspring. Somehow we negotiated the hubbub, located a cab, paid off our own porter (once our luggage was strapped on high), got in, and left behind us that scene of perpetual chaos which was Waterloo.

  Once we were settled and on our way, my wife attempted to resume her questions, but I resisted them, chatting idly and putting forth a determinedly cheerful countenance. I asked her how she had enjoyed her visit with her former employer, for she had occupied the position of governess in the home of Mrs. Forrester when I had first been so fortunate as to make her acquaintance.

  She was puzzled at first by my obstinacy, but seeing there was nothing for it, fell in with my wish and gave me a lively account of her stay at the Forresters’ country home in Hastings, and of the children, her former charges, who were now quite old enough to dispense with governesses altogether.

  “Or so they would like to think,” my wife amended with a laugh. I think I never loved her more than I did during that ride. She knew I was upset by something, but, seeing that I did not then wish to communicate it, she took her cue from my questions and humoured me with the perfectest grace until I had nerved myself to face the ordeal. She was an excellent woman and I miss her cruelly to this day.

  Supper was waiting for us when we arrived, and we went through the meal affecting the same light-hearted banter, each attempting to regale the other with anecdotes and incidents that had occurred whilst we were apart. As the repast drew to a close, however, she sensed the subtle transition in my mood, and anticipated me.

  “Come, Jack, you’ve beat about the bush long enough. You cannot possibly be interested in further details of those horrid children. Now take me into the sitting room,” she went on, rising and stretching forth her hand, which I took instantly. “There’s a fire there waiting to be lit. Then we shall make ourselves comfortable and you shall have a brandy and soda if you wish it, with your pipe. Then you will tell me what has happened.”

  I followed my wife’s directions as meekly as a child, except that I did not put any soda in my brandy. My wife had been impressed, in the early days of our acquaintance, with my portrait of General Gordon. How she came to possess the following trivial piece of information I never discovered (very possibly as she came from a military background it was common knowledge), but General Gordon was said to favour the brandy and soda above all other concoctions. My wife, perhaps because I had been wounded in action in Afghanistan, held an exaggerated notion of my affiliations with the army. She was for ever attempting to cultivate in me a taste for General Gordon’s brew. In vain I protested that I had inherited the General’s picture on the death of my elder brother; in vain protested that the General had never commanded the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers. She revered him to distraction—primarily for his work in ending the Chinese slave trade—and she never abandoned hope that I would some day come to relish her hero’s drink. Tonight, however, she did not sulk when she perceived that I had—as was my custom—omitted the soda from my glass.

  “Now, Jack,” she prompted, having arranged herself very prettily on the horsehair sofa opposite the chair in which I sat—the chair in which Holmes had fallen asleep the night before. She was still in her travelling costume-grey tweed with a touch of lace at the wrists and throat—though she had removed her hat before supper.

  I took a pull at my brandy, made a great show of lighting my pipe, and then related the entire catastrophe.

  “Poor Mr. Holmes!’ she cried at the end, clasping her hands together in agitation, tears standing in her eyes. “What are we to do? Is there anything we can do?” Her readiness and willingness to help warmed my heart. She had no thought of shunning the difficulty, of avoiding my companion and the sordid disease that had overtaken and distorted his true nature.

  “I think there is a measure that may be tried,” I answered, getting to my feet, “but it will not be easy. Holmes is too far gone to accept help willingly and I daresay he is still too clever to be tricked into applying for it.”

  “Then—”

  “A moment, dearest. I wish to fetch something from the hall.”

  I left her briefly, and retrieved the copy of The Lancet Stamford had given me. I wondered, as I walked back to the sitting room, whether or not Mary could help me, if necessary, to effect my plan. She was an independent girl who had very much made her own way in the world. The plan had been slowly forming in my brain since I had sat on a bench in Waterloo waiting for her train, reading about the Austrian specialist.

  I returned to the sitting room, closed the door, and told my wife of my interview with Stamford and what had come of it.

  “You say you have read the article?” she said.

  “Yes, twice, while waiting for your train.” Resuming my chair, I spread the issue of The Lancet open upon my knee as I thumbed through it in search of the piece.

  “This doctor—ah, here it is—this doctor has made a thorough study of cocaine. He came to the early, and, he confesses, erroneous conclusion that its powers were miraculous, capable of curing almost any disease and of ending alcoholism. He discovered, howe
ver, the terrible curse of its addiction when a dear friend of his perished as a consequence.”

  “Perished,” she echoed in hushed tones, speaking in spite of herself.

  We looked at one another, fearfully, as the awful possibility of Holmes’s death in this grotesque fashion assailed our imaginations. My wife, no less than I, had reason to be grateful to Holmes, for it was through his agency that we had come to meet. I swallowed and went on.

  “At any rate, after the death of this chap (it happened earlier this year) the doctor who wrote this article reversed his endorsement of cocaine and now expends his energies in the hope of curing unfortunate folk who have come within its thrall. He knows more about the drug than anyone else in Europe.”

  Again, we exchanged glances.

  “Will you correspond with him?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “There is no time. Holmes is too far along the path to destruction to waste an hour. His constitution is strong, but it cannot withstand the ravages of the venom he administers to himself. Unless we get help for him at once, his body will fail before we are ever given the opportunity to repair his mind.

  “I propose taking him to the Continent. I propose letting this doctor work on him himself, whilst I attempt to render every assistance that my knowledge of Holmes and my willingness to sacrifice time and energy can provide.”

  My wife sat silent for some moments in deep thought. When she turned to me again, the practical side of her nature asserted itself in a series of penetrating questions.

  “Suppose the man can do no good—what then?”