The Seven-Per-Cent Solution

by Nicholas Meyer

  “His nature?”

  “That is more difficult. He is bright, apparently, but excitable, given to fits of impatience with those around him. I believe it was one of those conflicts that resulted in the dismissal of Prince Von Bismarck. The Kaiser is fond of military displays—of uniforms, parades and demonstrations of personal power. He—” Freud hesitated with a short laugh.

  “Yes?”

  “Actually, I have had a theory about the Kaiser for some time now.”

  “I should be most interested in hearing it,” Holmes offered politely, without hesitation.

  “It is hardly subtle,” Freud rose brusquely to his feet as though annoyed with himself for having mentioned the theory.

  “Pray allow me to judge its relevance to my case,” Holmes insisted, pressing his finger-tips together and leaning back against the mantel, the pipe clenched between his teeth and smoke curling upwards in a steady spiral.

  Freud shrugged.

  “You may have known—either from seeing pictures of him or from reading on the subject—that the Kaiser possesses a withered arm.”

  “A withered arm?”

  “The result of some childhood disease—possibly poliomyelitis. I am not certain. In any case, physically he is not a complete man.” Here Freud paused and eyed me askance. “You are the first to hear this peculiar notion of mine.”

  Holmes regarded him behind the pipe smoke.

  “Go on.”

  “Well—briefly—it has occurred to me that perhaps the Kaiser’s insistent emphasis on displays of strength, his love of colourful uniforms—particularly those with cloaks which manage to conceal his deformity—the parades, the medals with which he adorns himself—it has occurred to me that these bellicose loves are all in some way manifestations of his feelings of personal inadequacy. They might all be construed as elaborate compensations for the withered arm. An ordinary cripple need not feel so sensitive as he, moreover, for he is the king and descendant of a long line of conspicuously noble and heroic ancestors.”

  I was so utterly absorbed in the Doctor’s statement that I forgot Holmes was in the room. When Freud had finished, I shifted my gaze and saw that Holmes was regarding him with fixed attention and wonder in his expression. Slowly, Holmes sank in the chair opposite mine.

  “This is most remarkable,” said he, finally. “Do you know what you have done? You have succeeded in taking my methods—observation and inference—and applied them to the inside of a subject’s head.”

  “Scarcely a subject.” Freud smiled shortly. “In any event your methods—as you refer to them—are not covered by a patent, I trust?” His tone was mild, yet the satisfaction in it was evident. Like Holmes, he was not without vanity. “Yet what I have surmised may prove totally erroneous. You yourself have noted the dangers of reasoning with insufficient data at one’s disposal.”

  “Remarkable,” Holmes echoed. “Not only does it possess the ring of truth—or of plausibility, if you prefer—it also conforms to certain facts and theories I shall now lay before you.” He got to his feet once more, but paused distracted, before commencing. “Remarkable. You know, Doctor, I shouldn’t be surprised if your application of my methods proves in the long run far more important than the mechanical uses I make of them. But always remember the physical details. No matter how far into the mind you may travel, they are of supreme importance.”

  Sigmund Freud nodded and bowed, slightly overcome, I think, by the detective’s abrupt and effusive praise.

  “Now, then,” Holmes resumed, his thoughts collected, “let me tell you a story.” He relit his pipe as the Doctor settled himself into an attitude of attention. Like the detective, Sigmund Freud was a great listener, though indeed the two men showed their absorption in a client’s statement in entirely different fashions. Freud did not listen with his eyes closed and his finger-tips pressed together. On the contrary, he leaned his bearded cheek on an open palm, propped his elbow on the arm of his chair, threw one leg across the other, and watched whoever was speaking with wide, sad, steadfast eyes. Even the cigar which he held in his other hand could not make him squint with its pungent smoke. At such times he gave the impression of peering directly into one’s soul, an impression that Holmes, a sensitive observer, could not fail to grasp, as he launched into his story.

  “A wealthy widower with an only son he does not care for particularly—and who does not care for him—goes travelling to the United States. There he meets a young woman half his age, yet in spite of this disparity—or perhaps because of it—they fall in love. Knowing that his own years are numbered, they are married without delay. The woman comes from a well-to-do Quaker background and the two are joined together in a Quaker church, known as a ‘meeting house’. This phrase, later mumbled by our client, was understood as ‘meat house’, and in that connection mistakenly associated itself with our hypothetical warehouse and literally put us off the scent for a time.

  “The couple returns to the isolated home of the husband in Bavaria, where the first thing the bridegroom does is to alter his will in favour of his bride. Her religious views on the subject, as well as his own convictions, advancing with the years, make it impossible for him to retain control of an empire dedicated to the manufacture of war material. Having neither the strength nor the inclination to devote his last years to the dismantling of his factories, he very simply puts the entire matter into her hands in the event of his death, to do with as she sees fit.

  “The old gentleman, however, has not reckoned with—or has badly underestimated—the wrath of his prodigal son. Finding his hopes cut off, cut off literally from untold millions, this young devil proves capable of drastic steps to regain them. Politically conservative himself, and raised in the New Germany, he possesses certain connections and he uses them. Offers are made to certain people, people who have no intention of allowing a foreign commoner—much less a woman!—to dismantle the core of the Kaiser’s war machine. The young man is given carte blanche, and is no doubt assigned some help. We have yet to discover how it was managed, but he somehow accomplishes the death of his father—”

  “Holmes !”

  “And then proceeds to spirit his step-mother out of Germany and into a warehouse prison near the Danube Canal, here in Vienna. The father’s will is on file in the two countries where he holds property, and the bride is now urged to sign over her interest to the son. This she courageously refuses to do. Her love and her religious convictions lend her a strength that resists starvation, and all manner of threats besides. In her lonely confinement, her mind begins to give way. Ingeniously, she manages to escape. Only when she is free, however, is the utter hopelessness of her situation borne in upon her. She speaks no German, knows no one, and is too weak to take the initiative. The bridge is the nearest and simplest solution, but passing constables prevent it, at which point she retreats into the helpless state that you, Doctor, have already described so well.”

  He paused and took several rapid puffs of his pipe, tactfully allowing us the time to digest his reasoning thus far.

  “What of the lady we saw at the opera?” Freud wondered, sitting back thoughtfully and blowing forth smoke from his cigar.

  “The young man we are playing against is as bold as he is cunning. Upon learning that his step-mother had flown her prison, he makes a quick decision. Realising her position of helplessness as clearly as she, he elects to ignore her. Let her tell her story to whoever can understand her—the thought must have amused him—he would not make himself conspicuous by searching for her or by employing others to do so. He would hire someone to assume her place and bluff through the business of the will with a simple forged signature; for who, when all was said and done, would care to contest the widow’s decision? I do not know where he discovered his clever pupil; possibly she is the very maid she pretended to recognise, or else, perhaps, some American actress down on her luck and stranded far from home. But, whoever she is, she has been coached well, and paid well, too, no doubt.

 
; “Foreseeing the slim possibility that his step-mother would be discovered, he even provided her substitute with a convincing story. Of course he must have known his step-mother had lost her wits before her escape. He was confident her mind would not soon be whole enough to command anyone’s serious attention. You will recall, Watson, that the woman we spoke with today referred to her maid as Nora Simmons. This is a rather ingenious touch on the part of the young Baron, though as a precaution it was sufficiently outre to first arouse my suspicions. That the maid should bear the same initials as the mistress would be a senseless coincidence-unless, of course, some of the clothing she wore during her captivity and escape bore the initials of Nancy Slater. He might better perhaps have said that she departed from the house with some of her mistress’s clothing,” he continued in a ruminative fashion, sorting out the alternatives as he spoke. “But now, obviously he had not told that part of the story to the Bavarian police.”

  “Then the maid’s flight was reported the night of the Baron’s death?” I asked.

  “Or the morning after. It would not surprise me to learn that it was,” my friend returned. “The young man with whom we are dealing has, I suspect, learned to play cards from the Americans.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That he always has an ace up his sleeve. The question now—” He was interrupted by a knock on the study door. Paula opened it part-way to announce that an orderly from the Allgemeines Krankenhaus had arrived with a message for Dr. Freud.

  No sooner had she uttered these words, than Sherlock Holmes leapt forward with a cry, clapping a hand to his forehead.

  “They’ve taken her !” he yelled. “Fool that I am to have thought they would hesitate, whilst I stood babbling here.” He dashed from the room, squeezing past the astonished man without ceremony, and accosted the unsuspecting orderly in the vestibule, both hands grasping the man’s lapels.

  “She’s gone, is she? Dr. Freud’s patient is gone?”

  The man nodded dumbly, too startled to reply. He had only been sent on an errand and had no notion of its gravity. He bore a curt note from Dr. Schultz, wondering what had become of the woman since she had been left in Dr. Freud’s hands and protesting her unorthodox removal from hospital during the afternoon—before he had a chance to see for himself how she was getting on and to conduct an examination prior to her release. In an oblique allusion, Schultz promised to mention the matter to Meynert.

  “Were you there when she was carried off?” Holmes demanded of the orderly as he hastily slid into his Norfolk and threw on his Inverness. The man shook his head and said he had not been.

  “Then you shall take us round to whoever was on duty,” the detective informed him briskly, clapping his ear-flapped travelling cap on his head. “Hurry, gentlemen,” he called over his shoulder, “we have not a moment to lose. For though we may have nothing so much as a deranged woman at one end of our trail, there lurks a European conflagration at the other !”

  CHAPTER XIV

  We Join a Funeral

  THE CAB DARTED THROUGH the late afternoon traffic on its way back to the hospital. No one spoke, except that Holmes continually enjoined the driver to hurry. Each was occupied with his own thoughts. The orderly looked from one to the other of us, wondering, I could tell, what the devil was going on, and wincing as our vehicle dashed in front of street-trams and forced pedlars to leap astride the kerbs and out of our way. Sigmund Freud’s large brow was furrowed with thought, whilst Holmes sat, bent forward, in moody and depressed silence, rousing himself every thirty seconds or so to encourage the driver.

  At one point we were forced to come to a complete stop. The street was barred by a troop of Hungarian Life Guards on their way to their posts at the Hofburg. Holmes surveyed the obstacle gloomily, then sat back with a sigh.

  “It’s no use,” he announced abruptly, “she is lost and we are beaten.” He ground his teeth with vexation, his grey eyes bright with pain.

  “Why so?” Freud asked.

  “Because he will kill her the first chance he gets.” He pulled out his watch and stared at it mournfully, while from the corner of my eye I beheld the orderly’s eyes grow wide with alarm. “And they have had their chance by now. Watson,” he said, turning to me, “you would have done better to leave me to the cocaine. I have out-lived my usefulness.”

  “Permit me to disagree with you on both counts,” Freud responded before I could answer, “but I do not think the lady’s life is in danger. Drive on, cabbie !” he called to the man as the Life Guards finished obstructing our way. Holmes looked at him briefly, but said nothing as the cab rolled forward and gathered speed.

  “You must permit me to do some inferring of my own,” Freud pursued, deciding that he must speak without encouragement. “Using the same methods I applied to the Kaiser’s personality, I conclude that the Baroness may be in grave peril, but I cannot believe that her step-son plans to murder her now that she is in his hands once more.”

  “Why not?” Holmes countered without real interest. “It would be the most practical move he could make.”

  “It would have been more practical still if he had disposed of her at the same time he arranged the death of his father, wouldn’t you say?”

  The question captured Holmes’s attention, and he turned to face the Doctor directly. Dr. Freud seized his opportunity, and went on.

  “Surely, that would have been the simplest solution. Arrange matters so that both are killed in an accident and then he inherits the entire estate automatically. So runs the will, and he must have known it.”

  Holmes frowned.

  “Why didn’t he?” he wondered aloud.

  “Would you care to hear my theory?”

  Holmes nodded, his eyes alive with interest at the slim possibility of hope the Doctor held out.

  “It will take too long to detail my researches,” Freud began, “but it is my opinion that the young man in question hates his step-mother with a passion that far exceeds the impediment she represents to his political or financial schemes.”

  “Why so?” I interrupted, in spite of myself. “He can scarcely know her, and if that is the case, how has he developed the hatred you postulate?”

  Freud turned to me.

  “But you do admit that his behaviour towards his stepmother has been hateful?”

  “Oh, quite.”

  “So hateful—” The cab lurched to one side, momentarily interrupting Freud as we braced ourselves. “So hateful, in fact, that though it would have been infinitely simpler to dispose of her, he yet preferred to keep her alive, fraught with peril though such a decision has proved to be, in order to imprison and torture her past bearing and past sense.”

  Holmes nodded, pursing his lips as he considered the situation thus outlined.

  “Therefore,” Freud continued, as we drew near the hospital, “using your own methods, we must infer another motive. What would you say if I told you this fanatical hatred existed before he ever met the woman his father had married, and would have existed no matter whom he had wed?”

  “What?”

  “You see, the young man’s extraordinary behaviour towards the step-mother he does not know can only be explained in one fashion. And that is that he is so loyal and devoted to the memory of his true mother that his father’s action and this woman’s consent have outraged the most elemental depths of his character. For the father’s betrayal of his first wife: instant death. For the false mother: lingering survival—even though it is impractical from other points of view. That is the only theory that covers all the facts, and as you have yourself observed upon occasion, Herr Holmes, when the probable has been excluded, the remainder, however strange, must be the truth. I have applied your methods correctly, have I not? And if so, we may depend upon it, the woman is still alive, however menaced. Here we are.”

  Holmes stared at him for a half-second before springing out and rushing towards the gate, pulling the orderly by the hand. Dr. Freud and I followed, instructing the dri
ver to wait.

  Inside, we were led without delay to the porter who had released Freud’s patient earlier in the day. The porter spoke with exasperating precision, pompously interjecting his sentiments regarding the irregularity of procedure surrounding the patient’s departure.

  “Imagine every inmate released by a note without a proper—” Holmes broke in without ceremony.

  “Describe the people who fetched her, if you please,” said he curtly, whereat the fellow turned slowly round and scrutinised him. From his manner and from my companion’s breathless posture—and his foreign-looking costume—it was evident to me that the porter took him for a potential resident in the psychiatric ward.

  “Please hurry !” I pleaded, seeing that he made no more to speak. “It is of the utmost importance.”

  “Describe them?” the stupid fellow repeated slowly. “Why I’m hanged if I can describe ‘em. You know who they were, didn’t you?” he turned to Dr. Freud.

  “I?” Freud echoed, astonished. “If I knew them, why should I be asking you for a description?”

  “But—” sputtered that frustrating individual, “they said they had been sent by you !” And he looked at Freud as though he, too, might be a candidate for permanent residency.

  For a moment we stared at each other blankly. Then Holmes broke into a dry chuckle of appreciation.

  “Cunning and nerve !” he exclaimed, shaking his head. “My statement to the lady at Wallenstein Strasse this morning put the idea into their heads, as well as telling them where the fugitive was to be found. Now, my man, give us a description.”

  “Well—” The porter launched into a vague memory of two men, one short, choleric, and shifty-eyed, the other tall, dignified, and impassive.

  “That will be the butler,” Holmes interposed. “Doctor,” he said, turning to Freud, “you had best leave word here to send for the police. We shall want them before this business is done. Tell them that a woman has been abducted from this hospital and leave the Wallenstein Strasse address. We shall go there now.”