The Seven-Per-Cent Solution Page 9

  Freud stared at Holmes for a moment in utter shock. Then, suddenly, he broke into a smile—and this came as another surprise to me, for it was a child-like expression of awe and pleasure.

  “But this is wonderful!” he exclaimed.

  “Commonplace,” was the reply. “I am still awaiting an explanation for this intolerable ruse, if ruse it was. Dr. Watson may tell you that it is very dangerous for me to leave London for any length of time. It generates in the criminal classes an unhealthy excitement when my absence is discovered.”

  “Still,” Freud insisted, smiling with fascination, “I should very much like to know how you guessed the details of my life with such uncanny accuracy.”

  “I never guess,” Holmes corrected smoothly. “It is an appalling habit, destructive to the logical faculty.” He rose, and though he tried not to show it, I suspected a thaw was creeping into his replies. Holmes could be as vain as a girl about his gifts, and there was nothing patronising or insincere in the Viennese doctor’s admiration. He now prepared to forget or ignore the danger he supposed he was in, and to enjoy his last moments to the fullest.

  “A private study is an ideal place for observing facets of a man’s character,” he began in a familiar tone, reminiscent of an anatomy professor explicating the intricacies of a skeleton before a class. “That the study belongs to you, exclusively, is evident from the dust. Not even the maid is permitted here, else she would hardly have ventured to let matters come to this pass,” and he swept a finger over some near-by bindings, accumulating soot on the tip.

  “Go on,” Freud requested, clearly delighted.

  “Very well. Now when a man is interested in religion, and possesses a well-stocked library, he generally keeps all books on such a subject in one place. Yet your editions of the Koran, the King James Bible, the Book of Mormon and various other works of a similar nature are separate—across the room, in fact—from your handsomely bound copy of the Talmud and a Hebrew Bible. These, therefore, do not enter into your studies, merely, but constitute some special importance of their own. And what could that be, save that you are yourself of the Jewish faith? The nine-branched candelabra on your desk confirms my interpretation. It is called a Menorah, is it not?

  “Your studies in France are to be inferred from the great many medical works you possess in French, including a number by someone named Charcot. Medicine is complex enough already and not to be studied in a foreign language for one’s private amusement. Then, too, the well-worn appearance of these volumes speaks plainly of the many hours you have spent poring over them. And where else should a German student read French medical texts but in France? It is a longer shot, but the particularly dog-eared appearance of those works of Charcot—whose name seems to have a contemporary ring—makes me venture to suggest that he was your own teacher; either that, or his writing had some special appeal for you, connected with the development of your own ideas. It can be taken for granted,” Holmes went on with the same didactic formality, “that only a brilliant mind could penetrate the mysteries of medicine in a foreign tongue, to say nothing of concerning itself with the wide range of subject matter covered by the books in this library.”

  He walked about the room, as if it were a laboratory and nothing more, paying us only the most cursory attention as he continued his lecture.

  Freud watched, leaning back with his fingers interlaced across his waistcoat. He was unable to stop smiling.

  “That you read Shakespeare is to be deduced from the fact that the book has been replaced upside-down. You can scarcely miss it here amidst the English literature, but the fact that you have not adjusted the volume suggests to my mind that you no doubt intend pulling it out again in the near future, which leads me to believe that you are fond of reading it. As for the Russian author—”

  “Dostoievski,” Freud prompted.

  “Dostoievski . . . the lack of dust on that volume—also lacking on the Shakespeare, incidentally—proclaims your consistent interest in it. That you are a physician is obvious to me when I glance at your medical degree on the far wall. That you no longer practise medicine is evident by your presence here at home in the middle of the day, with no apparent anxiety on your part about a schedule to keep. Your separation from various societies is indicated by those spaces on the wall, clearly meant to display additional certificates. The colour of the paint is there somewhat paler in small rectangles, and an outline of dust shows me where they used to be. Now, what can it be that forces a man to remove such testimonials to his success?Why, only that he has ceased to affiliate himself with those various societies, hospitals, and so forth. And why should he do this, since once he troubled himself to join them all? It is possible that he became disillusioned with one or two, but not likely that disenchantment with the lot of them set in, and all at once. Therefore I conclude that it is they who became disenchanted with you, Doctor, and asked that you resign your membership in each of them. And why should they do this—and in a body, from the look of the wall? You are still living placidly enough in the same city where this has all taken place, so some position you have taken—evidently a professional one—has discredited you in their eyes and they have in response—all of them—asked you to leave. What can this position be? I have no real idea, but your library, as I noted earlier, is evidence of a far-ranging, enquiring and brilliant mind. Therefore I take the liberty of postulating some sort of radical theory, too advanced or too shocking to gain ready acceptance in current medical thinking. Possibly the theory is connected with the work of the M. Charcot who seems to have been such an influence on you. That is not certain. Your marriage is, however. It is plainly blazoned forth on the fingers of your left hand, and your Balkanised accent hints at Hungary or Moravia. I do not know that I have omitted anything of importance in my conclusions.”

  “You said that I possessed a sense of honour,” the other reminded him.

  “I am hoping that you do,” Holmes replied. “I inferred it from the fact that you bothered to remove the plaques and testimonials of those societies which have ceased to recognise you. In the privacy of your own home you might have permitted them to remain and made what discreet capital out of them that you would, and no one the wiser.”

  “And my love of cards?”

  “Ah, that is a point of greater subtlety still, but I will not insult your intelligence by describing how I came to know it. Rather, I turn to you in candour and ask that you now tell me what has brought me all this way to see you. It was not merely for the sake of so elementary a demonstration.”

  “I asked you before,” Freud said with a smile, his admiration for Holmes’s abilities still evident in his face, “why you thought you had been tricked into coming here.”

  “I have no idea,” Holmes responded with a touch of his earlier asperity. “If you are in trouble, say so, and I will do my best to help you, though why you should have gone about securing my presence in this fashion—”

  “Then it is you who are not being logical,” interposed the Doctor gently. “As you have so ably deduced, I am in no particular difficulty—other than the professional one to which you have alluded,” he amended with a brief inclination of his massive head in the direction of the absent plaques. “And, as you point out, the method used to bring you here was unorthodox in the extreme. Clearly, we did not think you would come of your own accord. Does this suggest nothing to you?”

  “That I would not wish to come,” Holmes responded unwillingly.

  “Precisely. And why? Not because you feared we intended you harm., I might be your enemy, Professor Moriarty might be, as well. Even—excuse me—Dr. Watson. But is it likely your brother would be of our number? Is it likely we all are in league against you? For what purpose? If not to do you harm, then perhaps to do you good. Had you thought of that?

  “And what good might that be?”

  “You cannot guess?”.

  “I never guess. I cannot think.”

  “No?” Freud leaned back in his chair. “T
hen you are being less than candid, Herr Holmes. For you are suffering from an abominable addiction, and you choose to wrong your friends who have combined to help you throw off its yoke rather than to admit your own culpability. You disappoint me, sir. Is this the Holmes I have read about? The man whom I have come to admire not only for his brain but for his princely chivalry, his passion for justice, his compassion for suffering? I cannot, believe that you are so subjugated by the power of this drug that you do not, in your heart of hearts, acknowledge your difficulty as well as your own hypocrisy in condemning the staunch friends, who, solely out of love for you and concern for your well-being, have taken so many pains on your account.”

  I found that I was holding my breath. In my long acquaintance with Sherlock Holmes I had never heard anyone address him in such fashion. For a moment I feared some incredible outbreak of fury on the part of my unfortunate friend. I had underestimated him, however, as Sigmund Freud had not.

  There was another long pause. Holmes sat motionless, with his head bowed. The Doctor did not take his eyes off him and the room was deathly still.

  “I have been guilty of these things,” Holmes spoke at last, and in a voice so low it was almost impossible to catch the words. Freud leaned forward. “I make no excuse,” he went on, “but as for help, you must put it out of your minds, all of you. I am in the grip of this devilish malady and it will consume me! No, don’t try to reassure me; you mustn’t.” He held up a protesting hand, then let it fall helplessly to his side. “I have applied all my will to banishing this habit and I have not been able to do so. And if I, summoning all my resolve, cannot succeed, what chance have you? Once a man takes the first false step, his feet are set for ever on the path to his own destruction.”

  I realised, in my corner of the room, that my mouth was hanging open and my breast heaving with emotion. The silence was electric and I did not dare to break it. Dr. Freud, however, did.

  “Your feet are not set inexorably on the path,” he replied, leaning forward with quiet urgency, his eyes bright. “A man can turn around and leave that path to destruction, though it may require some help. The first step need not be fatal.”

  “It always is,” groaned Holmes, in a despairing voice that wrung my heart. “No man has ever done what you describe.”

  “I have done it,” said Sigmund Freud.

  “You?”

  Freud nodded.

  “I have taken cocaine and I am free of its power. If you will allow me, I will help you to free yourself as well.”

  “You cannot do this.” Holmes’s voice was breathless. Though he protested that he did not believe, yet his tone told me how desperately he wished to hope.

  “I can.”

  “How?”

  “It will take time.” The Doctor stood up. “For the duration I have arranged that you both shall remain here as my guests. Will that be agreeable to you?”

  Holmes rose automatically and started forward, but then he suddenly whirled about, clapping an agonised hand to his brow.

  “It’s no use!” he wailed. “Even now I am overcome by this hideous compulsion!”

  I half rose from my chair, with some thought of comforting him with a word of encouragement and good cheer, but stopped in my tracks, realising the futility—the mockery, even—of such a gesture.

  Dr. Freud came slowly round his desk and put a small hand gently on my friend’s shoulder.

  “I can stop this compulsion—for a time. Sit down, please.” He motioned to the chair from which Holmes had risen, and seated himself on the edge of his desk. Holmes silently obeyed and sat waiting, his posture indicative of his misery and pessimism.

  “Do you know anything of the practice of hypnotism?” Freud enquired.

  “Something,” Holmes returned wearily. “Do you propose to make me bark like a dog and crawl about on all fours?”

  “If you will co-operate,” Freud said, “if you will trust me, I can reduce your craving for a time. When next it exerts its attractions, I will hypnotise you again. In this way we shall artificially reduce your addiction until the chemistry of your body completes the process.” He spoke very slowly, taking pains to penetrate and subdue the rising tide of Holmes’s panic and mortification.

  Holmes studied him for a length of time when he had done speaking, and then, with an abrupt shrug of his hunched shoulders, he acquiesced, with a studied insouciance. Dr. Freud restrained himself from sighing aloud, it appeared to me, and went to the bow window, drawing the curtains, plunging the room into semi-darkness. Then he returned to Holmes, who had not moved a muscle.

  “Now,” Freud began, pulling up a, chair opposite him, “I want you to sit up straight and keep your eyes fixed on this.”

  And he drew from his waistcoat pocket the watch fob I had glimpsed earlier, and commenced swinging the end of it slowly back and forth.

  PART II

  The Solution

  CHAPTER VIII

  A Holiday in Hell

  PROFESSOR MORIARTY’S initial reluctance to journey back to London in the company of Toby lent a touch of comic relief to an otherwise ghastly week. He took one look at the dog—when I brought him round to his hotel in the Graben that afternoon—and announced that he was a man of good will (as evinced by his journey to Vienna in the first place) but that there was a limit to his generosity beyond which it was impossible to trespass.

  “That,” he said, looking over his spectacles at Toby, who returned his gaze with an eager and willing expression of his own, “is the limit. I am a patient man—a desperate man, I grant you, but a patient one, Dr. Watson. I have not said a word about the vanilla extract that has totally ruined a new pair of boots, have I?—but this is too much. I will not transport that animal back to London, no, not for Cadwalader and all his goats.”

  I was in no mood to trifle with him, however, and told him so. If he wished to let Toby travel with the luggage, he was at liberty to do so, but return the animal to Pinchin Lane he must. I referred obliquely to Mycroft Holmes, and Moriarty—still whining—backed down and subsided into muttered asides.

  I sympathised with his complaints but was in no position to listen to them. My own nerves were frayed to the breaking point, and a reassuring telegram from my wife, saying that all was well at home, was the only comfort I could pluck for myself. It was little enough.

  Sherlock Holmes’s attempt to escape from the coils of the cocaine in which he was so deeply enmeshed was perhaps the most harrowing and heroic effort I have ever witnessed. In both my professional and personal experience, in both military and civilian life, I cannot recall anything to equal the sheer agony of it.

  That first day, Dr. Sigmund Freud had been successful. He managed to mesmerise Holmes and put him to sleep in one of the adjoining rooms he had placed at our disposal on the second floor of his home. No sooner was Holmes stretched out on the elaborately carved bed than Freud grasped my sleeve urgently. “Quickly !” he commanded. “We must search all his possessions.”

  I nodded, not needing to be told what we were looking for, and the two of us began rifling Holmes’s carpet bag and also the pockets of his clothes. It went against many of my principles thus to obtrude on my friend’s privacy. But we were playing for high stakes and I hardened my heart as I bent to the task.

  There was no difficulty in finding the bottles of cocaine. Holmes had travelled to Vienna with enormous quantities of the drug. It was a wonder, I thought, pulling forth bottles from the recesses of the bag, that I had not heard them clinking against each other en route; but Holmes had prevented this by wrapping the bottles in the black velvet cloth whose use was normally reserved for covering his Stradivarius in its case. Without pausing to acknowedge the pain in my breast when I saw to what purpose he had adapted the cloth, I continued to retrieve the deadly vials and hand them to Dr. Freud, who had dextrously completed an inspection of the sleeping man’s pockets and his Inverness travelling cloak, where he had discovered two more containers.

  “I think we have
them,” said he.

  “Don’t be certain,” I adjured him. “You are not dealing with an ordinary patient.” He shrugged and watched as I took the stopper from a bottle and moistened the tip of my finger with the colourless liquid and then touched my tongue with it.

  “Water !”

  “Can it be?” Freud sampled the contents of another vial and looked over at me in astonishment. Behind us, Holmes rolled over in uneasy slumber. “Where is he hiding it, then?”

  We thought desperately, not knowing when the sleeper might awaken and our troubles begin in earnest. It had to be here, somewhere. Emptying the entire contents of the carpet bag on the luxuriant oriental rug, we perused the meagre effects Holmes had brought with him from London. His linen yielded nothing, nor did the greasepaint and other paraphernalia of his disguise. For the most part, what remained consisted of some unconverted English silver and notes, and his familiar pipes. The black briar, the oily clay, and the long cherrywood were well known to me, and offered, I knew, no place for concealment. There was, however, a large calabash I had never seen before, and, picking it up, I was surprised to find it heavier than its size warranted.

  “Look at this.” I removed the meerschaum top and turned the big gourd upside down. Out fell a small bottle.

  “I begin to see what you mean,” the doctor admitted, “but where else can he have secreted them? There are no more pipes.”

  We stared at one another over the top of the empty bag, and then, in the same instant, stretched out our hands for it. Freud’s thought was a moment before mine, however. He picked up the bag, feeling the weight and shaking his head.