Chapter 4 ― The Resolve of Mary Morstan (Part 1)

Our return from Rakusei brought us back to a semblance of normalcy. At first glance our lives went on much as they had before. I continued to soberly run my practice and go out on house calls, while Mary concentrated on documenting the cases of Irene Adler. But something had definitely changed. We had intended to venture no further than the warm shallows, yet somehow we had found ourselves swept out to sea. Now the water was freezing, and beneath our feet there yawned a bottomless abyss.

During breaks in my routine I would find my mind wandering back to the events of that long day in Rakusei: Madame Richborough’s seance, the sudden appearance of that mysterious staircase, the noontime light of that enormous moon, the clearing around the Moon Rocket launchpad, the arrest of Madame Richborough, the return of Miss Rachel…each of these things seemed like a fragment from a dream, and yet they had all happened.

Professor Moriarty never returned to 221B Teramachi Street.

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On his return home Sherlock Holmes was met by a large crowd composed of members of the Victims’ Association. They came from all walks of life: typists and clerks, young nobles, burly labourers, ladies of leisure and their retinues, old married pensioners, and so forth. But what united them all was a hatred of Sherlock Holmes.

“You call yourself a detective?” they howled, pressing at the door. “For shame!”

The crowd quickly attracted a mob of patrolmen, reporters, and curious onlookers. Inspector McFarlane ordered the Victims’ Association to disperse, but instead they began to rail angrily at the newspaper men about Holmes’s slovenly ways.

As they had worked themselves into the peak of their frenzy Holmes made an appearance at the door. With one glance of amazement at the pistol in the detective’s hand Inspector McFarlane started forward to wrest it from him, but he was too late: Holmes raised the pistol into the sky and pulled the trigger.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said he to the stunned crowd; “Your anger is quite understandable. But in truth it is not me you are angry with, but yourselves. Lounger, you cry: laggard, wastrel! But are you not all the same? Did you not come to see me because you could not bear the consequences of your own faults? We are each of us loungers, laggards, wastrels: for we are all human. Let us learn to be kind to one another.”

Holmes’s sophistry only threw fuel on the flames. Now the enraged crowd tightened like a noose around him, backing him against the door.

“Enough excuses! Damn your kindness! We want you to do the job you promised!” they cried.

It was then that the door of the office across the street flew open, and a mellifluous voice rang out.

“Pray, calm yourselves!” called Irene Adler. “Whatever troubles you have, I shall solve them for you.”

Holmes and Irene Adler had come to a colleagues’ agreement before they left Hurlstone: Irene would shoulder the burden of solving Holmes’s outstanding cases, and Holmes in his stead would work under her direction.

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Late in December I visited 221B Teramachi Street for the first time since my return from Hurlstone. By the time I reached Holmes’s abode, the fog had crept in, and all of Teramachi Street was dissolved in a sea of mist. The sun had not set yet, but the surroundings were obscured into a twilight shade, and as I looked up from the threshold I saw emitting from the blinds on the second floor a pale orange glow. Seeing that the light was coming from Professor Moriarty’s old room I supposed that Cartwright must be up there, clearing out the professor’s things.

“What a thoughtless thing to do,” sighed Mrs. Hudson as she took my coat. “I suppose one must make hay while the sun shines, but surely it would be common courtesy to inform me before gallivanting off to a hot spring retreat. I am his landlady, after all!”

“You must forgive him; after all, he has been severely strained,” I reassured her.

Matters would only become more complicated if it became known that the professor had disappeared, and so we had agreed amongst ourselves to feign that he was on holiday at Arima Onsen instead.

In front of the fireplace a pile of cushions had been erected upon a blanket, and atop this edifice Sherlock Holmes reclined sedately like an immortal sage. Over his night-dress he wore a grey gown, and in between puffs on a black clay pipe was eating a jam-filled biscuit. His eyes flickered open when I sat down on the settee.

“I tell you, Watson,” said he; “That woman will be the end of me.”

“I see that Miss Adler is not sparing the rod.”

“It is no one’s fault but my own for agreeing to it. I have not had a good night’s sleep here for the past week. She has had me sneaking into opium dens in Demachiyanagi, and eavesdropping in Ohara-no-sato, and brawling with anarchists atop the aqueduct at Nanzenji…yes, what a week it has been.”

“Yet I see there is a healthy glow in your cheeks.”

“I admit that it is not a bad arrangement,” yawned Holmes, taking another draw on his pipe. “Miss Adler provides the solution for every case. The work itself is easier than I had anticipated. Why, if I had known that I might have gone to see her sooner.”

The Holmes of old would never say such a thing, for he was always looking for more stimulating mysteries to confront. Only by throwing all his energies into a case could he feel fulfilled as a detective; yet now he was perfectly content to leave everything in Irene Adler’s hands.

“You realize that she is your rival, don’t you, Holmes?”

“What about it?”

“Have you lost your sense of independence? Miss Adler may be a superb detective, but do not forget that it was you, and you alone, who uncovered the truth of the Musgrave affair.”

“I believe we had agreed to drop the matter, Watson,” said Holmes with an irritable gesture. “In the first place it was never a case, thus there was no reason for a detective to investigate it. The Chamber of the East of the East is an enigma, beyond the ken of man. One must let sleeping dogs lie, you know.”

“Then you will abandon Professor Moriarty to his fate?”

With the return of Miss Rachel the mystery of her disappearance had finally been solved. But it had come at a cost, for the chamber had claimed Professor Moriarty in her stead. One disappearance had been replaced with another.

Holmes looked into the fireplace, his eyebrows arched.

“Rescuing the professor could not be simpler,” he said. “Why, you could simply find another sacrificial lamb to replace him, though you know as well as I do that would solve nothing. We could blow the chamber up with explosives: now there’s an idea! But I’m afraid that our poor friend would never see the light of day again.”

Holmes got up and then collapsed down into his armchair.

“This problem is too much for us to handle.”

“Is there nothing we can do?”

“Nothing. All we can do is put it from our minds.”

What had happened at Hurlstone as yet remained a secret to the public. No one knew that Miss Rachel was back, and as long as Mrs. Hudson could be convinced to keep quiet, no one would notice the absence of the reclusive Professor Moriarty. Even if Madame Richborough were to stand in the dock and spill all that she had seen, no one would believe her.

There was a knock at the door, and who should come in but Cartwright.

“Good day to you, Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson.”

“Ah, Cartwright,” said Holmes. “Making progress up there?”

Cartwright sank onto the settee and let out a sigh, looking quite exhausted. His chestnut hair was disheveled now, his cheeks covered with grime, and his eyes peered out wearily from behind his gold-rimmed spectacles. He had spent the better part of the last day wrestling with Professor Moriarty’s collection of books and notes; and besides, the shock of the events at Hurlstone must have dealt a staggering blow to his psyche. There were the paranormal phenomena in the Chamber of the East of the East, yes, but also the arrest of Madame Richborough, his partner in the investigation of the spiritual; and worst of all was the disappearance of Professor Moriarty, his revered mentor. It was certainly a wretched string of misfortunes.

“You may as well give yourself a little more rest, Cartwright.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that. The professor charged me with this personally. I’ve got to do right by him and pick things up where he left off.”

“That may be so, but haste makes waste, you know. I’d hate to see you fall into a slump of your own.”

“I wish he’d come back. Then everything would solve itself,” lamented the young man, burying his face in his hands. “I still can’t make head or tail of it all. Where does the power of the Chamber of the East of the East come from? It’s far beyond any spiritual phenomenon I am familiar with. But Miss Rachel really has come back, so we can only assume that it must be real.”

He paused suddenly as if some realization had just occurred to him.

“I did come across something quite curious.”

“What is it?”

“The professor’s bedroom is locked.”

“That’s all?” asked Holmes with a frown. “Why, I’m sure that Mrs. Hudson would unlock it in a flash.”

“That’s the trouble. Mrs. Hudson doesn’t remember having set a lock on the third-floor bedroom. Professor Moriarty must have attached it himself. Strangest of all, the professor has been sleeping in the sitting-room, for the bed was dragged there.”

“Then what is in the bedroom?” wondered Holmes.

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“I am a little uncomfortable entering the professor’s rooms on my own,” Cartwright admitted as he swung upon the door.

These rooms had once been my own, but now they were quite changed, and there was a smell of mould and dust in the air as if they had not been lived in for some time. The room was simply furnished; besides a long, dark oaken desk which stood beneath the window, the only other furniture consisted of a small bookshelf, a blackboard, and a simple cot. The carpet was littered with piles of books which could not fit into the overflowing bookshelf. In the corner there was a crate into which a hodgepodge of works and awards testifying to the professor’s sterling reputation had been carelessly discarded: a treatise on physics entitled On the Dynamics of the Asteroids; the best-selling self-help book The Binomial Theorem of the Soul; plans for the Moon Rocket Project; certificates of merit from the Physical Society; and a medal bestowed upon him by Her Majesty.

“His living is practically ascetic,” remarked Holmes as he surveyed the room. “It seems the professor had little interest in anything other than physics.”

Cartwright added coals to the fireplace and turned up the gas lamp, though the room did not seem much brightened. The view from the window was obscured by the hazy mist, painted red by the setting sun.

The desk was covered by a stack of large papers, each packed tightly with scribbled formulas and diagrams. It was clear that the professor had not abandoned his work, and as I imagined him sitting alone at that desk, fighting desperately to break out of his slump, I could not help but feel a harrowing pity for him.

Cartwright approached a door at the side of the room and showed us that its knob would not turn.

“This is his bedroom. Locked, as you can see.”

The room which lay beyond that door was smaller than the sitting-room. During my time here it had contained my bed and dresser. But as Cartwright had indicated, it appeared that Professor Moriarty slept in the sitting-room.

“I wonder what he is hiding in there,” mused Holmes, kneeling down to squint through the keyhole. “Ah, now this is interesting.”

“What do you see?”

“Something that I think you will find quite fascinating, my dear Watson.”

Holmes stepped aside to allow me to peer through. It was bright on the other side, which must have meant that the window to the rear garden was uncovered. I squinted, and a queer scene swam into view: packed rooftops, and crowded chimneys, and Big Ben towering in the distance. How could this be? I looked into a room, and yet I saw the whole city of Kyoto.

I pulled away from the keyhole and looked at Holmes, who nodded solemnly. He had not had cause to make use of his burgling kit in some time, and now he drew from it a thin metal rod which he inserted into the keyhole. In no time at all I heard a metallic click; in a slump Holmes may have been, but his particular skills had not atrophied. He stood and put his hand on the knob.

“Well, gentlemen,” said he, “I trust you are prepared?” He opened the door, and together we stepped into the room beyond.

In the center of the room a number of tables had been pulled together, and atop them had been constructed a miniature city. The tabletops were hidden from view by wooden blocks large and small, and in the spaces between the tiny buildings there were broad rivers, clock towers, palaces, and green parks. The pastel light which streamed in from the back yard cast lifelike shadow throughout the tiny town. Little wonder that I had taken it for a distant view of the real thing through the keyhole.

“Amazing,” I gasped. “When can he have found the time to build such a thing?”

As I looked over the town, though, I noticed something a little strange. There in the center of the city, along the Kamo River, was the majestic form of the National Diet Building, and near the foot of the nearby bridge was the lofty shape of Big Ben. But Minami-za was not at the opposite bank where I expected it to be. And once I had noticed that discrepancy the others made themselves apparent. The Kamo slithered and snaked through Kyoto in a queer fashion, and tracing its path upstream I did not see the confluence where the Kamo and the Takano merge. Neither did I see the complex which comprised the seat of government, or Her Majesty’s palace where they would be in real life. Both Mt. Daimonji and Mt. Hiei were missing, and most striking of all I did not see a single temple or shrine.

Cartwright lowered himself so that the city was at his eye height.

“This must be a model of an imaginary city.”

“Yes, the resemblance to Kyoto notwithstanding.”

“It’s fascinating. I could almost imagine this city really exists.”

The smoke from Holmes’s pipe wreathed the city like the fog of the Kamo River.

Professor Moriarty had been tormented by insomnia. Work can be a balm to the mind, and I suspected that the professor had shut himself up in this little room during those long sleepless nights and built this model city.

“I wonder if you both could give me a hand,” said Holmes suddenly. He was looking at the ceiling with his eyes narrowed, and following his gaze I saw, hanging from the ceiling by a slender thread, a moon the size of a lemon.

“There is something written on the moon, and I should like to find out what it is.”

Together with Cartwright I hoisted Holmes up. Holmes reached his hand up and brushed the moon with his fingers. It spun round and round, and as it did he scowled at it.

“London,” he muttered.

“London? What is London?”

“I don’t know. But that is what it says,” Holmes returned in a mystified tone, watching the moon spin.

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I departed 221B Teramachi Street and flagged down a hansom. As it rattled through the streets of Kyoto, I looked out into the sea of fog that covered the streets and fancied that I was driving through a city in a dream. The streetlamps which stood along the long wall of Her Majesty’s palace burned quietly in the night like a row of jewels. My thoughts were fixated upon the model city we had discovered in Professor Moriarty’s bed-chamber.

A wild fancy came into my mind―what if that city really did exist? That swirling river with its many bridges, and the great clock tower, and the streets with carriages flying up and down―what if that city were called London? And perhaps this imaginary city had a Sherlock Holmes of its own, with his own John H. Watson, living quietly at a place we might call 221 Baker Street owned by a landlady named Mrs. Hudson. And most importantly of all, Mr. Sherlock Holmes of London solved cases left and right, not even affected by so much as the shadow of a slump.

Holmes of London: the more I thought about it, the more fascinated I became with the idea.

Mary had not yet come home when I arrived at my practice in Shimogamo. I was too excited to turn into bed just yet, so instead I went into my office and turned on the light. It was then that I realized that the thrumming in my breast was in fact the desire to put pen to paper which I had for so long forgotten.

I rummaged in the cabinet behind me and took out my copies of Holmes’s adventures. All told, twenty-four of them had been published in the Strand Magazine, and gathered into two compilations, entitled The Victories of Sherlock Holmes and The Glories of Sherlock Holmes. All of these stories, of course, took place in Kyoto.

As I flipped through the pages of my own work, I was reminded, not only of the excitement of those cases, but of the environment in which I had penned those words. Some I had written with the stench of Holmes’s chemical experiments in my nostrils, others in a hotel room on the trail of an investigation, and still others had been written right here in this room, in the home which I now shared with Mary .

I replaced the manuscripts into the cabinet, then laid out a fresh sheet of writing paper on the desk.

Over the past year, Sherlock Holmes had tried and failed to solve all sorts of cases around Kyoto. Yet I did not think that meant his deductions or conclusions were worthless. “The Adventure of the Naval Treaty”, “The Man with the Twisted Lip”, “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”―it would be a shame to allow Holmes’s brilliant conjectures in each of those cases to go uncelebrated merely because reality had not lived up to them. It was all backwards, I concluded.

If the world rejected Holmes’s deductions, why not create a new one worthy of them instead?

I thought for a moment, then wrote down a title:

THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE

I felt a sort of defiance well up within me. Last autumn Sherlock Holmes’s great failure in this case had signified the beginning of his slump. Now I intended to rewrite it into a blazing triumph, one that would strike a blow against the reality which had so cruelly trampled it down into the mud.

I felt a new life reverberating within my frame. My pen skated across the paper with an astonishing speed, like a ship with its sails billowing in the wind, and in its wake was birthed a brand new world: London, 221B Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes.

“What are you doing, my dear?” I dimly heard someone say, as if from a great distance.

I was abruptly pulled away from London and back into the real world. Looking up I saw Mary standing at the door to my office, wearing a coat and a look of concern. Apparently it was not only once that she had called my name, but I had been too engrossed in my work to notice that my wife had come back.

I roused myself up and looked at her with a dazed smile. “Why, Mary,” I said, “I’ve just begun a new adventure.”

“A new adventure?” she asked quizzically.

We stared at each other silently for a moment. Then Mary walked briskly in and lit the fireplace, adding coals. Only then did I realize that I had been working in the cold, and was forgotten to take off my overcoat. I laid down my pen and placed my benumbed hands to my mouth to warm them. Mary stooped down and planted a kiss on my cheek.

“I’ll put on the kettle,” she said, with a smile on her face.

After she had left the office, I looked down at the manuscript.

“Well,” I muttered, and I took up my pen again.

Thus was born Sherlock Holmes—of London.