Murder, My Dear Watson Read online

  “I have not the faintest idea,” I replied coldly.

  “The distance from the Earth to the Sun is about ninety million miles, so the area is about one hundred million billion square miles. Now the Earth looks to the comet like a circular target eight thousand miles across, inscribed on the sphere. That target’s area is only some fifty million square miles. The chance the comet will hit it in transit is therefore the first number divided by the second: of the order of one in two billion. Of course the comet has two chances: one coming in, and one coming out, so the actual odds are one in a billion. Still quite absurdly small.”

  “But if there are millions of comets out there?” I said.

  “The question is not how many there are in the depths of space, but how many large enough to be really dangerous approach the Sun each year. That is only a dozen or so, so an impact with globally catastrophic effects is to be expected only about once per hundred million years.

  “As to the chance that the comet now passing will hit us: the evaporation of gases from the surface does measurably affect the course of comets, but that is only because our measuring instruments are very accurate. The magnitude of the acceleration is tiny: about one-millionth that of an object falling under gravity here on Earth. The probability that this particular comet will hit us is zero, and was known to be so almost from the moment it was first discovered. It will be three-quarters of a million miles away at closest approach: three times the distance of the Moon.”

  Moriarty was sneering openly, but Mycroft merely inclined his head toward him and continued: “Of course, the author of the justly celebrated paper, ‘On the Dynamics of an Asteroid,’ knows better than any of us how absurd it is to visualise a comet zigzagging about the sky like a malfunctioning firework.”

  “But what on Earth—or indeed in the solar system—has Mr. Moriarty to gain by alarming everybody so?” I asked. I could tell from Sherlock Holmes’s intent expression that he, too, would like to know this.

  Mycroft smiled. “Money. Manipulation of the stock market.”

  “But how?”

  “Stockbrokers understand little of the companies whose shares they deal in. They prosper mainly by imitating one another. If you see your neighbour buy a stock, he probably thinks it is about to go up; if he sells, it is probably going down. Usually this rule of thumb works well, but sometimes you get a runaway effect, where company shares shoot upwards quite out of relation to their reasonably possible earnings. The Americans tell the story of a man who starts a rumour that they have struck oil in Hell. After everyone else has gone there, he begins to think there must after all be something in the story, and follows them.”

  “No doubt inspired by the true history of the South Sea Bubble,” I said. “My grandfather lost all his money. But that was a hundred years ago. We are more sensible now, and also more rapidly and accurately informed, thanks to the electric telegraph.”

  Mycroft snorted. “You are an optimist, Doctor. I anticipate men will still be as gullible a hundred years in the future. I wonder what kind of illusory real estate will then be the focus of their deluded hopes? At present, however, Mr. Moriarty is trying to create the opposite of the South Sea Bubble: a stock market depression, as nervous investors lose confidence in the future, and follow one another into a panic of selling.”

  “But how can anyone profit from such a crash?”

  “In this case, by buying gold. In times of crisis, gold soars in value: it is the safe investment of last resort, guaranteed to retain its worth even when all the world’s stocks and currencies are so much waste paper. Mr. Moriarty has little money of his own, but he has unsavoury business associates with plenty. His friends have been stockpiling gold.”

  The young man had turned quite white. “I have done nothing illegal!” he cried. “I have said not one word that is untrue.”

  Mycroft frowned.

  “That is arguable,” he said. “But now let us turn to your second, still more ingenious, scheme. I refer to the letters which I believe you have sent out to all ten thousand of the doctors currently listed in the Medical Register, inviting them to test themselves for Marchant’s syndrome, and the letters that they also received, apparently from a quite unrelated source, inviting them to buy life insurance. Doubtless Dr. Watson has seen examples.”

  He glanced at me. As he took in my expression, I succeeded, for the first and only time in my life, in startling Mycroft Holmes.

  “Good heavens, doctor, were you one of those unlucky ones who tested yourself positive? Have no fear: the chances are a hundred to one against your death.”

  “A hundred to one in favour of death, you mean!”

  “Not so. Tell me, is Marchant’s syndrome common?”

  “No, it is fortunately rare.”

  “Indeed it is. In fact, at any given time, only about one individual in ten thousand is in the early, symptomless stages of the disease. Of the ten thousand doctors who did the test, only one is really likely to have it. But the test gives a false positive result one time in a hundred— so one hundred of the ten thousand doctors got a positive result, and are now convinced that they almost certainly have the disease, just as you were!”

  I felt my head reel. “That is completely paradoxical.” I said. I looked across at Sherlock Holmes. “Surely there is a contradiction. The test is known to be reliable.”

  My friend was shaking his head, and smiling wryly. “Mycroft is correct, Watson, and there is no paradox. When you gave yourself the test, there was indeed only one chance in a hundred it would give a false positive. But unlikely as that was, it was still more unlikely—by a further factor of a hundred—that you really had Marchant’s. My dear fellow, I am gladder than I can say. If I had thought more clearly earlier this evening, I could have saved you an hour of needless worry.”

  Gradually, I felt the dreadful fear ebb within me, bringing such a feeling of relief that I almost cried out in joy. Mycroft coughed to regain our attention, and pointed accusingly at Moriarty.

  “Most or all of those one hundred doctors convinced they have Marchant’s will no doubt hasten to buy your unreasonably expensive life insurance. You will probably have to pay out in only one case. You have put a hundred men and women in terror of their lives in order to make some fast money.”

  The young man shrugged. “That is not my fault,” he said. “You cannot blame me if they are all so stupid that they have jumped to false conclusions. I repeat, I have done nothing illegal, nor indeed in my own eyes even immoral, for I have told no falsehoods. There is nothing to prosecute me for.” He looked scornfully at me, then across at the two brothers. “You are both intelligent men. Surely you will sympathise with the maxim that a fool and his money are soon parted.” Suddenly, he giggled. “In fact, the felons are those who have signed a declaration that they are healthy while under the impression that they almost certainly have Marchant’s syndrome. Doubtless including yourself, Doctor.”

  Sherlock Holmes sprang to his feet. He picked up a horsewhip which some visitor had left propped by the fireside.

  “Get out,” he shouted. “Never let me set eyes on you again.”

  Our unwelcome guest sprang to his feet with a squeak of terror. Clearly he had been unprepared for such direct action. He scuttled to the door, but paused a moment to look back at us from the threshold.

  “Good-bye, gentlemen. But you have not seen the last of me. I shall remember this!”

  “I THOUGHT YOU let Moriarty off very lightly,” I said to Sherlock Holmes, as we sat before the still-glowing fire later that evening.

  My friend shook his head. “He was right: the law could not touch him,” he said. “Mycroft has put an end to his present schemes, for he has ensured articles will appear in tomorrow’s papers explaining to the general public why they need have no fear of the comet, and also in the medical press to reassure doctors on the subject of Marchant’s syndrome. At least we have put enough of a scare into the young man that I fancy it will be quite some years before he
dares to cross our paths again.”

  “I am most glad to hear it. It has been a trying day for me.”

  My colleague extended his slippered feet toward the fire with a sigh. Suddenly he smiled.

  “Really, Watson, I feel that I should congratulate you.”

  “Congratulate me? My dear Holmes, I feel that I have made an utter ass of myself, in several ways.”

  “Precisely, Watson. How many men can say that they got themselves into such a bind that it took the efforts of not merely one, but both of the Holmes brothers to extricate them from it? You really have been busy. But I trust the moral of the day’s alarms has not been lost on you?”

  I cast my thoughts over comets, disease, insurance, and deception.

  “Perhaps I am dense, Holmes, but I really cannot perceive any factor in common.”

  “The moral, Watson, is that while life contains its hazards, it is the man who does not know how to calculate the risks who is in real danger.”

  His gaze strayed to the window. “The comet is particularly fine tonight. Let us enjoy it at our leisure, and without the slightest fear that it may come crashing down upon our heads.”

  THE ADVENTURE OF THE

  YOUNG BRITISH SOLDIER

  Bill Crider

  I HAVE WRITTEN previously about the three massive manuscript volumes containing the record of Sherlock Holmes’s exploits of the year 1894, a remarkable year indeed, not only for Holmes’s return to Baker Street but for both the number of cases in which he involved himself and of their curious nature. The adventure of the golden pince-nez, for example, admirably displays the singular powers of my friend, while the nauseating tale of the red leech gives an idea of the depths of depravity to which some men will sink to attain their ends. But there is one case that is not recorded in those three volumes because at the time of its occurrence it seemed far too personal for inclusion. Never before had my own life and affairs intruded into the realm of Holmes’s detective work, and the result when they did so was far from happy. I have decided, however, now that the passage of years has eased the sting, to commit the events to paper in the hope that they might prove of interest to my readers.

  IT WAS A BITTERLY cold winter’s night near the beginning of December. There was no snow or ice outside, and the wind did not blow, but the cold was so intense that it seemed to settle on the city with a weight of its own, a weight so heavy that it almost cracked the paving stones. Holmes and I sat secure in our Baker Street rooms, he attempting to organize some of the clippings that he kept relating to criminous activities of all sorts, and I leafing through a book of Mr. Kipling’s poems, pausing now and then to read one of them. I was particularly affected by one entitled “The Young British Soldier.”

  The fire had burned down to the last log, which was glowing, though hardly alight at all, and while the room was beginning to cool, I felt quite warm. My face was flushed, and I limped to the window to stare out at the freezing darkness, though what I saw in my mind’s eye was neither dark nor freezing. Far from it, indeed, and I pressed my hot, damp palms against the cold glass.

  “It must come to you strongly, now and then,” said Holmes.

  Startled, I turned to stare at him. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “The memory of your service,” said he, “and of the time the Jezail bullet struck you down.”

  I was surprised, but not astonished. This was not the first time that Holmes had seemed to read my mind. I said, “But how could you know what I was thinking? It seems impossible.”

  “Hardly impossible,” said Holmes. “First there is the matter of the book you are reading, the one by Mr. Kipling. I wager that I could tell you the exact words you came across when the blood rushed to your face and you began to perspire as if you were still on the Afghan plain. And then there is the matter of your limp.”

  “Ah.”

  “Indeed. Your wound has hardly troubled you in recent days, even in the cold, yet when you crossed the room it might have been only a few months ago rather than fourteen years that you had a bullet through your leg.”

  “Now that you explain it, I can see that it was rather easy for you to discover my thoughts. But one thing still puzzles me.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “Your comment about the poem. I can hardly believe you could quote the exact lines. I will grant that no man in England, or the world for that matter, can approach your knowledge of crime and criminals. I hold it as an article of faith that there is no one who knows more about tobacco ash or poison or the criminal mind than you. As for poetry, however, I have never known you to read a line of it.”

  Holmes rose from his chair and walked to the mantel, where he filled a briar pipe with tobacco from one of the pouches there. He lit the pipe and puffed on it for a few moments until the tobacco was burning to his satisfaction. Then he removed it from his mouth and said, “’When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, / And the women come out to cut up what remains, / Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains, / And go to your Gawd like a soldier.’”

  I had not been astonished earlier, but now I confess that my mouth fell open. It was not so much that Holmes had discovered the exact verse, for more times than once Holmes had amazed me with his deductive powers. But in all our acquaintance I had never heard him quote four lines of poetry from memory.

  “You see, Watson,” he said with a thin smile, “I have hidden depths.”

  “You do, indeed,” said I. “But why?”

  “Why memorize a bit of verse? Do you not recall that you have read that poem to me previously?”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “But that was a year ago, and I never thought that you would commit it to memory.”

  “The subject matter has its own grisly interest,” said Holmes. “And I remembered those particular lines because they seemed to have a great deal of meaning for you.”

  The last log fell apart on the grate and sparked into coals. I shivered, though not from the cold.

  “They remind me of things that I would prefer not to recall with any clarity,” I said. “Had it not been for my orderly that day at Maiwand, I might have been the young British soldier of that poem.”

  “Your orderly,” said Holmes. “Murray.”

  “Yes. Had he not slung me across a packhorse and taken me from the field, I would have been left to the mercy of the foe, though mercy was not something much heard of on that field.”

  “And what of Murray?” Holmes asked. “I do not believe you ever told me of his fate.”

  “Only because I do not know it. He returned to the fighting after I was safe in Peshwar, and after that I lost all touch with him. Perhaps he, too, returned to England.”

  “Or died in battle in some foreign land,” said Holmes.

  “Perhaps,” said I. “But I suppose we shall never know.”

  After that, I set Kipling’s book aside and Holmes went back to his clippings. We spoke no more of Murray until seven days later when a carriage arrived outside our window early one morning.

  The weather had gone from unbearably cold to merely seasonable, and the sun shone dimly through our windows. Holmes was examining something or other through his microscope, and I was leafing through a medical journal when I heard the long scrape of a wheel against the curb below in the street.

  Holmes heard it as well. He raised his head and said, “I believe we are about to have a visitor, Watson. Be so good as to get the door.”

  I went downstairs and admitted a woman of about my own age. She looked around distractedly and said, “Mr. Sherlock Holmes?”

  “No,” I replied. “He is upstairs. Follow me, and I will take you to him.”

  I led the way upward, and she followed me into the room, where Holmes sat as if engrossed in whatever he saw through the lenses of the microscope.

  “Holmes,” I said, “you have a visitor.”

  He turned to face us, and the woman at my back said, “Oh, no. It is not Mr. Holmes that I have come
to see. It is someone else, a Dr. Watson.”

  “I am Dr. Watson,” I said, a bit taken aback. Seldom did anyone come seeking me at Baker Street.

  “Do not be so surprised, Watson,” said Holmes. “The woman is clearly in need of your help.” He rose and walked to her. “Please be seated,” he said, and cleared a space on the couch for her.

  She sat as if grateful for the opportunity, and I saw for the first time that her face was flushed and that her eyes were sunken. No doubt Holmes, keen observer that he was, had noticed these symptoms immediately and known that the woman was in need of my medical attention. But he said to her, “Who is it that needs the services of Dr. Watson?”

  “My husband,” she replied.

  Holmes looked at me. “Worry, Watson, worry produces the lack of sleep that darkens the skin under the eyes. Anxiety reddens the skin as much as any fever.”

  “So I see,” I said.

  “And who is your husband?” Holmes asked the woman.

  “He is known to Dr. Watson,” she said. “His name is Edward Murray.”

  “The man who saved your life, Watson,” Holmes observed.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Murray, turning to me. “And now, Dr. Watson, he needs you to save his.”

  MRS. MURRAY EXPLAINED that her husband was quite ill, “And he says that you, Dr. Watson, are the only one who can save him.”

  “I am afraid that he might have an exaggerated idea of my skills,” I said.

  “Nonsense,” said Holmes. “You are a fine physician, Watson, as any of your patients would attest.”

  “But how did he hear of me?” I asked.

  “You have recorded the cases of Mr. Holmes,” Mrs. Murray said. “And Edward has read them all eagerly. He often speaks of the time he carried you off the battlefield to safety, and he was delighted to see an account of it when you published the first of Mr. Holmes’s adventures.”

  “It was no more than he deserved,” I said. “Had it not been for him, I would surely have died in Afghanistan.”

  “Many did,” said she. “Edward could not save them all.”