Chapter 5 ― The Triumphant Return of Sherlock Holmes (Part 2)

The gas lamps were lit in the hallway when I returned to my lodgings. Madame Richborough’s seance was scheduled to begin that evening at nine. Intending to rest during the interim, I climbed the dimly lit steps. As I passed the third-floor landing, the door to Cartwright’s room flew open.

“Good evening, doctor.”

“Cartwright! I thought you’d still be in Hampstead.”

“I had to come back for the seance,” replied Cartwright, looking a little piously at me.

He was a young painter of about twenty years in age, and one would not have known it to look at him that he was considered one of the greatest new hopes of the London painting scene. He taught painting, as had his late father, and on the weekends he would travel to see his mother and younger sister in the suburbs of London. I found him an agreeable young man when Madame Richborough had introduced us on the occasion of his moving in, and we hit it off almost immediately. It was my favourite pastime to sit the night with him, sipping weak tea and listening to him propound his theories on painting.

“You’ll be there, won’t you, Dr. Watson?”

“I have to attend once in a while to placate Madame Richborough. Though I’m afraid I can’t quite summon your same enthusiasm towards the subject of spiritualism,” I replied, upon which Cartwright cleared his throat somewhat awkwardly.

I was still unsure of Cartwright’s motives in regards to spiritualism. At first, he like me had approached the subject with a considerable amount of skepticism. But his attitude had transformed completely once a young spirit medium named Rachel began to show up at the madame’s seances, and now not a session went by but he was present. Whenever I so much as brushed on the subject he would hem and haw.

“Would you like to come inside, doctor?”

“Gladly.”

“I’ve just finished up a new portrait,” he said happily, holding open the door for me.

Painting paraphernalia lay cluttered in between the simple furniture, and the smell of paint clung to everything. The pale blue light of evening shone through the window. From the corner Cartwright brought a portrait and stood it on an easel in the center of the room.

“Do you be so kind as to give me your opinion,” he said.

The portrait was of an older man. He wore a dark frock coat, and his hands which he held behind him clutched a top hat. His glowering expression was directed slightly off to the right, his thin lips pulled into a cruel sneer. His frame was slight and his back was rounded severely, but his eyes held a formidable gleam. There was something of the unpredictable air of the wild beast about him, and yet his white, prominent forehead spoke of the acute intellect which lay within.

“Professor Moriarty?” I asked.

“One of my better likenesses, I think,” he replied.

Professor Moriarty was an occasional visitor of Madame Richborough on account of having been indebted to her late husband, though to the details of that relationship I am not privy. He had the disturbing habit of oscillating his pale, reptilian face from side to side when he looked at you, like a snake regarding its prey. When Madame Richborough had first dragged me over to make his acquaintance, he had leaned in and whispered in my ear, as if divulging a secret of great import, “I am a great admirer of detective fiction,” and declared that he had read all of the stories I had written down about Holmes. But this did nothing to dispel my uneasy impression of him, and I found it impossible to feel much affection towards him.

“I think it will find favour with the public,” said Cartwright, gazing upon his work with pride. “Professor Moriarty is well-known in many circles. This will be my ticket to fame and fortune, I am sure of it.”

“You mean that you will turn down the Yorkshire job?”

As I have mentioned Cartwright had taken on some pupils, and the father of one of those students happened to know a wealthy landowner in Yorkshire who sought an in-residence teacher to instruct his two daughters in watercolours, as well as to make an inventory of their art collection. In return he would be granted a room in the mansion, and a salary far exceeding what any young man could expect to earn at that age, to say nothing of the invaluable education to the burgeoning artist that may only be gained from the works of the old masters.

Yet despite my urging, Cartwright had yet to forward any note of recommendation to the landowner.

“It’s a generous offer, but if I were to leave for Yorkshire, I would no longer be able to avail myself of Professor Moriarty’s influence.”

“What of his influence? You will go far, with or without Professor Moriarty. You ought to put more stock in your own possibility.”

“Did you make your own career without any help?”

“Well, I would not go as far as to say that…”

“You see?” Cartwright laughed aloud. “I will do what I must to seek my fortune.”

Feeling a little unsettled, I returned my gaze to the portrait. There was something about this man which bothered me. On every occasion that I had met him I had had the impression that I was talking with an empty husk. I did not understand myself, then, why I had given him the important role of Holmes’s fellow-lodger in The Triumphant Return of Sherlock Holmes.

“I will admit the professor is a little strange. He is positively rolling in money, and seems to wield a great deal of clandestine influence in many circles. Why then is he so eager to avoid the spotlight? Each time I’ve visited his home the lights are out, and he never seems to have any visitors.”

“There must be more to the professor than meets the eye.”

“He is simply too far above the likes of us,” declared Cartwright. “The doings of us mere mortals must seem child’s play to him. There is nothing which is beyond his ken, from the outer reaches of the universe to the innermost secrets of the human heart. He sees and calculates all. He may be the greatest person in London, a modern Aristotle!”

In Cartwright’s words I heard something close to veneration of the professor.

　　　　　　　◯

When I came down from my garret around nine that evening, I found Cartwright chatting with Rachel in the foyer. Her pale, dainty face peeked out from her wide bonnet beneath the light of the gas lamps, and she glanced upward a little when she looked my way.

“Good evening,” she said in a small voice.

I had the little clairvoyant some times before. She was the daughter of a merchant whose shop was set up on Great Ormond Street. Though she had only become prominent as a spirit medium in the last past six months, around that neighbourhood her reputation apparently dated back much further than that. Her devout, conservative father had at first deplored those rumours, but the influx of spiritualist customers eventually brought him around.

It was the common folk of London, like Madame Richborough, who were the strongest champions of Rachel, inviting her to their sitting-rooms to hold seances. Rachel refused to accept any fee for her services, which perhaps only made her seem more trustworthy.

“Good evening,” I said in answer to her greeting, “I am looking forward to your seance tonight.”

She looked down demurely.

“Pray temper your expectations. I cannot promise anything will happen tonight.”

Her diffidence had become something of a trademark for her. Surely such an accomplished medium could afford to boast a little more confidence, and yet I always had the impression that Rachel was not confident that she could master her supernatural powers. A more discerning observer might suspect that her retiring demeanour was simply a ploy to win confidence in her psychic abilities.

Madame Richborough rapturously welcomed us into her living room, where a candelabra had been set on a large table.

“Dear Cartwright,” she cooed as she poured tea for us, “May I presume that you have accepted the tutoring position?”

“Well, you see,” said Cartwright with a little cough, “To be honest, I am still debating.”

“Debating! But haven’t you already visited Hampstead?” cried Madame Richborough, her eyes dramatically opened wide. “What is there to debate about? You could live on a lovely estate, rub shoulders with the cream of society, gain a master education in artwork…one could not dream of a better position. Such an opportunity will never come around again, you know!”

“You may be right, and yet I have finally found meaning in my work. The conditions may be favourable, but I cannot abandon my students now. And what would become of my mother and sister were I to go gallivanting off to Yorkshire?”

“What does your mother say?”

“She tells me to do what I think is right.”

As Madame Richborough and Cartwright argued back and forth over the matter of his going to Yorkshire, Rachel hung her head, occasionally glancing up with worried eyes at Cartwright. For his part Cartwright was not ignorant of her attentions; the only who did not seem to have noticed this silent repartee between the two young people was Madame Richborough.

At last Cartwright stood up tall and cleared his throat.

“At any rate, I do not intend to leave London now,” he declared, and I detected a quiet shiver of relief go through Rachel’s expression.

　　　　　　　◯

In The Triumphant Return of Sherlock Holmes, Madame Richborough is a spirit medium and a swindler, with an uncanny personal magnetism. But in real life Madame Richborough was a simple landlady, meddlesome but kind-hearted.

It was my understanding that she had turned to spiritualism after the deaths of her husband and younger sister. One of her tenants had invited the grieving woman to a seance at which she had spoken to the spirits of the two deceased, from which she derived peace and calm. Thus had her enthusiasm for inviting tenants to seances arisen, and though I myself did not much care for spiritualism neither would I gainsay others who found solace in it.

Madame Richborough drew the curtains and put out the gas lamp, putting the room into darkness, save for the candles which illuminated the faces of the participants around the table. At the madame’s direction we put our arms on the table and joined hands with our neighbours; Cartwright was on my left, and Madame Richborough to my right.

“You may begin,” said Madame Richborough gravely.

The young clairvoyant shut her eyes and bent her head, and began to chant an incantation. For a while we listened to her voice in silence. Madame Richborough’s eyes were fixed upon her, full of longing and expectation; her look was matched by the earnest gaze in Cartwright’s eyes. Rachel’s head drooped ever further downward, and her voice nearly petered out into silence.

The last time I had attended one of these seances, the spirits had claimed themselves to be Madame Richborough’s sister and Cartwright’s grand-uncle. They spoke only through Rachel’s mouth, and their assertions were so vapid that anyone could have made them, which I did not find very convincing. At the same time I did not believe that Rachel’s intent was to deceive. I suspected that she was more susceptible to auto-suggestion than most.

After a while Rachel slowly looked up. In the flickering candlelight I saw in place of her previous apprehension a kind of sensuality. Her eyes remained shut as her head turned to face me.

“Dr. Watson,” she whispered. “The spirits wish to commune with you.”

Around the table every face turned to look at me.

My continued silence prompted Madame Richborough to speak up.

“Who is the spirit?”

“She is a young woman.”

“And her name?”

“Mary…she says she is your wife.”

The moment I heard that name leave her lips I was struck by a wave of revulsion. It was impossible that this young lady should have any knowledge of my past. Either Madame Richborough or Cartwright must have whispered this information in her ear. I was so outraged at this sacrilege towards the dead that by sheer impulse I got to my feet. Cartwright’s hand shot out and took a vise-like grasp upon my arm.

“Please, you must remain sitting where you are, Dr. Watson,” I heard Madame Richborough say.

“You have suffered ever since you moved into this house. You are afraid to face Mary’s spirit,” said the clairvoyant from across the table, and her voice shifted. “Why are you afraid of me, John? Will you not hear what I have to say?”

I felt a chill race up my spine. It was as if the medium had turned into a completely different person. I heard the voice as though it was being thrown from beyond a vast, dark plain. There was a frozen chill in the air. Madame Richborough let her head fall with a serious expression, and Cartwright let go of my arm.

I lurched a few steps back, hardly able to breathe.

“Forgive me, Mary. I was a fool.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I was a doctor, your own husband. And yet I could not save you.”

No sooner had the Harley Street doctor stepped out from the bedroom after his examination then he rounded upon me sternly.

“How can you have let it progress so far?”

The diagnosis was galloping consumption. One of her lungs had already ceased to function, and the other was being ravaged. When I heard him say that she had three months to live I felt a hole opening up beneath my feet to swallow me.

Can’t you let Holmes take care of his own business once in a while, my love? she had said to me shortly before that fateful visit. You’ll work yourself to death.

I’m all right, Mary. My leg is feeling fine, had been my reply.

The career of Mr. Sherlock Holmes was reaching its zenith then. Requests of the most fascinating variety came flooding into 221 Baker Street not only from England, but from various polities and kingdoms in Europe as well. My stories in the Strand Magazine had built an avid readership. As Holmes’s biographer, how could I possibly afford to sit around and rest when there were so many glamorous adventures to be had? Mary’s pleas fell on deaf ears. Every time a telegram came from Holmes, off I went to Baker Street to investigate the crime, often not coming home until the wee hours of the morning. My practice in Kensington lay all but abandoned.

I will not deny that a little whisper of doubt would come across my mind―sooner or later something will go wrong. But I never imagined that the fatal stroke would come in the form of my wife’s illness.

I spent the final six months of Mary’s life by her side, not once venturing out to Baker Street. My days, once frantic and exciting, became quiet and ordinary. Mary never blamed me for anything. In fact, now that we spent all of our time together she seemed happier than she had been. I cursed my past folly, but I could not undo it now.

Mary’s spirit spoke to me again.

“I do not resent you. You found your calling in your work with Mr. Holmes. And it was through him that we were brought together. It was never my place to tear you two apart.”

I whirled around and fled the room. “Dr. Watson!” Cartwright’s voice followed me, but I did not so much as pause as I flew past the gas lamps in the foyer and up the darkened stairs. I slammed the door to my garret and leaned back against it, and only then did I find that I could breathe again.

　　　　　　　◯

The appearance of Mary’s spirit at the seance revived memories which I had heretofore kept locked away. I had dismissed the veracity of spiritualism, and yet now I had been shaken to the core by the ghostly voice of my Mary which had issued from between Rachel’s lips.

I closed my eyes and stood there in the darkness for a while, for the pain I found was almost too much to bear.

Suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping at the windowpane. I cautiously approached my desk, found a match, and lit the lamp.The sound was coming from behind the drawn curtain, which I pulled aside to find my own face staring at me in the smudged glass. And superimposed upon the reflection I saw the face of Sherlock Holmes. I started backward, but Holmes gave another rap on the window and murmured, “The window, Watson, quick!” It appeared that my visitor was no phantom after all.

I hastily unlatched the window and swung it open, allowing Holmes to slide inside.

“Holmes! What are you doing here?” I gasped.

“I’m here to fetch you back to reality,” he said, taking a little hop down from my desk and swiftly striding across the garret to press his ear against the door, listening intently for any sound from the corridor.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

“I am a wanted man,” he answered, “and I cannot be too cautious these days.”

He took a cigar from his pocket and went back to the desk, bending down to light it from the lamp and puffing deeply on it. I sat on my bed, while Holmes lowered himself into a wooden chair. His face had grown thin, and it was apparent as Mrs. Hudson had feared that his battle with this insidious enemy was taking its toll. Yet his eyes retained the old sparkle.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so ill-used, Holmes.”

“I don’t get much sleep these days, and when I do I am tormented by the strangest dreams.”

He would dream of a great waterfall in Switzerland, he said, thundering downward with a tremendous roar and veiling the air with its great spray. In the dream Holmes approached the edge of the fall as if in a trance, looking down at the boiling foam in the pit far below, as if the whole world was hurling itself into the chasm of oblivion. Then a black figure approached him from behind, and sent him hurtling into that same abyss.

“It’s always the same dream. I’m quite sick of it, I tell you.”

“That must speak to the pressure you feel.”

“There’s no helping that. I have spent years grappling with this case, and at last it is reaching its critical point,” he said. “If you desire to spend the rest of your years secluded in this garret I have no right to stop you. As a friend I would be remiss not to respect your wishes. And yet circumstances compel me to do otherwise.”

“What do you mean?”

At my confused words Holmes leaned forward.

“You have probably heard of Professor Moriarty?” said he.

“You mean Madame Richborough’s visitor?” I replied. “He comes to the house from time to time.”

“I have never told you who he is,” said Holmes. “For years past I have continually been conscious of some power behind the malefactor, some deep organizing power which forever stands in the way of the law, and throws its shield over the wrong-doer. It is so cunning and careful that I could find no evidence to trace it back to its source. It was all I could do to deduce its action by putting together traces left behind in cases of the most varying sorts. That was why I have not spoken of it to you until now: I have often wondered whether I was not in fact dreaming the whole thing up. But I persisted, not out of any fidelity to the law but for my own intellectual curiosity, for I was desperate to know what manner of person could be behind such a curious criminal organization, and how they carried out their aims.

“But for all my facilities I found it almost impossible to break through the veil which shrouded this organization. There must be some power moving at the center, and yet all my investigations led me to were coincidences and happenstance. It was as if there was a black hole at the center of London, and no matter how carefully I followed each thread it inevitably was swallowed up into this yawning void. No matter how carefully I peered, no light could escape to reveal the figure hidden within. It was only last fall that I was able to seize my thread and follow it until it led to the heart of the mystery: Professor Moriarty.”

“You mean to tell me that Professor Moriarty is the head of this criminal organization?”

“That is exactly what I mean.”

“Impossible! He’s just a retired mathematician.”

“That is the common impression. In the first place few have ever heard of him, and that is what is most shocking of all. Until I spoke to Inspector Lestrade, he had never appeared on the desks of Scotland Yard, and if not for my unravelling of the web that would most certainly have continued to be the case. Dozens of unsolved cases would have languished in perpetuity.

“I still find it difficult to believe myself that half of the evil that is committed in this great city could be organized by one man. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web which radiates out into every corner of London. He does little himself, only plans in the study of his residence in Pall Mall, and sends forth his agents, which are numerous, to carry out his designs. Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, a man to be removed―whatever he concocts, his agents swiftly put into motion. But they are only pawns: the only one who understands and controls the totality is Processor Moriarty.

“You see, to the professor, humanity itself is calculable. He manipulates men as though they are factors in an equation. That is how he can so tightly control his organization. It moves like a well-oiled machine, or perhaps a sinuous creature, to carry out his crimes. He created it without assistance from any other. It fills me with a dread to behold it. There has never been a criminal like him, and I doubt there will be one after. He is the immovable constant: we are merely marionettes, and he is pulling the strings.”

Holmes’s words elicited a kind of horror in me. I remember what Mrs. Hudson had said, back in Baker Street: Mr. Holmes is obsessed with the case.

“It almost sounds as though you admire the man,” I remarked.

“I have at last found an opponent who deserves and requires every ounce of my attention,” chuckled Holmes. “He is the Napoleon of crime. It is only right that I give such an extraordinary antagonist his proper due.”

For the last six months Holmes had been straining to the utmost to bring Professor Moriarty into the arms of the law. He had secured the cooperation of Scotland Yard and was now drawing his toils around the mastermind.

“He is hot on my scent, now that he senses the net closing on him. You know of the bombing at Baker Street?”

“I visited just this afternoon. It was a horrible sight.”

“I feel terribly for Mrs. Hudson. I have gone to ground for the last two weeks, and you see Moriarty’s pique at his failure to unearth me. I had considered getting away to the Continent until the police were able to act, but that is out of the question now.”

“Why is that?”

“Because of you, my dear Watson,” said Sherlock Holmes. “Moriarty has set his sights on you.”

　　　　　　　◯

“They have been watching you day and night,” Holmes continued. “What other purpose could Professor Moriarty’s frequent visits serve? Madame Richborough, Cartwright, that spirit medium Rachel: they are all of them lackeys of the professor. Madame Richborough invited you for a seance tonight, did she not?”

“How could you know that?”

“An elementary deduction,” said he. “They belong to a gang which uses the facade of spiritualism to defraud and manipulate, with the yield offered up in tribute to Moriarty’s operation. I have no doubt that everything that happened there tonight was the product of careful premeditation. Mary’s spirit appeared, I presume?”

“You mean it was all a trick?”

“Did you seriously believe that the spirit of Mary had descended upon you?” said Holmes, taking me on the arm and shaking me. “Get yourself together, Watson. With a little preparation anyone could make a fraudulent imitation of her. You are tormented by guilt at her death, and so they staged a seance in order to seize your weakness. As for their purpose, it is of course because you were formerly my partner. Professor Moriarty understands only too well what led to our parting of the ways, and he seeks to use your grief and rage as a weapon against me. That is how he operates.”

Holmes got up and tossed his cigar-end into the fireplace, then leaned back against the mantelpiece and bowed his head. He looked exhausted.

The lamp flickered in the slight breeze which came in through the window.

“I know of the grudge which you carry toward me,” said Holmes quietly. “Why else would you write The Triumphant Return of Sherlock Holmes?”

At his words my eyes moved toward the desk by the window, atop which lay a thick sheaf of papers.

“You’ve read it?” I asked, to which Holmes nodded.

“I’ve stolen in a fair few times to read it,” he replied, rousing himself from the mantelpiece. “It is a strange piece of crime writing which bears almost no resemblance to the crime records you have published before in the pages of the Strand Magazine. It is set in the curious world of Victorian Kyoto, and yet you, me, Mrs. Hudson, Mary, Irene Adler, and even Professor Moriarty play a part in its tale. I was quite keen to know why you would write such a thing, and the more I read the more apparent it became that this was something of another genre entirely wrapped up in the guise of a detective story. Your aim was not to write crime fiction: quite the opposite entirely.”

Holmes returned to settle in his chair.

“You made up this world in order to strip Sherlock Holmes of his powers of detection. As to why he has fallen into his slump: the question is meaningless, for that is the very foundation on which this world is built. The author has decided it must be so, and therefore it is beyond the power of the inhabitants of his creation to alter it. Sherlock Holmes can never have his ‘triumphant return’. As long as Holmes is powerless in this fairy kingdom of Victorian Kyoto, you can live there forevermore with Mary at your side. What say you to this?”

I forgot to breathe as I listened to Holmes lay out his theory. Never before had he read and spoken of my stories before with such intensity. I felt at once vexation that I should be so accused, and yet at the same time the relief of a great burden being lifted from my shoulders. For the first time, it seemed to me that Holmes truly understood me.

“But your aim has not been accomplished,” he said, leaning toward me and resting his elbows on his knees. “No matter how vivid your depiction of Victorian Kyoto, it is merely a product of your inner desires, a way to escape harsh reality. Lay down your pen and raise your eyes from your papers, and you will find that you remain in London. You can breathe life into Mary on the page, but she will never return from the grave. I cannot imagine how painful it must feel. With every word you write the self-deception must become more unbearable. You cherish this fantasy world you have created, and yet you loathe it at the same time. All your hate is poured into the Musgraves’ Chamber of the East of the East, that irrational plot device, and it is driving your story surely toward wrack and ruin.”

In amazement I looked around my garret. The writing desk at the window, the worn old dresser, the round table and the simple tea set, the soot-stained fireplace―all the accoutrements which had seemed so dear to me, now seemed in the lamplight like waterlogged cargo washed ashore from a shipwreck. I was amazed I had never realized how suffocating the room was, from the low angled ceiling to the tiny garret window. But that was because for the past six months I had been living in another world. I had shut the window to London, and wandered into a labyrinth of my own devising.

Walking to the desk I picked The Triumphant Return of Sherlock Holmes. Six months of work was represented in this stack of papers. Within lay Victorian Kyoto, 221B Teramachi Street, the gallant flowing Kamo. I recalled an evening walk along the river, and along with it a vision of Mary came to me. My wife was clasping my hand, the warm glow of the setting sun on her laughing cheeks as we walked.

Anguish welled up in my breast, hot as tears. So it’s over, I thought to myself. I would never be able to return to that city of Kyoto again.

“Come back to Baker Street, Watson,” said Holmes. “Let us begin anew, you and I. This will be the triumphant return of John H. Watson.”