Donald Thomas - Sherlock Holmes and the King’s Evil

I burst out laughing at the apparent absurdity of the suggestion. Holmes remained solemn.

“You cannot take it seriously,” I said, “the notion of the Japanese occupying the Mississippi Valley!”

“What I take seriously, Watson, is that America is strong at sea but weaker on land, as England has been. Such have been both our historic priorities. I take seriously the prospect of a small American peacetime army fighting valiantly, suffering reverses at first, but eventually being victorious. Pending that eventuality, which may be months or years away, I also take seriously the probable triumph of the U-boat campaign, while the Tampico oil wells supply German submarine bases in Mexico. I take seriously the choking of our supply lines by U-boat fleets, stalemate on the Western Front, the Royal Navy starved of fuel oil, immobilised, and a peace treaty leaving Germany with all her European conquests.”

“What a peace!” I said, as if to myself.

“ Belgium would be her puppet state, giving her a seaboard opposite our own shores. France would lose all that she lost in the war of 1871 and more besides. Morocco would be a German colony, opposite Gibraltar. Remember the German gunboat Panther’s seizure of Agadir in the crisis of 1911.”

It was in a sober mood that we abandoned the half-finished puzzle and went to our rooms as the first sounds of the milk-carts and the bread-vans disturbed the early winter morning of the street. In a few hours more we should have enough of the German text before us to compose a report for Sir Reginald Hall.

The contents of the Zimmermann Telegram were released to the world in instalments. At first it seemed that we need not have bothered to decode the message, for Count Bernstorff called at the State Department on the afternoon of 31 January and gave notice to Secretary Lansing that Germany would commence unrestricted sinking on the following day. Bernstorff was handed his passport and ordered to leave for home. Yet Wilson was still the man of peace. “I refuse to believe that it is the intention of the German authorities to do what they have warned us they will feel at liberty to do. Only actual overt acts on their part can make me believe it even now.”

There were to be overt acts in plenty but Holmes had not been wasting his time. In the privacy of his room at the Foreign Office, Arthur Balfour, presented a copy of the infamous telegram to the American Ambassador, Dr Page. Woodrow Wilson, who had striven so long for peace and had hoped that even the U-boat campaign might not mean general war, was aghast at Zimmermann’s audacity. In the cause of peace, the President had put at the disposal of Zimmermann the diplomatic cipher channel of the United States, so that America ’s peace proposals and Germany ’s responses might be confidentially exchanged. The Foreign Office in Berlin had even been allowed to use the channel for coded telegrams to its own embassy in Washington. How this facility had been abused as a means of preparing for war was now plain to see.

Too late, Arthur Zimmermann telegraphed urgently and in plain text to Eckhardt in Mexico City, “Please burn all compromising instructions.”

Woodrow Wilson became as implacable for war as he had been adamant for peace. Yet for weeks afterwards, the Zimmermann Telegram was still described in the United States Senate as being “probably a forgery of the British Secret Service.” Sherlock Holmes was not much given to outbursts of passion. On this occasion, having read of the allegation, he went so far as to crumple the Morning Post and hurl it from the breakfast-table into the grate.

He need not have worried. The American Secret Service had already established that the telegram was indeed sent by Western Union from Bernstorff in Washington to Eckhardt in Mexico City. Worse still, it revealed that Zimmermann had so far violated the decencies of diplomacy as to propose an attack on the very nation which offered peace and the means of friendly negotiation.

Woodrow Wilson’s resolve broke the nerve of those who had been conspiring against him. Zimmermann admitted to the world the bad faith of which he had been guilty in sending the famous-or infamous-message to Count Bernstorff. Three American ships were sunk without warning on 18 March and President Wilson declared war on 6 April. President Carranza quickly denied any intention of offering Germany submarine bases or a military alliance to attack Texas and New Mexico. Japan, it seemed, had no such intention and Zimmermann was denounced for maligning the Imperial Court by imputing these designs to it.

So badly had events turned out for Zimmermann that he was soon to be dismissed from office. Germany ’s U-boats found that their base and fuel supply at Tampico had proved a will o’ the wisp. The Royal Navy’s oil reserves were secure. In alliance with the United States naval squadrons, it soon had the U-boat wolf-packs by the throat. The outcome of the war was no longer in doubt, only the date of victory.

Sherlock Holmes remained in government harness until the end of hostilities. Yet he was increasingly able to return to his private practice as a consulting detective. The first case of this kind is one that I remember with particular pleasure.

We received a visit from Sir Henry Jones, Laird of Tighnabruaich, whose son was Captain Obidiah Jones, a young Scots officer reported missing, feared dead, in a battle against the Turks. Sir Henry heard no more until he received a postcard from Turkey, written in a hand he did not recognise. It was entirely blank except for the address: “Sir Henry Jones, 184 Kings Road, Tighnabruaich, Scotland.”

As if to celebrate the gentler ways of peace, Holmes had instructed Mrs Hudson that a glass of mid-morning Madeira and slices of seed cake must be provided for our first civilian client. It woke memories of the pre-war world, a far cry from the intellectual austerity of Room 40.

Sir Henry had brought his curious post-card to us in some distress, not knowing what had become of his son. Since there was no message on it, he feared the worst. The curiosity of the address was that his village ofTighnabruaich is a remote collection of a few houses. It is so small that those houses need no numbers and there is certainly no “ Kings Road ” to be found there.

Holmes studied the postcard for a long moment and then looked up.

“I believe you may have every confidence, Sir Henry, that your son is alive and well. He may soon return to his regiment, for he and his company have escaped the enemy pursuit, though they were cut off from their comrades. He is leading his company back, under cover, to their headquarters. Their provisions are spartan but he and his men are so far safe. Indeed, he has been able to smuggle out this message to you.”

There was no mistaking the old man’s delight but he looked at us in the most startled manner, as if afraid to believe what he had been told.

“How on earth, Mr Holmes, can you tell such a thing from that card-which seems to me to bear no message whatever, merely an incorrect address?”

Holmes drew himself upright.

“There you are in error, Sir Henry. You will appreciate that the equipment of the criminal investigator must contain a working knowledge of the world’s great texts, not least those of Classical Languages and Holy Writ. They are frequently employed in forming military codes. It was General Sir Harry Smith-was it not?-who having seized the province of Sind during the Indian wars, communicated this by a message in one word. ‘Peccavi.’ To those with no knowledge of the Latin tongue it must be meaningless. Yet every English schoolboy would know that it is translated as ‘I have sinned.’ You see? The Horse Guards understood at once that Sind was in our power.”