Unknown (41 page)

"Doubtful that you would,
sir. The artist was not il
lustrious,
but Mr. Selkirk fancied them."

The great sleuth crossed to the
wall and looked at the oils closely. Attuned to his moods for so
long, it seemed
to
me that Holmes's features sharpened and that predatory look was upon
him of a sudden. Not for the first time
I
noted that, on occasion, my intimate friend resembled
a
bird of prey.

"That will be all, Meers."

"Very good, sir."

As the butler disappeared, Holmes
looked at me with that twisted half-smile that I knew sprang from
self-
reproach.

"Oh, what a fool am I!"
he said.

Holmes was never quite satisfied.
When a solution
was
in his grasp, and from experience I knew that it
was,
he most frequently regretted not having arrived at it sooner. The
life of a perfectionist is not an easy one.

"I had but to consider the
career of Basil Selkirk," he
continued.
"He was infatuated with communications.
His
business success was based on information accurately and rapidly
transmitted. How reasonable that he would fancy four paintings by
Samuel Morse."

"I never heard of him."

"As an artist, I daresay you
haven't. Morse was an art student in England and, later, Professor of
Art at
the
University of the City of New York. He was an American, you see.
After devoting the early part of his
life
to painting, he realized that fame would never be his
in
the world of art so he applied his energies to other
things.
In 1844, the first message was sent by wireless
telegraphy,
which he invented."

"Most interesting," I
commented, "but the associa
tion
with our missing diamond eludes me."

"Because I have not touched
on the relevant matter.
The
former artist also invented a telegraphic code based
on
dots and dashes, which bears his name. An interest
ing
feature of the Morse code is that eleven letters of
the
alphabet have opposites. As an instance, the distress signal given at
sea."

"S.O.S." was my
automatic response.
"In
Morse, the letter
S
consists of
three dots or short
sounds.
The letter
O
is
its opposite, being three dashes
or
longer sounds. Let me make this perfectly clear,
Watson.
What are the opening notes of Beethoven's
Fifth
Symphony?"

"Dot . . . dot . . . dot . .
. daaaaah," I hummed
quickly.
I had not attended all those concerts at Albert
Hall
and elsewhere with my friend for nothing.

"You have just signaled the
letter
V,
old
fellow.
Three dots
followed by a dash. The opposite of
V
is
B,
by the way."

"Wait," I said,
excitedly. "The Selkirk cipher uses opposites based on the Morse
code."

"Exactly," replied
Holmes, seating himself at the
desk
and extracting the financier's letter from his
pocket.
I fiddled in my coat for a pencil and found one, handing it to him.

"Now," continued the
detective, "the first line reads:
Q-M-K-T-X-Y-N-C-T."

"With the
C
off line."

"The very thing that might
have alerted me. In
Morse,
the letters
C, H,
J,
and
Z
have no opposites.
Therefore,
in this first line, I assume
C
is legitimate as
well as the
H in
the second line.
Now the opposite of
Q
is
F.
M
becomes
I
,
K
gives
us
R,
and
T
indicates
E. X
is
P, Y
is
L, N
represents
A,
the
C
is
natural with
T
again indicating
E.
Watson,
the first word is fireplace."

As my eyes swiveled to the
fieldstone fireplace in the
very
room we occupied, Holmes worked out the next
two
lines in jig time and then regarded me trium
phantly.

"Fireplace—Fifth—Rosette."

Sure enough, the mantle was
adorned by a row of rosettes and I crossed to it eagerly. Counting
from the
left, I
fiddled with the fifth rosette, but to no avail.

"Try counting from the
right," suggested Holmes.

I did, of course, and in but a
moment experienced
one
of the greatest thrills in my long association with
the
master sleuth. The wooden ornament turned a full
forty-five
degrees. There was a click and a section of
the
wood paneling over the mantle swung noiselessly
open.
I reached inside the aperture and removed a small
casket.
It was a work of art in its own right, but I
curbed
my natural inclination and crossed to the desk
and
placed it before Holmes.

"After all, you found it,"
I stammered.
Holmes
waved this thought aside. "After you, ol'
chap."

There were simple release catches
on both sides of
the
casket, which moved under my thumbs, and I was
able
to raise the lid. The interior was lined with black satin and on it
lay the oval-shaped gem, cut by a mas
ter.
The incredibly hard stone seemed to drink in the
light
of the room and return it in magnified form. It was dazzling to the
eyes, emitting a pure, yet dancing, white
ness
like the fires of Arcturus burning in the blackness
of
unlimited space. This miracle of crystallized carbon,
glowing
with a life of its own, secreted within its flawless form,
needed no expertise to pronounce it as genu
ine—for
what cunning artisan could ever recreate such
a
miracle of nature. It rendered me speechless but not
for
long.

"Holmes, 'tis said that men,
Selkirk probably among
them,
are absolutely dotty over such gems. I'm dashed
if
I blame them. It is something, is it not?"

"Cold to the touch with a
fire that will not burn but a dazzling brilliance that can sear the
soul."

I did not know if Holmes was
merely musing or quot
ing.

"Yes, Watson," he
continued, "it is, indeed, some
thing."

With a visible effort, Holmes
broke the mood of the
moment
and his long, flexible fingers extracted the dia
mond
from the casket. He handed it to me.

"Ol' chap, your pocket
handkerchief will protect the
beauty."

As I carefully swathed the gem in
linen and placed it
in
my breast pocket, my friend scooped up the casket,
which
he replaced in the hiding place over the mantle.
Closing
the small hidden panel, he regarded me for a long moment, his eyes
dreamy with thought.

"You know, I have espoused a
pragmatic philosophy
throughout
our long association. But at this moment, it
is
hard for me to conceive that such a majestic and
quite
unique creation of nature is not guided by an inevitable
destiny. Can it not be that this ageless and invulnerable thing,
which has seen empires fall and genera
tions
vanish, is simply passing from hand to hand down
a
preordained path to its fate."

I had certainly never heard Holmes
speak in such a manner. As we departed from the castle of Basil
Selkirk
and returned
to Baker Street, ours was a silent journey
with
my friend and myself buried in our thoughts.

21

The Resolution

227

It was late in the afternoon that
our expected visitor
from
Berlin arrived. On our return from St. Aubrey,
Holmes
did not divest himself of his suit clothes as was
his
habit, but instead had extracted the small salon
piece,
which he fancied as a weapon, from a drawer of
the
desk. Alerted by this precautionary move, I had se
cured
my revolver as well. Questions pounded at my
brain,
but I quieted their siren call and applied myself
to
the answers that had already come my way during
the
events that had crossed the sky of our lives like scud clouds in a
high wind. The silence in our chambers was
unusual
and complete. Finally, with my thoughts col
lected,
I regarded Holmes. His tall and whipcord frame
stood
by a window gazing with unseeing eyes at the
passing
scene.

"I say, Holmes, am I
interrupting a chain of
thought?"

"Not really," he said,
without turning. "I was liken
ing
the gem in your pocket to a creation of that Oscar
Wilde
fellow. If you recall, Dorian Gray remained ever young, unsullied by
the passage of time. In similar fashion the Pigott Diamond has
burned with an everlasting flame for years on end."

"Possibly fueled by its
effect on so many lives," I
said,
almost without thought, and was surprised when
Holmes
turned toward me with a look of interest. "I
was
just thinking that our pursuit of the statue and the
gem
has been a tortuous one, with a variety of inci
dents,
but it has resolved itself to where the unknown elements are few."

"My dear Watson, ofttimes you
amaze me. Please don't let your thoughts dangle in thin air, but
elucidate."

If there was a twinkle in his eye,
I chose to ignore it.

"Once you divined that the
Golden Bird was nesting
on
a crystal egg, the motives became clear. As a dedi
cated
collector, Basil Selkirk was schooled in the history
of
diamonds and, given the clue of the year of Ali
Pasha's
death, figured out that the Pigott Diamond still
existed.
Naturally, he wanted it and was quite willing to
give
up the Golden Bird as a means of removing himself
from
the scene."