The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures (56 page)

“The third finger of his right hand?”

“Why, yes, my dear fellow. Surely you are not going to tell me that you noticed nothing about that? Come, I was at that window for little more than three or four minutes and I had grasped its significance long before you turned and saw me.”

“Now that I think about it,” I replied, “my patient does wear a finger-stall on the third finger of his right hand. Some trifling injury, I suppose. It certainly could in no way contribute to his condition.”

“I never suggested that it did, doctor. I am sure you know your business better than that. Trust me, then, to know mine.”

“But does his concealing that finger have some significance?” I asked.

“Of course it does. Tell me, what does a man customarily wear upon his third finger?”

“A ring, I suppose. But that would not be upon the right hand, surely?”

“Yes, Watson, a ring. You have arrived at the point with your customary perspicacity. But why should a man wish to conceal a particular ring? Tell me that.”

“Holmes, I cannot. I simply cannot.”

“Because the ring has a particular meaning. And who is it who would wear a ring of that nature? Why, a monarch, of course. I tell you that man in bed there is a king, and he is hiding for some good reason. There can scarcely be any doubt about that.”

To my mind, there was at least room for a measure of disagreement with this conclusion. Smith was perhaps a name that anyone wishing to live anonymously might take, but certainly my patient had shown not the least trace of a foreign accent, as he was surely likely to do if he were the ruler of one of the lesser European states whose appearance, especially since he wore a full beard, might be unknown to me. Yet he did have a manservant of European origin, though here again this was not an altogether uncommon circumstance for a single English gentleman who might be something of a traveller. I would have liked to put all these doubts and queries to my friend, but from the moment that he had told me what he had deduced from my patient’s concealed finger he lapsed into one of those moods of silence well familiar to me, and for the whole of our journey back to London he uttered scarcely a word, little more than to say to me at the station in Hertfordshire that he had a number of telegrams which he needed urgently to despatch.

I was curious enough, however, to find an opportunity of visiting Baker Street again next day. But, though I found Holmes fully dressed and a great deal more alert than on my last visit, I was unable to obtain from him any hint about the direction of his inquiries. All he would do was to talk, with that vivacity of spirit which he could display whenever the mood took him, about a bewildering variety of subjects, the paintings of the Belgian artist, Ensor, the amorous adventures of Madame Sand, the activities of the Russian nihilists, the gravity of the political situation in Illyria. None was a matter on which I felt myself particularly informed, yet on each Holmes, it seemed, had a fund of knowledge. At length I went back to my medical round not one whit better able to decide whether my Hertfordshire patient was no more than the nervous Englishman, Mr Smith, whom he seemed to be, or in truth some foreign potentate sheltering under that pseudonym in the safety of the Queen’s peace.

The following morning, however, I received a telegram from Holmes requesting me to meet him at his bank in Oxford Street at noon “in re the hidden finger.” I was, you can be sure, at the appointed place at the appointed hour, and indeed a good few minutes beforehand.

Holmes arrived exactly to time.

“Now, my good fellow,” he said, “if you will do me the kindness of walking a few yards along the street with me, I think I can promise you a sight that will answer a good many of the questions which I have no doubt have been buzzing in your head these past few days.”

In silence we made our way together, along the busy street. I could not refrain from glancing to left and right at the passersby, at the cabs, carriages and vans in the roadway and at the glittering shopfronts in an endeavour to see what it was that Holmes wished to show me. But my efforts were in vain. Nothing that I saw roused the least spark in my mind.

Then abruptly Holmes grasped my arm. I came to a halt.

“Well?” my companion demanded.

“My dear fellow, I am not at all clear what it is to which you are directing my attention.”

Holmes gave a sigh of frank exasperation.

“The window, Watson. The shop window directly before you.” I looked at the window. It was that of a photographer’s establishment, the whole crowded with numerous likenesses of persons both known and unknown.

“Well?” Holmes demanded yet more impatiently.

“It is one of these photographs you wish me to see?” I asked.

“It is, Watson, it is.”

I looked at them again, actors and actresses, the beauties of the day, well-known political figures.

“No,” I said, “I cannot see any particular reason for singling out one of these pictures above any of the others. Is that what you wish me to do?”

“Watson, look. In the second row, the third from the left.”

“The Count Palatine of Illyria,” I read on the card below the portrait which Holmes had indicated.

“Yes, yes. And you see nothing there?”

Once more I gave the photograph my full attention.

“Nothing,” I answered at last.

“Not the very clear likeness between the ruler of that troubled state and a certain Mr Smith at present recovering from illness in Hertfordshire?”

I examined the portrait anew.

“Yes,” I agreed eventually. “There is a likeness. The beards have a good deal in common, and perhaps the general cast of the countenances.”

“Exactly.”

From an inner pocket Holmes now drew a newspaper cutting.

“
The Times,
” he said. “Of yesterday’s date. Read it carefully.”

I read, and when I had done so looked up again at Holmes in bewilderment.

“But this is a report of the Count Palatine appearing on the balcony of his palace and being greeted with enthusiasm by a vast crowd,” I said. “So, Holmes, how can this man in the photograph be my patient down in Hertfordshire but two days ago?”

“Come, Watson, the explanation is childishly simple.”

I felt a little aggrieved and spoke more sharply than I might have done in reply.

“It seems to me, I must say, that the sole explanation is merely that my patient and the Count Palatine of Illyria are not one and the same person.”

“Nonsense, Watson. The likeness is clear beyond doubt, and nor is the explanation in any way obscure. It is perfectly plain that the man glimpsed at a distance by the crowd in Illyria is a double for the Count Palatine. The situation there, you know, is decidedly grave. There is the most dangerous unrest. If it were widely known that the Count was not at the helm in his country, the republican element would undoubtedly make an attempt to seize power, an attempt, let me tell you, that would in all likelihood be successful. However, you and I know that the Count is seriously ill and is living in Hertfordshire, under your excellent care, my dear Watson. So the solution is obvious. With the connivance of his close circle the Count has arranged for a substitute to make occasional public appearances in his stead in circumstances under which he will not easily be identified.”

“Yes, I suppose you must be right, Holmes,” I said. “It certainly seems a complex and extraordinary business though. Yet your account does appear to connect all the various elements.”

“It connects them indeed,” Holmes replied. “But I think for the time being we can assure ourselves that all is well. Do me the kindness, however, doctor, to let me know as soon as there is any question of the Count becoming fit enough to resume his full powers.”

It was, in fact, no later than the following week that I was able to give Holmes the reassuring news he had asked for. I had found my patient very far along the road to recovery, and though, not wishing to let him know that Holmes had penetrated his secret, I had not said to him that quite soon he would be ready to travel, I had left his bedside with that thought in my mind. In consequence I went from the station at Baker Street on my return directly to our old rooms.

“He is distinctly better then?” Holmes asked me.

“Very much so, I am happy to say. The lassitude that originally gave me cause for anxiety has almost completely passed away.”

“Bad. Very bad, Watson.”

“But surely, Holmes …”

“No, Watson, I tell you if the Count’s enemies should gain any inkling of the fact that he is likely to be able to return to Illyria in the near future, they will stop at nothing to make sure that he never crosses the Channel.”

“But, Holmes, how can they know that he is not in Illyria? You yourself showed me that extract from
The Times.
”

“I dare say, Watson. Yet an illusion of that sort cannot be kept up indefinitely. No doubt the conspirators watch every appearance the supposed Count makes upon the Palace balcony. At any time some small error on the part of the substitute may give the game away. Very possibly that error has been already made and suspicions have been aroused. Remember that I myself was not the only spy you caught down in Hertfordshire a fortnight ago.”

“The gipsy, Holmes? But I thought he was no more after all than a passing gipsy.”

“Quite possibly he was, Watson. Yet did it not strike you as curious that the fellow was skulking in the grounds of the house?”

“Well, I had supposed that he had in fact never penetrated the garden itself.”

“Indeed, Watson? Then it is perhaps as well that I have taken an interest in the matter. We should not wish the Count Palatine to fail to reach his homeland in safety. You have said nothing of his rapid recovery to anybody but myself?”

“Of course not, Holmes. Of course not.”

Yet just one week later as, making what I hoped might be my last visit into Hertfordshire, I approached my mysterious patient’s residence I was reminded with sudden shame that I had in fact spoken about his recovery outside the house the previous week when I had been talking to the manservant who had driven me back to the station in the dog-cart, and I recalled too that I had spoken in tones deliberately loud and clear so as to make sure that I was understood by this foreigner. I was debating with myself whether those words of mine could perhaps have been overheard then by some lurker, when my eye was caught by just such a person within some fifty yards of the gate of the house itself, an individual who seemed by his dress to be a seaman. But what was a seaman doing here in Hertfordshire, so far from the sea?

I decided that it was my duty now at least to deliver an oblique warning to the Count Palatine’s faithful manservant, even though I still did not wish to disclose that I knew through Holmes whom he served. I succeeded, I hope, in giving him some general advice about the dangers of burglars in the neighbourhood, advice which I hoped would alert him without betraying what Holmes and I alone knew. I was relieved, too, when my patient, having declared his intention of visiting a Continental spa now that he felt so much better, asked if his servant could collect from me a supply of a nerve tonic I had prescribed sufficient to last him for a number of weeks. I gladly arranged for the man to come to me next day for the purpose, thinking that I could in this way get the latest tidings before the Count Palatine – if indeed this were the Count Palatine – left our shores.

My anxieties over the lurking seaman I had noticed by the house gate proved fully justified when the manservant called on me the day afterwards. He reported that he had encountered this very fellow in the garden at dusk the night before, and that he had given him a thorough beating before chasing him from the premises. I decided it would be as well to visit Holmes and report on the favourable turn to the situation. It ought, I believed, to assuage any fears he might have. Instead therefore of returning home to lunch I called in at my club, which lies between my house and Baker Street, to take some refreshment there.

It was while I was hastily consuming a boiled fowl and half a bottle of Montrachet that the place next to me at the table was taken by an old acquaintance, Maltravers Bressingham, the big-game hunter. I enquired whether he had been in Africa.

“Why, no, my dear fellow,” he replied. “I have been shooting nearer home. In Illyria, in fact. There is excellent sport to be had in the wild boar forests there, you know.”

“Indeed?” I answered. “And were you not disturbed by the state of the country? I understand the situation there is somewhat turbulent.”

“Turbulent?” Bressingham said, in tones of considerable surprise. “My dear fellow, I assure you that there are positively no signs of unrest at all. I spent a week in the capital, you know, and society there is as calm and as full of enjoyment as one could wish.”

“Is it indeed?” I said. “I believed otherwise, but it must be that I have been misinformed.”

Sadly puzzled, I left the club and took a hansom for Baker Street. I found Holmes in bed. I was more dismayed at this than I can easily say. A fortnight before, when I had first called on him after a period of some weeks, he had been lying on the sitting room sofa certainly and in a condition I did not at all like to see. But his state now seemed a good deal more grave. Was that indomitable spirit at last to succumb totally to the sapping weakness which lay for ever ready to emerge when there was nothing to engage the powers of his unique mind? Was the world to be deprived of his services because it held nothing that seemed to him a worthy challenge?

“Holmes, my dear fellow,” I said. “What symptoms affect you? Confide in me, pray, as a medical man.”

In response I got at first no more than a deep groan. But I persisted, and at length Holmes answered, with a touch of asperity in his voice which I was not wholly displeased to hear.

“Nothing is wrong, Watson. Nothing. This is the merest passing indisposition. I do not require your professional services.”

“Very well, my dear fellow. Then let me tell you of events down in Hertfordshire. I trust they will bring you not a little comfort.”