The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes (9 page)

Could Watson have returned and be living again at 221B? Impossible!

She knocked on the door of my old apartments. When the door opened I gazed upon a complete stranger. I did not recognize the man at all. He was a robust fellow in his early forties, with a hearty manner and a long, smiling face.

‘Mr Holmes,' he cried when he saw me, and his eyes lit up with surprise and joy. ‘What are you doing prowling about in that get-up!' And then, to my astonishment, this stranger stepped forward and grabbed me, and he hugged me. I was like a doll in his powerful arms. Then he pushed me away and held me at arm's length, held me by the shoulders, and he shook me a little, and he said, ‘How very good to look upon your face again, sir! You have not changed at all!'

I was utterly bewildered.

The man laughed. ‘Can it be that you, the famous Sherlock Holmes who can discern, at a single glance, the complete life history of a complete stranger – can it be that you cannot recognize your old colleague in crime detection! It is I, sir! It is Willie Wiggins, the captain of your Baker Street Irregulars!'

‘Wiggins,' I cried. I peered. Then, slowly, I recognized the boyish face of young Willie Wiggins behind the mature face that was before me. ‘My heavens! You've grown up!'

‘I had no choice, sir,' said he. ‘I had no choice.'

Willie and his wife, the dark woman who appeared behind him in the doorway, invited me in and introduced me to their two young children. Mrs Hudson cooked us supper that night, and dined with us. Over a joint of beef and roast potatoes I learnt that Willie was now a manager of the Southeast and Chatham Railway. The reason he lived in this apartment was that it was the only home he'd ever known or aspired to. I had never had any idea that my humble lodgings had appeared so grand in his childish imagination. He told me that Alfie Berk – Willie's lieutenant in the Irregulars back in '81 – was now a police detective on the metropolitan force. According to Willie, Alfie always proclaimed that he had started out as a detective at the age of seven and he saw no advantage in learning a new trade. Dougie Duggin, did I remember him? Yes, yes I did. The little boy with the exuberant spirit and the fat face and torn ear. Dougie was dead, killed in a tavern brawl in Deptford. He had turned to burglary, went bad to worse, and at the end Willie had never seen him anything but drunk.

After supper, Willie and his wife Thelma turned their children out of the children's own bedroom, which once had been my bedroom. They insisted I sleep there for the night while the young ones took the couch. I am not a terribly warm person, Wilson, but I felt very warm that night – warmer than I have felt in the past ninety years, that is sure! Lying beneath that old ceiling, with all its old cracks in the same old places, and hearing horses occasionally passing on the street as they did of old, and thinking of times I had spent in that room musing on crimes long solved and forgotten, I could not help but think of old Watson and the excitements that had sprung upon us in this old house – and how he and I were once young and now suddenly were becoming old men. I stared at the old ceiling and I felt the nostalgia and miracle and sadness of passing time more poignantly than ever I had before, or ever I have since. I think I may never again feel such a keen sense of loss as I did that night in that old house in my old bedroom, not if I should live a thousand years. It was all real, and close, and warm, and vanishing. Forever vanishing as I fell asleep.

Next morning, as the first beams of sunlight warmed the bricks and trees and pavements of Baker Street, Willie Wiggins looked out the front window and informed me that the house was being watched by three men. One was burly, bald, bearlike, with a handlebar moustache. He held a shovel and was pretending to repair the paving stones. Another was tall and slim and faced away from the house while holding a small spy mirror in the fold of his newspaper. The third was a stocky redheaded individual who leant against a tree and held a cup of something hot. Willie reported that he also saw a new motorized omnibus, a line of three motorcars, two hansom cabs, a tradesman's wagon, two bicyclists, a woman walking a tiny white poodle, a man sitting on a blanket playing a flute, and two mothers pushing prams. One of the mothers glanced up at Willie from moment to moment – but that, said Willie, was the surest sign she was a normal passerby. ‘Normal women cannot help gazing at me,' said he.

‘Oh, Willie!' said his wife.

He laughed.

I told Willie that I needed to catch the earliest possible train to France. Most of all, I needed to get away from the house without being seen.

‘That should not be difficult,' said Willie. ‘I have an old trunk.'

An hour later Willie and his friend from next door loaded Willie's old steamship trunk on to a tradesman's cart parked in front of the house. I felt cramped inside, but I could breathe easily enough. As the horse plodded away with me I noticed (through the keyhole) that the big bald man who had been fixing the paving stones had vanished, leaving his shovel fallen against a fence. On my slow ride to Charing Cross I closed my eyes and listened to the voices of Willie and the wagon driver speculating about when the war would end. I listened to sounds of horses clopping and whinnying, squawky horns, clatter of wheels, rattle of harness, swish of tires, footfalls on pavement, shouts of drivers, hum and wheeze of motors, voices of people surging and fading. Every once in a while I heard a dog barking excitedly.

At Charing Cross Station Willie used his influence to see that the trunk was loaded into a locked baggage car. He spoke through the lid: ‘The warning signs are up in the station, Mr Holmes – a very rough crossing in the Channel.'

‘Not to worry,' I whispered.

‘It won't be long now and I'll have you out of there,' said Willie.

By and by I felt gentle motion as the train began to roll. Shortly Willie undid the hasp and opened the lid and I climbed out.

We sat together on the trunk lid and looked out the window: steam flew by, trees whizzed, brown countryside jiggled in the distance. We talked all the way to Canterbury, and as we talked William Wiggins, district manager for the Southeast and Chatham Railway, slowly turned into little Willie Wiggins of the Baker Street Irregulars. More and more I could see little Willie Wiggins in the train manager's gestures and expressions. He told me over and over that I looked the same as he'd remembered. ‘The way you're going, you'll last another hundred years,' said Willie.

‘I hope not,' said I.

Little did we know.

The train stopped at Chatham, then Canterbury. I began to feel pleased. Soon I would be boarding the boat at Dover. Once I had reached the continent unobserved, it would be nearly impossible for anyone to pursue me. I mentioned this to Willie as we sat in the Canterbury station. Scarcely had I done so when I heard a tapping, then a banging.

‘Somebody is breaking into this car!' whispered Willie.

We darted into the shadows behind a pile of luggage. Now came a loud cracking sound. The door opened and a huge bald man with a handlebar moustache lunged up into the car and rushed to the trunk in which I had been hidden. He held an iron crowbar high over his head with his right hand as he leant down and flung open the trunk lid with his left hand. He stared into blackness, stupefied: ‘Was ist den dass!' he cried in amazement. He gazed down into emptiness.

Willie smashed him on the back of the head with a hunk of lumber, knocking him head first into the trunk. Willie and I then pressed him, pulled him, punched him and stuffed him until finally we could close the lid. Willie snapped the hasp and stuck a hunk of wood through the loop to fasten it.

‘That should hold him,' I said.

‘Shall we call Scotland Yard?' asked Willie.

I thought a moment. The Russians evidently were after me, and now the Germans also. Scotland Yard would ask questions of Willie, and they might try telephoning Paris to intercept me. Scotland Yard might complicate things further. ‘Leave him where he is, Willie,' I said. ‘Let him ride back to London alone and boxed. Someone will find him eventually.'

‘Won't they be surprised!' laughed Willie.

As we swayed and jiggled towards Dover we became aware of distant rumbling, then rain rushed on the roof, then Willie leapt to close the window.

‘Coming down in sheets, Mr Holmes,' he said, wiping the rain off his face. ‘'Twill be a rough passage. I have some friends in Dover where you could stay, if you'd like to wait for the smoother water tomorrow.'

‘Got to go over today, Willie.'

Willie grinned. ‘You were always most fierce, Mr Holmes. Sometimes I wonder what you are made of.'

‘This one is for king and country, Willie.'

‘Then, I'm glad it is you, Mr Holmes. If anyone can carry it off, you can – whatever it is.' He grasped my shoulder with his big hand.

The carriage jolted to a stop along the platform at Dover and we stepped out into a lashing rainstorm. The winds backed us up. We bent against the gale and made our way towards the steamboat. Willie insisted on carrying my valise, inside of which I hoped my disguises, clothes, revolver, and precious cargo were not getting wet. We waited in the transit building for an hour. At last we went down to the ship.

At the foot of the gangplank the purser stood checking tickets. Near him lingered an old woman who evidently was uncertain whether she dared make the crossing. She kept shaking her head. The white dog in her basket was whining.

‘I would wait until tomorrow, madam,' said the purser. ‘The sea will be much quieter.'

I handed him my ticket.

‘Are you are up to it, sir?' said he, with a bluff smile. ‘No guarantees!' He laughed heartily.

‘I'll chance it,' said I.

I took the valise and shook Willie's hand. He hugged me. Then I started up the gangplank.

The dog in the old woman's basket began barking. Her shawl was soaked and her hair hung like a mop in front of her face, and her travelling bag was slouched at her feet. She struggled to gather it. ‘I best go,' she said.

I paused, intending to help her with her luggage. But she stood so long in that wicked rain, fumbling so futilely to find her ticket, that finally I gave up on her and hurried up into the cabin.

The crossing was even rougher than promised, everything sliding, water boiling over the decks. When we neared Calais a sudden calm prevailed and ushered us in to port. I hurried away into the gloomy wet streets and found a small hotel and stayed the night, and in the morning I took the first train to Paris. On that dull October morning, as we clattered and whistled and steam-puffed through the bleak countryside, we could hear the roaring of the guns to the north where the Germans were driving south towards Ypres. I knew our British boys were in the thick of it, and that every bomb that exploded might well mean another five or ten English families would soon receive a telegram they would never forget. Our train often pulled into sidings and stopped while troop trains lumbered past. The troop trains were filled to overflowing with French lads. The lads looked gay and vigorous in their uniforms. They waved towards our train, where handkerchiefs in feminine hands fluttered like flowers from every window. After months in the trenches those hopeful and vigorous lads would look far from gay. But I think they didn't know it, for they were young. Thank god they didn't know it. And so we made our way towards Paris, amid the rumblings of war. By now the battle front stretched from the Channel all the way across the north of France to Switzerland. My urgent task was to find a route around that line of fighting, a route that would lead me into Germany and up to Berlin. My immediate plan was to travel through Paris and on to Geneva, thence to Bern and Basel, and so make my way north across the German border.

When I descended at the Gare du Nord I was shocked to realize that Paris, like the rest of the world, had changed. How strange to see motor vehicles crowding the boulevards! Who would have thought it? It seemed to me that everything in the world was changing, and that soon nothing would be the same. I took a motor taxi south across the river to the Rue des Beaux-Arts. That was the street where I had stayed during my previous visit to Paris, fifteen years earlier, in May of 1899. I tried to find the hotel where I had stayed in those early days, but it no longer existed. I walked twice past the section of street where it had stood. I thought memory had betrayed me. But the hotel was gone. I continued down the street and booked a room at the Hôtel d'Alsace. The name seemed vaguely familiar. I asked the desk clerk if this was where Oscar Wilde had died. It was.

I was interested in Oscar Wilde because I have always regarded theatrical performance as a required field of study for anyone serious about becoming a detective. As a student at Cambridge I spent many a pleasant and instructive hour acting in amateur theatrical productions – I may be the only Cambridge undergraduate who enrolled at the university in disguise, took rooms under an assumed name, and played a fictional role for several months before being unmasked by a fellow student. To escape from oneself into another character is the art of becoming invisible – an art I have practised throughout my career. I would have been dead many years ago had I not been a master of it. So naturally I followed the doings of the theatre world with great enthusiasm, and when Oscar Wilde's talent burst into view on the London stage in 1892, with ‘Lady Windermere's Fan,' I was in the very first audience. After seeing that play I never missed the chance to attend a new Wilde production. But how quickly the golden days vanish for us all! Three years later, in 1895, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest' appeared to overwhelming acclaim. And very swiftly thereafter came Wilde's fall from grace, and he was clapped in Reading Gaol. I remembered reading that he was released from prison, but after that I heard little of him. I had no notion of what had become of him until one day in Paris, in that spring of 1899, I encountered him quite unexpectedly by the Seine.