The Seven-Per-Cent Solution Read online

  I shrugged. “He is the only person in Europe who seems to know anything of the matter. What alternative have we but to try?”

  She nodded.

  “But what of the doctor? Will he see Holmes? Perhaps he is too busy, or—” she hesitated, “too dear.”

  “I shall be able to answer that question more accurately when I have an answer to my telegram,” I told her.

  “You sent a telegram?”

  I had wired from Waterloo after reading the article. This was taking a leaf from Holmes who preferred telegrams to all other forms of communication. I winced, remembering that he was at present addressing them to poor Moriarty. My case, however, was justified. Nothing short of a telegram could have served my purpose. As for the telephone, even had overseas lines been available in ‘91 I should not have used them. I had contracted from Holmes his prejudice against the telephone. With a telegram, as Holmes said, one is forced to be concise, and, as a result, logical. Messages beget messages in return, not a lot of useless gibbering. I did not want a qualified or long response, just an unadorned yes or no.

  “Ah,” my wife began, leaning back unhappily, with a sigh, “but we have not reckoned with Mr. Holmes himself. You admit that he is not to be tricked into applying for help. Suppose the doctor does accept him as a patient. How are we to get him there? From what you have said, I understand him to be more on his guard than ever.”

  “That is true,” I replied, shaking my head. “It will not be easy to get Holmes abroad. He must be made to feel he is going of his own volition.”

  “And how are we to accomplish that?”

  “He must be made to believe he is on the track of Professor Moriarty—and we must provide the clues.”

  My wife favoured me with the blankest stare of astonishment I have ever beheld on a human countenance.

  “Provide the clues?” she gasped.

  “Yes.” I held her eyes steadily with my own. “We must plant a false trail that will lead Holmes to Vienna.”

  “He will see through your scheme,” she protested automatically. “No one knows so much about clues as does he.”

  “Very likely,” I responded, “but no one knows so much about Holmes as do I.” I leaned forward. “I will use every device I know to attract him, to put him on the scent. Subtlety is not my forté, but it is his. I shall absorb it temporarily. I shall think like him; I shall consult my notes of past cases he and I worked on together; you will help me; and,” I concluded, more bravely than I felt, “we shall get him to do our bidding. If necessary,” I added lamely, “I am prepared to spend money as if it were water.”

  My wife bent towards me and took my face earnestly in both her hands. She gazed searchingly but with affection into my eyes.

  “You would do all this—for him?”

  “I should be the most miserable wretch on earth if I did not,” I replied, “seeing what he has done for me.”

  “Then I shall help you,” said she simply.

  “Good.” I seized her hands in mine and pressed them with excitement. “I knew I could depend upon you. But first we must gain the co-operation of the doctor.”

  That obstacle to our plans, however, was overcome momentarily. There was a knock at the front door, and shortly there-after the girl entered the room with a telegram in her hand. With trembling fingers I tore open the seal and read a brief message, couched in quaintly awkward English, to the effect that the doctor’s ‘services were to the great English detective gratis offered’, and that he was anxiously awaiting word. I scribbled a hasty reply and sent the girl to the door with it.

  Now all that remained was to get Sherlock Holmes to Vienna.

  * * *

  * Much controversy has raged amongst scholars concerning Watson’s marriage, or marriages. Without entering into the question of how many times he was married, and to whom, this passage and the one that follows it make it perfectly clear that the woman to whom he refers was Mary Morstan, Holmes’s client in The Sign of the Four and the only female Watson positively states that he married. N.M

  CHAPTER IV

  Interlude in Pall Mall

  OF COURSE, IT WAS ONE THING to say one was going to assimilate the mind of Sherlock Holmes and quite another to do it.

  Fired by the telegram, we drew our chairs closer to one another, and, pausing only long enough for me to get my cases down from the shelves, set about planning our false trail.

  Alas, it proved more difficult than even I had imagined. Students of my works have seen fit to remark that the man who wrote them was ‘slow’, a dullard, hopelessly gullible, totally without imagination, and worse. To these charges I plead not guilty. While it is true that I have employed literary licence in recounting some of my adventures with Holmes, and have therefore sometimes erred in making myself appear too stupid in comparison, yet I included these exaggerations not for the mere sake of enhancing my friend’s abilities in the eye of the reader, but rather because being in his company often made one feel dull whether or not one possessed a normal intelligence, which, by the by, I believe I do.

  But when a normal brain, coupled with all the good will in the world, sets out to dupe a superior one, it very quickly becomes evident where the problem lies. We made a dozen false starts that night, and each had some gap in it, some flaw in the reasoning, or else in its lack of the quality that I knew might be able to engage Holmes’s attention. My wife, playing devil’s advocate, several times punctured what briefly appeared to be brilliant schemes.

  How long I sat before the hearth, cudgelling my brains and poring over my notes, I know not, except that it seemed longer in my fancy than was subsequently borne out by the clock above the mantel.

  “Jack!” exclaimed my wife abruptly, “we’re going about this all wrong.”

  “How do you mean?” I demanded, somewhat nettled, for I was doing the very best I knew how and it irked me to hear from my own wife that my efforts in a dear friend’s behalf were ‘all wrong’.

  “Don’t be angry,” she said quickly, perceiving the flush which spread over my features, “I only meant that if we want someone to outwit Mr. Holmes, we must go to his brother.”

  Why ever hadn’t I thought of it before? I leaned forward impulsively and kissed my wife upon the cheek.

  “You are right,” said I, rising. “Mycroft is the very man who can bait our trap. Even Holmes admits that Mycroft is his intellectual superior.”

  In my haste I had already started towards the door.

  “Will you go there now?” she protested. “It is nearly ten. Jack, you have done enough for one day.”

  “I tell you there is no time to be lost,” I replied, slipping into my jacket, which had hung before the blaze. “Besides, if I can reach the Diogenes Club before eleven I may very possibly find Mycroft still there. You needn’t stay up for me,” I added, kissing her tenderly once more.

  Outside, I hailed a hansom and told the driver to take me to the Diogenes Club, where Mycroft was usually to be found. This done, I reclined on the cushions and listened to the clip-clop of the horse’s iron shoes against the cobble-stones as we drove through the gas-lit streets. I tried to keep awake, though in truth I was fairly done up.

  Nevertheless, I had known Holmes, when on a case, to be capable of the most superhuman exertions. If I was unable to emulate his brilliance, at least I could match his endurance.

  I did not know Mycroft Holmes well. Indeed, I had met him only once or twice and that some three years earlier, when our paths had crossed during the unhappy business of the Greek interpreter. Indeed, I had been more than seven years in residence with Holmes before he mentioned having a brother, and the relevation astounded me as much as if I had learned the earth was flat. I was further amazed when Holmes indicated his brother’s mental faculties were even keener than his own.

  “Then surely,” I said at the time, “he is an even greater detective, and, that being the case, how is it I have never heard of the man?” For it seemed impossible that another such brain
as Holmes’s could exist in England with no one remarking on it.

  “Oh,” Holmes had replied airily, “Mycroft prefers to hide his light under a bushel, so to speak. He is very lazy,” he added, seeing that I did not understand. “He would be perfectly willing to piece out a mystery if it did not involve getting out of his chair. Unfortunately there is often more to it than that,” he chuckled, “and Mycroft abhors anything in the nature of physical exertion.”

  He went on to explain that his brother spent most of his time in the Diogenes Club, across from his lodgings in Pall Mall. The Diogenes was a club devoted to a membership that could not abide clubs. It contained the queerest and most unsociable men in London, and no member was on any account permitted to take the least notice of another member. Save only in the Strangers’ Room, talking was strictly prohibited.

  I had actually dozed off when the cabbie opened the trap and, without looking down, announced in an offhand way that we had reached our destination.

  Stepping quickly across the street to the club’s entrance, I gave the footman my card and requested that he send Mr. Mycroft Holmes to me in the Strangers’ Room. He bowed stiffly and retreated upon my errand. Only a flicker of his eyelids, half-closed in perpetual hauteur, gave me to understand that he thought my appearance irregular. I made a feeble attempt to straighten my collar and passed a rueful hand over the bristle on my chin. Fortunately, there was no need to remove my hat and comb my hair. Though the custom was dying out even then, men—especially in clubs—often retained their hats indoors.

  After an interval of five minutes, the steward rejoined me, walking on padded feet, and, with a graceful motion of his gloved hand, ushered me forth and deposited me in the Strangers’ Room, where I found Mycroft Holmes.

  “Dr. Watson? I wasn’t sure I should recognise you.” He waddled forward and took my hand in his pudgy fingers. I have stated elsewhere that in contrast to Sherlock’s gaunt physique, his brother was fleshy to the point of obesity. The years had not diminished his girth that I could detect, and he, for his part, observed me narrowly out of pig-like eyes lost in folds of fat.

  “You have some urgent business that concerns my brother, I perceive,” he went on, “for you have been travelling all day on his behalf—using hansoms, I should judge—and you have stopped briefly at Waterloo to pick something—or, no,” he amended, “to pick someone up. You are very tired,” he added, indicating a chair. “Please tell me what has happened to my brother.”

  “How did you know anything has happened to him?” I asked, sinking into the chair with amazement. Here was Holmes’s sibling indeed.

  “Pooh,” Mycroft waved an enormous paw. “I have not seen you these three years and then it was in the company of Sherlock, whose doings I know you chronicle. Suddenly you pay me a visit at a time when most married men are at home with their wives, and you arrive without your alter ego. It is an easy matter to suppose that something is amiss with him and you come to me for help or advice. I can see by your chin that you have been about all day with no opportunity to shave again, as your beard demands. You are not carrying your medical bag, though from your own statements in print I know you have resumed your practice. Therefore I conclude that your arduous business is connected with your visit to me this evening. The date of the visitor’s stub projecting from the pocket of your ulster informs me that you have been on the platform at Waterloo today. If you had been there to collect a parcel you would not, of course, have needed to go further than the luggage room, for which, I believe, no visitor’s pass is required; therefore you were at the station to meet someone. And as for the hansoms which have been carrying you about all day, your beard and haggard expression proclaim that you have not been home; yet your ulster is dry and your boots are clean despite the inclement weather. And what other mode of transportation can affect pleasant grooming so well as that which our Mr. Disraeli calls the gondolas of London? You see, it is all quite simple. Now tell me what has happened.”

  He drew up a chair opposite to mine, giving me time to digest my astonishment, smiled kindly, and offered me a drink. I shook my head.

  “You have not been in touch recently with your brother, then?” I asked.

  “Not for more than a year.”

  This did not seem strange to me, though most people would have thought it odd that two brothers living in the same city, with no quarrel betwixt them, should have kept so totally apart. But the Holmes brothers were the exception, not the rule, as I had good reason to know.

  Cautioning Mycroft Holmes that my tidings were not pleasant, I told him of his brother’s condition and how I proposed to remedy it. He heard me out in dejected silence, hanging his head lower and lower as I spoke. When I finished, the pause which followed was so long that for a moment I wondered if he had fallen asleep. A deep rumbling sigh almost persuaded me that he had, but it was followed by his head coming slowly up until his eyes were level with mine once more. Behind their piggy look I saw pain.

  “Moriarty?” he repeated at last, huskily.

  I nodded.

  He cut me off with a weary wave of his hand.

  “Quite so, quite so,” he murmured, then lapsed again into silence, staring at his finger ends. At length, with another sigh, he heaved himself to his feet, and spoke with animation, as if attempting to throw off the depression into which my news had plunged him.

  “Getting him to Vienna will not be easy,” he agreed, going to the door and pulling the bell-rope, “but it should not be impossible, either. In order to do so we must merely persuade him that Moriarty is there—there and waiting for him.”

  “But that is precisely what I have no idea how to accomplish.”

  “No? Well, the simplest solution is to induce Professor Moriarty to go to Vienna. We’ll need a cab, if you please, Jenkins,” Mycroft Holmes said over my shoulder to the steward who had responded to the bell-rope’s summons.

  He was silent during our nocturnal journey to number 114 Munro Road (the Hammersmith address provided us by the Professor’s card), except that he enquired about the Austrian specialist and asked who he might be. I explained in some detail about the article in The Lancet, and he responded with a grunt.

  “Sounds Jewish,” was his only comment.

  I was getting a second wind, and having Mycroft—Mycroft’s brain—enlisted in my cause did much to restore my spirits. I was tempted to ask him about Professor Moriarty and the tragedy he had referred to, but I held my tongue. Mycroft was clearly preoccupied with the present plight of his brother; there was something in both their natures that seemed to preclude such presumption, even in a friend, and I was certainly no intimate of Mycroft’s.

  I fell to wondering, instead, how we should persuade Professor Moriarty to comply with our bizarre request. Surely, we will never induce the timid tutor to surrender his post and leave for the Continent all at once. He will demur; worse, he will whine. I turned to my companion with the object of communicating my misgivings, but he was craning his head out of the window.

  “Stop here, cabbie,” he directed quietly, though we were still some distance from our destination.

  “If the Professor was not exaggerating,” Mycroft explained, forcing his bulk out of the cab, “we must be on our guard. It is essential that we talk with him, but it would not do to reveal our visit to Sherlock, should he have chosen this night to stand vigil.”

  I nodded and told the driver to wait for us where he stood, no matter how long it took. I pressed a shilling into his palm to ensure that he did so, and promised him yet another when we returned. Then Mycroft and I set off quietly down the deserted streets for the Professor’s residence.

  Munro Road was in an undistinguished neighbourhood of two-storey dwellings with stucco fronts and unbecoming little gardens. At the end of the street I saw white smoke rising into the night air and clutched my portly companion by the sleeve. He looked in the direction I indicated and nodded. Together we stepped into the shadows of the nearest dwelling.

  Sta
nding beneath the only lamp on the street was Sherlock Holmes, smoking his pipe.

  Edging our way closer in the shadows and crouching there, we quickly perceived that the situation was an impossible one. As long as Holmes was planted squarely opposite the Professor’s front door, we could not hope to enter unobserved except by a diversion; what that diversion might be we neither of us could imagine. In low whispers we held a brief consultation. The strategy of retreating to the street behind the house and entering through the back door was raised, but several arguments militated against such a ruse. There would certainly be a fence to climb, and Mycroft was obviously incapable of such gymnastics though they would not be beyond me. Even if he did master the fence, and even allowing for us to calculate the correct house in the darkness, there was still the locked back door to contend with; the inevitable commotion that followed our entry would unavoidably attract Holmes’s attention.

  Unexpectedly, the problem was solved for us. Looking back again at the figure of my friend standing in the yellow glare of the lamp, I saw him knock the ashes from his pipe against the heel of his boot and saunter down the other end of the street.

  “He’s leaving!” I exclaimed in an undertone.

  “Let us hope he does not intend coming back to pursue his watch,” Mycroft muttered, gasping for breath as he rose and endeavoured to dust off his knees. His girth would not allow his hands to reach them. “Quickly, now,” he said, giving up the effort, “we must accomplish our errand without further delay.”

  He struck off in the direction of the house. I stood still, watching the now distant figure of my friend in the darkness. It seemed to me that his very back—straight and narrow in his Inverness—looked lonely and forlorn.

  “Watson, come on!” Mycroft hissed, and I followed him.

  Rousing the inmates proved simpler than we expected; Professor Moriarty was up, his attempts at sleep having been poisoned—not for the first time—by the knowledge that Holmes was standing beneath his window.