The Seven-Per-Cent Solution Read online

  “Other geniuses would no doubt be born,” I replied lamely.

  “Ah, Watson,” said he, shaking his head from side to side. “Good old Watson. You are the one fixed point in this universe of avalanches !”

  I looked at him and beheld tears glistening in his eyes.

  “Excuse me.” He rose abruptly and took the carpet bag with him. For once I was grateful. The drug would restore his spirits, and until I had delivered him to the care of the knowledgeable Viennese physician, I was, ironically, dependent upon it.

  Shortly after Holmes returned, a tall, very red-headed Englishman opened the door of our compartment and asked, in a distracted mumble, if he might share it with us as far as Linz. He had got on the train at Salzburg, but it had filled up while he was in the dining car. Holmes urged him to be seated, with a languid wave of his hand, and appeared to show no further interest in the man. I was left to attempt a desultory conversation, which, for his part, the new arrival, conducted in vague, monosyllables.

  “I’ve been for a ramble in the Tyrol,” he said, in answer to a question of mine, and Holmes opened his eyes.

  “In the Tyrol? Surely not,” said he. “Doesn’t the label on your baggage state that you have just returned from Ruritania?”

  The handsome Englishman turned almost as pale as Holmes. He got to his feet, repossessed his bags and, mumbling apologies, said he was going to have a drink.

  “What a pity,” I remarked after he had gone, “I should have liked to ask him about the coronation.”

  “Mr. Rassendyll did not wish to discuss it,” Holmes declared, “else he would have left his gear with us instead of taking it to the club car. This way he has no reason to return.”

  “What an extraordinary head of hair ! One would have instantly granted him entrance to the League,‡ eh, Holmes?”

  “No doubt,” he replied drily.

  “You say his name’s Rassendyll? I couldn’t make out the label.”

  “No more could I.”

  “Then how in the name of all that’s wonderful—?” I began, but he cut me off with a brief laugh and a wave of his hand.

  “I’ve no wish to make a mystery of the matter,” said he. “I recognised him, that is all. He is the younger brother of Lord Burlesdon.§ I chatted with him at a party at Lord Topham’s once. Rather a ne’er-do-well,” he concluded, losing interest in the subject as the drug’s effects made themselves felt.

  It was quite dark when the train pulled into Linz and we took Toby for his perambulation on the platform. By this time, Holmes himself was convinced that Moriarty had gone all the way to Vienna (though for what reason he still could not imagine), and, therefore, it did not surprise him when the dog failed to react to any olfactory stimuli in the station.

  We reboarded the train and slept all the way to Vienna, which we reached in the early hours of the morning.

  Again we went through the process of shaving and donning clean linen, but this time we were conscious of suppressed excitement, of prolonging the dramatic moment when Toby would step out on the platform and see if any vanilla extract was to be detected.

  Finally the time had come. Crossing our fingers for luck, Holmes and I stepped out of the train, carrying our bags and holding Toby’s lead. We walked slowly from one end of the train to the other, and had only one more car to go, but still Toby gave no sign that served as a hopeful indication. Holmes’s face grew long as we approached the gate which led to the terminus.

  Suddenly the dog froze in its tracks, then darted forward a foot or two along the platform, his nose ploughing through the soot on the ground and his tail wagging in jubilation.

  “He’s found it !” we exclaimed simultaneously. He had indeed, and after setting up his own growls and whines of satisfaction, Toby turned about and started rapidly towards the gate.

  He led us through that foreign railway station as though it were Pinchin Lane, a thousand miles away. No frontiers, no barrier of language made the slightest impression on Toby or in the least interfered with his pursuit of the vanilla extract. Had the scent been strong enough—and had Professor Moriarty taken it into his head to do so—that dog would cheerfully have followed him around the globe.

  As it was, he led us to the cab stand outside the terminus and stopped, looking at us with a hurt expression in his eyes that begged for forgiveness. At the same time it reproached us with being somehow responsible for matters coming to this pass. Holmes, however, was not disturbed.

  “It appears he has taken a cab,” he observed calmly. “Now in England, hansoms that cater to the railway trade generally return to the station after they have delivered their fare. Let us see if Toby is interested in any of the cabs.”

  He was not, however. Holmes sat down next to our bags on a bench just inside the main entrance, and thought.

  ‘Several possibilities occur to me, but I believe the simplest one, for the moment, is to stay here and let Toby examine every cab as it arrives in line at the stand.” He looked up at me. “Are you hungry?”

  “I breakfasted on the train while you were asleep,” I replied.

  “Well, I think I should enjoy a cup of tea.” He rose and handed me Toby’s lead. “I’ll be in the buffet, should luck favour us.”

  He went his way and I returned to the cab stand where the drivers were suitably mystified by my behaviour. Toby and I would walk up to every new cab as it took its place in the line, and I would extend my arm encouraging him to go forward and sniff at it. Some of the drivers were amused by this ceremony, while one beefy gentleman with a face as red as a beet protested vociferously, and even with my schoolboy German I was able to comprehend his alarm : he feared Toby was about to deface the vehicle. Indeed, that once turned out to be his intention, but I managed to pull him away just in time.

  A half-hour passed by in this fashion. Long before it was over, Holmes emerged, carrying both our bags, and stood watching. There was no need to speak, and after some moments he came forward and sighed.

  “It won’t do, Watson,” he said. “Let us go to an hotel where I will make other arrangements. Cheer up, old friend, I said there were several more possibilities. Cab !”

  We stepped up to a new arrival, ready to get in, when suddenly Toby broke out with a bark of joy and began wagging his tail with emphasis. Holmes and I looked at each other in astonishment, then burst out laughing together.

  “All things come to those who wait, Watson !” he chuckled, and went to speak with the driver. Holmes’s German was better than mine, though not by much. Aside from memorised quotations from Goethe and Schiller—no doubt also culled from schooldays and of little use to us now—his knowledge of most languages (except French, which he spoke fluently) was confined to the vocabulary of crime. He could say ‘murder’, ‘robbery’, ‘forgery’, ‘revenge’ and such in a variety of tongues, and knew a few related sentences in each, but little else, besides.¶ In the present instance he appeared to be at a loss to describe Moriarty, but the cabman was polite, especially when Holmes offered him some money. He had purchased a language aid at the book counter next to the buffet, and this he whipped out, thumbing frantically in an effort to enlarge his command of German. The cumbersome method bore no fruit and I was not sorry when another driver, one who had been much amused by my antics earlier, called down from his perch that he knew ‘some small English’ and offered to help.

  “Thank heavens,” my companion murmured, “all I can find here is: ‘The weather is most becoming, do you not think so?’ ”

  He pocketed the book and addressed himself to our interpreter.

  “Tell him,” Holmes said, speaking slowly and distinctly, “that we want him to take us to the place where he took another passenger within the past few hours.” He proceeded to furnish our interpreter with a detailed description of Moriarty, which was then repeated in German for the benefit of the driver of the cab in which Toby had evinced such a pronounced interest.

  When this communication was but half completed the drive su
ddenly beamed, uttered a bellowing “Ach, ja !” and waved us hospitably into the vehicle.

  The moment we were seated, he snapped the reins and we were off through the busy, beautiful streets of the city of Johann Strauss—and also the city of Metternich, depending on your own associations. I had no idea where we were or where we were going, never having been in Vienna before. We passed through colourful squares, near imposing statues, and stared out of our windows at the interesting natives of that city who, unaware of our inquisitive presence, went about their morning’s business.

  I remarked above that ‘we’ stared out of the windows; but this is only two-thirds of the truth. I stared out the window and Toby stared out the window. But for Holmes, as always on such occasions, the scenery, however quaint or dramatic, held no attractions. Contenting himself with observing the names of the streets we traversed, he lit his pipe and settled back against the cushions, his mind devoted to the business at hand.

  With an abrupt mental jolt, I too recalled the business at hand. In a few moments—should nothing go amiss—Holmes and I would come face to face with the doctor on whose help I so totally depended for Holmes’s recovery. What would Holmes’s reactions be? Would he co-operate? Would he even admit his difficulty? Would he be grateful or infuriated that his friends had taken so enormous a liberty with him? And how would he view being duped with his own methods, hoist with his own petard?

  I banished these last thoughts the moment they arose. I cared not for his gratitude, and it would scarcely surprise me if he did not display it, under the circumstances. No, the important thing, my paramount concern, was that he be cured. Let that happen and all other travail and livid rebuke might be easily borne.

  The cab pulled up to a small but attractive building on a side street just off a major thoroughfare. Its name, in my preoccupation, I failed to note. The driver by various signs and gestures gave us to understand this was the destination of the gentleman we were seeking.

  We got out and Holmes paid the man, after a brief consultation.

  “We may have been robbed, but it was worth it,” he confided in high good humour when the cab had pulled away. We turned our attention to the house itself, and Holmes rang the bell. I noticed, with relief, a small plaque which quietly proclaimed the name of the man we had come to see.

  A moment later the door was opened by a pretty maid, who was only briefly startled by the presence of such a peculiarlooking dog in the company of two visitors.

  Sherlock Holmes informed her of our identities and she responded at once with a smile, and an invitation, couched in broken English, to enter.

  We nodded and followed her inside, finding ourselves in a small but elegant entrance hall with a white marble floor. The house was some kind of Viennese chocolate bread miniature, crammed with Dresden knick-knacks of every description. To one side, a thin black banistered staircase led up to a charming little balcony that ran in a semi-circle over our heads.

  “Please, this way—come,” the maid gestured, still smiling openly, and she ushered us into a cramped study which opened off the vestibule. When we had seated ourselves, she offered to take Toby and find him something to eat. Holmes vetoed this at once, with cold formality, looking at me significantly around the shoulder of the girl, as much as to say, “What sort of meal might we expect to be given our valiant Toby under this particular roof?” But I argued that the Professor would never dare any manoeuvre so precipitate.

  “Oh, very well, perhaps you are right,” he agreed, considering the matter while smiling icily at the grinning maid, who waited for our decision. I could see that he was tiring again and in need of an injection—or something better. I thanked the maid and handed over Toby’s lead to her.

  “Well, Watson, what do you make of it all?” Holmes demanded when she had gone.

  “I can make nothing of it,” I confessed, seeking refuge in the familiar response, instead of anticipating events. The Doctor, I felt, should have the right to explain the situation in his own way.

  “And yet it is obvious enough—obvious though horribly diabolical,” he amended, pacing back and forth and examining the Doctor’s books, which, though mainly in German, were easily perceived as being of a medical character—at least on the side where I was seated.

  I was on the point of asking Holmes to explain his remark when the door was opened and into the room stepped a bearded man of medium height and stooped shoulders. I took him to be in his early forties though I subsequently learned he was only thirty-five. Through his faint smile I saw an expression of infinite sadness, coupled, as it seemed to me, with infinite wisdom. His eyes were more remarkable than anything else in his face. They were not particularly large, but they were dark and deep-set, shadowed by an over-hanging brow and piercing in their intensity. He wore a dark suit with a gold chain peeping under his jacket and stretched across his waistcoat.

  “Good morning, Herr Holmes,” said he, in heavily accented but otherwise perfect English. “I have been expecting you and am glad that you decided to come. And you, Dr. Watson,” he added, turning to me with a gracious smile and extended hand, which I shook, briefly, my eyes unable to leave Holmes’s face.

  “You may remove that ludicrous beard,” he said in the highpitched voice which he had displayed on the night he burst so melodramatically into my house, and used again the following day when I had visited him in his. “And kindly refrain from employing that ridiculous comic opera accent. I warn you, you’d best confess or it will go hard with you. The game is up, Professor Moriarty !”

  Our host turned slowly to him, allowing for the full effect of his piercing gaze, and said, in a soft voice: “My name is Sigmund Freud.”

  * * *

  * Wiggins. An enterprising street Arab, who, for a time, directed the movements of Sherlock Holmes’s ‘unofficial detective force’ of gutter urchins, ‘the Baker Street Regulars’. N.M.

  † Holmes had in fact already written a monograph, ‘On the Tracing of Footsteps’, a pioneer work on the subject and the first to advocate the use of plaster of Paris in taking impressions. He was the author of several privately printed articles on similar topics as well as his masterful essay ‘On the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus’, said by experts to be the last word on the subject. N.M.

  ‡ Watson refers here to ‘The Red-Headed League’, a bogus society that ostensibly aided and employed men with pure red hair. In the case labelled ‘The Adventure of the Red-Headed League’ the reader will be supplied with the complete details. N.M.

  § Here is one of the great accidental meetings in recent English history, pregnant with all sorts of irony. Watson appears to have gone to his grave without ever knowing just who the remarkably handsome red-headed fellow traveller was. As Holmes deduced, he was in fact just returned from Ruritania, and not the Tyrol. His experiences in that kingdom and an interesting eye, witness account of the coronation of King Rudolph V can be found in Mr. Rassendyll’s book on the subject, The Prisoner of Zenda, published in 1894 under the pen-name, Anthony Hope. N.M.

  ¶ It was undoubtedly this cursory knowledge that enabled Holmes to identify the bloody writing on the wall of the Lauriston Gardens house in A Study in Scarlet. N.M.

  CHAPTER VII

  Two Demonstrations

  THERE FOLLOWED A LONG silence. Something in the manner of the physician gave Holmes pause. Excited though he was, he controlled himself with a visible effort, and approached the man, who had quietly eased himself into a chair behind the cluttered desk. He gazed at him steadily for some moments and then sighed.

  “You are not Professor Moriarty,” he conceded at length. “But Moriarty was here. Where is he now?”

  “At a hotel, I believe,” the other answered, maintaining his steady gaze.

  Holmes withdrew before it, turned, and resumed his chair with a look of inexpressible defeat.

  “Well, Iscariot,” he turned to me, “you have delivered me into the hands of my enemies. I trust they will recompense you for the trouble you took on the
ir behalf.” He spoke with a lassitude underlined by a calm certainty and his words would have convinced me had I not known for a fact that he was utterly deluded.

  “Holmes, this is unworthy of you!” I flushed, mortified and angered by the outrageous epithet.

  “That is the pot calling the kettle black, if I am not mistaken,” he retorted. “However, let us not quibble. I recognised your footprints outside the Professor’s house; I perceived that you brought with you a Gladstone bag, suggesting that you knew we should be going on a journey. The amount of luggage told me you knew in advance how long it would be and I was able to see for myself that you prepared for a voyage precisely as long as the one we undertook. I only wish to know what you plan to do with me now that I am in your power.”

  “If you will permit me a word,” Sigmund Freud interjected quietly, “I believe you are doing your friend a grave injustice. He did not bring you to see me with any intention of doing you harm.” He spoke calmly, easily, and with soft assurance, despite the fact that he was speaking in a foreign tongue. Holmes refocused his attention on the man. “As for Professor Moriarty, Dr. Watson and your brother paid him a considerable sum of money to journey here in the hope that you would follow him to my door.”

  “And why did they do that?”

  “Because they were sure it was the only way they could induce you to see me.”

  “And why were they so eager for that particular event?” I knew that Holmes must be badly confused but he was no longer showing it. He was not a man to err twice.

  “What reason occurs to you?” the doctor countered surprisingly. “Come, I have read the accounts of your cases and just now have I seen a glimpse of your astonishing faculties. Who am I and why should your friends be so eager to have us meet?”

  Holmes eyed him coldly.

  “Beyond the fact that you are a brilliant Jewish physician who was born in Hungary and studied for a time in Paris, and that some radical theories of yours have alienated the respectable medical community so that you have severed your connections with various hospitals and branches of the medical fraternity—beyond the fact that you have ceased to practise medicine as a result, I can deduce little. You are married, possess a sense of honour, and enjoy playing cards and reading Shakespeare and a Russian author whose name I am unable to pronounce. I can say little besides that will be of interest to you.”