Nicholas Meyer (4 page)

Had he appeared, though?

This was an even madder notion, and I cursed myself for having articulated it, even in the recesses of my brain. I turned from the window and the first light of dawn.

Of course, he had.

And for once I received proof positive of an assertion.

The two used brandy snifters lay where Holmes and I had left them.

I awoke the next morning, or rather that same morning, in my own bed, whither I had apparently flung myself half-dressed at some point during my profitless speculations of the night before. The house was already bustling with preparations for the day, and I arose with the intention of starting afresh, as it were, and seeing what came of that.

After changing and completing the process of dressing and shaving, I descended the stairs and had breakfast. Not even the papers were sufficient distraction: my mind was elsewhere already. I now recalled that I had taken Holmes's pulse and examined the pupils of his eyes the night before. But once again the same question came back to haunt me: had I really, or was this, too, part of the dream?

The question was too maddening to be endured, and, hastily concluding my breakfast, I went round to Cullingworth and asked him if he could see to my practise for the morning. He was happy to oblige (I had often assumed his at short notice), and without more ado I hailed a cab and set out for Baker Street.

It was still early in the morning when I stepped out onto the familiar stretch of pavement before 22IB

and paid the cabbie. I sucked in the morning air vigourously (for all that it was still rather damp), and rang the bell. The door was opened almost at once by our landlady, Mrs. Hudson. She seemed gratified beyond words to see me.

"Oh, Dr. Watson, thank heavens you've come!" she exclaimed without preamble, and astonished me by taking the sleeve of my coat and pulling me into the area-way.

"What is it—?" I began, but she cut me off with her fingers on her lips and looked anxiously up the stairs. Holmes's ears were of the keenest, however, and it was soon evident our brief exchange had been to some extent overheard.

"Mrs. Hudson, if that gentleman answers to the name Professor Moriarty," a shrill voice that was nonetheless recognizable as his called down from above, "you may show him up and I will deal with him! Mrs. Hudson?"

"You see how it is, Dr. Watson," the unhappy landlady whispered in my ear. "He's got himself barricaded in up there; won't take his meals, keeps the shutters closed all day—and then he steals out at night,
after
I've bolted the door and the slavey's in bed—"

"Mrs. Hudson—!"

"I'll go up and see him," I volunteered, patting her reassuringly on the arm, though in truth I did not feel particularly confident. So there
was
a Professor Moriarty, at least in Holmes's fancy. I mounted the seventeen well-trod steps to my old lodgings with a heavy heart. What a noble mind was here

overthrown!

"Who is it?" Holmes enquired from the other side of the door when I knocked. "Moriarty, is that you?"

"It is I, Watson," I responded, and when I had repeated this several times, he at length consented to open the door slightly and peered at me strangely through the crack.

"You see it is only I, Holmes. Let me enter."

"Not so fast." His foot jammed against the base of the door. "You may be he disguised. Prove you are Watson."

"How?" I wailed, for I had no idea, in truth, what it would require to satisfy him of my identity.

He thought for a moment.

"Where do I keep my tobacco?" he demanded abruptly.

"In the toe end of your Persian slipper." This answer, given so punctually, appeared to allay his suspicions to a degree, for his voice softened slightly.

"And my correspondence?"

"Is affixed to the mantel with a jack-knife."

He grunted an affirmation.

"And what were the first words I ever spoke to you?"

" 'You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.' For heavens' sakes, Holmes!" I pleaded.

"Very well, you may enter," he replied, satisfied at last. He removed his foot from the door, opened it slightly, and pulled me in vigourously. The moment I had stepped across the threshold he closed the door behind me and threw several bolts and locks, none of which had ever been attached during my residence. I watched, transfixed, as he proceeded with these operations and then put his ear to the panel, listening for I knew not what. Finally, he straightened up and turned to me with an extended hand.

"Forgive me for doubting you, Watson," he said with a smile that was very like his own, "but I had to make sure. They will stop at nothing."

"The professor's gang?"

"Precisely."

He led me into the room and offered me tea which he had evidently brewed himself, using for the purpose the bunsen burner amidst his chemical apparatus on the deal table and a large beaker. I accepted a cup and sat down, looking about me, as Holmes went about pouring. The place was much the same as it had been when I shared it with him—it was as untidy as always—but the shutters and windows were bolted and the shutters themselves were not the ones with which I was familiar. They were new, constructed, as far as I could judge, of heavy iron. These and the many locks on the door were the only visible signs of alteration.

"Here you are, old man."

From his chair by the fire Holmes's arm jutted out as he passed me my teacup. He was wearing his dressing gown (the mouse-coloured one) and his bare arm protruded as he reached over.

It was a battlefield of puncture marks.

I will not detail the rest of that painful interview; its substance can be easily gleaned and it would cast an unworthy shadow on a great man's memory for me to relate what effects this horrible drug had produced upon his faculties.

After an hour I left Baker Street—being admitted to the outer world with almost as many precautions as I had been taken in from it—seized another cab, and returned to my own residence.

There, still reeling with the shock of Holmes's mental collapse, I encountered a disagreeable surprise.

The girl, upon my entering, informed me that there was a gentleman waiting to see me.

"Didn't you inform the gentleman that Dr. Cullingworth was taking my rounds this morning?"

"Yes, I did, sir," she answered, ill at ease, "but the gentleman insisted on seeing you, personally. I didn't like to close the door on him, so I let him wait in the consultin' room."

This was really too much, I thought with rising irritation, and was about to say so when she came forward timidly with the salver in her hand.

"This is his card, sir."

I turned over the piece of white cardboard and shuddered, the blood turning to ice in my veins. The name on the card was that of Professor Moriarty.

*2*—Biographical

For the better part of a minute I gazed stupidly at the card, and then, conscious of the girl's presence, thrust it in my pocket, handed her back the salver, and went past her into the consulting room.

I did not dare think. I did not want to think. I was incapable of thought. Let this—this gentleman—

whoever he was, and whatever he called himself, explain matters to me if he could. I had, for the moment, no intention of speculating any further.

He rose at once as I opened the door, a small, shy personage in his sixties with his hat in his hand and a startled expression on his face that quickly subsided into a timid smile when I introduced myself. He extended a thin hand and took mine briefly. He was dressed well though not expensively, with the air of a professional man who is nevertheless unused to the hurly-burly of the real world. He belonged in a monastery, perhaps, where his blue myopic eyes would have no other business than to pore over ancient parchments and decipher their meanings. His head added to the monkish impression I had formed of his nature, for it was almost totally bald, with a few delicate wisps of white-grey hair circling the back and sides.

"I hope I have not inconvenienced you by occupying your consulting chamber," he was saying in a quiet but anxious voice, "only my business is of the most urgent and personal nature and it was you, not Doctor—ah—Cullingworth that I wished to—"

"Quite so, quite so," I interrupted with an asperity that I could see was startling to him. "Pray tell me what is the matter," I went on in a softer tone, and motioned him to sit down again as I drew up a chair opposite.

"I don't quite know how to begin." He had the disconcerting habit of turning his hat round and round in his hands as he spoke. I tried to imagine him as Holmes had described—a brilliant and diabolical fiend, sitting motionless at the center of every evil web of conspiracy spun by man. His appearance and attitude were not helpful.

"I have come to you," the professor resumed with sudden energy and decision, "because I know from reading your accounts that you are Mr. Sherlock Holmes's most ultimate acquaintance."

"I have that honour," I acknowledged gruffly, with a perfunctory inclination of my head. I was determined to be on my guard, for though I judged his appearance to be innocuous I made up my mind that he would not deceive me by it.

"I am not sure how to say this," he went on, twisting his hat round more than ever, "but Mr. Holmes is

—well, I suppose persecuting me is the only word to describe it."

"Persecuting
you
?" I ejaculated.

"Yes," he agreed hastily, starting again at the sound of my voice, though not apparently recognizing its emphasis. "I know it sounds absurd, but I don't know how else to put it. He—well, he stands outside my house at night—in the street." He stole a glance at me to see what reaction, if any, my features revealed. Satisfied that I was not about to erupt with indignation, he continued.

"He stands outside my house at night—not every night, mind you—but several times a week. He follows me! Sometimes for days on end he dogs my footsteps. He doesn't seem to mind my being

aware of it. Oh, and he sends me letters," he added as an afterthought.

"Letters?"

"Well, telegrams, really; they're only a sentence or two. 'Moriarty, take care; your days are numbered.'

Things like that. And he has seen the headmaster about me."

"The headmaster? What headmaster do you mean?"

"Headmaster Price-Jones, at the Roylott School where I hold the position of mathematics instructor."

He had named one of the lesser-known public schools in the area of West London.

"The headmaster called me in and asked me to explain Mr. Holmes's allegations."

"And what did you tell him?"

"I said I was at a loss to explain them; I said I didn't know what they were. So he told me." Moriarty twisted round in his chair and screwed up his blue eyes in my direction. "Dr. Watson, your friend is persuaded that I am some sort of—" he groped for the words—"criminal mastermind. Of the most depraved order," he added with a helpless shrug, throwing up his hands. "Now I ask you, sir: in all honesty—can you see in me the remotest trappings of such an individual?"

There seemed almost no point in saying I could not.

"But what is to be done?" the little man pursued with a whine. "I know that your friend is a good man

—all England resounds with his praise. But, in my case, he has made some ghastly mistake and I have become his unfortunate victim." Lost in thought, I said nothing. "The last thing in the world that I would wish is to cause him any embarrassment, Doctor," the whine persisted. "But I am at my wits'

end. If something is not done about this—this persecution, what other alternative have I than to turn the matter over to my solicitor?"

"That will not be necessary," I responded at once, though in truth I had no idea what course of action to follow.

"I sincerely hope it will not," he agreed. "That is why I have come to you."

"My friend has not been well," I answered, feeling my way. "This action is no part of his normal behaviour. If you had known him when he was in health—"

"Oh, but I did," interrupted the professor, to my vast surprise.

"You did?"

"I did indeed, and a most engaging young man he was, was Master Sherlock."

"Master Sherlock?"

"Why, yes. I was his tutor—in mathematics."

I stared at him open-mouthed. From the expressions succeeding one another across his own

countenance, I gathered he had somehow assumed I knew this. I said I had not and begged him to tell me all about it.

"There isn't much to tell." The whine in his inflection was becoming disagreeably pronounced. "Before I came down to London—this was years ago, after University—"

"You didn't by chance write a treatise on the Binomial Theorem?" I interrupted.

He stared at me.

"Certainly not. Who has anything new to say about the Binomial Theorem at this late date? At any rate, I am certainly not the man to know."

"I beg your pardon. Please continue."

"As I was saying, I left University and accepted the position of tutor in mathematics in the home of Squire Holmes. There, I taught Master Mycroft and Master Sherlock—"

"I apologize again for interrupting you," I said, with great excitement, for Holmes had never spoken of his people to me in the entire period of our acquaintance. "Where was this?"

"Why, in Sussex, of course, at the family seat."

"The family was from Sussex?"

"Well, not originally. That is, the Holmes clan hailed from there, yes, but the Squire was a second son, never due to inherit the estate at all, by rights. He and his family lived in North Riding—in Yorkshire—

that's where Master Mycroft was born. Then the Squire's elder brother died, a widower without issue, and Master Sherlock's father moved his family into the old estate." (This statement would seem to reconcile the opposing views of the late W. S. Baring-Gould, who, in his biography of Holmes, postulated his Yorkshire background, with those of Trevor Hall, who more recently contended that Holmes was born and reared in east Sussex. Baring-Gould also informs us that Moriarty tutored Holmes in mathematics. How he came by this crucial piece of intelligence—without access to the present mss—he does not explain.)