Nicholas Meyer (5 page)

"I see. And that is where you met Holmes?"

"I taught both boys," Moriarty replied with more than a touch of pride, "and brilliant lads they were, too, both of 'em. I should have liked to go on, only—" he hesitated, "then came the tragedy—"

"Tragedy, what tragedy?"

Again, he favoured me with a bewildered glance.

"Don't you know—?"

"Know? Know what, man? Good heavens, speak plainly!" I was on the edge of my chair with excitement. These details were so new to me that I fairly forgot the Holmes of the present, and his grave troubles, in my eagerness to satisfy my own curiosity about the Holmes of the past. Every word this little man uttered on the subject proved more astounding than the last.

"If Master Sherlock hasn't told you about it, I don't know that it is for me to—"

"But, see here—"

I could not convince him. He took the view that it was a professional confidence of sorts and nothing I could say on the subject would change his mind. The more urgently I pressed him the more reticent he became, until at last, deaf to my entreaties, he rose and looked about for his blackthorn.

"Really, I have said all that I came to say," he insisted, avoiding contact with my eyes as he fumbled for the stick. "You really must excuse me—no, I cannot and will not be indiscreet in this matter. I have told you all I can, and I leave it in your hands to resolve this—this dilemma."

He departed with a resolve for which I should have scarcely given him credit. Timidity was suddenly overcome by an anxiety for egress, and Professor Moriarty took his leave, allowing me to ponder my next move. Considering these tantalizing references to Holmes's past, replete with obscure tragedies, I privately felt that what the professor viewed as tragic might to myself appear merely sad, his being, as I suspected, an overly sensitive nature. But I had no time for these avenues of thought, however, so engrossed was my mind with the present predicament of Holmes's collapse and Moriarty's veiled threat (understandable under the circumstances, it grieved me to admit), of calling in his solicitor. This was to be avoided at all costs. Holmes's was a high-strung nature (I had known him to collapse before, though not, indeed, as a result of cocaine), and such an exposure was unthinkable. (Watson mentions two instances of such a collapse, in "The Reigate Squires" and in "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot.") Rather, what he needed, I decided upon reflection, was therapy. His terrible habit must be broken, and for this I needed some kind of assistance, past experience having shown me that I was not capable of stemming his addiction with my own meagre resources and knowledge. Indeed, if I was correct, what I had scarcely managed before would prove quite impossible now. During the intervening months when our contact had been of the slightest, the fatal compulsion had increased its attractions ten-fold, so that now he was more in its awful grip than he had ever been. If I had been unable to help him break that grip before, when it was but a momentary grasp, how should I prevail now that it had become a stranglehold?

I looked at my watch and noted that it was almost two. With the better part of the day gone by, it would be foolish to resume my practice, for Mary would be returning from Mrs. Forrester's at five and it was my intention to be at Waterloo by then to meet her.

In the meanwhile I would go to Bart's and seek out Stamford's advice—not telling him, of course, the entire truth, but setting the problem before him as belonging to one of my own patients.

Stamford, it may be recalled, had been a dresser under me at Bart's when I was studying at the University of London back in '78. Since then, he had gone on to take his own degree at that same august institution and was now a physician on staff at the old hospital where, so many years ago—in the chemical laboratory—he had first introduced me to Sherlock Holmes. He did not know Holmes well and had only brought us together when he learned we were each of us desirous of finding and sharing good rooms at a reasonable price. I did not intend to allude to Holmes today if I could help it.

Once again I set out from my home, this time with some bread and cold ham, supplied by the girl, which I wrapped in paper (over her protestations) and stuffed in my pocket as I had seen Holmes do so often, when, being engaged upon a case, he had no time for a more conventional repast. The memory caused a pang in my breast as I climbed into a cab and started off for Bart's on my dismal errand.

It has been wondered at by contemporary scholars that Holmes and I were so fond of cabs, which admittedly were dear, when the Underground was to be travelled for considerably less. As long as I am clearing up mysteries, I may say that though the Underground was less expensive than the horse-drawn vehicles we favoured, and though it was in some instances definitely faster, it is also true that the lines were not completed and in many cases did not take us where we wished to go.

But the real reason we did not use them when we could avoid it (and "we" here is meant to include most gentlemen of means) was that the Undergrounds at that time were a hell beneath the earth. Steam-driven, filthy, sulphurous, and dangerous, they were unreliable when they were not lethal and no fit place for a human who could afford another mode of locomotion. People who were forced to use them inevitably suffered lung ailments, and my practice, which bordered on the railway, saw many workmen, builders, and maintainers of that subterranean network of trains, who may be said to have literally given their lives so that Londoners today might enjoy the safest and most modern system of cheap transport in the world.

No Underground connected Baker Street with Bart's—in 1891 Baker Street was nowhere near the

length it is today—and so a cab was not an extravagance but a necessity (unless one considered the omnibuses, but they had their own imperfections).

St. Bartholomew's must rank as one of the oldest hospitals in the world. Its twelfth-century structure was erected on Roman foundations, supposedly by Henry I's jester, Rahere, who, on a pilgrimage to Rome caught sick and swore—if he should recover—to build a great church in London.* I know not if the tale is true, but Bart's did begin as a church and remained one until Henry VIII annexed it in the name of the Crown and then proceeded (as he did elsewhere) to destroy much of the ecclesiastical portions of the building, suffering the hospital itself to be only slightly altered in the transition. Until some twenty years before I studied at Bart's, the great Smithfield Market with its huge slaughterhouses was right by the way, and the stench of dead animals was said to quite overpower every other odor for miles around. I am glad that before I ever arrived Smithfield had been disbanded, and, where animals once shrieked their death agony and blood ran thick in gutters, a number of goodly public houses and shops had risen in its place. I am told it is more or less unchanged to this day, but I have not returned to Bart's this last fifteen years.

* For a detailed description and history, see Michael Harrison's excellent volume,
In the Footsteps of
Sherlock Holmes
, Drake Publishers.

When I entered its portals in my cab that April 25th, however, I thought not of the ancient building's lineage, nor did I halt to peruse the hodgepodge of architectural additions and encrustations that alternately delight and infuriate the eye. I paid off the cab and went straight into the Pathological Department and sought out Stamford.

My journey took me through a veritable labyrinth of corridors and turnings, forcing me to ask directions several times, so long had it been since I last threaded the maze. There was no reeking odor of Smithfield now. Instead, my nostrils were assailed by the pungent fumes of carbolic and alcohol, nothing new to them, since those twin harbingers of the medical profession accompanied me daily on my rounds. Nonetheless, their concentration was admittedly great here at Bart's.

Stamford, it developed, was giving a lecture, and I was obliged to take a seat at the back of the high-tiered auditorium and wait for him to conclude. It was hard, indeed, to concentrate on his words—

something about circulation, I fancy, though I am not prepared to swear to it—so distracted was I with my own purposes. Nevertheless, I do recall looking down at him, standing on the rostrum as though he owned it, and remembering how long it had been since he and I had sat in these very seats and listened to yet another revered curmudgeon dinning these same facts into our own thick skulls. Stay, was Stamford not already beginning to resemble that curmudgeon? Whatever was his name?

When the talk was finished I strode down to the front and called to him as he neared the door.

"Great heavens, it's Watson!" he cried, stepping over to me at once and vigorously wringing my hand.

"What on earth brings you to Bart's on this of all days? Heard my talk, did you? I wager you didn't think I could remember all that foolishness. Have you?"

And so he chattered on for several minutes, and, taking me by the arm, led me through additional sections of labyrinth to his own office, which was spacious but cluttered with the double paraphernalia of a physician who is also a teacher. Stamford had a jolly way with him as a youth and it pleased me to see that he still rattled on as mindlessly as ever. He had aged gracefully, and possessed the same old good-humoured air without his previous plumpness; his harried professional manner also became him

—it gave him something to joke about, and yet he was sufficiently busy so as not to be wholly distracted by his propensity for being "clever," as he put it.

I let him ramble away for a decent interval, supplied him with details of my own life, my marriage, budding practice, and so forth, and dealt as best I could with the inevitable queries about Holmes.

"Who would have ever thought you two would hit it off so splendidly?" he chortled, and offered me a cigar which I accepted. "And you—you've become almost as notorious as he! what with your accounts

—'Study in Scarlet,' 'Sign of the Four'—you've a real gift for telling a tale, Watson, and a flair for titles, too, I'll be bound. Tell me, now—we are quite alone and I'll never breathe it to a soul—can your friend and mine, can old Holmes really do all the things you've said he does in those accounts of yours? Truly now!"

I answered coldly that in my opinion Sherlock Holmes was the best and wisest man I had ever known.

"Quite, quite," Stamford rejoined hastily, perceiving at once his want of tact. Then he leaned back in his chair. "Who'd've thought it? I mean I always knew the man was clever but I'd no idea—! Well, well, well." He seemed at last to realize that I had come to visit him with some definite end in view, and he now turned his attention to it. "Was there something I could do for you, old man?"

I said there was, and, collecting myself, briefly outlined for him the case history of a patient in the thrall of cocaine, alluding tactfully to the phantasies that accompanied the heavier stages of the addiction. I asked him what steps could be taken to cure the man of his suffering.

Stamford, to do him justice, listened to me with perfect attention, his hands on his desk, smoking in silence, as I unfolded the details.

"I see," he said, when I had done. "And tell me, do you mean to say that the patient himself is not aware of the origins of this feeling—that someone is out to do him harm? He does not understand that this delusion is fostered by the drug he persists in using?"

"Apparently not. I believe it has got to the stage—if this is possible—when he is no longer aware of taking the cocaine at all."

Stamford shot up his eyebrows at this, then blew air soundlessly out of his cheeks.

"I will be candid with you, Watson. I don't know if that is possible or not. In point of fact," he continued, rising and coming round his desk to me, "the medical profession knows very little about addiction of any kind. Yet, if you have kept up your reading, you are aware that at some point in the not-too-distant future, such drugs as cocaine and opium are likely to be declared illegal without prescription."

"That will scarcely be of any use to me," I cried bitterly. "By that time my patient may well be dead."

The thought caused my voice to rise in a manner that attracted his attention. I must be more off-hand.

Stamford studied me for a moment, and I withstood his scrutiny as best I could. Then he returned to his chair.

"I don't know what to tell you, Watson. If you were able to convince your—your patient that he must place himself totally under your supervision and care—"

"Out of the question," I interrupted, managing casually to wave my cigar about.

"Well, then—" he threw out his hands in a helpless gesture. "Wait a bit, though." He rose from his chair again. "There was something here that might be of use to you. Now where did I put it?"

He began rummaging about the office, carelessly disturbing piles of papers and causing a deal of dust to rise about us. With another pang I was reminded of Holmes's own chaotic filing arrangements at Baker Street, where finding a reference or looking up an old case was likely to send both of us coughing into the street for an hour or two while dust settled.

"Here it is!" he exclaimed in triumph, and he heaved himself erect from a floor-level cabinet by the window, holding in his hands a copy of
Lancet
.

"This is March 10," he said, handing it to me and catching his breath. "Have you seen it?"

I said I had not, my practice was keeping me so busy, but I believed I had it at home.

"Well, take this with you anyway in case you've misplaced your copy," Stamford insisted, pressing it into my hands. "There's a young chap—in Vienna, I think it is—at any rate, I didn't have time to read the whole thing, but it seems he's involved in conducting cocaine cures. I can't remember the name but it's in there somewhere and maybe he says something that can be of help. I'm sorry, old man, but I'm afraid it's the best I can do."

I thanked him profusely and we parted with many promises on both sides to dine together in the near future, to introduce one another to our wives, and so forth. We had neither of us the slightest intention of carrying out these extravagant proposals, and my heart was in my boots as I set out for Waterloo. I had no more faith than Stamford that the little piece in
Lancet
could save my friend and bring him back from the abyss into which he had fallen. Little did I dream, as I set off to meet my wife, that for the second time in ten years, Stamford—priceless, invaluable Stamford!—had answered my prayers, and Holmes's.