George Mann - Associates of Sherlock Holmes

Bystanders reported this noisy malefactor to be crouched over and almost barking in the manner of an animal. It was to considerable surprise, when the culprit was eventually run to ground, that the gentleman in question was discovered to be aged indeed, more than seventy and at least the threefold senior of his young quarry. Police were summoned (here we may imagine the disquiet of several present) and the amateur arsonist arrested. In such unexpected ways are the commonplace assumptions of our society upended and overturned.

Sent: 10th January 1913

From: Panjandrum

To: Detective Inspector Arnold Blakely, Scotland Yard

Understand you have our man Presbury in custody. Professor part of larger design. Please release forthwith without charge. Your brother on the square, Panjandrum

Dear Professor Presbury,

I regret to inform you that certain recent conduct upon your part has been brought to our attention and that, in consequence, we must request your departure from this establishment by six o’clock tomorrow. You will understand that we have the reputation of this hotel to consider at all times and we cannot be seen to indulge or tolerate (let alone condone) such behaviour.

I understand, sir that you were once a gentleman and so I should be most grateful for your total and discreet acquiescence in this matter.

Yours, with regret,

There is much of the past few days which is now to me both murky and obscure. There are in that time elements which possess a quality of the oneiric, and others which I believe I can see in the crisp, cold light of day, to have been largely shameful. There is much that I have no desire to record here. That peculiar and unexpected incident which has just occurred, however, I surely have no choice but to set down.

Following a most unsatisfactory interview with the wearingly small-minded manager of this otherwise pleasant hotel in which he refused altogether to weaken his resolve or to consider any alternative course of action than that to which he is committed, I returned to my room in order to pack together my belongings and so prepare for my departure.

When I opened the door, however, it was to discover within a gentleman sat upon a chair, observing my entry with a look of something like watchful disapproval. We had met on only a handful of occasions, a decade past, during a period of my life much befogged and dimmed, yet did I recognise him at once, for this man’s fame precedes him as a mourner goes before a hearse.

As I crossed the floor he rose to his feet and extended his right hand. With his left, he smoothed his moustache, a brisk gesture which nonetheless, at least to the trained eye, betokened anxiety and even mild disquiet.

“Dr Watson?” I said. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“You remember me, then?” His voice was full of that bullish determination to state the obvious which typifies the military mind.

“How could I not?” I replied. “After you and Mr Holmes took so great and uninvited an interest in my affairs?”

“A wholly neutral observer,” began the doctor, “might rather be inclined to suggest that the encounter to which you allude ended with our saving your life.”

“That may be so,” I replied with a forbearance that was, I think, something of a marvel. “Yet our acquaintanceship was a fleeting thing. Might I ask how you have found me and what is the nature of your business here?”

“Locating you, Professor, has not been difficult. One had merely to follow the trail of destruction that you have left in your wake. And as for the nature of my business, let me be quite clear. It is an intervention born of concern and of fellow human feeling. I have come here today to deliver a warning.”

At these words I felt a distinct surge of anger. “Whatever do you mean by such impertinence? Whatever is this absurd warning of yours?”

“I should close the door, Professor,” said he, “and sit before me. We do not have much time and the words I have to say to you now are of the most sensitive and significant kind. Indeed, if you pay proper heed to them, they will yet save your life.”

“Do you take me for a fool, sir?” I began and felt myself ready to tumble again into a paroxysm of righteous rage.

Yet Watson interrupted – “Professor!” – and I saw in his eyes not only absolute sincerity but also (and it was this which persuaded me to stay my words and, almost meekly, obey) something very close to fear.

So it was that I found myself doing as I had been asked and sitting opposite this unwanted visitor as that old storyteller began to speak.

“Let it first be noted that I am here today not on my own behalf but as an emissary from Mr Holmes.”

“Sherlock Holmes,” I breathed, perhaps more in the manner of a villain from the popular stage than I had intended. “It was my understanding that that jackanapes – that meddler-in-chief – had retired. That he drowses now by some Sussex fireside.”

“Your understanding, at least in regards to my friend’s retirement, is correct. Nonetheless…” At this, a smile of an uncharacteristically knowing, even sly, nature crossed my visitor’s face. “It is not Mr Sherlock Holmes who has sent me to speak to you today.”

“No?”

“Rather, I am present on behalf of an equally noble man: Mr Mycroft Holmes.”

I rummaged for a moment through that portion of my mental apparatus that is devoted to trivia before retrieving the necessary fragment of data. “The elder brother, yes? He who is reputed to dwell in the upper reaches of government?”

“Quite so,” said Watson. “Though I fear he is not now nearly as close to the centre of things as once he was. We are none of us – are we – quite as at home in this new century as we were in the last? We are all of us, I think, essentially Victorian.”

“On the contrary,” I said, adopting a pleasingly lofty tone such as I had for many years deployed in the faces of students too unwavering in their convictions, “it is my greatest regret that I was not born very much later. This new age of abandon suits me so very much more nicely than did those stultifying decades in which you thrived.”

“I confess myself surprised, sir, given the unmanly excesses of your biography, that the simple accident of your birthday should prove now to be the greatest of your regrets.”

I glared. “You spoke, I believe, of a warning.”

“I did.”

“Then pray deliver it. My courtesy is not without limit.”

My guest looked at this as though he intended to issue a rejoinder. In the event, he contented himself with the following, rather lugubrious words: “Mycroft cannot be seen to act in this matter. Therefore he must do so at one remove.”

“You are his cat’s paw?”

“Surely something a trifle more benign than that. Nonetheless he wished me to convey to you the extreme danger of your predicament.”

“I am in no danger, sir. My situation is surely the reverse of that state.”

“Professor, nothing is what it seems. The lady whom you know as Lowenstein has no true claim upon the name. Rather she is an agent of the War Office. She is employed as a singular agent for those extraordinary projects which have, given the present European situation, been granted tacit authority.”

I shook my head at the absurdity of it all. “You have spent too long in the pages of your own books. Such things do not happen in real life. Why should the lady lie to me in so bald a fashion? What possible interest would that office have in me? Besides, I find your pessimism concerning our continental relations to be positively dispiriting.”