THE IRREGULAR CASEBOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (19 page)

‘You have my word that I will not,’ I said, angrily.

‘Very well. A fencing lesson and a bloodletting will do you no harm!’

He sent a rack of blades skidding across the floor with his boot. ‘Venetian blades of the finest quality. With your permission, I will keep faith with the weapon that served me so well in London. Rosellino’s masterpiece. He will never make another. This is the way all disputes should be settled in Venice.’

I could not give a coherent account of what followed because it was conducted with such speed of reflex and economy of movement. If I can recreate that dazzling interplay of blades, it is because Sherlock Holmes gave me his own account of the fight, and it is from my notes that I have constructed the account.

One thing was immediately apparent even to my untrained eye. If I had ever thought that I had seen Holmes at full stretch, either in combat or practice, I never had. He had simply never met an opponent good enough to bring out the best in him.

In all conscience I must record that this one was more than his equal. It was always the contention of Sherlock Holmes that fencing could be likened to a conversation, with one fencer ‘asking questions’ with his blade that the other was forced to ‘answer’ with a parry, before asking his own ‘question’ with the riposte. Mentoni, according to Holmes, was not content just to speak with his blade; he told fables from the forgotten history of duelling, expounded complex doctrines, and hammered home painful truths, with his rapier. He evidently even told witty jokes with his blade, referring to the styles and favoured moves of the great masters of Fence. It was, alas, a momentous conversation in a language I could not understand.

What I saw was Holmes apparently managing to hold his own, under slow retreat, against a ceaseless stream of lightning-swift attacks. Evidently, when Holmes did manage a counter, he came up against effortless ‘ceding’ parries which made no attempt to resist the attack, but diverted it with gently yielding strokes, as water slides off a rock. It was like chasing an elegantly floating phantom.

‘I found myself,’ Holmes later admitted, ‘admiring his work.’

As the progress of the fight took the two men close to the spot where I was standing, Mentoni stepped back out of range of Holmes’s sword and executed the back-handed sweep of the blade with which he had slit the unfortunate’s throat in London. But he aimed it at me! Whether this was an unthinking piece of treachery on his part, or an attempt to divert Holmes’s attention I cannot say, but it did draw my friend’s eye away from his opponent for a split second, and in that time Mentoni gathered up Holmes’s blade with a circular action and disarmed him.

Holmes retreated to avoid the fatal lunge that had to follow, and fell over a footstool. Mentoni approached the fallen body with great deliberation, blade poised.

I was on my honour not to intervene, but Holmes had been placed in the situation by a trick, and I had no qualms about levelling the score. Picking up a glass, I threw it at Mentoni’s head. As he ducked away from the flying glass, Holmes scrabbled to one side and regained his sword.

Holmes now pressed home a desperate attack that drove Mentoni back in a series of parries, until the Venetian’s back came up against an elegant cabinet of Murano glassware. For a second his sword arm dropped, exposing him to attack. Then he dropped to his haunches and threw out his blade towards the throat in that characteristic movement. But the blade hit thin air. Holmes had withdrawn a pace, waited for the full extension of the blade, then ‘pinked’ the outstretched arm with one economical thrust.

Mentoni cried aloud, and drew from his garments with his left hand the extra menace of a Venetian stiletto. It was shielded by his body from Holmes, and I would have called to warn him, but there was no time. The swords flashed in a last, impossibly fast, succession of parries and ripostes, a pattern of light and ringing steel, and both men stopped as though time had been frozen.

Mentoni’s face had an expression of puzzlement, as a man who finds himself among unfamiliar surroundings. He turned as though searching for something, then went forwards, overturning the cabinet, and toppled straight through a nearby window.

I ran over, but saw only a settling turbulence on the waters of the canal below. ‘Well done, Holmes!’ I cried.

He stood quite still, sword still poised, looking at a spreading stain on his arm.

‘Thank you, Watson. Would you be so good as to bring me a chair. I seem to be wounded.’

‘Pulverine is Barilla ash, Watson, impure Sodium Carbonate obtained by burning seaside plants. It is used in the manufacture of glass. I am sure the traces of seashell were added to make the glass harder, no doubt one of the secrets of Murano’s success. Your mention of glass manufacture and Ash Wednesday in the same breath forged the link.’

We were in a home-bound express. Holmes reclined with his arm in a sling, a look of drowsy satisfaction on his face.

‘Whatever strange bond of fortune linked you to Mentoni and the Perseus, it is broken for good now,’ I offered.

‘Until the body is found, I will not believe that he is dead.’

‘What of the statuette? Is it right to leave Cellini’s great masterpiece in the lagoon?’

Holmes shifted drowsily.

‘I would not worry yourself unduly, Watson. Cellini’s great masterpiece was never in the lagoon.’

‘What do you mean. . .?’

‘My dear Watson, when Toto drew that blade across the statue, it took off fragments of thin gold leaf and
bronze.
When Cellini made a small masterpiece, it would be of the very finest solid silver or gold. What we found was probably a model for the big Perseus, gilded to act as a decoy. Having succeeded in finding it after following the Admiral’s Machiavellian trail of clues, we hardly suspected the status of what we found. You notice that it fooled us!

‘I am inclined to leave the real Cellini masterpiece where it is, for it has had an ill-starred life. So many people have been killed for it. The conspirators, including the Admiral, his servant and, in the last few days alone, three more victims. God knows how many more through the years. Let it stay where it is safe, and will never again be the focus for mad political endeavour.’

‘But what is it, Holmes? Where is it?’

‘It is a fitting image for the triumph of a great sea port over its enemies; Neptune dominating a sea monster. It stands now where it has always stood: under its concealing coat of paint, in full view, on top of the clock in the Marchesa’s palazzo.’

‘Amazing, Holmes; but there is one other thing I do not understand.’

But Sherlock Holmes, head rocking lightly to the rhythm of the train, a smile of contentment playing around his thin lips, was sound asleep.

The Black Heaven

WHEN A MOOD OF BLACK DEPRESSION was upon him, Sherlock Holmes would curl up in his favourite armchair and lose himself for hours on end in a bulky, well-thumbed old volume that was never far from his side. Whether it was the medicine I would have prescribed for his condition is doubtful, but Holmes seemed to find comfort there. Its contents certainly suited all too well his state of mind.

On one such occasion, a wet cold autumn day at the turn of the century, during a period of stagnation, he had pored over the heavy, untrimmed pages for the whole morning without uttering a word. Suddenly he raised his eyes from the book and cried, ‘What perception, Watson, what penetration. Take any page at random. Here we have the enigma that is The Man of the Crowd, likened to a book that will not permit itself to be read. How perfectly that sums up the mystery that is humankind. Let no one tell you Poe is a fantasist, Watson. He is a realist, perhaps the greatest realist in Literature.’

‘I don’t see how that can be,’ I objected. ‘Though I do concede that “A Descent into the Maelstrom” describes a real phenomenon.’

‘You misunderstand me, Watson. I refer to the true reality, the eternal verities, presented with clarity and penetration. The object hidden from all eyes by being placed in full view; the Imp of the Perverse that lurks within the mind and betrays the guilty soul; the villain who is most monstrous because he passes unnoticed in the crowd. Poe is my dark Plato, Watson. He has defined for me the limits of the possible. If it were not for Dupin, there might be no Sherlock Holmes.’

My reply was cut short by Billy, who announced that a gentleman wished to speak to Mr Holmes on a matter of great urgency. Holmes gestured lazily, and our visitor was soon revealed as a full-faced young man with thinning hair and an open, pleasing countenance. His eyes, however, were shadowed with sadness, and his whole demeanour one of extreme nervousness.

‘Mr Holmes? Dr Watson? I am glad to meet you. I have read of your work, in
The Strand Magazine
.’

Holmes grimaced, but said nothing.

‘I need your help urgently, Mr Holmes, for I am involved in a mystery so strange and disturbing, that I can think of nothing else by night or day. At times I even fear for my sanity. If you cannot help me, no one can.’

This speech, and the sincere manner in which it was uttered, seemed to rouse Holmes a little from his torpor. He put aside the black book, placed his fingertips together beneath his chin, and nodded to our visitor as if to encourage him to proceed.

‘My name is Arthur Machen. I am not a native of London. I came here some years ago to find my way in the realm of Literature—and a very hard time I had of it! For many a month I existed only on tobacco and green tea. At one time I found work with the publisher George Redway as a translator, proof-reader, cataloguer, and whatever else I could do to make ends meet. A small inheritance temporarily rescued me from this drudgery, and gave me sufficient respite to devote myself wholly to creative work. As a result I tasted a little success. Several of my mystical fancies saw print, and some even praised them and compared them, unjustly, I am sure, with the works of the great Edgar Allan Poe.’

Holmes brightened considerably at this, and absently tapped the book by his side as he listened.

‘All seemed set fair in my life. I had everything I could desire. Then came a period of great torment and sadness. My life was torn apart, and I suffered the agony of the damned. My recovery was slow, and I began to have some disturbing experiences. It seemed—I hope you will not dismiss me as insane, Mr Holmes—it seemed that characters from my books were coming alive. I would meet people who spoke words straight from my stories, or behaved just as my characters did.

‘So much I might have put down to chance, but recently things have taken an even more sinister turn.

‘It is my habit to walk the obscure byways of this great City, and to seek out sights as strange as Syon or Baghdad. I have had many curious encounters; but none like the one I had in a pub in Stepney. A workman came in and stood by me at the bar, and began to talk to me about mysteries that I had invented. Did I have a particular reason for calling one of my books
The Three Impostors
? What was the significance of The Pain of the Goat? Did the word
Ixaxar
have any special significance to me? What might I mean by talking of The Black Heaven?

‘He spoke not as if he was discussing Literature, but real things. I began to suspect that it was he, not I, who was mad. He was very insistent, and when I made my excuses and left the pub, he followed me. Fortunately my knowledge of the byways was such that I managed to shake him off, but I was badly frightened.

‘Over the days that have followed, I find complete strangers whispering the word
Ixaxar
as they pass. A perfectly respectable gentleman passed me on the street outside the Café Royal, and whispered without looking at me, “What is the Black Heaven?”

‘It seems I can’t walk the streets without meeting my own fictions in the flesh. And I feel very strongly that the whole affair is building relentlessly to some climax that spells danger for me. What should I do, Mr Holmes?’

The black mood that had lain on Holmes was forgotten. He leapt to his feet, lit his pipe, and stood with his back to the fire.

‘Let me begin by filling in certain details that you have omitted from your account. You come from a good, but not wealthy, family in South Wales. I should say the border country. Your father is, I think, a clergyman. You were educated in England, but not too far from your own land. I would say Hereford. You have been married but are no more. Could it be that the terrible tragedy that you spoke of was the death of your wife?’

Seeing the expression on Machen’s face, Holmes flapped his hand impatiently.

‘Come, this is no great thing: barely worthy of an explanation. You were obviously well educated, but have been obliged to struggle for your living. So there was enough money for school fees, but not the social contacts that would have launched you on a lucrative career. Your places of origin and education are both obvious to someone like myself who has a professional interest in regional accents.

‘Your father is a gentleman, then, who educated his children, but could afford to do little more for them. That particular combination of genteel poverty is typical of all too many honest country clergymen. You have the indentation of a wedding ring in the flesh of your finger, but the ring is removed. You spoke of a terrible suffering. So you see, there is no mystery.

‘Now, are you absolutely sure that the things you write, and that certain other people seem to find so serious, are merely figments of your own creative imagination?’

‘I have, as I said, catalogued thousands of occult books, Mr Holmes. I cannot be certain that I have not, inadvertently, used a title or an idea, but I can assure you that if I have it was unintentional and was only for fictional use.’

‘Very well. Just one other thing. Why did you not tell me that after your wife died, you joined some organisation or society of a mystical nature?’

‘How could you know that?’

‘You were alone in London, having suffered a terrible shock, and in need of support that your family were too far away to give. It must have been difficult to come to terms with the idea that you were parted from your wife forever. These are circumstances in which many people turn to spiritual consolation. It might have been the Church, but you have admitted to an interest in matters mystical.

‘What would be more natural than to seek aid from some occult source? Was it spiritual mediumship?’

‘No it was not. Though I am no longer an active member of the society in question, I feel that the oath I took should still be honoured. I will call them The Order of the Twilight Star. It offered me a path to enlightenment but could not give me what I sought.’

‘Have you considered the possibility that this secret order is behind your strange experiences? That it is their response to your decision to leave them?’

‘It did cross my mind, but I am sure this is not the case. Though it provided no answers for me, I could not doubt the sincerity and seriousness of purpose displayed by its members. There is to my knowledge only one person in the order who might conceivably be capable of such things, and I have given him no reason for any hostility. In any case, I have engaged in some quiet questioning of friends in occult circles, and no one knows of anyone who would have anything to gain by persecuting me.

‘All in all, I am at a loss to know what is happening to me—or why. I need the help of someone capable of solving this mystery. Will you take my case, Mr Holmes?’

‘Well, well,’ said Holmes easily, a smile playing about his lips, ‘how thin is the line between comedy and tragedy, as our hero Poe knew only too well. This is, on the face of things, a whimsical matter, a jest, or at best a curiosity of chance convergence that must happen occasionally when so many people jostle each other in so small an area as London.’

The smile faded from Holmes’s face.

‘And yet—and yet—your whole account cries out to me of depths unplumbed, and dangers unguessed. I will take your case, Mr Machen. I should warn you, though, that if we are to solve your little puzzle it will involve some risk to you, for you will be required to keep up your habit of walking the byways of London until the next meaningful meeting occurs. However, you will no longer be alone on your walks. With your assistance we may sniff out a “man of the crowd”. Let us hope your particular mystery proves to be a book that will permit itself to be read!’

I had always believed that our adventures had made us thoroughly familiar with the whole of London, but a night or two on the tail of Mr Machen soon disabused me of my conceit. He knew every obscure court and alleyway from Stoke Newington to Catford. Three evenings of such wanderings went by before our patience was rewarded.

After hours of uneventful walking, we saw a slight, scruffily dressed man bump into Machen, and when he had passed on our client stood looking at a scrap of paper that had been pressed into his hand. With one glance back in our direction he walked on with greater appearance of urgency.

We followed him for some miles into an area increasingly run down and unpopulated, where the houses stool parlous and unlit on either side. Machen checked the paper he held in his hand, then turned into a gate hanging aslant between stone pillars bearing urns.

We followed and found ourselves walking down a cloggy path of moss, past an elaborate fountain in very ruinous condition, to the crumbling façade of an Italianate mansion. In the moonlight the surface of the building was pocked with signs of great age. The entrance door stood open. We slipped inside, and at once the smell of damp and corruption almost choked us. Voices could be heard in one of the upper rooms. We climbed the stairs.

‘I assure you,’ Machen was saying, ‘I can be of no assistance to you. I have no information on this matter. In fact I can assure you that The Black Heaven does not exist outside the confines of my own imagination.’

Holmes crept forward and I followed. A single lamp with a half closed shutter shed bands of shadow on the mildewed walls and ceiling of the room. Machen was standing just inside the door. On the far side of a table that held the lamp stood a large, shadowy figure, the enveloping folds of his great cloak casting sinister shadows on the wall behind him. The lamp shutter threw a bar of darkness across the man’s face, but as we entered and became visible to him he fell backwards against the far wall with a hand to his brow.

Holmes snatched up the lamp and opened the shutter with the words, ‘Let us see the face of your tormentor, Mr Machen.’

For a second the glare of released light dazzled me. As my eyes grew accustomed to the brightness I stood thunder struck. The big figure shrugged and lowered his head. Holmes set down the lamp and said in a tone that betrayed little of the emotion he must have been feeling, ‘Good evening, Mycroft.’

Holmes’s elder brother smiled sheepishly. ‘I think it is time that I confided in you, Sherlock. The Diogenes Club is closer than Baker Street, I think. Would you be so good as to summon a cab, Dr Watson?’