Nicholas Meyer (11 page)

*It was undoubtedly this cursory knowledge that enabled Holmes to identify the bloody writing on the wall of the Lauriston Gardens house in "A Study in Scarlet."

"Thank heavens," my companion murmured, "all I can find here is: 'The weather is most becoming, do you not think so?' "

He pocketed the book and addressed himself to our interpreter. "Tell him," Holmes said, speaking slowly and distinctly, "that we want him to take us to the place where he took another passenger within the past few hours." He proceeded to furnish our interpreter with a detailed description of Moriarty, which was then repeated in German for the benefit of the driver of the cab in which Toby had evinced such a pronounced interest.

When this communication was but half completed the driver suddenly beamed, uttered a bellowing,

"Ach, ja!" and waved us hospitably into the vehicle.

The moment we were seated, he snapped the reins and we were off through the busy, beautiful streets of the city of Johann Strauss—and also the city of Metternich, depending on your own associations. I had no idea where we were or where we were going, never having been in Vienna before. We passed through colorful squares, near imposing statues, and stared out of our windows at the interesting natives of that city who, unaware of our inquisitive presence, went about their morning's business.

I remarked above that "we" stared out of the windows; but this is only two-thirds of the truth. I stared out the window and Toby stared out the window. But for Holmes, as always on such occasions, the scenery, however quaint or dramatic, held no attractions. Contenting himself with observing the names of the streets we traversed, he lit his pipe and settled back against the cushions, his mind devoted to the business at hand.

With an abrupt mental jolt, I too recalled the business at hand. In a few moments—should nothing go amiss—Holmes and I would come face to face with the doctor on whose help I so totally depended for Holmes's recovery. What would Holmes's reaction be? Would he cooperate? Would he even admit his difficulty? Would he be grateful or infuriated that his friends had taken so enormous a liberty with him?

And how would he view being duped with his own methods, hoist with his own petard?

I banished these last thoughts the moment they arose. I cared not for his gratitude, and it would scarcely surprise me if he did not display it, under the circumstances. No, the important thing, my paramount concern, was that he be cured. Let that happen and all other travail and livid rebuke might be easily borne.

The cab pulled up to a small but attractive building on a side street just off a major thoroughfare. Its name, in my preoccupation, I failed to note. The driver by various signs and gestures gave us to understand this was the destination of the gentleman we were seeking.

We got out and Holmes paid the man, after a brief consultation.

"We may have been robbed, but it was worth it," he confided in high good humour when the cab had pulled away. We turned our attention to the house itself, and Holmes rang the bell. I noticed, with relief, a small plaque which quietly proclaimed the name of the man we had come to see.

A moment later the door was opened by a pretty maid, who was only briefly startled by the presence of such a peculiar-looking dog in the company of two visitors.

Sherlock Holmes informed her of our identities and she responded at once with a smile, and an invitation, couched in broken English, to enter.

We nodded and followed her inside, finding ourselves in a small but elegant entrance hall with a white marble floor. The house was some kind of Viennese chocolate bread miniature, crammed with Dresden knick-knacks of every description. To one side, a thin black bannistered staircase led up to a charming little balcony that ran in a semi-circle over our heads.

"Please, this way—come," the maid gestured, still smiling openly, and she ushered us into a cramped study which opened off the vestibule. When we had seated ourselves, she offered to take Toby and find him something to eat. Holmes vetoed this at once, with cold formality, looking at me significantly around the shoulder of the girl, as much as to say, "What sort of meal might we expect to be given our valiant Toby under this particular roof?" But I argued that the professor would never dare any manoeuvre so precipitate.

"Oh, very well, perhaps you are right," he agreed, considering the matter while smiling icily at the grinning maid, who waited for our decision. I could see that he was tiring again and in need of an injection—or something better. I thanked the maid and handed over Toby's lead to her.

"Well, Watson, what do you make of it all?" Holmes demanded when she had gone.

"I can make nothing of it," I confessed, seeking refuge in the familiar response, instead of anticipating events. The doctor, I felt, should have the right to explain the situation in his own way.

"And yet it is obvious enough—obvious though horribly diabolical," he amended, pacing back and forth and examining the doctor's books, which, though mainly in German, were easily perceived as being of a medical character—at least on the side where I was seated.

I was on the point of asking Holmes to explain his remark when the door was opened and into the room stepped a bearded man of medium height and stooped shoulders. I took him to be in his early forties though I subsequently learned he was only thirty-five. Through his faint smile I saw an expression of infinite sadness, coupled, as it seemed to me, with infinite wisdom. His eyes were more remarkable than anything else in his face. They were not particularly large, but they were dark and deep-set, shadowed by an over-hanging brow and piercing in their intensity. He wore a dark suit with a gold chain peeping under his jacket and stretched across his waistcoat.

"Good morning, Herr Holmes," said he, in heavily accented but otherwise perfect English. "I have been expecting you and am glad that you decided to come. And you, Dr. Watson," he added, turning to me with a gracious smile and extended hand, which I shook, briefly, my eyes unable to leave Holmes's face.

"You may remove that ludicrous beard," he said in the high-pitched voice which he had displayed on the night he burst so melodramatically into my house, and used again the following day when I had visited him in his. "And kindly refrain from employing that ridiculous comic opera accent. I warn you, you'd best confess or it will go hard with you. That game is up, Professor Moriarty!"

Our host turned slowly to him, allowing for the full effect of his piercing gaze, and said, in a soft voice:

"My name is Sigmund Freud."

*7*—Two Demonstrations

There followed a long silence. Something in the manner of the physician gave Holmes pause. Excited though he was, he controlled himself with a visible effort, and approached the man, who had quietly eased himself into a chair behind the cluttered desk. He gazed at him steadily for some moments and then sighed.

"You are not Professor Moriarty," he conceded at length. "But Moriarty was here. Where is he now?"

"At a hotel, I believe," the other answered, maintaining his steady gaze.

Holmes withdrew before it, turned, and resumed his chair with a look of inexpressible defeat.

"Well, Iscariot," he turned to me, "you have delivered me into the hands of my enemies. I trust they will recompense you for the trouble you took in their behalf." He spoke with a lassitude underlined by a calm certainty, and his words would have convinced me had I not known for a fact that he was utterly deluded.

"Holmes, this is unworthy of you!" I flushed, mortified and angered by the outrageous epithet.

"That is the pot calling the kettle black, if I am not mistaken," he retorted. "However, let us not quibble.

I recognized your footprints outside the professor's home; I perceived that you brought with you a Gladstone bag, suggesting that you knew we should be going on a journey. The amount of luggage told me you knew in advance how long it would be, and I was able to see for myself that you prepared for a voyage precisely as long as the one we undertook. I only wish to know what you plan to do with me now that I am in your power."

"If you will permit me a word," Sigmund Freud interjected quietly, "I believe you are doing your friend a grave injustice. He did not bring you to see me with any intention of doing you harm." He spoke calmly, easily, and with soft assurance, despite the fact that he was speaking in a foreign tongue.

Holmes refocused his attention on the man. "As for Professor Moriarty, Dr. Watson and your brother paid him a considerable sum of money to journey here in the hope that you would follow him to my door."

"And why did they do that?"

"Because they were sure it was the only way they could induce you to see me."

"And why were they so eager for that particular event?" I knew that Holmes must be badly confused but he was no longer showing it. He was not a man to err twice.

"What reason occurs to you?" the doctor countered surprisingly. "Come, I have read the accounts of your cases and just now have I seen a glimpse of your astonishing faculties. Who am I and why should your friends be so eager to have us meet?"

Holmes eyed him coldly. "Beyond the fact that you are a brilliant Jewish physician who was born in Hungary and studied for a time in Paris, and that some radical theories of yours have alienated the respectable medical community so that you have severed your connections with various hospitals and branches of the medical fraternity—beyond the fact that you have ceased to practice medicine as a result, I can deduce little. You are married, possess a sense of honour, and enjoy playing cards and reading Shakespeare and a Russian author whose name I am unable to pronounce. I can say little besides that will be of interest to you."

Freud stared at Holmes for a moment in utter shock. Then, suddenly, he broke into a smile—and this came as another surprise to me, for it was a child-like expression of awe and pleasure. "But this is wonderful!" he exclaimed.

"Commonplace," was the reply. "I am still awaiting an explanation for this intolerable ruse, if ruse it was. Dr. Watson may tell you that it is very dangerous for me to leave London for any length of time. It generates in the criminal classes an unhealthy excitement when my absence is discovered."

"Still," Freud insisted, smiling with fascination, "I should very much like to know how you guessed the details of my life with such uncanny accuracy."

"I never guess," Holmes corrected smoothly. "It is an appalling habit, destructive to the logical faculty."

He rose, and though he tried not to show it, I suspected a thaw was creeping into his replies. Holmes could be as vain as a girl about his gifts, and there was nothing patronizing or insincere in the Viennese doctor's admiration. He now prepared to forget or ignore the danger he supposed he was in, and to enjoy his last moments to the fullest.

"A private study is an ideal place for observing facets of a man's character," he began in a familiar tone, reminiscent of an anatomy professor explicating the intricacies of a skeleton before a class. "That the study belongs to you, exclusively, is evident from the dust. Not even the maid is permitted here, else she would hardly have ventured to let matters come to this pass," and he swept a finger over some nearby bindings, accumulating soot on the tip.

"Go on," Freud requested, clearly delighted.

"Very well. Now when a man is interested in religion, and possesses a well-stocked library, he generally keeps all books on such a subject in one place. Yet your editions of the Koran, the King James Bible, the Book of Mormon, and various other works of a similar nature are separate—across the room, in fact—from your handsomely bound copy of the Talmud and a Hebrew Bible. These, therefore, do not enter into your studies merely, but constitute some special importance of their own. And what could that be, save that you are yourself of the Jewish faith? The nine-branched candelabrum on your desk confirms my interpretation. It is called a Menorah, is it not?

"Your studies in France are to be inferred from the great many medical works you possess in French, including a number by someone named Charcot. Medicine is complex enough already and not to be studied in a foreign language for one's private amusement. Then, too, the well-worn appearance of these volumes speaks plainly of the many hours you have spent poring over them. And where else should a German student read French medical texts but in France? It is a longer shot, but the particularly dog-eared appearance of those works of Charcot—whose name seems to have a

contemporary ring—makes me venture to suggest that he was your own teacher; either that, or his writing had some special appeal for you, connected with the development of your own ideas. It can be taken for granted," Holmes went on with the same didactic formality, "that only a brilliant mind could penetrate the mysteries of medicine in a foreign tongue, to say nothing of concerning itself with the wide range of subject matter covered by the books in this library."

He walked about the room as if it were a laboratory and nothing more, paying us only the most cursory attention as he continued his lecture. Freud watched, leaning back with his fingers interlaced across his waistcoat. He was unable to stop smiling.

"That you read Shakespeare is to be deduced from the fact that the book has been replaced upside-down. You can scarcely miss it here amidst the English literature, but the fact that you have not adjusted the volume suggests to my mind that you no doubt intended pulling it out again in the near future, which leads me to believe that you are fond of reading it. As for the Russian author—"

"Dostoievski," Freud prompted.

"Dostoievski ... the lack of dust on that volume—also lacking on the Shakespeare, incidentally—

proclaims your consistent interest in it. That you are a physician is obvious to me when I glance at your medical degree on the far wall. That you no longer practice medicine is evident by your presence here at home in the middle of the day, with no apparent anxiety on your part about a schedule to keep. Your separation from various societies is indicated by those spaces on the wall, clearly meant to display additional certificates. The color of the paint is there somewhat paler in small rectangles, and an outline of dust shows me where they used to be. Now, what can it be that forces a man to remove such