The Finality Problem

by G. S. Denning

  “Who’s Charlie?” Holmes wondered.

  “His friend. They were down having a drink at that pub over there, I think. Well, Charlie got a look at me and said, ‘Bloody hell! Best one ever!’ and threw me a shilling. I begged him to help me. He said he was trying to and threw down another shilling and a handful of coppers. By this time, my cries had attracted the attention of some of the other locals, who gathered round and agreed I was deeply unfortunate and the best beggar they’d ever seen. I kept asking for aid and they kept throwing pennies and half pennies. It went on like that for almost an hour. Finally, I realized I was to have no help at all. What should I do? I went back down in the alley to see if I could come to understand what had afflicted me so. I didn’t think to bring the coins with me, but one of the more caring locals gathered them all up and put them into my pockets for me before I left. Well, I went back to the smiff—as you call it—and started dragging myself all around it. Such a strange light! I could not say the color. I could hear voices in strange languages, but I could not understand them. Finally, in desperation, I pulled myself back through it in the other direction. The voices came into focus. The secrets made sense. And when I drew myself out the other side, I found my limbs were their right shape again. Not only that, I had made 26s 4d in my accidental career as a beggar.”

  “I know doctors who don’t make that much in an hour,” I said, then recoiled as I realized, “Oh! In fact… I am one.”

  “Now that would make a good article!” said Holmes.

  “And so it did. Of course, I omitted certain details.”

  “Of course,” Holmes conceded.

  “But the article sent shockwaves through London. Why, I thought my career as a journalist was finally taking off!”

  “Yet, it did not,” I pointed out—rather more rudely than I meant to. I gave a little cough of apology.

  Neville St. Clair fixed me with a level stare. “No. It did not. My next article was highly anticipated, but not very well received. Made more of a ripple than a shockwave, I fear. The one after that: not even a ripple. All the sky-high offers from the city’s editors dried up at once. I had no idea what to do! All that was left to me was the glum realization that I could make far more as a beggar than a writer.”

  “Which,” I said to Mrs. St. Clair, “he decided to do.”

  “Well, I had to do something, didn’t I?”

  “And thus, Hugh Boone was borne,” I declared. “For almost two years, Neville St. Clair took the train into the city every morning, arrived at his place of employment—the storage room he rented over The Bar of Gold. There, he would change into his begging rags, climb down the ladder he’d had attached, wander through the smiff and get himself bent into whatever shape he thought might be most lucrative. When he was done begging, it was back into the alley, through the smiff, up the ladder, into his street clothes and home in time for dinner. It might have gone on forever, if not for a strange happenstance: you, Mrs. St. Clair, and the package you needed to pick up at the Aberdeen Shipping Company.”

  “So that was you I saw in the upstairs window,” Mrs. St. Clair cried.

  “Of course it was,” said Neville. “By God, I was horrified! What could I do? I heard you come in downstairs! I knew I had only moments! I stripped off my clothes, tied them up in a bundle, stuffed a bunch of pennies in the pockets to weigh them down, and threw them into the Thames. I had no time to dress. I made it down the ladder in my underpants and through the smiff. I thought, maybe with enough mud, people would not notice my lack of clothing, though that proved to be the least of my concerns.”

  “Right,” I said. “For how could you know that you were about to be discovered and blamed for your own murder. Matters must have been complicated, no doubt, by the fact that you’d got yourself so smiffed up that you could not write or speak. You had no power to explain the situation, even to save your life, which was in danger given that your new deformities did not lend themselves to eating or breathing.”

  By way of confirmation, Neville St. Clair merely shrugged and complained, “Please… I’m so hungry!”

  “Ah. Yes. We had better see to that,” I admitted.

  “No,” Lilly St. Clair insisted. “Bath first!”

  Famished though he might be, Neville did not protest. Holmes gave his head a sad shake. “Well, you’ve done it again, Watson. You’ve seen us through the fog. I must say, I feel dashed guilty about that smiff. It’s done its share of mischief, hasn’t it? Grogsson, I’ll need you to get a message to Lestrade. We’ll want him tonight. There’s work to be done. Maybe battle.”

  “Yaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!” Grogsson howled. By which he meant, I think, that he’d like that very much.

  Holmes grimaced. “We’re going to have to clear out a den of mystic-opium zombies, I shouldn’t wonder. And then… I don’t care if I have to buy both buildings and brick up the alley, we have to block off that smiff. I can’t fix it, but I must do my utmost to see it harms no others.”

  “What time shall we meet?” I asked.

  Holmes’s green eyes flicked in my direction. “You will not be involved.”

  “But… it’s my case!”

  “And you have solved it. Thank you. Now go home.”

  “You cannot—”

  “This is exactly the sort of thing we are trying to preserve you from, Watson. Now, go home or I shall do something rather unpleasant that renders you incapable to participate.”

  I stamped my foot at him. “Really, Holmes! You have much to learn of gratitude!”

  Yet his was not the only sense of gratitude that had been tested that day. With a hint of a tear in the corner of her eye and a slew of emotions on her face, Lilly St. Clair took me by the arm.

  “Sir, you have returned my husband to his loving family!” she said.

  I blushed. “Think nothing of it, madam. I was happy to—”

  “And destroyed our livelihood.”

  “Oh…”

  “…”

  “…Yes I have.”

  THE ADVENTURE OF THE LYING DETECTIVE

  HEARING IS ONE OF THE STRANGEST AND MOST INTIMATE of human senses. There are a thousand sounds we know so well that we barely notice them anymore. They may be distasteful, or precious—the call of the local knife-grinder or the whistling of a kettle. Yet even these expected sounds can provide a rapturous wonderment when they occur in an unexpected place. Imagine exploring the depths of an unknown cave and hearing the sudden lowing of a cow in the darkness behind you. Or running for your life down the darkened streets of Whitechapel with a murderer at your heels, only to turn a corner and hear two dozen schoolchildren break clumsily into “Nearer, My God, to Thee”. That’s what it was like, the morning I began “The Adventure of the Lying Detective”. The day the imp assaulted my door.

  Which was not to say it was the first intrusive sound of the morning. That honor went to Mary. One of the side-effects of having turned our house into a center for London’s second-rate artistic community was Mary’s increased frustration at her inability to play piano. She’d had lessons in the past, it seemed, but had never really taken to the instrument the way she’d hoped. Now that she was surrounded with the constant advice of London’s more mediocre breed of music-hall performer, she had become certain that their guidance would lift her to new heights of musical achievement.

  It hadn’t. She was dreadful.

  The worst part was that Mary knew perfectly well how wretched she sounded. This might cause a more demure artist to sequester themselves until they had improved. But no. With Mary this simply meant that anyone who chose to comment on the quality of her playing—or even acknowledge the fact that she was playing—was taking his very life into his hands.

  I was in my overstuffed chair that morning, reading the paper, hating my existence, and doing my absolute utmost to ignore her latest musical onslaught. As I sat there, grinding my teeth to powder, a second noise broke forth. It might have easily been mistaken for a knock upon our door.

 
; But it wasn’t. It was too strident. Too insistent. Too angry. Too close to the ground. Yet the most remarkable thing about it was the familiarity. Oh, how many times had I heard that exact sound, with that exact cadence? Never here, of course. No, I never expected to hear it here. I dropped my paper to my lap and spluttered, “Good Lord, that sounds exactly like Mrs. Hudson!”

  “Raaaargh!” Mary replied, in response to my intrusion. An instant later, one of our heavy silver candlesticks came flying just past my face, spattering a few drops of tallow across my shoulder. I suppose I should have been furious, but I wasn’t. I was transfixed. Whatever could this well-known sound be doing so far from its proper place? Ignoring Mary’s latest attempt at casual mariticide, I rose as if from a dream and hastened towards our front door.

  As I neared, I became evermore certain. This was not knocking. This was kicking. Just kicking and kicking and kicking! Oh, how I had dreaded that noise in my happy past. And yet, how many times had it heralded the beginning of an adventure, the like of which I craved so terribly? I raced forward with a hopeful heart. Chives was just arriving, a gruff expression on his gourd-y little face, as if he had a thing or two to say to whoever would treat my door in this indecorous manner. I reached him just in time and gently pushed him back, as if to say, “No, no. You mustn’t. This is not an indignity; it is a thing of wonder!”

  Eagerly, and yet still disbelieving, I pulled the door open and asked, “Mrs. Hudson? Is that you?”

  There she stood.

  Her only concession to the idea of “going out” had been to don a little hat. Other than that, she stood in her usual dress—a battered pink dressing gown and house slippers. Oh, how happy she looked, that I had chosen to answer my door in person. After all, she was holding on to a message designed to hurt my feelings. Its force might be lessened if delivered secondhand, mightn’t it? And certainly she would miss her chance to enjoy the moment. Eyes twinkling with delight and malice, she released her arrow.

  “He’s dying.”

  * * *

  What a strange journey it was to Baker Street. Strangely… hopeful. Yes, Mrs. Hudson was of the opinion that Holmes had only hours left upon this world. She gleefully opined that he must be in terrible pain and wondered what her life would be like when she was at last free of her burdensome lodger. She was glad Holmes had summoned me. Not because I could help, of course, but because I would be able to see the fruits of a life misspent in that peculiar fashion Holmes and I had pioneered.

  I believed her for not one second. Because—well, you’ve read something of my adventures—what could possibly kill Holmes? The idea had become preposterous to me. How many times had I seen him drink mercury, strychnine, cyanide, lye or bleach? I’d seen him clawed by a demon. Dropped from a great height. Impaled through both legs. Grogsson-punched. Burned by demonic flame. Why, I myself had shot him twice through the heart, and what was the result?

  No, something else was occurring. I wasn’t sure what, but I was eager to discover it. Why, with an implicit invitation from Holmes and the accompaniment of Mrs. Hudson, I had every expectation of finally making it back into the mystically shrouded confines of 221B. By God, why hadn’t I thought of it before? The only times I had ever known Holmes’s magical defenses to be breached, the culprit had been in Hudson’s company. I should have lured her out before now and used her to effect an infiltration.

  But never mind. I was there now. Oh, how my heart raced when we turned the corner on to Baker Street and I realized I could see my own familiar door! The moment the cab stopped, I sprang out with a cry of triumph and ran to the stoop. Mrs. Hudson seemed a bit taken aback by my eagerness to see my old friend die, but nevertheless came and opened the door and invited me in.

  There were the stairs I knew so well. “Sqeee-er-kareeek!” went the third step from the top, as I bounded up. The door to my old rooms yielded as I turned the knob and the familiar smell of my old domicile greeted my nose.

  Well…

  Almost. It seems Holmes—who had never been fastidious as I in his personal habits—had left no small number of half-empty pots of soup about for a bit longer than he ought. If I was of a mind to quaff a cup of truly unappetizing, half-congealed broth, it seemed I would have no shortage of choices. But never mind that; I was home!

  I think the sound of the opening door must have alerted Holmes, for from the depths of his room came an eager, “Watson, is that you?” followed by a plaintive and overly theatrical, “Ohhhh… aahhhhgh… fever! The fever!”

  I was not three steps in and already I could tell Holmes was up to something. Squinting with skepticism, I stepped through the sitting room into the hallway, and looked into Holmes’s room. The first sign I was right lay just beneath his nose; Holmes had once again donned his “brilliant disguise” moustache—the grand two-footer he used whenever he was trying to pass himself off as a common Irish something-ing man. As was his habit whenever he adopted this ruse, he’d knocked three of his teeth out and placed them at the corner of his alchemical workstation, so he would not forget to put them back in later. I could see them sitting right there—in plain view—along with the bloodstained ink blotter, which was the tool he favored for such purpose. He had the gas light turned down very low so the tiniest little tongue of flame was all that lit his chamber. Nevertheless, I could see he had added a number of lumps to his face using modeling clay and had slicked himself with bacon grease to simulate great quantities of sweat.

  Well…

  I could smell he’d slicked himself with bacon grease to simulate great quantities of sweat.

  I ventured a tentative, “Good morning, Warlock.”

  “Oh! Ohhhh! Ah! Watson, is it you? I cannot see, because… the fever! Oh, the fever! And also these spots, and this sweat, and probably a sore throat or something. Plus, I am blabbering on about oysters, so you know my mind’s not right.”

  “Oh? Blabbering on about oysters, are you?”

  “Sure. Watch this: ‘Indeed, I cannot think why the entire bed of the ocean is not one solid mass of oysters, so prolific the creatures seem. And yet, if anyone asks you to name the most seductive, alluring animal you could think of, how unlikely I find it that you would reply, “The oyster, by all means! By god, the lithe and sexy oyster!”’”

  “Well, I can certainly state your mind isn’t right,” I assured him.

  “Good, remember that!” he instructed me. “Also, it is of paramount importance that you convey to anybody who asks that it is my opinion that whatever ails me is a tropical disease of Chinese provenance, contracted due to my proximity with dock workers.”

  “Despite the fact that China is sub-tropical or temperate?”

  “Hush, Watson! Anyone who asks must be told it’s an unknown dread disease of the Chinese tropics!”

  “And we expect someone to ask, do we?”

  “Oh, I’ve been so clever, Watson!”

  “Indeed?”

  “Indeed!”

  He threw both hands up to his lips, fiddling his fingertips together and smiling in pleasure. He was lost in his own thoughts and delighted at his own cunning nature, so after a few moments’ silence, I mentioned, “Mrs. Hudson says you’re dying.”

  “What? Oh! Yes, most probably.”

  “I suppose I’d better examine you, then.”

  Yet I’d made it no more than a step nearer to him before he threw up his arms and cried, “Hey! No, no, no! Keep away from me!”

  “So… fearing that you may be dying, you summoned a doctor to not examine you?”

  “Summon you? I did no such thing.”

  “Then why do we suppose Mrs. Hudson showed up at my door?”

  Holmes gave a wounded sniff. “Because one of her oldest and dearest friends lay at the very brink of death and she was naturally concerned.”

  “Hmmm. Yes. Sounds exactly like her,” I said, rolling my eyes as hard as I could. “And yet, do you know something strange? I cannot recall ever giving her my new address. In fact, I quite recall purpo
sely omitting to give her my new address.”

  “Oh, I may have mentioned it to her,” Holmes scoffed.

  “When you sent her out to fetch me?”

  “Exactly. Damn!”

  “What’s going on, Holmes?”

  Yet the infuriating fellow refused to concede that I had caught him in a lie. He lay there silently, arms crossed over his chest with an expression of cold fury caused, no doubt, by the fact this encounter was not going as well as he’d planned.

  “All right. I’m going to examine you.”

  “No, I said!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because this malady is deadly contagious, Watson. By touch! Yes, by touch. Or even by looking too closely! So don’t!”

  “That is a specious argument, Holmes. It would not stop me from rendering aid to a stranger, much less so old and dear a friend.”

  For just a moment, his expression flickered, as if his resolve were softening. Yet, in the next instant his face hardened and he spat, “Well, facts are facts, Watson, and, after all, you are only a general practitioner with very limited experience and mediocre qualifications. It is painful for me to say such things, but you leave me no choice.”

  “Oh?”

  “No choice at all! So sorry to say it, old man, but I need specialized care!”

  I smiled. “Fortunately for you, Holmes, I am acquainted with the famous Dr. Ainstree, the world’s foremost authority on tropical diseases. He is in town. I think I might persuade him to come to you.”

  “What? No. I don’t want him.”

  “You don’t want the world’s foremost authority?”