The Adventure of the Lady on the Embankment

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  "Mr. Sherlock Holmes, is it?" inquired the hawk-faced doctor. "What a surprise. A privilege to meet you, I'm sure."

  "I'm sorry I cannot say the same," returned Holmes, covering Helmuth with the same still intensity with which Helmuth covered me.

  "What a piquant situation," continued Helmuth, unruffled. "A Mexican standoff, in the vivid phraseology of my adopted country. Just take your pistol by the barrel and lay it on the desk over there, will you? Ah, you wish to point out that if I shoot Dr. Watson you will surely shoot me. True, but would it not be rather cold consolation for the death of such an old and dear friend? And really, no shooting need take place at all. I was sure you would see reason.

  This last as Holmes, grey with anger, mortification, and a cold suppressed fear, placed his pistol upon my consulting room desk.

  "Very good. Now just stand in the middle of the room over there." He took a hypodermic from his pocket and tossed it lightly to land upon an easy chair near Holmes. "Now, Cordelia, my pet, Mr. Holmes is just going to give you an injection to calm your nerves. Go to him."

  No one moved. "Now, really, anyone would think I was intending to carry you off to do you harm instead of good. Nonsense. Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson, I would no more intentionally injure this lady than I would take a penknife to the Mona Lisa. It would be aesthetic sacrilege. You are all making a great deal of fuss over very little."

  "Not a penknife," replied Miss Naismith, a kind of Arctic light in her eyes. "But I can very easily imagine you taking a brush and palette to her, to 'improve' the picture."

  "I'm waiting," replied Helmuth coldly. Out of the corner of my eye I could see his finger tighten on the trigger.

  Miss Naismith shrugged, and started to walk in front of the desk toward Holmes. As she passed it she whirled softly and aimed Holmes's pistol toward us. "Lewis Brookman!" she cried.

  Astonishment filled the doctor's eye a moment, and his pistol wavered toward her an uncertain instant. She fired.

  His gun went off by my head, but the bullet buried itself in the ceiling as he staggered backward, blood spattering from his shattered arm. Holmes and I were on him in an instant and wrested his pistol from his broken grasp. He tried to fight us, but his wound was too much for him and he passed out. I applied a tourniquet as Holmes hastily called the Yard.

  "My dear friend, I owe you my profoundest apologies," Holmes said earnestly later, when Lestrade had carried off his unconscious prize and we were left alone once more. A reaction had come upon me when it was all over, I am unashamed to report, and I poured us each a stiff whiskey with hands that shook. Miss Naismith as usual refused spirits.

  "My miscalculations were only exceeded by Helmuth's own," Holmes continued. "I never imagined he would walk into our trap before it was set. A just Providence must have heard me twitting Lestrade. And yet when you think about it, his approach was most logical, if bold. Why should a man his age take up the techniques of a car burglar?"

  "He was always smooth like that," put in Miss Naismith. "He would be under your guard and through your heart before you knew he'd drawn steel. It's how he took me in."

  She sighed. "It's been coming back to me, bit by bit. It was my own fault, really. Sheer stupidity.

  "I'd been watching his operation for some time. I thought Calvin Oser and I would be able finally to nail him on the possession of certain poisons. I was going to steal Cal some samples for comparison analyses. That, plus my testimony on what I'd seen and overheard in my time there, would be enough to go to court.

  "Then one evening as I was about to leave for my rooming house, Helmuth astonished me utterly by coming up to the lab and asking me to marry him. I didn't quite know what to say."

  "How could you consider such a proposition from such a man even for an instant?" I asked, amazed.

  "Well, I don't know. I knew his past wouldn't bear looking into, but then neither would mine. I've never been afraid of poisonous snakes, ever since I used to hunt rattlers for the county bounty when I was young, for pocket money. I didn't realize that the rattlesnakes were the more gentlemanly fellows, who always gave fair warning before they struck. I had always been impressed by his brilliance. It seemed to me that he had not patronized me for my sex, for he always demanded perfection in my work, and I respected him for it. And to tell the truth, I was foolishly flattered-my first proposal and all that. Also, I was tired. I was so shaken, 1 had this romantic vision of requiring him to give up his criminal activities. Would it not be better to reform that amazing brain than punish it? And I would be the instrument of that reform." She laughed, but her laugh had an edge that worried me. "I hinted as much, rather broadly. I then realized from what he said that he had apparently thought me blind and deaf all those months, and witless too. He was genuinely shocked that I was on to him.

  "He begged me to give him a day to think it over, hinted that he was profoundly moved. When I returned the next day, he walked up to me smiling and told me how utterly impressed he was with my moral reasoning, then put a pad of chloroform over my mouth and nose, and that's the last thing I remember clearly until I woke up in that little room in Camberwell.

  "He must have wanted to make me over into a kind of perfect docile wife. He was in the habit of keeping dangerous pets-poisonous snakes, and a vicious ocelot-and collecting aesthetic rarities. He just wanted to add me to his collection.

  "It is a kind of disease that I inspire in all my friends; he just had it in an acute form. They have always wanted to change me to match some vision of reality they have inside their own minds. My cousin wanted me to be a suffragette, her husband wanted me to be a doctor; Dr. Watson wants me to give up smoking and take up wine imbibing, Mrs. Watson wants me to change my style of clothes and hair, and Cal Oser's the worst of all-he wants me to be a lady.

  "As a matter of fact, Mr. Holmes," she continued, turning to my friend, "you are probably the most unique individual I've ever met. Not once in our acquaintance have you ever asked me to be like anything but myself."

  "What I still don't understand," I said, "is why Garnett, Helmuth or whatever his name is, killed this fellow Sacker, or Sandeman."

  "Sandeman could be very irritating at times," said Miss Naismith reminiscently. "In personality he was a weak bully, with a tendency to swagger over those he thought he could dominate. He tried some tricks with me once, and I surprised the very devil out of him by putting him through a window. He left me alone after that. He'd been with Helmuth a long time-came with him from South America, I believe. Perhaps he had tried attempting a bit of blackmail on the side. It would be like him, and Helmuth would be a very unsafe person to do that to."

  "I shouldn't be surprised if there turns out to be some such element involved also," said Holmes. "But I submit that the principal reason he was poisoned was for the crime of lese majeste. It was his independent attempt to murder you, Miss Naismith, that sealed his fate. Helmuth's (or Brookman's, as I expect my answer from Brazil will prove) motivations for his actions throughout this case have been so very bizarre, that I rather expect that his ultimate destination will be Broadmoor rather than Dartmoor."

  The arrival of Lt. Calvin Oser the next week, plus the reply to Holmes's cable to Rio, served to fill in the remaining blanks in the recent history of my patient and her two kidnappers. New York had known Helmuth only as an English doctor who had been employed for many years by a New York pharmaceutical concern as their field representative in Brazil. He had emigrated from Brazil to America on the strength of this employment, then set up his own little firm in New York. It did a legitimate business, although not enough to account for his wealth. The first assistant Helmuth had hired to run this end of the business had vanished mysteriously after not quite two years of employment. Lt. Oser had been connected with the case at that time, but no explanation of the young man's disappearance was ever forthcoming. Thus when his old acquaintance Miss Naismith came to him with her first suspicions of a second and far more sinister pharmaceutical business running under the mask of the f
irst, he was able to counsel her with utmost seriousness. Working together, they had garnered nearly enough evidence for an arrest when Miss Naismith, Dr. Helmuth, and his secretary Sandeman abruptly disappeared. Oser had followed a false trail to St. Louis before Holmes's telegram sent him racing to catch the next ship to London.

  The reply from Rio was less conclusive, but testimony later from Helmuth confirmed the hypothesis it suggested. Dr. Lewis Brookman had left the Hospital San Felice at the request of its administration for "irregular activities," and had disappeared up the Amazon upon a botanical expedition. The first appearance of "James Helmuth" took place 10 months later in Manaos. The two were one and the same man.

  Lt. Oser proved to be a surprise to me. I had built up a rather romantic mental image of the gentleman on the basis of Miss Naismith's obvious delight in his arrival. I escorted Miss Naismith around to Baker Street to greet him on the evening of his landing, his day having been spent on the business at Scotland Yard.

  The man who stood upon the hearth rug at our entry was in late middle age, with thinning sandy hair shot through with grey, and twinkling blue eyes deep set under tufted brows. He had clearly been a muscular athlete, much outdoors, in his youth, but the more recent comforts of city life had broadened his figure. Except for a certain pugnacity of jaw and keenness of glance, one might have taken him for a shopkeeper contemplating retirement.

  "Cordelia, you are a sight for sore eyes," he smiled at Miss Naismith, and took her awkwardly by the hand. "Mr. Holmes has been telling me about your troubles. You all right, girl?"

  She smiled in return and gave a quick nod. "I... I'm feeling better each day. I still can't remember everything, though a little bit more comes back every time..." She searched his face, a little desperately it seemed to me, and there was a tension in her. "I remember Boston, and New York."

  "Do you remember Crazy Callaghan, and your poor old dad?"

  She hesitated. "No."

  He cocked his head and studied her a moment, lips pursed. "I see."

  Holmes dragged another chair around and rang for tea, and we all sat down around the cold fireplace.

  "I take it then," I said to the lieutenant, "that you knew Miss Naismith as a young girl."

  Lt. Oser chuckled. "Yes, although it would be just as true to say I knew her as a young boy-or a young hooligan."

  "What?" I'm afraid I must have looked as bewildered as I felt, for Holmes smiled behind his hand.

  "Lt. Oser has a remarkable story to tell, Watson," said the detective. "Much that was murky becomes clear. Listen."

  Lt. Oser looked uncertainly at Miss Naismith. "I don't know. Do you think I should talk to this doctor-feller, Stein, first? I don't want to say something upsetting."

  "I definitely think you should see Dr. Stein before you return to New York," said Holmes. "However, I spoke with him yesterday about your visit, and asked him very much the same question. Boiled down, his reply was that the upsetting parts would have to be gone through sooner or later, and that sooner was just as good as later. Also, I feel Miss Naismith has a right to know what we know, and Dr. Watson is here. But perhaps we should let Miss Naismith decide."

  We turned to this lady, who was curled up in the basket chair in sad, solemn attentiveness. "Go ahead," she said tonelessly.

  "That's my Cord," said Lt. Oser. "I've never known her to shirk a difficulty yet. She stuck with her old Dad right down to the bitter end in that dirty little border hole. But I'm getting my story hind end first.

  "I should tell you, gentlemen, that I was a territorial marshal in New Mexico back in '84 when I first met this lady. I guess she must have been about 16 then, though I took her for younger. Those were the bad old days in those parts. I was back last year-to think how the place has changed in one lifetime! I felt like a time-traveler in one of those writer-feller's books. Her old dad-he was an Englishman, he'd been a doctor in California before his wife died and the dipsomania got to him-had a bee in his bonnet about her safety, not that he was too far out, and had her dress up to pass off as his son. They were good at it, too. I knew 'em a year and a half before I tumbled to it.

  "They were hooked up with a feller named Crazy Callaghan. Prospecting, they said, though Callaghan made more money off cards, till somebody caught him at it one day in a bar in Mexico and shot him. That was later, though, after Doc Naismith had died and Cordelia went to Boston to her mama's cousin.

  "Now, what old Doc was prospecting for turned out to be two fellers who'd done him a bad turn, I might say a very bad turn, in California. This situation first came to my attention when one of the two was found hanging from a tree just down the mountain from Cloudcroft. This was in '86. When we finally got him identified I was inclined to think that someone had done the community a service, and let it go at that, but my old devil curiosity was aroused, and one thing led to another.

  "Now, I had about caught up with Doc Naismith and Callaghan at a little town not far from Taos when a peculiar thing happened. A feller by the name of Nelson Ball, who was wanted by the Texas Rangers in connection with a mail robbery, came up to me and asked to turn himself in. Now, this feller had been successfully evading the law all over the West for a number of years, so you can imagine it struck me as a bit out of character. It was hard to tell with a hard-boiled so-and-so like Ball, but it came to me the man was scared of something-more scared than he was of the law. So I broke off to escort him up to jail in Taos.

  "One night about a day's ride from Taos, Crazy Callaghan dropped in on our camp. He just seemed to want to jaw over old times and take a cup of coffee with me. Now, I didn't trust Callaghan further than I could toss him, but I was damned if I could figure out what his game was this time. I fell asleep puzzling over it, and woke with a hell of a headache to find that Ball and Callaghan had bolted, except they seemed to have left Ball's horse behind-found it all saddled and bridled, grazing loose where mine was picketed.

  "I sat down and thought it over for a while, then got up for a look-see. I can't say I was really surprised when I found Ball's body shot full of holes in a little gully about a mile from my camp. His gun had fired twice. So I took him on up to Taos, and after a day's more thought, got a warrant sworn out for Doc Naismith. Friends are friends, but the law's the law.

  "I overtook 'em in a little border town. Old Doc was dying of the fits by then. I was surprised he'd lasted that long. Callaghan went over the border, but Cordelia of course stayed with her dad, nursing him as best she could. I lent her some money, and we saw the thing through to the end and had him buried decently.

  "Now, I'd found out the only relative Miss Cordelia had in the world besides her dad was a cousin of her mama's in the East. So I took her up to Santa Fe, bought her a dress and a one-way ticket to Boston, and put her on the train. She was inclined to kick at first, till I pointed out to her that Crazy Callaghan was never known to carry any other weapon but a shotgun, being a lousy aim and scared to death of snakes, and old Doc was so shaky at the end he couldn't have hit a barn at ten feet. Then she got more reasonable and did as I asked. You gentlemen both have already heard part of that story, so I'm not giving anything away; besides, it's ancient history now, and you are gentlemen.

  "Later when I moved east so my wife could be with her people, I ran into Cordelia in New York and was pleased to see how well my good turn had come out. So it was no surprise when she caught on to that snake Helmuth that she brought her story to me. The rest you know. Though I'll swear I'd have pulled her out of there like a shot if I'd known how things were going to turn out."

  Partway through this narrative Miss Naismith had folded her arms around her knees and turned her face from us. When she turned it back in the ensuing silence, her features were under control, although her cheeks were wet.

  "Tea?" offered Holmes without comment.

  "Thank you." She took the cup and drank from it. The simple domestic action seemed to help her pull herself together. "Thank you, Cal," she went on in a steadier voice. "It comes back.
In jumbled bits, but it does come back. I suppose it must."

  Sherlock Holmes searched for a word of comfort. "Miss Naismith, there may have been times of horror, but you shouldn't try to put away your past. It made you what you are, and what you are is nothing to be ashamed of."

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