Nicholas Meyer (16 page)

* Holmes refers here to Inspector G. Lestrade of Scotland Yard, who—like a number of other

detectives at the Yard—was fond of denigrating Holmes's methods and theories, until it was necessary to call him for help when a case proved too complex for an ordinary mind to handle.

It was no great distance to the hospital, and on arriving we were informed that Dr. Schultz was with his patient in the Psychiatric Wing. We found him in the outside court, accessible through a separate gate, beyond which the patients were permitted—under supervision—to sit or wander about in the sun.

There were games also at their disposal and some half dozen were playing croquet, though it was a mad game they played, with much shouting and noise and need for the attendants' presence.

Dr. Schultz was a heavy-set and seemingly self-important individual, roughly fifty years of age, with a thin mustache and incongruously large side-whiskers.

He greeted Freud with guarded formality and Holmes and myself in a perfunctory manner. As the hospital was devoted to teaching as well as the practice of medicine, he did not demur when Freud asked if we might accompany him. I believe he caught the fact that I was a physician and assumed that we had reasons of our own for wishing to view the patient.

"It's really no concern of mine," Schultz explained as we stepped briskly over the lawn, "but we must do something with her, you see. She was observed attempting to throw herself into the canal from the Augarten Bridge. Bystanders tried to stop her, but she succeeded in breaking free and throwing herself in anyway. Malnutrition," he added, as an afterthought, "but when the police brought her round she did eat a little. The question is: what now? If you can find out who she is or anything of the kind, I shall be forever in your debt."

He did not sound much interested in being forever in Freud's debt, and Freud smiled at me rather than responding directly.

I was struck—as Holmes had been by Schultz's message—with the similarity in tone between the

proper physician and the proper Scotland Yard investigator when dealing with their respective iconoclasts. Whatever Freud's theories, they resembled Holmes's in the condescending scepticism they evoked in quarters of officialdom and sanctioned thought.

"There she is—all yours. I am due in surgery. Just leave word for me at my office, if you will be so kind. I will look in on her again tomorrow."

He departed for his operation, leaving us to face a young woman who sat in a basket-chair, looking out at the lawn with wide unblinking blue eyes that refused to squint in the bright sunlight. She was obviously under-nourished and her skin had a delicate blue tint, especially beneath the eyes. It might have been a striking face but for the ravages of her condition. I should have said she was exhausted, had not the rigid quality of her posture proclaimed that she was under the highest tension.

Freud walked round her slowly as Holmes and I watched. He passed a hand before her face. There was no response. She did not resist as he gently held her wrist to gauge her pulse, but when he released his hold, the limb dropped back into her lap like a dead thing. Her face was thin, thinner even than it was supposed to be judging from its bone structure. We were unable to estimate her weight since she was dressed in ample hospital clothing. Holmes appeared mildly interested in the woman and stood

watching attentively as Freud went about his cursory examination.

"You see why they call for me," Freud said quietly. "They don't know what else to do. She cannot be sent to any of the normal facilities for the destitute in her present condition."

"What made her hysterical?" I asked.

"That is not beyond surmise, surely. Poverty, despair, desertion. At the end of her tether, she decided to end her life, and, being deprived of that goal, she retreats into the state in which we find her."

Freud was opening his black bag and rummaging about for something. He took out a syringe and a bottle.

"What will you do?" Holmes squatted down beside him on his haunches, not removing his eyes from the unfortunate wretch who sat before him.

"What I can," Freud responded, rolling back the floppy sleeve of her white gown and sterilizing a portion of her arm with cotton dipped in alcohol. "I will see if I can hypnotize her. In order to do that I must give her something to relax and enable me to get her attention."

Holmes nodded and rose to his feet as Freud plunged the needle home.

He began swinging his watch-chain back and forth and talking in that solicitous yet forceful voice of his—as I had had occasion to witness so many times before. I cast a brief glance at Holmes, wondering what associations this procedure held for him, but his faculties were plainly absorbed by the woman's reactions to the watch-chain and Freud's voice.

The doctor motioned us with his free hand to stand back, out of the line of the patient's vision, and went on quietly telling her to listen to what he had to say, to relax, that she was among friends, and so forth.

At first I was conscious of the croquet game, with its ludicrous shouts, going on somewhere to my left, but as Freud went on, the sounds receded into the distance. So persuasive was the doctor's insistent litany that we might have been shrouded in the familiar semi-darkness of his study at Bergasse 19.

Almost imperceptibly, the patient's eyes began to blink and then to follow the movements of the fob, which they had hitherto ignored. Perceiving this, Freud changed his quiet injunctions to relax and commanded her, in the same soft tones, to sleep.

Hesitating at first, with another flicker of her lids, the girl did as she was bid, and closed her eyes.

"You can still hear me, can't you?" Freud asked. "Nod your head if you can hear me."

She nodded languidly, her shoulders slumping.

"Now you will be able to talk," Freud told her, "and to answer some very simple questions. Are you ready? Nod again, please."

She did.

"What is your name?"

There was a long pause. Her mouth moved slightly but no sound emerged.

"Please speak more clearly. I will ask you again and you will speak clearly. What is your name?"

"My name is Nancy."

She spoke in English!

Freud frowned in surprise and exchanged a brief involuntary glance with me, then returned his attention to the girl. Coughing slightly, he addressed her now in English.

"Now then, Nancy. What is your full name?"

"I have two names."

"Yes, and what are they?"

"Slater. Nancy Slater. Nancy Osborn Slater. Von Leinsdorf," she added with a choking sound. Her mouth continued to work after she had done speaking.

"All right, Nancy. Relax. Relax. You are all right. Tell me: where are you from?"

"Providence."

Freud looked up at us, clearly mystified, and I confess I was almost of the opinion we were the victims of some improbable practical joke—or was her fancy now wandering idly into the realm of

metaphysics?

Holmes solved the dilemma. Standing directly behind the girl he spoke quietly so that only we might hear.

"Perhaps she refers to Providence, the capital of Rhode Island. It is, I believe, the smallest of the United States."

Freud was nodding energetically before he had concluded, and then, shrugging at the peculiarity of it, he knelt before the girl once more and repeated the question.

"Yes. Providence. Rhode Island."

"What are you doing here?"

"I spent my honeymoon in an attic."

Her mouth was chewing convulsively on itself again, and when she spoke some speech impediment distorted her replies, making it somewhat difficult to catch the words. Perplexed as I was by her condition and her inarticulate speech, my heart nonetheless went out to her, poor stricken creature!

"All right, now. Relax. Relax."

Freud rose and faced us. "It doesn't make any sense at all."

"Ask some more questions," Holmes prompted quietly. His eyes were hooded like the head of the cobra beneath heavy lids, but I knew he was as far from sleep as he ever got. Only the utmost fascination could provoke that dreamy appearance where the smoke rising from his pipe and the fact that he was standing were the only clues to his consciousness. "Ask her some more questions," he repeated. "Where was she married?"

Freud repeated the question.

"In the meat-house." Her speech impediment made it difficult to understand her.

"A meat-house?"

She nodded. Freud looked over her shoulder at us and shrugged once more. Holmes motioned him to go on.

"You say your name is Von Leinsdorf. Who is Von Leinsdorf? Your husband?"

"Yes."

"Baron Karl Von Leinsdorf?" Freud was unable to suppress the challenging note in his voice.

"Yes."

"The Baron is dead," he began, when the woman who called herself Nancy suddenly rose with a fierce movement, her eyes still closed, but apparently struggling to open.

"NO!"

"Sit down, Nancy. Sit down. That's good. That's very good. Now relax again. Relax."

Once more he rose and faced us. "This is most peculiar. Obviously her delusions persist under hypnosis

—not often the case," he informed us with a significant look.

"Delusions?" Holmes spoke, opening his eyes. "What leads you to infer they are delusions?"

"They make no sense."

"That is not the same thing. Who is Baron Von Leinsdorf?"

"An elderly peer of the realm. A cousin to the Emperor, I believe. He died some weeks ago."

"Was he married?"

"I have no idea. I confess I am at a loss. I have managed to communicate with her but what she has to say does not tell us what should be done with her."

He cupped a fist in a palm and twisted it in his perplexity as we stared down at the strange patient, whose mouth was beginning to work again.

"May I pose a question or two?" Holmes nodded in her direction.

"You?" Freud sounded more surprised by the request than he probably had intended.

"If you don't mind. I may be able to shed some small light in the darkness that surrounds us."

Freud considered the question again, looking keenly at Holmes, who waited for his response with every outward appearance of indifference. Yet I knew from a dozen tell-tale signs, that meant something to me alone, how dearly he wanted to receive the doctor's permission.

"It cannot do any harm," I ventured, "and surely, as you confess yourself mystified, a little assistance might not be amiss. I have known my friend to make sense out of what was far less sensible," I added.

Freud hesitated a moment longer. He was unwilling, I think, to admit defeat or acknowledge his need for help, but he needed help, and I also think he had some inkling of how much it meant to Holmes, who had shown so few signs of life himself, until recently.

"Very well. But be quick. The sedative is wearing off and we shall lose her shortly."

Holmes's eyes gleamed briefly with excitement, but hooded themselves almost at once as he followed Freud to the front of the basket-chair.

"There is someone here who would like to talk to you, Nancy. You may speak as freely to him as you did to me. Are you ready?" Freud bent closer. "Are you ready?"

"Y-yes."

Freud nodded to Holmes, who seated himself on the grass at the foot of the chair and looked up at her.

His hands rested in his lap but his finger-tips were pressed together in his accustomed fashion when listening to the statement of a client's case.

"Nancy. Tell me who bound your wrists and ankles," he said. His voice did not need to strive for Freud's gentle quality. With a start, I realized how similar it was to the tone he employed when comforting troubled clients in the sitting room at Baker Street.

"I don't know."

For the first time, Dr. Freud and I noticed the bluish marks around the girl's wrists and ankles.

"They used leather, didn't they?"

"Yes."

"And put you in a garret?"

"What?"

"An attic?"

"Yes."

"How long were you kept there?"

"I—I—"

Freud held up a warning hand and Holmes nodded imperceptibly.

"All right, Nancy. Never mind that question. Tell me: how did you escape? How did you leave the attic?"

"I broke the window."

"With your feet?"

"Yes."

I now noticed the cuts on the back of the girl's feet, exposed in the hospital clogs.

"And then you used the glass to sever your bonds?"

"Yes."

"And you climbed down the drain-pipe?"

Very gently he examined her hands. Now that Holmes drew our attention to it, we could see the torn nails and recent evidences of peeled skin on the palms. Her hands were extraordinarily beautiful otherwise, long, graceful, and well-formed.

"And you fell, didn't you?"

"Yes..." There was emotion creeping again into her voice and her lips were starting to bleed, so badly was she mutilating them.

"See here, gentlemen," Holmes stood up and softly pulled back a lock of her rich auburn tresses. Her hair had been tied behind in a knot by the hospital attendants but it had fallen loose and covered a purple bruise.

Freud moved forward and motioned Holmes to cease his interrogations, which he did, stepping back and knocking out the ashes from his pipe.

"Sleep now, Nancy. Go to sleep," Freud ordered.

Dutifully, she closed her eyes.

*11*—We Visit the Opera

"What does it mean?" demanded Freud. We were sitting in a little cafe on Sensen Gasse, just north of the hospital and the pathology institute, and having cups of delicious Viennese coffee while we pondered the problem of the woman who called herself Nancy Slater Von Leinsdorf.

"It means villainy," Holmes responded quietly. "We do not know how much of her story is true, but it is certain the lady was bound hand and foot and starved in a room that fronted another building in a narrow alley, and she escaped in much the fashion she described. It is a pity the hospital staff cleaned her up and burnt her clothes. Her original condition would have been most helpful."

I stole a glance at Freud, hoping he would not interpret Holmes's remark as a callous one. The detective realized with one part of his brain that it was necessary to care for the woman, that she had been soaking wet and in need of help, but the other part of his brain automatically classed people as mere units in a problem, and at such moments his references to them—before those who were unfamiliar with his methods—must always seem surprising.