Nicholas Meyer (17 page)

Dr. Freud, however, was intent on his own line of thought. "To think that I was prepared to certify her as a complete lunatic," he murmured, "that I could not see—"

"You saw," interrupted Holmes, "but you did not observe. The distinction is an important one and sometimes makes a critical difference."

"But who is she? Is she really from Providence, Rhode Island, or is that part of her fancy?"

"It is a cardinal error to theorize in advance of the facts," Holmes admonished. "Inevitably it biases the judgement."

He lit his pipe as Freud stared at his coffee cup. In the past two hours their positions had been quietly reversed. Hitherto the doctor had been mentor and guide, but now Holmes had assumed that role—

easily a more familiar one to him than that of helpless patient. Though his expression remained inscrutable, I knew how keenly he rejoiced in the return to his more familiar self; while Freud, to do him justice, was not averse to playing the part of his pupil.

"What is to be done, then?" he demanded. "Shall we inform the police?"

"She was in the hands of the police when she was discovered," Holmes replied a trifle hastily. "If they did nothing for her then, what should they do now? And what would we tell them, eh? We know only a very little and that little may be too small for them to work with. It would in London," he added drily.

"Besides, if there really is a nobleman involved, they may be reluctant to delve too deeply into the business."

"What do you suggest, then?"

Holmes leaned back and made a casual show of studying the ceiling.

"Would you consider looking into the matter yourself?"

"I?" Holmes did his best to appear astonished, but the role was a little too close to life, and I fear that for once he overplayed it. "But surely my condition—"

"Your condition has not incapacitated you, obviously," Freud broke in impatiently. "Besides, work is just what you need."

"Very well." Holmes sat forward abruptly, giving up the game. "First we must find out about Baron Von Leinsdorf—who he was, what he died of, when, and so forth. And, of course, whether or not he

possessed a wife, and, if so, of what nationality. Since our client is unable to answer certain questions, we must work the case from its other end."

"What makes you say that the woman's garret faced another building over a narrow alley?" I asked.

"Elementary, my dear fellow. Our client's skin was white as a fish's belly, yet we know from her own statement that there was a window in her prison and that it was large enough to accommodate her escape. Inference: although the room possessed a window, there was something that prevented any great degree of sunlight from entering, for surely, if it had, she would not be so pale. And what more likely to achieve this than another building? It is a longer shot, but we might also infer that the building is a newer one than the one that housed our client, because architects do not usually construct windows opening out onto brick walls."

"Wonderful!" exclaimed Freud, who I could see was taking hope from Holmes's words and from his calm, assured demeanour.

"It is merely a question of associating probabilities in the most probable fashion. For example, in
The
Tempest
, the shipwrecked duke and his comrades comment on the strange storm that washed them ashore on Prospero's island and yet failed to dampen their clothing. For years scholars have debated amongst themselves concerning this singular tempest. Some have held that it was a metaphysical storm only, and others have postulated equally intricate symbolic hurricanes, all designed to leave the mariners' clothing dry. Yet it helps to know that the reason this storm did not disarrange the duke's clothing is that costumes were the most expensive part of the Elizabethan theatre's resources and the management could not risk mildew every time the play was performed, to say nothing of the actors falling prey to pneumonia. It is easy to imagine—once one is armed with this knowledge—the

Burbages, father and son, requesting their playwright to throw in a line alluding to their dry habiliments after their terrible confrontation with the elements. Is there an Austrian equivalent to Burke's Peerage?

Perhaps the afternoon would not be wasted if you were to look up some details regarding the late Baron Von Leinsdorf."

"Let me use you as my sounding board, Watson," said Holmes, after Sigmund Freud had left to conduct his research into the late nobleman's affairs. "I must pick my way carefully—not because we are faced with an insoluble mystery, but because I am like a sailor who has spent too much time ashore, and I must regain my sea legs. Perhaps a walk would help, talking of legs."

We paid our due and set forth towards Währinger Strasse, where we turned right. Holmes had filled his pipe again, and he stopped briefly to light it, concentrating in the slight breeze.

"There are two possibilities here, Watson," said he. "One is that this woman is who she claims to be, and the other that she is deluded—or else intent on deluding us. Don't look so surprised, my dear fellow; that she is shamming for our benefit is an idea we cannot afford to discount at this stage of the game. Now this question, the question of her identity, we shall leave, as I said, until we have further data. But the other elements in the case are entitled to our speculation. Why was this woman kept in a garret, tied hand and foot? Whether she be princess or beggar woman, there are only two possibilities.

Either her abductors wished her to do something, or else they wished to prevent her doing something."

"If she was bound hand and foot," I ventured, "the latter possibility strikes me as more likely."

Holmes looked at me and smiled.

"Possibly, Watson. Possibly. But taking the beggar woman as our working hypothesis, a beggar woman who speaks English with an American accent—what could she do, and to whom, that they should fear her? And if they feared her and wished to prevent her from doing anything, why did they allow her to live at all? Why not simply—" His voice trailed off.

"Holmes, supposing these people—whoever they are—
did
wish to do away with her? Isn't it possible that they drove her deliberately to the suicide she attempted at the canal?"

"You mean allowed her to escape? I think not, Watson. Her flight was too daring, too ingenious, and too risky for her captors to have anticipated it. Remember she slipped coming down the drain-pipe and hurt her head."

We walked for a time in silence. I noticed that we were heading past Dr. Freud's house along Bergasse and moving slowly towards the canal.

"Are you going to look at the Augarten Bridge?" I enquired.

"Of what use is the bridge to us?" he answered impatiently. "We know that the constables found her there and failed to prevent her from throwing herself off it. No, I would rather try to find the building where she was kept. It's deuced awkward having a client who can't talk."

"What makes you think you can find the building?" I gasped. "It could be anywhere in Vienna!"

"No, no, my dear doctor, not anywhere at all. Remember, in her weakened condition, the young lady could not have travelled very far. She was found on the bridge, ergo, she got there from the immediate vicinity. Besides, we have already inferred an alley, and is not a waterfront conducive to that notion? A warehouse, perhaps; with a meat-house nearby? In any case, I am not expecting to find the building. I simply would like to familiarize myself with the general scene of the action."

He fell silent, leaving me to my own thoughts, which, I confess, were utterly confused. I did not like to break in on his contemplations, but the more I considered the matter, the more bewildering it became.

"Holmes, why should a woman take all the trouble to escape and then throw herself into the river at the first opportunity?"

"A fair question, Watson. A tantalizing question, and one that is probably crucial to our case, though there are at present an infinite number of motivations, all of which, I suspect, depend on our establishing the identity of our client."

"Perhaps we are making more of all this than there is," I hazarded, for though I did not wish to deprive my companion of the therapy of the chase, nevertheless, it was best not to nourish false hopes.

"Perhaps she is just an unfortunate victim of an individual, a lover become deranged or—"

"It won't do, Watson," he laughed. "In the first place, the woman is a foreigner. Under hypnosis she answers questions in American English. Then again, we have the mention of a Baron Von Leinsdorf—

surely not a small fish. And finally," he said, turning to me, "what matter if the case is only a small one?

It has its own peculiar rewards, and there is no reason why this unhappy woman should have less justice than the wealthier or more influential specimens of her sex."

This time I said no more, but accompanied him in silence as we entered a section of the city which was considerably less agreeable than those neighbourhoods we had seen during our stay.

The houses were no more than two stories high, built of wood rather than stone. They were dirty, many of them needing paint, and all tended down towards the canal where they stopped just short of the water's edge. There, dilapidated dories were beached on the rocky terrain, looking like stranded small whales. Short telegraph poles with sagging wires completed the dismal picture, and the canal itself added the final touch. Muddy, sluggish, and crammed with unattractive barges—for Vienna received most of its supplies by water—it was a sight more reminiscent of sections of the Thames than of the city of the beautiful blue Danube, which lay some miles to the east, beyond our field of vision.

Here and there a warehouse and a short pier dotted the endless stretch of tenements, and occasional shouts of laughter and the wheezings of an accordion proclaimed a seedy public house in the vicinity—

a far cry from the luxury of the Cafe Griensteidl. Off to our right some quarter of a mile lay the Augarten Bridge where the adventure had begun.

"A dreary enough vicinity," Holmes commented, surveying the bleak scene, "and any one of those buildings might accommodate our structural specifications for Nancy Slater's prison."

"Nancy Slater?"

"For want of another name, that one must serve," he returned equably. "I am not a medical man and so cannot properly refer to her as the patient; client, too, seems inappropriate, under the circumstances.

She is not in a position, after all, to communicate with us, much less to engage our services in her behalf. Shall we be getting back? I believe Dr. Freud has kindly arranged for us to attend the opera this evening. I am dying to hear Vitelli, though they do say he is past his prime. In any case, I must make sure that the evening clothes you purchased for me will fit."

So saying, we turned in our tracks and trudged out of that weary place. Holmes said little on our way home, though he stopped at a telegraph office and despatched a wire. Knowing him as well as I did, I made no attempt to intrude upon his thoughts, but busied myself with the problem at hand, trying without success not to reason in advance of the facts, but it was a hopeless effort and I gave it up as a bad job. My mind was not logical and disciplined, as was my companion's; it was ever straying to romantic, and utterly improbable solutions to the affair, none of which I should have the courage to broach to any hearer but myself.

I had succeeded completely in one task, however: I knew Sherlock Holmes's measurements and had even allowed for an inch or two less in view of his emaciated condition. The clothes I ordered from Horn's, the smart tailor in the Stephenplaz, fitted the detective beautifully.

Dr. Freud was already at home when we returned, and waited for us with the information Holmes himself would normally have run to earth had he been familiar with the city and its language. His search had taken no little time, yet he had managed to see a patient later in the afternoon. "Wolf Man,"

"Rat Man," or whatever, he was always conscientious about them.

Baron Karl Helmut Wolfgang Von Leinsdorf (Freud told us) was a second cousin to the Emperor Franz Josef, on his mother's side. He himself was from Bavaria, not Austria, and the bulk of his estate—

which consisted of factories devoted to the manufacture of armaments and munitions—was located in the Ruhr Valley of Germany.

The Baron had been a pillar—albeit a reclusive one—of Viennese society. He was devoted to the theatre. He had been married twice, first to a lesser Hapsburg princess, who had died some twenty years before, leaving him with an only son as heir.

Young Manfred Gottfried Karl Wolfgang Von Leinsdorf enjoyed a rather less savoury reputation than his late father. A prodigal, his gaming debts were said to be enormous, and his character—particularly where women were concerned—was known to be totally unscrupulous. He had been to Heidelberg for three years, but left that seat of learning somewhat under a cloud. His political views were extremely conservative and favoured a return to—

"And the second marriage?" Holmes interrupted quietly.

Freud sighed. "Was made two months before his death. On a voyage to America he made the

acquaintance of the Providence textile heiress, Nancy Osborn Slater. They were married almost at once."

"Why the rush?" Holmes wondered aloud. "Surely people of means and station habitually prolong the ritual of betrothal and matrimony for all the festivity it is worth."

"The Baron was nearly seventy," Freud responded, shrugging. "Perhaps—in view of his death, which occurred so soon after the nuptials—he had an inkling—"

"Quite so, quite so. Curiouser and curiouser," my companion added, forgetting his grammar * and sitting back in his evening clothes with his long legs stretched towards the fire in Freud's study, his eyes gleaming beneath half-closed lids. His finger-tips were judiciously pressed together, as his custom was when he wished to concentrate.

* Holmes, in my opinion, was not forgetting his grammar, as Watson suggests, but rather quoting from
Alice in Wonderland
, by Lewis Carroll. Watson was obviously unfamiliar with the book (he preferred sea stories) or else had forgotten it.