The Last Sherlock Holmes Story (19 page)

The house was in every respect the opposite of Number 221, which it faced across Baker Street. This even extended to the condition of the rooms, which – save one – were all bare and empty. The sole exception was the
first-floor
bedroom, at the rear of the premises. This was fully but simply furnished: a bed, a wardrobe, a wash-stand, a chest of drawers. Like Holmes’s room at
221B
, to which it corresponded, it also contained a tin chest filled with papers and mementoes. The papers were of two sorts. First, there were cuttings from the press reports of the Whitechapel murders. These were stuffed into cardboard boxes. The texts were heavily underscored in parts, and sprinkled with marginal comments and exclamation marks. There were also several bundles of handwritten papers in the chest, tied up neatly with red tape. At first sight these looked exactly like the records of past cases which Holmes kept in the chest in his room. But these were records of a very different kind: exhaustive, graphic, gloating accounts of each of the Whitechapel murders, written by the murderer. I burned the papers later, for they were not fit to be read, but I kept back one sheet which will serve to give the flavour of the collection. It was a sort of index, written in the bold coarse hand
whose letters had popularised the name of Jack the Ripper, and it ran as follows:

Curriculum Mortis

At the bottom of the chest, when I had removed all the papers, I found a small wooden box and three glass vessels. The box contained a quantity of cheap jewellery, several locks of hair, a scrap of cloth, part of a broken mirror, a candle stub, two farthings, some matches, and a human tooth. The glass vessels were of the kind used in hospitals to retain organs for examination. They were filled with a colourless fluid, and wax-sealed. The first two I looked at held various abdominal organs. Amongst the contents I recognised part of a liver, a section of duodenum, a kidney, and a short length of urethra. The last jar –

(I broke off here, hoping I might omit this final obscene detail. But I am persuaded that without it my subsequent behaviour may not be fully understood.)

The last jar contained portions of a uterus, together with a foetus of some twelve or fourteen weeks’ growth. A paper label bearing six lines of writing was pasted to the glass.

It would be no undue exaggeration to say that those six lines sealed Holmes’s fate. I had asked for some proof so gross and blatant that our friendship would be dissolved as if in acid, leaving me free to destroy a stranger and a murderer. Here was my proof, and its effect was everything I had asked for – and more. Strictly speaking I could have washed my hands of the business there and then. I had only to call Lestrade and show him what I had found, and then to take him to my house and give Holmes over into his keeping. But it was too late for such
half-measures
. If I had discovered just the papers and the jars, without that jeering verse, I might have been content to play Judas. But I was personally involved now. The abomination Holmes had become threatened everything I hold dear and by which I have lived my life. The last thing I wished was to see such filth besmirch for ever the image of a man whom others besides myself had come to regard as among the best and the wisest England had produced. It would have been a terrible and damaging blow to the moral fibre of the entire nation if Sherlock Holmes had been identified in open court as the author of those lines. My legal duty gave way before a sense of obligation to my country and to the great ideal of enlightened rationalism which Holmes himself personified. If the events of the next ten days revealed a Watson whose existence no one – least of all myself – had previously suspected, the cause may be traced directly to that scrap of demonic doggerel.

I let myself out of that house, which Holmes had pointed out to me long before as Moriarty’s lair, shortly before five o’clock. I felt strangely calm and deliberate, but also elated. The morning air seemed to have been wafted straight from some mountain peak. I inhaled it gratefully as the cab jingled me home through the awakening city. How singular, I thought, that dull stolid uninspiring John Watson should have been selected as the instrument of fate!

My first task on returning home was to replace Holmes’s keys. He was still sleeping, and I took the opportunity to search his clothes for weapons and drugs. I found neither. His only possessions, besides the
keychain
, were a little money, his cigarettes, a ham sandwich wrapped in paper, and a small horn snuffbox. Having satisfied myself on this point, I relocked the bedroom door and made my way downstairs, where I wrote two letters. The first was a short personal note to my wife, containing as much of the truth as I thought she should know. The other was a detailed communication addressed to Inspector Lestrade. Although I was determined to settle the account with Holmes myself, I was not foolhardy enough to assume I would necessarily be successful. My own life I was prepared to hazard, but I could not permit Holmes to go free if I failed. I therefore told Lestrade what had happened, and what I had found, and what I was attempting, and hinted broadly that if I were to die as the result of an accident in the next few weeks, the circumstances might well bear looking into. This letter I sealed in an envelope addressed to my bank manager, instructing him to forward the contents on the 8th of May. When the maid appeared to lay the fire, I gave her the letter with instructions to put it in the post that morning without fail. I then sent her off to pack some necessities in a small case.

By now my sleeplessness was beginning to take its toll, and as I considered the prospect before me it became clear that this was going to be a continuing problem. The scene Holmes had painted for me the night before, of two exhausted men each willing himself to stay alert longer than the other, now took on a more immediate
significance
. Obviously I could not leave Holmes unwatched for even a few minutes. There was quite literally no telling what he might do, and even if it were nothing more than a decampment in flight from imaginary enemies, it
would mean the end of all my hopes for a decent solution to this horribly indecent business. Evidently if I was to retain the advantage I had to have some artificial support denied to Holmes. I had made sure that he was without needles or bottles, but what was I to do? I had nothing suitable to hand, and by the time the chemists’ shops opened Holmes would be up and about. Then, suddenly, I remembered the gift which Holmes had made to me of his hypodermic needles and his cocaine solution. Cocaine was by no means ideal for my purposes, but its action is stimulating to the central nervous system and if used judiciously I had no doubt it would fit the bill. I located the small brown bottle in one of the drawers of my desk, transferred the contents to a larger container marked ‘The Linctus’, and diluted them considerably. I then injected a small amount into my arm. The effect was immediate and remarkable. I felt my head clear, my spirits lift, my limbs surge with energy. Yes, it would do! I set the bottle and the case of needles on one side, and went upstairs to see how my guest was faring.

As I opened the door I noticed at once that the bed was now empty. In the same instant Holmes leapt out from behind the door and swung at my head with a
fire-iron
. Only the hypersensitive reactions which are a product of the drug saved my life. I sensed the attack just in time, and the weapon caught me only a glancing blow. This was still enough to stun me momentarily. I came to lying on the floor with Holmes bent over me. His arms were around me and his face was filled with anxiety.

‘You’re not hurt, Watson?’ he cried. ‘For God’s sake, say that you are not hurt!’

I rose groggily to my feet

‘It’s nothing.’

‘Ah, the fiend! You see how cunning he is. He makes me almost kill my only friend! He knew that after seeing 
his man in the garden I would assume that he had done away with you, and was coming to finish me off.’

‘In the garden? His man?’

He plucked me by the sleeve and led me over to the window.

‘No, stand back! Like so, at the side. Do you see him?’

‘William? He comes every Saturday, to do the garden.’

‘Ha! Clearly Moriarty foresaw the utility of having an agent with access to your household. Your domestics may also have been suborned. I should never have stayed here, Watson. It was madness. We have been very fortunate thus far, but the Professor may strike at any moment. We must leave at once. Every second is precious.’

‘My luggage is packed.’

Holmes gave out an exclamation of disgust.

‘No luggage, man! You might as well tell him which station we are headed for and save him any further trouble in the matter. We will go as we are, and encourage the manufactures of the countries through which we travel. But first we must think of a
beau stratagème
to get out of this house alive.’

Whilst Holmes paced the floor, wrestling with this imaginary problem, I was trying to answer the rather more vital question of how to take along the cocaine and syringe unobserved, since we were to travel without
luggage
. The thought of the drug gave me an idea.

‘I say, Holmes! How would it be if I got myself up as if I were paying a visit to a patient? You know –
morning-dress
and black bag. Surely he would not suspect that?’

Holmes gave me an approving glance.

‘Excellent, Watson! I see that you are in form today. I had the same idea two minutes ago. What was giving me pause was the question of how my own exit might be managed. Now I have that too.’

He would say no more, but bade me go and change.
When the maid called me, I was to go straight down and get into the waiting cab. Evidently Holmes was indulging himself in that strain of arch mystification I had come to know so well. It seemed best to humour him, so I went to my room to don my professional attire. I had scarcely finished packing my medical bag – it was rather weightier than usual, what with the cocaine, the case of needles, a purse of gold coins, and my service revolver – when the maid knocked to tell me that my cab was at the door. I hastened downstairs. A hansom was drawn up at the kerb. I climbed in without a word and the driver promptly whipped up his horse. We drove smartly through the residential streets of the district and turned out into Cromwell Road. Our pace here was such that we were soon overtaking all other traffic. Passing the great façade of the new museum, we drew level with an unoccupied four-wheeler. I heard my cabbie hail his opposite number.

‘You free, mate?’ he cried. ‘There’s a growler wanted in Alfred Place West.
†
Down by the railway station. I just come from there!’

The other waved acknowledgment and turned off to the right. At the next corner we followed suit. We sped furiously down the street, rounded the corner on one wheel, raced to the end, and drew in at the Metropolitan station. My driver leapt down from his perch and secured the reins to a lamp-standard.

‘Come, Watson! There’s not a moment to lose!’ cried Sherlock Holmes.

A few words with the maid had in fact prepared me for this revelation, but any want of warmth in my response went unnoticed as Holmes led me at a run into the station. Instead of turning down the steps leading to the trains, however, he continued at full stride the length of
the short arcade. Dashing out the other side, he crossed the road and climbed into the four-wheeler that was just drawing up. I scrambled in after him, Holmes rapped loudly on the roof, and in another moment we were mobile again.

‘Might I trouble you for a cigar, Doctor?’ asked Holmes with a twinkle. ‘All this fresh air calls for a chaser.’

Now I had to hear how he had told Jane to run to the High Street cab rank and summon the tallest and thinnest driver to my address, where he was induced by means of a sum of money to exchange clothes with Holmes and to part with his cab for half an hour, at the end of which time he was to take a train to the South Kensington station and retrieve it. Moriarty would of course assume, on seeing us enter the station, that we had resorted to the railway, into whose nether depths he would descend whilst we sped away unpursued, etc., etc. Dutifully I gasped and nodded and exclaimed. What did it matter? Let Holmes amuse himself. He might elude Moriarty, but he could not escape me.