Nicholas Meyer (15 page)

The doctor froze during this speech, then turned around again, very pale, and faced his tormentor.

"You are absurd," he replied briefly, and turned once more to go, again having hit the mark he desired.

In an instant the beer drinker was on his feet, dashing his glass to bits on the floor in a fury.

"Will you step out,
mein Herr
?" he cried in a voice shaking with rage. "My seconds will call upon you at your convenience."

Freud looked him up and down, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.

"Come, come," he offered blandly, "you know that gentlemen do not duel with Jews. Have you no sense of etiquette?"

"You refuse? Do you know who I am?"

"I neither know nor care. I'll tell you what I will do," Freud went on, before the other could protest, "I'll undertake to beat you in a set of tennis. Will that satisfy your sense of propriety?"

At this juncture some of the young man's friends sought to intervene, but he pushed them vehemently away, never taking his eyes from Freud, who was now coolly engaged in removing his boots and taking down his tennis racquet.

"Very well,
Doktor.
I shall attend you on the courts."

"I shall not keep you waiting," responded Freud, without bothering to look up.

Advance word of the match had obviously run through the club by the time we made our appearance beneath the enormous skylights and joined the young man with the scar and his entourage, some of whom were elaborately examining the balls to be used as if they were bullets.

"Don't you find this absurd?" I tried to caution Freud as we started up the stairs.

"I find it entirely absurd," he replied without hesitation, "but not so absurd as our attempting to slay one another."

"You do not fear losing this match?"

"My dear Doctor, it is only a game."

It may have been a game to Freud, but his opponent was in deadly earnest and showed it from the moment play began. He was bigger, stronger, and in far better training than the physician and they were both aware of the fact. He drove his shots deep and with considerable accuracy, while Freud answered them as best he could but appeared in no way discomfited when he was not in time to return them. In this fashion he gave up the first two games, capturing only one or two points in the process.

During the third game he did slightly better and actually reached deuce before surrendering the point. I took it upon myself to draw some water for the doctor as the play was halted for the switching of sides.

"You did rather better that last round," I noted encouragingly as I handed him the sponge.

"I hope to do better still." Freud made a few passes with the sponge behind bis neck. "His game is only offensive and, among other things, without a backhand. Have you noticed?"

I shook my head.

"But it is the truth. Every point I've drawn from him has been to his backhand. Watch."

I watched, as did two hundred * eager spectators. Now the tide turned, slowly but inexorably, as Freud took game after game away from the younger man. At first his opponent could not understand what was happening. It was not until the score was tied at three games all that he realized Freud's strategy was deliberate, and, knowing his own weakness, stood farther and farther to the left of the court, in hopes of forestalling the doctor's tactics. In this manner he gained a point or two, but Freud quickly perceived his intentions and frustrated them by shooting his returns down the right-hand alley, far from the reach of his harried opponent.

* Watson's memory surely plays him false here. A personal inspection of the Maumberg's yet extant indoor courts reveals that no more than one hundred spectators could have watched this exciting though little-known episode in Freud's life. Obviously Freud's biographer, Ernest Jones, was not among them.

And when he did reach them in time, Freud exploited the exposed backhand once more, hitting deftly cross court again. The playing was not easy, but the young man with the scar clearly had the worst of it.

Forcing a defensive game, Freud obliged him to race from side to side, whilst he himself stood virtually still. Anger led the young ruffian into errors he should never have made had he been in full control of his temper, and Freud drew the set to a close within an hour, the final score standing at six games to three.

When the last shot had spun wide of the young man's reach, Freud walked calmly up to the net.

"Is honour satisfied?" he enquired politely. I believe the other would have sprung forward and throttled him there and then, had not his friends hastily intercepted and held him back by force.

In the dressing chambers, Freud bathed and changed once more into his street clothes without

comment, except to acknowledge my effusive congratulations, and we started back to Bergasse 19.

"At least I had my set of tennis," he observed, hailing a cab. "And I didn't even have to wait for a court."

"That man's comment—about your theory," I asked, after some hesitation. "You don't seriously contend that boys—that they—"

He smiled at me with that expression of sadness I had come to know so well. "Set your mind at rest, Doctor. I do not contend that at all."

I sank back on the cushions of the cab with something like a sigh, though I do not think Freud was aware of it.

When we returned to the house, Freud cautioned me to say nothing of the tennis-duel to Holmes. He did not wish to distract my friend with the incident, and I agreed.

We found the detective where we had left him, poring over volumes in the study and not inclined to talk. Merely finding that he took an interest in something was encouraging to me. Withdrawing to my room, I pondered over the curious scene at the Maumberg. We never had learned that young

jabbernowl's name, but his face, his livid wicked face, seamed with that evil scar, lingered in my mind for the rest of the afternoon.

During supper Sherlock Holmes appeared to have relapsed into his former malaise. Despite our efforts at conversation, his rejoinders were again monosyllabic and desultory in the extreme. I eyed Freud anxiously but he affected to ignore my glances and chattered away as though nothing were amiss.

Following supper he rose and excused himself from the table, returning some moments later with a parcel in his arms.

"Herr Holmes, I have something which I believe you might enjoy," said he, handing over the oblong box.

"Oh?"

Holmes took the box and left it in his lap, not knowing, apparently, what to do with it.

"I wired to England for this," Freud went on, sealing himself again. Holmes still said nothing, but looked at the box.

"May I help you open it?" offered Anna, reaching up for the string.

"Please do," Holmes responded, and turned the box round towards the child.

"Be careful," her father enjoined as her small fingers grappled with the knot. "Here." With a pocket-knife, Freud severed the string and Anna pulled open the paper, then uncovered the box. Involuntarily I drew in my breath when I saw what was inside.

"It's another box!" Anna exclaimed.

"Let Herr Holmes open this one himself," Frau Freud commanded behind me.

"Well, aren't you going to?" Anna encouraged him.

Without answering her, Holmes drew a case from the stuffing inside the box. Slowly but automatically, his fingers worked the catches and he withdrew the Stradivarius, then looked up at the Viennese physician.

"This is very kind of you," he said in the same quiet tone that so frightened me. Anna clapped her hands with excitement.

"It's a fiddle!" she cried, "a fiddle! Can you play it? Oh, please, won't you play it for me? Please?"

Holmes looked down at her, then back at the instrument in his hands. Its varnish gleamed in the gas-light. He plucked a string or two, wincing slightly at the sound. Tucking the violin beneath his chin, he jerked his neck up and down to accustom the thing to its proper place and set about tuning it. This done

—as we watched with all the breathless anticipation of people at the circus witnessing a high-wire performance—he withdrew the bow and ran some rosin up and down it after tightening the horsehair.

"Hmm."

He played tentatively at first, and not at all in his usual style as he assayed a few chords and phrases.

Slowly, however, a smile spread across his features—the first genuinely happy expression I had beheld there in what seemed an eternity.

And then he began to play in earnest.

I have alluded elsewhere to my friend's musical accomplishments, but never did he so excel himself and bewitch his listeners as he did that night. A miracle took place before our very eyes as the instrument restored life to its owner and he to it.

Seemingly without realizing it, Holmes pushed back his chair and arose, still playing the violin and becoming more animated as he became increasingly absorbed. I forget what he began with—I am not musically knowledgeable myself, as some of my readers have observed before this—but I fancy it was some exercises and wistful compositions of his own.

I know what he played, next, however. Holmes had a flair for the dramatic and he knew, after all, where he was. He played Strauss waltzes. Oh, how he played! Rich, languorous, sonorous, gay, propulsively rhythmic—I know they were propulsively rhythmic because Dr. Freud seized his wife round the waist and began to waltz her about the dining-room and into the sitting-room as Holmes, Anna, Paula, and myself followed. So enrapt was I in watching the spectacle and eyeing my friend, whose smile had not ceased to leave his face, that it was some moments before I became aware of a small hand tugging at my sleeve. I looked down and beheld Anna, who stretched forth her arms in my direction.

I was never accounted much of a dancer, and with my game leg I was perhaps still less of one than most unmusical men—but I danced. It wasn't, I suspect, a very graceful performance, but it possessed infinite energy and good-will.

"Tales of the Vienna Woods," "Wiener Blut," the "Blue Danube," "Wine, Women, and Song"—Holmes played them all as we four whirled around the room, shrieking with laughter and enjoyment! After a time I exchanged partners with Freud and danced with his wife, while the doctor—whom I could

perceive was little more accustomed to waltzing than I—gambolled about with his daughter. At one point, in my excitement, I even recall spinning Paula about, much to her amusement and over her protestations.

When at last it was over, we all of us fell into chairs, gasping for breath, our ridiculous smiles playing on, though the music that inspired them had stopped. Holmes removed the violin from beneath his chin and stared at it for a long time. Then he looked up and across the room at Freud.

"I have not ceased to be astounded by your talents," Freud said to him.

"I am just beginning to be amazed by yours," Holmes countered, looking him steadily in the eye—and there, I delighted to observe, was the familiar sparkle.

I retired that night marvelling at the power of music. I believe it is somewhere in
Julius Caesar
(It isn't) that the bard speaks of music having the power to soothe the savage breast and calm the restless spirit, but I had never had the opportunity of witnessing a practical demonstration of that phenomenon.

It persisted after the rest of the house had gone to bed, as I had good reason to know, for through the thin partition that divided Holmes's room from mine I could hear him quietly scraping away on into the wee hours. Allowed to choose his own repertoire, he reverted to the melancholy, dreamy airs of his own invention. They were haunting and desperately sad, but they had the eventual effect of lulling me gently to sleep. I drifted off vaguely wondering if, now that we had managed to strike a spark in my friend's chilly soul, that spark was destined to kindle itself into flame, or rather to die out again with the coming day. The episode with the violin proved that his soul was not gutted and charred beyond igniting, but whether music was sufficient in itself for the purpose, this I instinctively doubted.

Somewhere, too, in my uneasy slumbers, I saw again that devil's scheming face with its grotesque, dead white wound.

*10*—A Study in Hysteria

Sherlock Holmes was quiet the next morning at breakfast. He gave no clue as to whether or not the musical episode had well and truly set him on the road to recovery. Dr. Freud remained inscrutable in the face of his patient's neutral behaviour. He asked, as usual, how Holmes had slept and if he would like a second cup of coffee.

What happened next forever prevents my saying with certainty whether or not the violin alone recalled my companion to his former self. If the doorbell had not rung, the mad adventure into which we fell headlong would not have occurred. Yet, in spite of what followed, I am glad the messenger arrived with a note for Dr. Freud, for without it I fear Holmes might well have relapsed, fiddle or no.

He was a courier from the Allgemeines Kranken-haus, the teaching hospital to which Freud had once been attached. He bore a note from somebody on the staff, asking if Dr. Freud would care to come and look at a patient who had arrived the night before. The note had a familiar flavour as Freud read it aloud.

"I would be pleased if you could spare the time to consult with me about a most peculiar case (it ran).

The patient cannot or will not speak a word, and though she is frail, her health appears perfectly sound.

Could you find a moment to stop by and conduct a brief examination? Your methods are a little off the beaten track but I have always respected them, myself." It was signed "Schultz."

"You see what a pariah I am," Freud said, smiling, as he folded the note. "Would you care to accompany me, gentlemen, and see the recalcitrant woman?"

"I should be greatly interested," Holmes responded with alacrity, and proceeded to fold his napkin.

Preparing to go as well, I remarked humourously that I had not thought the doctor's patients could be of any interest to him. He certainly had not evinced curiosity about them before.

"Oh, I have no interest in the patient," Holmes laughed, "but doesn't this Dr. Schultz sound much like our old friend Lestrade? * I have decided to come and offer Doctor Freud my sympathy."