“Your theological ideas, you mean?”
Our visitor looked at Holmes sharply. “Why do you assume that?”
For once I didn’t wait for Holmes to elucidate, for surely the reason for the comment was obvious. “You said you were a clergyman, Mr. Beagle,” I said.
“Ah, not precisely, though I can see how I might have misled you on that point. My living arrangements and relationship to the community are somewhat like those of a country parson, but I am not a member of the clergy, though at one time in my life it was intended that I should be.”
“In any event,” I went on, “if you have been invited to a social occasion that for whatever reason is not to your liking, why not simply decline the invitation?”
“I wish it were that simple,” our visitor lamented. “As you can see, I am an old man. I have arrived at an age at which the impulse to take on new studies or new projects is tempered by the knowledge that I might not be able to finish them. In so many ways, my life is as wonderful as it could be—I have all the joys brought by family, financial comfort, and intellectual stimulation. Even my health, worrisome my whole life, has enjoyed an unlikely improvement. But still the accumulation of years weighs upon me. Death, if not quite a friend, is a frequently encountered acquaintance, nodded to on a city street, seen from the corner of my eye on public conveyances, glancing over my shoulder even as I take a daily walk on the grounds of my own home. Sometimes I feel that I would welcome death, but I don’t relish having life taken from me prematurely by the hand of another. And it may well be that Lamburt LeSue, whoever he is, would like to end my life prematurely, that I am being lured there only to be killed.”
“Then why go, Mr. Beagle?” I demanded, becoming impatient. I was so intrigued by our visitor’s exasperating reticence that I scarcely noticed Holmes’s uncharacteristic silence.
“To get back something that belongs to me. A piece of jewelry, to be precise. A stock pin that was given to me by a ship’s captain in commemoration of a journey I once took. It was a completely unique piece. I wore it proudly for many years. Then it vanished, stolen from me, I am grieved to say, in a room full of respectable, distinguished scholars. I had resigned myself to never seeing this stock pin again. But now I want it back. The person who issued this invitation claims to have it.”
Holmes spoke at last. “I believe your best course of action, Mr. Beagle, would be to convey your acceptance of the invitation but not to attend.”
“If I don’t attend, Mr. Holmes, how can I retrieve the property that is mine?”
“Leave that to me. Send word to your host that you will be there, and hie yourself back to Kent with your good wife to enjoy Christmas with your rather large family.”
“I made no reference to the size of my family,” our guest said with a faint smile.
“You have told us very little but more than enough. Forgive the impertinence, but if you were to accept the invitation and then not attend, it would be consistent with some other major events of your life, would it not?”
Our visitor seemed uncertain whether to be offended or amused. He chose the latter reaction. “I suppose you could say so. But you must understand, Mr. Holmes, often my intentions have been the best, but my body has let me down. It is true I am not at best ease in large gatherings. And the fact that something of value was stolen from me on one of the rare occasions I attended a mass meeting of persons in my field of endeavor might be enough to influence a man to stay away from crowds. But to be more specific to the point I believe you are making, it was the state of my health and not cowardice that caused me to miss that meeting at Oxford in 1860.”
“To be sure, to be sure,” Holmes agreed. “And Professor Huxley proved a more than adequate stand-in, did he not?”
By this point, I felt myself the object of some sort of game, as Holmes and Beagle airily alluded to matters of which I was ignorant, waiting to see how long it would take me to interpret their conversation. But any person with an awareness of science and public affairs in the England of 1881 would by this time have been afforded enough clues to know the true name of our visitor before Holmes finally deigned to utter it. For once, I was determined to rob Holmes of his dramatic gesture.
“Mr. Beagle,” I said, “your theory that music preceded speech in human development is one that Mr. Holmes and I have discussed with interest.”
“Yes, yes,” he said, “I’m gratified. But I can no longer take the pleasure in music I once did. Nor art nor poetry. Though I hear my wife’s reading of popular romances with pleasure, great literature has closed its pages to me. It is one of the sadnesses of my life.”
“I fear the demands of the clock preclude any more aesthetic discussion,” Holmes said, somewhat acerbically. “What was the design of this missing stock pin, Professor Darwin?”
Fascinating as it was to listen to an extended conversation between two of the great minds of the nineteenth century, the rest of that conference in Baker Street was only prelude to the real drama of the case. An hour after his arrival, Charles Darwin, author of The Origin of Species and one of the most controversial figures in Victorian England, was on his way again. Much information had been exchanged and elaborate plans made, plans which Holmes and I had pledged to carry out. Surely time was of the essence, but when the great scientist had left, Holmes could not resist the opportunity to demonstrate his brilliance yet again.
“Tell me, Watson, exactly when did you guess our distinguished client’s identity?”
“It was more than a guess, Holmes, and I must tell you it was well before you called him by name.”
“Why, of course, my dear fellow. I was certain of that.”
“There were several indicators,” I said. “The reference to a country home in Kent, to early aspirations to join the clergy, to controversial views, to a large family. And of course, when he mentioned an 1860 meeting at Oxford and you made reference to the arguments of Professor Thomas Henry Huxley, I knew this bearded savant could be only one man, Charles Darwin. And when did you know the truth, Holmes?” I added, proud of my deductions but fully expecting to hear that he had been a jump or two ahead of me.
“As soon as he climbed out of his hansom, Watson.”
“Then you had prior knowledge.”
“My dear fellow, you cut me to the quick! I knew nothing of our client beyond the name he gave. The name alone was enough for a hypothesis, for was not the Beagle the ship on which Darwin made his historic five-year voyage? The sight of the white beard and our client’s apparent advanced age were enough for hypothesis to become theory. The several pointers you mentioned served only to verify the theory. Now then, Watson, why are we wasting time? There is much to be done and precious few hours in which to do it.”
I may have grumbled somewhat testily about my awareness of the urgency, but Holmes did not hear me.
Over our years of friendship, I have seen Sherlock Holmes in many disguises. As readers of my accounts know, some of these impersonations were elaborate enough even to fool me. In the Darwin affair, however, I was in on the impersonation from the beginning. I watched in admiration as Holmes subtly aged himself, donned a white beard, and altered his carriage to suggest advanced years. Before we left Baker Street to fulfill Professor Darwin’s social engagement, I expressed my frank amazement.
“It should suffice, Watson,” Holmes said, “if, as we have been led to understand, his host does not know Darwin intimately.”
Clearly, Darwin was expected to come alone to the scheduled meeting. But shortly before the appointed time, I visited The Highwayman’s Rest pub. It was another bitterly cold evening. The pub’s sign, depicting the figure of a masked highwayman on horseback under crossed pistols, swayed in the wind. After peering through the round bottle-glass windows at the distorted figures within for a moment, I entered the welcome warmth of the main room, where the glow of the fire glittered off the brass fittings. Holmes had assured me The Highwayman’s Rest was an establishment where any service or favour cou
ld be had for the right price. He had also provided the name of an employee who would help me if I mentioned the name Sherlock Holmes and showed a palm full of coin. While the establishment had a wealth of small, low-ceilinged rooms that afforded privacy for the various activities of its customers, the phrase “the private room” apparently referred to one in particular. I was shown there and advised where I could conceal myself, firearm at the ready, to listen to the conversation between the ersatz Darwin and the mysterious Lamburt LeSue.
When Holmes, in his Darwinian disguise, arrived at the pub, he was shown into the private room by the same door through which I had entered. I was already waiting behind a rarely-used standing screen. Its apparent purpose was to make the private room even more private when such was requested.
Lamburt LeSue, if indeed it was he who swept dramatically into the room from a rear door a few moments later, cut a remarkable figure. The figure he cut, to be precise, belonged to the traditional Father Christmas, including red suit and white beard, the latter even fuller and much more obviously false than that worn by his prey.
“Happy Christmas!” he roared with manic joviality. “Is this the gift you had hoped for, Professor Darwin?”
The bizarre figure passed to Holmes a small object, presumably the stock pin. Holmes examined it closely to see if it was consistent with the description Darwin had given us. Apparently it indeed contained an insect from Galapagos preserved in amber. He nodded his head.
“It is, sir. I am grateful to you. May I extend my thanks and compliments of the season.”
“And does it bring back memories of that historic voyage on which your wonderful brain single-handedly created what has come to be called Darwin’s Theory of Evolution?” Father Christmas inquired.
“No, Mr. LeSue, if that is your name, it does not. My work in the field of evolutionary theory took many years after the completion of the voyage of the Beagle, and I have never claimed it was mine alone.”
“Have you not? My mistake!”
“Might I ask how this pin came into your possession, Mr. LeSue?”
“I did not steal it, if that is what you are wondering. In fact, it was given to me by the man who stole it from you. Professor Isaiah Corcoran. You remember him I am sure?”
“I do indeed,” Holmes said. “But as a great scientist, not as a thief.”
Father Christmas snorted. “Our experience differs. I know him as a thief. I know him only as a thief. I was his student, you see, his assistant for a time, and a discovery I made while working for him, the identification of a rare specimen that would have made my scientific reputation, he published under his own name. The senior researcher’s prerogative, I was told. Odd the excuses we make to justify outright thievery. He showed me your stock pin one day, and I knew it could not have come into his hands by legitimate means. He made me a gift of it, an uncharacteristic burst of generosity designed I suppose to make me happier with my lack of credit on a great discovery. I at first determined to give it back to you.”
“Which you have done, sir, and I have offered my thanks. Now, if you will excuse me, Mrs. Darwin is waiting, and—”
“No.”
“I may not leave?”
“No. As I thought it over, I came to realize how much you, Professor Darwin, symbolized the kind of scientific dishonesty of which I had been the victim. And I realized that my fortuitous possession of the stock pin gave me an opportunity to do a much greater service to mankind than simply to return stolen property. For, you see, some kinds of stolen property cannot be returned. A man’s good name, a scientist’s reputation, these cannot be returned.”
“And what exactly is your name, Father Christmas? Not, I dare to venture, Lamburt LeSue.”
“You are correct.”
“And it seems doubtful to me you are known as the even more unlikely cognomens Merwin A. Drauss or Mark Caljane.”
“There’s a tidy puzzle for you in those names, but you aren’t going to have time to solve it.”
“I’ve solved it already. They’re anagrams. What else could they be?”
“How astute of you. But now I shall at last have my revenge on you, Professor Darwin!”
“What, might I ask, have I done to you?”
“What have you done to me? Better to ask, what have you done to science? And what you do to science, you do to every scientist. If you’ve solved my anagrams, you should know what I mean.”
“I fear I do not.”
“Oh, never fear, Professor Darwin, I shall tell you in detail. This pub is noted for its thick walls, discretion, and other services not on the menu. No one will interrupt us. No one will hear us. There is no need to hurry. I can play with you as a cat plays with a mouse.”
“If the cat plays too long, the mouse sometimes escapes.”
“Rarely, very rarely, and not in this case.” Father Christmas laughed nastily. “A friend once asked me, ‘Does Darwin keep Christmas, do you think?’ And I said after a few moments’ thought, ‘I should think so. Even if he is an atheist.’”
“I am no atheist,” Holmes insisted, a statement consistent with Darwin’s public posture.
“ ‘Whatever his beliefs,’ I said to my friend, ‘he has a large family and he grew to manhood in a religious tradition, was even intended for the ministry at one time, thinks of his house as a country parsonage. I expect he keeps Christmas, for the children’s sake at least.’ Then I thought, when I have my revenge on Darwin, when I strike my great blow for truth and reason, why not choose the Yuletide season when I may give a gift to the community of science, on behalf of all honest researchers, all who believe in giving and taking credit only where it is due?
“I come before you in the name of Erasmus Darwin, your grandfather and namesake to whose ideas about evolution you added nothing. I come to you in the name of Jean Lamarck, another whose researches you plundered and claimed for your own. I come to you in the name of Alfred Russel Wallace, poor deluded man, who did the real original thinking, who had the real new theory, but who through the sleight of hand of you and your cronies Lyell and Hooker was denied it.”
“That’s not so.” Holmes could scarcely have sounded more indignant if his own character had been sullied. “Wallace received full credit. Our papers on species were read together before the Linnean Society.”
“Read together, oh, yes, read together, as if a collaboration. But the real original theory was his, not yours. It was Wallace who solved the problem of divergence, Wallace who determined how it is that many different species could have sprung from the same original source, but he could not be allowed to receive his proper credit. You had to be first. So Lyell and Hooker conspired with you to assure that Wallace would be relegated to the backwater of scientific annals.”
“We were in constant communication with Wallace. He was consulted at every point.”
“Consulted! He was off on his travels, gathering samples, doing the real work of the naturalist and had no one in England to watch out for his interests. So it is in the name of Wallace more than any that I take my revenge today.”
“It is true we are alone here,” Holmes said. “That does not mean, however, that no one knew I was coming here today. If you kill me, it will be known who arranged for my presence here. And surely the proprietor of this pub, wink though he may at prostitution and other forms of vice, cannot be guaranteed to keep silent where murder is concerned. You will have no hope of escaping arrest, imprisonment, and hanging.”
Father Christmas laughed again. “There are ways of escaping beyond the reach of locomotives or clipper ships or courtrooms. And in any event, why should I care? I will have completed my great work. My mission will be finished.”
The bearded figure moved menacingly forward, drawing what looked like a dagger from his broad black belt. Now must be the time. I leapt from behind the screen and rode the miscreant to the floor. My inclination would have been to move sooner, but Holmes had made me promise to hear the potential murderer out before I brought
him down.
Holmes retrieved the stock pin before we stormed back into the pub’s main room and insisted that Scotland Yard be called in to deal with the assailant.
The man in the garb of Father Christmas was eventually identified as Edgar Gamble, a former research scientist with a history of mental disorder. The account of the affair Holmes and I provided the police, making no mention of Charles Darwin, was elaborately conceived but unimportant to this narrative. Holmes was able to return the stock pin, and Darwin, a very wealthy man, expressed his gratitude handsomely.
Back in Baker Street, a few days before the dawn of 1882, I was still troubled by the affair of the stock pin. “Surely, Holmes, Gamble was a madman.”
“A clever one, however. Cleverer than the thief he once worked for. Isaiah Corcoran’s greatest coup may have been the theft of Darwin’s stock pin. He never published anything of real merit, not even the work he stole from his former assistant. Perhaps my claims for Corcoran as a great scientist helped to loosen Gamble’s tongue.”
“It needed little enough loosening. The same could be said for his wits.”
“Gamble had a gift for anagrams, though.”
I snorted. “A rather silly game. Merwin A. Drauss. Erasmus Darwin. Mark Caljane. Jean Lamarck. How long do you think it took the fellow to think those up?”
“You forgot the principal one. Lamburt LeSue for Samuel Butler.” Butler, the novelist and journalist best known for the novel Erewhon, had virtually accused Darwin of plagiarizing his own grandfather and been pointedly ignored by Darwin and his family and friends. Butler had apparently been one of the main inspirations in Gamble’s plan of revenge.
“But he was a madman, Holmes. The magnitude of conspiracy he envisioned leaves us no other conclusion. To imply that scientists of the stature of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker and Sir Charles Lyell should conspire to rob a fellow scientist of his due credit is nothing short of unthinkable.”
More Holmes for the Holidays Page 18
