The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories

by Otto Penzler

  “Then what will you do?” I asked, handing back to him the sheet of paper.

  “I shall pray, Watson. Not for a miracle—merely for an opportunity to demonstrate to Professor Bertillon the error of his methods in graphology and identification alike. There is a battle to be fought and won for Captain Dreyfus but it must be fought at the right time and in the right place.”

  During the next few weeks our Baker Street quarters were exchanged for two bedrooms and a sitting-room at the Hôtel Lutétia in the Boulevard Raspail. It was an area of business and bustle, having more in common with the nearby railway terminus of the Gare Montparnasse than with the bohemian society of poets and artists which the name of that district more often suggests. The Hôtel Lutétia rose like the hull of an ocean liner above a quayside in this commercial avenue of tall houses with their grey mansard roofs, their elegant windows and balconies set in pale tide-washed stone. In front of many a grander building, a handsome porte-cochère entrance remained. Yet the days of Second Empire quiet had gone. As afternoon drew on, the winter sun threw up a dusty light from the constant traffic.

  I was not present at the private discussions between Holmes and Professor Bertillon, which were concluded in a day or two. In truth, there was little to discuss so long as the two men remained immoveable. The silver nitrate, the iodine fumes, the special camera, were mere toys in Bertillon’s view. To make matters worse, a further hostility arose in general conversation when the professor repeated his view that the incriminating message of 1894 to the German Military Attaché was written in the hand of Captain Dreyfus. The first day’s meeting ended with ill temper on both sides. Next morning Bertillon returned to the debate over scientific detection, insisting that fingerprints might be disfigured or erased, or even prevented by the wearing of gloves. They were no substitute for the measurement of criminal heads, where counterfeiting was an impossibility. With that, he indicated that his exchange of views with his English visitor was at an end. Holmes returned from the Préfecture de Police in a filthy temper, his vanity bruised, and his appetite for battle with the French anthropologist all the keener. I could not help thinking—though I judged it best not to say so at the time—that the sooner we returned to Baker Street, the better.

  I had begun to look forward to our return and was already picturing myself among the comforts of home, when I heard my companion in the lobby of the hotel, informing the manager that we should require our rooms for at least another fortnight.

  “But why?” I demanded, as soon as we were alone.

  “Because, Watson, an innocent man is condemned to suffer the nightmare of Devil’s Island until he drops dead from exhaustion or the brutality of the regime. Bertillon, the one expert whose word might yet save him, refuses to say that word. As it happens, he also rejects, unexamined, the only infallible method of criminal identification upon which others have lavished years of toil. I do not greatly care for Alphonse Bertillon. I swear to you that these two issues may yet become a personal matter between us.”

  “For God’s sake, Holmes! You cannot fight a duel with the head of a French police bureau!”

  “In my own way, Watson, that is just what I propose to do.”

  After so much bluster, as I thought it, Holmes became inexplicably a pattern of idleness. So much for his threats against Professor Bertillon! Like a man who feels that the best of life is behind him, he began to describe our visit to Paris as a chance that “might not come again.” Yet I could not believe that it was some premonition of mortality that determined him to spend two or three weeks longer in the city. More probably it was his usual mode of life, in which he alternated between intense periods of obsessional activity—when he would sleep little and eat less—and weeks when he seemed to do little more than stare from his armchair at the sky beyond the window, without a thought in his head.

  The indolence that came upon him now was not quite of the usual sort. He tasted something of bohemian café society at the Closerie des Lilas with its trees and its statue of Marshal Ney. He spent an entire day reading the icy tombstones of Montparnasse cemetery, as he was to do next day at Père Lachaise. For the most part, we walked the cold streets and parks as we had never done in any other city.

  A frosty morning was our time for the tree-lined vista of the Avenue de la Grande Armée, the lakes and woods of the Bois de Boulogne extending before us in a chill mist. Down the wide thoroughfare, the closed carriages of fashionable society rattled on frozen cobbles. The shrubbery gardens of the adjacent mansions lay silent and crisp beyond the snowcaps of tall wrought-iron railings.

  “My dear Holmes,” I said that evening, “it is surely better that we should go our separate ways for a little. There is no purpose in our remaining longer in Paris. At least, there is no purpose for me. Let me return to London and attend to business there. You may stay here and follow when you think the time is right. There can be no use in both of us remaining.”

  “Oh, yes, Watson,” he said quietly, “there is the greatest use in the world. It will require us both, of that I am sure.”

  “May I know what the use is?”

  “The question cannot be pressed,” he said vaguely. “The purpose must mature in its own time.”

  It matured at a snail’s pace, as it seemed to me, for almost a week. During those days our morning rambles now took us through the red revolutionary arrondissements of the north-east. We crossed the little footbridges of the Canal Saint-Martin. Holmes studied the sidings and marshalling-yards of Aubervilliers with the rapt attention that other visitors might give to the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. A late sun of the winter morning rose like a red ball through the mist across the heroic distance of the Place de la République, where the statue of Marianne stands like a towering Amazon protecting the booths and shooting galleries. By evening we were in the wide lamplit spaces of the Place de la Concorde, the tall slate roofs of the Quai d’Orsay rising through a thin river mist on the far bank.

  Five days passed in this manner, as if Holmes were mapping the city in his head, noting the alleys, culs-de-sac, escape routes, and short cuts. That evening, there were footsteps on the stairs. At the door of our rooms, there appeared briefly and dimly a visitor who brought an envelope of discreet and expensive design with the gold initials “RF” interwoven. Holmes read the contents but said nothing.

  Next morning, he came from his room in a costume more bizarre than any of his disguises as a tramp or a Lascar seaman. He was wearing the black swallow-tailed coat and white tie of court dress. Before I could ask what the devil this meant, there was a discreet tap at the door and our visitor of the previous evening reappeared, now similarly attired in formal dress. I caught a murmured exchange and the newcomer twice used the form of “Monsieur le Président,” when indicating that time pressed. Holmes accompanied him without a word. I turned to the window and saw them enter a closed carriage, its black coachwork immaculately polished but without a single crest or other emblem to indicate its origins. I could only suppose it was for this summons that Holmes had been waiting while we walked the streets of Paris.

  III

  In the hours that passed before I saw him again, I no longer doubted that the “purpose” of our visit was working itself out. Holmes had used his influence, the Order of the Legion of Honour, as well as the reputation of a man who had rid Paris of the Boulevard Assassin, to obtain an audience with President Faure. The intention could only be to convince Félix Faure that Captain Dreyfus was no traitor and that the letter sent to Colonel Schwartzkoppen, the Military Attaché, would be shown on scientific examination to be the work of another hand.

  It was late in the afternoon when my companion returned. He knew as well as I that there was no need for an explanation of his absence. He stood in the sitting-room of the hotel suite, a familiar figure in the unfamiliarity of his formal costume.

  “Your patience may be rewarded, Watson,” he said with the quick movement of his mouth, which was sometimes a smile and sometimes a nervous quirk, “I h
ave put our case to President Faure.”

  “Our case?”

  He smiled more easily. “Very well, then, the case of Alfred Dreyfus. The matter of the handwriting. We have, I believe, a chance to vanquish Professor Bertillon on both fronts. Who knows? If we succeed in this, there may be a path to victory over him in other matters. I have struck a bargain with Félix Faure. The evidence against Dreyfus will be reviewed. Indeed, though he still thinks the man guilty, in all probability, he has not set his face against a retrial.”

  “Then you have succeeded?” I asked the question because, to anyone who had known him for a length of time, it was evident that Holmes was holding back some unwelcome detail.

  “Not quite,” he said, another nervous movement plucking at his mouth. “I fear, Watson, you will not like our side of the bargain. We are to remain in Paris for a few more months.”

  “Months! What the devil for?”

  “That, my dear friend, will be explained to you within the hour by President Faure’s confidential secretary. It is not too much to say that the fate of France and the peace of Europe may depend upon the safety of the treasure we are to guard.”

  “Treasure!” I exclaimed. “What treasure?”

  But Holmes waved his hand aside, recommending patience. He turned and went to his room, exchanging formal clothes for familiar tweeds and Norfolk jacket. Short of pursuing him and standing over him while he changed, there was little I could do. I walked about the tall corniced sitting-room on the first floor of the Hôtel Lutétia, folding a paper here and tidying a table there, in anticipation of a visit from the confidential secretary of the President of the Republic. Then I paused and stared down into the Boulevard Raspail with its busy traffic from the suburbs and markets. Would Félix Faure’s confidential secretary really make a habit of visiting confidants in what was almost a public room? I thought of Sir Henry Ponsonby and Sir Arthur Bigge as Her Majesty’s private secretaries, conducting confidential negotiations in the hotels of Bayswater or Pimlico. The idea was plainly absurd.

  This was one of the rare occasions when I suspected that Holmes, on unfamiliar territory, was out of his depth. He had just reappeared in his tweed suiting, when there was a knock at the door. It was a hotel page-boy who had brought our visitor from the lobby. The stranger entered the sitting-room. As the page closed the door again, Holmes bowed, took the hand of the President’s confidential secretary, and kissed it with instinctive gallantry. This newcomer was not the type of Sir Henry Ponsonby nor Sir Arthur Bigge, but one of the most striking young women upon whom I had ever set eyes.

  IV

  She might have been eighteen, though the truth was that she was thirty and already had a daughter who was ten years old. Yet there was such a soft round beauty in her face, a depth to her wide eyes, and a lustre in the elegant coiffure of her dark hair that she reminded one irresistibly of a London débutante in her first season. To describe her figure as elegant, narrow-waisted, and instinctively graceful in every movement is to resort to the commonplaces of portraiture. Yet Marguerite Steinheil was possessed of all these attributes and was never commonplace.

  Such was Félix Faure’s confidential secretary. Though I was struck by her beauty, even her modesty of demeanour on this occasion, the thought that preoccupied me was that no English politician’s reputation could have withstood such an association with a young woman of so remarkable a presence as hers.

  “Watson!” Holmes turned to me with a look of triumph. “Let me introduce to you Madame Marguerite Steinheil, the emissary of President Faure. Madame, allow me to present my colleague, Dr. John Watson, before whom you may speak as freely as to myself.”

  Somehow, I scarcely recall how, I mumbled my way through the pleasantries of formal introduction in the next few minutes. If I had thought before this that Sherlock Holmes had plunged into the Dreyfus affair beyond his depth, I was now utterly convinced of it. Madame Steinheil took her place on the chaise-longue, Holmes and I facing her from two upright gilded chairs. She spoke almost perfect English with an accent so light that it added to the charm of her voice.

  “I believe,” she said, “that I may soon be able to bring you good news of Captain Dreyfus, of whose innocence I have never myself entertained the least doubt. However, I may only help him, or help you, if you will assist me in return.”

  “Then you must explain that, madame,” Holmes said quietly. “I believe it is the President whom we are to serve, is it not?”

  She smiled quickly at him and said, “It is the same thing, Mr. Holmes. More than four years ago, I became his friend because of his interest in art. My husband, Adolphe Steinheil, is a portrait painter. Our drawing-room has long been a meeting-place for men and women from literature, art, music, and public life. We have a house and a studio in the Impasse Ronsin, off the Rue de Vaugirard, near the Gare Montparnasse. Félix Faure was a guest at my salons, a friend before he became President. After his election, he bought one of Adolphe’s paintings for the private rooms in the Élysée Palace. He is the President but he is also the greatest friend in the world to me. I must make this confidence to you. My own father is dead but Félix Faure has been, in his way, a father to me and I, perhaps, like a daughter to him.”

  The more I heard of this, the less I liked it. I saw that Holmes’s mouth tightened a little.

  “Forgive me, Madame Steinheil, but you are not—are you?—a daughter. You are a confidential secretary and you will betray your trust if you seek to be anything more.”

  She put her hands together and stared down at them. Then she looked up with the same smile, the same openness of her face and gaze, that would have softened any accusation in the world.

  “Mr. Holmes,” she said quietly, “I need not tell you that the Third Republic of France was born from war and revolutionary bloodshed almost thirty years ago. Since then, there has been scandal, riot, and assassination. In England, I think, you have not known such things. Were you to see the secret papers of the past thirty years in our own country, you would be more deeply troubled still and perhaps a good deal more shocked than you have been even by the affair of Captain Dreyfus. These papers of which I speak are known to very few people. Naturally, they have been seen by fewer people still.”

  “Of whom you are doubtless one, madame!”

  The cold precision of his voice was a harsh contrast to the softer tones of Marguerite Steinheil. Yet she was a match for him.

  “Of whom I am one,” she said, inclining her head. “Since the President came to office, he has suffered abuse in the Chamber of Deputies, he has been physically attacked in public and spat at. Lesser men would have resigned the office, as his predecessor did, and France would go down in civil war. But he will not resign, Mr. Holmes. He will fight. In order to fight, he must have a weapon. The pen, as you say, will prove mightier than the sword.”

  “If it is used with discretion,” Holmes said gently.

  She smiled again and then dropped her voice a little, as if fearing that even now she might be overheard.

  “For the past three years, Félix Faure has been engaged upon his secret history of France since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. It is to be his testament, his justification of steps that he must take, before the end of his septennat—his period of office.”

  “And you, madame?” Holmes inquired coolly. “What are you to him in such a crisis?”

  There was no smile as she looked at him now.

  “What am I in all this? Félix Faure saw in me a friend who would offer an undivided loyalty, a loyalty that is not to be found among the ministers and officials surrounding him. You have not lived in France during the past ten years, Mr. Holmes. From your well-ordered life in London, it is hard to imagine the scandal and near-revolution that plagues this city.”

  “One may deduce a little, even in London.”

  “No,” she said, and shook her head with a whisper of disagreement, “Félix Faure was called to office among the mortal injuries which France seemed determined to infli
ct on herself. The Boulangists would overthrow republicanism and restore the monarchy. The Anarchists would plunge us in blood. We had watched the bourse—the stock exchange—and the Quai d’Orsay brought to near-ruin by the Panama corruption scandals and the disappearance of two hundred and fifty million francs. We had seen governments created in hope, only to collapse in dishonour after a few months. Six months before my friend was called to the highest office, President Carnot himself was stabbed to death at Lyons by a terrorist. President Casimir-Périer was driven from office by libel and ridicule within a few weeks. During those weeks came the Dreyfus affair.”

  Holmes was about to say something but seemed to think better of it.

  “I watched that man’s epaulettes torn from his tunic,” the young woman continued softly, “on the parade ground of the Ecole Militaire, his sword broken over the adjutant’s knee. Mobs shouted for his death in the riots that followed. France had degenerated into such chaos that government itself seemed impossible. In our relations with the world, we had drifted from our alliance with Russia and were close to war with England over Fashoda and the Sudan. Félix Faure tried without success to persuade his ministers that a rapprochement with England and Russia was our sole salvation abroad. He failed to move them. How could he succeed when, as the secret papers confirm, his closest adviser in foreign affairs was a man whose mistress had for years been in the pay of the German Embassy? Four months ago, in October, matters were so grave that Monsieur Faure considered carrying out a military coup d’état as President, taking absolute power to impose order on the country by martial law.”

  “And you, madame?” Holmes still pressed for an answer to the most important question of all. “What were you to Félix Faure?”

  “I was his eyes and ears throughout all this, as well as his amanuensis. I went privately to sittings of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, to certain receptions and parties. He is surrounded by enemies in government and now he knows it, through me. I was better able to identify certain men who might have destroyed him, had they been appointed to office. They are, Mr. Holmes, without scruples or principles under their masks of public virtue. They are arrivistes ready to sell themselves to achieve their ambitions.”