My Dearest Holmes (14 page)

'Prolong your visit anyway, my dear, if you wish; but I do not anticipate being whisked away. I shall certainly be in touch if anything untoward occurs.'

The final slamming of doors and the shrill of the guard's whistle proclaimed that the train was about to depart. Mary hastily leaned out of the window and kissed me on both cheeks.

'Have fun,' she said.

'And you.'

I felt no premonition, no twinge of foreboding; but the ground was to shift from under my feet before I saw her again.

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II
--

I
WAS READING quietly in my consulting room that evening, when I heard the clang of the doorbell. The maid went to answer it, and I paused in mid-sentence to listen, fervently hoping it was not a late call on my professional services.

My heart leapt wildly as I caught the strains of his voice. A moment later, Sherlock Holmes was standing before me.

For a few seconds we looked at one another without speaking. I searched his face; he was even paler and thinner than usual. There were deep shallows under his eyes, and his expression was one of harassed anxiety. His dark hair, usually smoothed back so meticulously, was dishevelled. He smoothed it hurriedly with his hands and gave a quick, rueful smile.

'Yes, I have been using myself up rather too freely,' he said.

I opened my lips to speak, and hesitated. My concern for his health was evident; it was not the way to greet him.

'I ... thought you were in France,' I said instead. I took in his thin frame, his tense posture. 'I received your letters,' I added.

He did not reply, but turned to the window. 'Have you any objection to my closing your shutters?' he said in a clipped, strained voice.

I looked from him to the window in alarm.

'Why ... no,' I said, 'but--'I stopped in mid-sentence as he darted to the wall, edged his way round it to the window, and flinging the shutters together, bolted them securely. Such behaviour was so utterly unexpected that it produced a knot of fear in my solar plexus.

'You are afraid of something?' I said.

'Well, I am.'

'Of what?'

'Of air-guns.'

By now I was seriously alarmed for his state of mind. It must have showed in my face, for he smiled and shook his head as if to reassure me.

'I think you know me well enough, Watson, to understand that I am not usually the nervous type. But it is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognise danger when it is close upon you.'

He appeared to make an effort to calm himself. He sat down in the armchair beside my desk and took out his old silver cigarette case.

'May I trouble you for a match?'

I lit his cigarette for him. Our eyes met as he leaned towards me.

'I must apologise for calling so late,' he said, drawing in the smoke gratefully. I had never seen him so nervous.

'You always arrive at unconventional hours.' I tried an unsteady laugh.

'I shall have to leave in an even more unconventional manner, over your back garden wall.'

I gaped. 'Holmes, what is all this?' I said quickly.

He held out his hand, and I saw in the light of the lamp that two of his knuckles were burst and bleeding.

'Oh God, how did that happen?' I tried to take his hand, but he withdrew it.

'It's not an airy nothing, you see,' said he, smiling. 'Is Mrs Watson in?'

'She is away on a visit,' I said impatiently.

'Indeed! You are alone?'

'Quite. You knew I was alone, Holmes, or you would never have come.'

He looked at me reproachfully, and ignored the comment.

'Then it makes it the easier for me to propose that you should come away with me for a week, on the Continent.'

I stared. I could not keep pace with him. I looked around for my own cigarettes, and he offered me his case. His eyes remained fixed on my face as he waited for an answer.

'Where?' I said softly.

'Oh anywhere. It's all the same to me.'

I was nonplussed and shaken. I looked again at the blood on his hand. 'What case is this?' I said. 'And your hand--what happened? Tell me.'

Holmes took a deep breath and stubbed out his cigarette. He leaned forward with his elbows upon his knees, fingertips together. 'Have you ever heard of Professor Moriarty?' he said.

'Never,' I replied absently, looking at the pallor of his thin hands in the lamplight.

'Yes you have, Watson,' he said impatiently. 'You remember the Vermissa Valley business.'

'Ah yes. I'm sorry,'I said, trying to pull myself together. 'He was the mastermind behind the hounding of Jack Douglas.'

'That's right. You remember how I described him then.'

'You described him as a scientific genius.'

I did indeed remember that Holmes had been somewhat effusive upon the subject of Professor Moriarty. He appeared to see in him the old medieval ideal of the worthy opponent. Inspector Macdon aid had let slip that it was the opinion of the official force that my friend had something of'a bee in his bonnet' about the man; and I could not help leaning towards the same opinion myself. However, over the last few years, certainly since my marriage, I had not heard Holmes so much as mention his name. I had presumed that Moriarty, like so many master criminals before him, had faded into respectable retirement; or maybe had come to a sticky and ignominious end. I was somewhat alarmed, therefore, to hear his name once more on my friend's lips, and my alarm deepened as I listened to the tale he told me that evening.

He described Moriarty as the 'Napoleon of Crime'. He said that he was the organiser of half that was evil and of nearly all that was undetected in the City of London, but that he was fenced round with safeguards so cunningly devised that it seemed impossible to get evidence that would convict him in a court of law. He explained that for the last few months he, Holmes, had been trying to weave a net round him that would haul him in and send his whole criminal empire crashing to the ground.

'You know my powers, my dear Watson,' he said. 'And yet at the end of three months I was forced to confess that I had at last met an antagonist who was my intellectual equal.'

He told me that Moriarty had paid him an unexpected visit that morning, in an attempt to dissuade him from his efforts, and gave me a verbatim account of their conversation, which seemed chiefly to consist of compliments upon one another's genius, and mutual assurances that every argument they could use against one another had already crossed both their minds.

I must admit that I experienced an unpleasant pang of jealousy over my friend's obvious fascination with the man, which his assurances of his evil disposition and physical ugliness did little to dispel. For months, then, when my mind had been filled only with thoughts of him, his had been filled with Moriarty.

'I tell you, Watson, in all seriousness,' he said, 'that if I could beat the man, if I could free society of him, I should feel that my own career had reached its summit, and I should be prepared to turn to some more placid line in life.'

He would never have taken such a step for my sake, I thought.

At last, as he talked, I was able to piece together the reason for his visit and his unexpected proposal.

Apparently it was now only a matter of three days before Moriarty and all his gang would be in the hands of the police, thanks to Holmes' efforts; and for this reason, Moriarty was determined to put him out of action, permanently if possible. This was the story behind his bleeding hand. Already he had been attacked three times: once by a furiously driven two-horse van which had narrowly missed him; once by a brick which fell as if by accident from one of the houses in Vere Street and shattered to fragments at his feet; and once, on his way to me, by a rough with a bludgeon, upon whose front teeth he had barked his knuckles. He had spent most of the day in the safety of his brother Mycroft's club in Pall Mall.

Of course, I was horrified to hear of the danger he was in, and implored him to spend the night under my roof.

'You cannot go back to Baker Street,' I said. 'Stay here with me. I promise you will be quite safe. Please, Holmes. I shall not get a wink of sleep for worrying about you, if you go.'

'No, Watson. You would find me a dangerous guest.'

'Do you think that that weighs with me for an instant?'

'No, my dear Watson, but it weighs with me. Listen, will you come with me tomorrow? Can you start tomorrow morning? I must get you over to the Continent.'

'Why certainly I can, but can't you--'I stopped short. The import of his last words had suddenly struck me. 'What do you mean, you must get me over to the Continent?'

Holmes slowly lit another cigarette, and eyed me quizzically. I watched him in an agony of impatience. 'What do you mean?' I repeated.

'If it were just my own safety that I was worried about,' he said at last, very quietly, 'I would have placed myself in police custody until after the trial, and not even contacted you until all was over. But I am afraid, my dear friend, that things are a little more complicated than that. Moriaty's powers of observation and investigation are quite equal to my own. Just as I know the names, occupations and personal habits of his confederates, so he is conversant with those of mine; and he made it quite clear, in this morning's conversation, that he would not hesitate to get at me through you.

'"If you are clever enough to bring destruction upon me," he said, "rest assured that I shall do as much to you."

'"You have paid me several compliments, Mr Moriarty," said I. "Let me pay you one in return, when I say that if I were assured of the former eventuality I would, in the interests of the public, cheerfully accept the latter."

'"Of course, you put the interests of the public above those of your friend?" he said very softly. I affected not to know what he meant, and raised my eyebrows. "I have, as you know, reliable contacts in all walks of life," he continued calmly, "and among them are several who, if put into the witness box as you intend, could easily be prevailed upon to name names in the course of their evidence; and I must warn you, Mr Holmes, that your friend Dr Watson will certainly be among them. I fear he has not been over discreet of late; it is a great shame. Such a thriving practice; such an understanding wife; and all to no purpose."

'He gave a slow, hideous smile as he spoke these words, Watson. I pretended to be unmoved. I repeated, with a great show of conviction, that I was determined to destroy him at any price. He snarled at me, and left.

'Of course, there are some prices which will always be too high, and I have every intention that you should be out of the country when this trial takes place. We can assess the damage in retrospect, and act accordingly. But you must come away tomorrow.'

I heard him in stunned silence. The emotions which agitated in my breast must have been reflected in rapid succession in my face; the shock of knowing that my movements were watched, the shame that my indiscretions had been brought to Holmes' notice in this way, the fear for my reputation and Mary's security; none of them could eclipse the joy of knowing that even to destroy the Napoleon of Crime, my friend would not put me in danger.

My throat was so dry as to make speech impossible. I ran my tongue over my lips to moisten them, and felt them to be as cold as ice. Holmes watched me gravely.

'You see what has come of your incautious behaviour, my dear fellow,' he said gently. In spite of everything, I thought I detected a note of pleasure in his voice; pleasure at having shaken the independence and security which he had resented in me for so long.

'But I do not see how--who are these people, these witnesses?' I found a voice at last, albeit a high and unsteady one.

'You must begin to appreciate the scope of the man's organisation,' said Holmes patiently. 'Wherever there is organised crime--or organised vice--there is the hand of Moriarty. I have met several of his contacts in that area myself during the course of my investigations; young boys, many of them, who are only trying to save themselves from starvation; or soldiers seeking to supplement their meagre pay. Ah! So that is it. I can read it in your face, Watson. I hope you have not been seen in public--'

'No,' I said quickly. But I shuddered inwardly, remembering yesterday's invitation to luncheon. I had always assumed that soldiers, whose own positions were so vulnerable, were fairly safe companions. I shuddered again at the magnitude of my mistake.

'My dear fellow, you need a brandy; your nerves are all in shreds. No, not for me. I must be going. Take some yourself when I have left, and be sure to stay calm and collected. Now listen. Here are your instructions for tomorrow, and I beg, my dear Watson, that you will obey them to the letter, for you are now playing a double-handed game with me against the cleverest rogue and the most powerful syndicate of criminals in Europe. Now listen! You will dispatch whatever luggage you intend to take by a trusty messenger unaddressed to Victoria tonight ...'

He went on to issue a most complicated set of instructions, which led to a rendezvous in the second first-class carriage from the front of the Continental express at Victoria Station the next morning. He made me repeat them several times, and even insisted that I take notes, judging no doubt my dazed and shocked state to be a hindrance to an accurate memory. Mechanically I repeated the whole bizarre arrangement and assured him that I understood and would comply.