The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols

by Nicholas Meyer

  “That is untrue,” he responded without rancor. “But even if it were, copies are unpersuasive. It could always be argued they were forgeries, and a carbon signature, I hazard, would be viewed as inadmissible in most courts. No, Doctor, only the signed original will suffice.”

  For some reason, I found myself thinking of Holmes’s shattered Stradivarius.

  “Why is it so important to you? Why is it worth a woman’s life to preserve this nauseating falsehood? Two women’s lives,” I now felt compelled to add. “For you have already taken Manya Lippman’s. It was you, wasn’t it?”

  He regarded me thoughtfully with a blank expression before snapping back the last of his drink.

  “Alas, Doctor, soon we will be in Budapest, and I don’t have time to explain the intricacies of Russian politics or the machinations of Count Witte,* who is trying to turn our beloved Tsar into a progressive. This we cannot allow.”

  “Cannot allow? Do you work for Nicholas Romanov, or does he work for you?”

  This was greeted with a cynical shrug.

  “There are many ways to express loyalty. His Imperial Majesty tends to be swayed by the last voice in his ear. It is necessary—for his own good, you understand—for us, patriotic Russians, to be that last and loudest voice. Russia is losing the war with those little Nips. Someone must take the blame. You understand.”

  He stood. “I am in the closed compartment you banged on earlier and found to be locked. Anna Strunsky is not inside it. You have until Budapest, Doctor.”

  “I tell you I’ve no idea where Sherlock Holmes is!”

  “Then I suggest you find him, Doctor. Find him at once. Or Anna Strunsky will share Manya Lippman’s fate.”

  11.

  BUDAVARI SIKLO

  Ten years or so before these events, a piece in The Lancet introduced the world to the concept and reality of adrenaline, a secretion of the adrenal gland in times of excitement, responsible for several physical sensations affecting the heart, blood pressure, respiration, etcetera. I was familiar with these symptoms long before they had a physiological designation. I had experienced them on the battlefield in Afghanistan, later on a police steam launch chasing Jonathan Small and his Horrible Companion down the Thames, and later still on the marshes of Dartmoor, confronted by a gigantic spectral hound.

  So there was now no question in my mind what was overtaking me physically as once more I raced through the train, trying not to succumb to debilitating panic.

  Where was Holmes?

  Between the parlour and business cars yet again, and realizing I was starting to hyperventilate, I forced myself to stop moving, lean up against one of the trembling paneled bulkheads, and think. Sweat was trickling in rivulets from my scalp down the length of my body.

  When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains must be the truth had long been a dictum of the detective’s, and I racked my mind now to eliminate all that was impossible.

  I had searched the entire train by this point, including the galleys, dining, parlour and business cars, the coal tender, and the baggage cars. The mysteriously locked compartment I now knew contained only Director General Rachkovsky and possibly other members of the Okhrana, not the detective, whom they wished to see as eagerly as I, nor Mrs. Walling, whom they had spirited off the train during a momentary water stop. I was missing something obvious.

  At which point, in one of those bizarre moments of unexpected, intuitive clarity—no doubt also a by-product of my adrenaline jolt—I knew.

  The two monks were precisely where I had last seen them, side by side in their second-class compartment, pantomiming their familiar supplication, Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me. My heart leapt to see only one was seated with a missal in his lap. The other held what looked to be a volume that had been torn apart.

  “Holmes!” I fairly shouted.

  The monk looked up and smiled when he beheld me.

  “This is the most wonderful book ever written, Watson. Notwithstanding all those Russian names, War and Peace is the nearest thing to the Iliad that was ever—”

  “Holmes, she’s gone!” I slid the door shut behind me and tugged down the shades.

  “Mrs. Walling?” He appeared thunderstruck. Clearly the detective knew nothing of what was happening.

  “The Russians have her.”

  The blood drained from his face.

  “Tell me everything.”

  He was already tugging off the strands of his false beard and stepping out of his cassock. All this commotion produced absolutely no effect on his fellow congregant, who, eyes closed, continued his silent chanting.

  “Very obliging,” Holmes remarked, following my look. “I simply attached myself, and he appears neither to have noticed nor offered the least objection. Go on, man.”

  “There’s not a lot to tell,” I responded, but related with mortification all that had followed after I’d awakened from my stuporous slumber.

  He heard me out in gloomy silence as he adjusted his clothing.

  “They want you, and they want the confession.”

  He nodded. “Me they may have, the confession they may not.”

  “But how will you—?”

  “Come, Watson, let us hasten to where these gentlemen are to be found.”

  He slid open the door and led me backward to where our porter, having bedded down all the passengers in our car for the night, was once again enjoying a nap in his chair.

  At his feet rested a bull’s-eye for emergency use. Holmes delicately extracted the lantern without disturbing its owner and led me still further rearward to the baggage car, which we examined anew, this time with no conductor to intervene.

  Erik von Hentzau’s polo ponies nickered nervously at the bull’s-eye’s beam.

  Immediately the detective focused his attention on the two caskets, shining the lantern slowly along their lengths.

  “Hullo,” he exclaimed, kneeling closer. “How often does one see a coffin with air holes?”

  I knelt beside him, able to confirm his observation. Someone had indeed used a brace and bit to auger six apertures on either side of the pine box at the widened portion meant to accommodate the cadaver’s shoulders. Holmes nudged the casket, which moved easily. It took no great intelligence to understand it was empty.

  “This is where they concealed her until the water stop,” the detective reasoned. Using the crowbar I’d employed to open what proved to be a crate of furniture, Holmes prised the lid to confirm the coffin was indeed empty. A fragment of red cloth caught on a pine splinter within, which I recognized as belonging to the shawl Anna Walling had been wearing, served to confirm his deduction.

  Behind the box, almost lost in the shadows, I now spied a pile of stones. This was what the porters had labored to carry. We levered the lid off the second casket and found it weighted with more of the same.

  Behind us, the horses whinnied. Holmes and I looked at one another.

  “Why two coffins?” I wondered.

  “The second may have been for you, Doctor. Had one kidnapping not served to motivate me.”

  Before I had the chance to digest this prospect and its implications, we were interrupted.

  “Sherlock Holmes, I presume.” Swiveling the bull’s-eye, we beheld in its feeble light the director general of the dreaded Okhrana flanked by two silent henchmen.

  “Yes, I’ve been waiting for you,” the detective responded.

  “You put my men to a great deal of inconvenience in Odessa.”

  “They were clumsy and deserved what they got.”

  Holmes offered the Russian a cigarette, which he declined.

  “You know what I have to say,” Rachkovsky offered.

  “You also know my answer,” the detective returned.

  “Let me spell it out, so there can be no misunderstanding.” Rachkovsky seated himself on the other coffin. “I want Krushenev’s confession.”

  “I do not have it.”

  The Russian was first to blink.

 
; “Where is it?”

  “I posted it in Varna.”

  The other considered this gambit for several moments, then dismissed it, smirking confidently. “That is a lie. You would not dare entrust such a precious document to the mails, not in this part of the world.”

  “Nevertheless, I do not have it. You are welcome to search me and such belongings as I currently possess.”

  With a suddenness that sent the detective reeling across the undulating floor, Rachkovsky smote Holmes across the face with the back of his hand, a blow so fierce that, enhanced by the pronged ring on his third finger, it served to open a vivid gash on his right cheek and send Erik von Hentzau’s polo ponies into a neighing frenzy of prancing hooves.

  “You have no idea with whom you are dealing,” the Russian exclaimed.

  Holmes coolly retrieved his cigarette, dabbing at his cheek with a handkerchief. “On the contrary, you have just convinced me—if your scurrilous Protocols had not already done so—precisely with whom I am dealing. In addition, Rivka Nussbaum had entirely persuaded me days ago.”

  “Who?”

  “And you poisoned Theodor Herzl.”

  “Would I admit it if I had?”

  “True. Invite the world to speculate as to his cause of death.”

  The other inclined his head to concede the point. “I might.”

  “Let us leave it at this,” Holmes concluded, seating himself insouciantly on the coffin opposite and blowing smoke. “My friend here has a revolver aimed at your heart. Move an inch and he will shoot you dead.”

  I produced my weapon, its chambers full, trigger cocked. Rachkovsky was not a man who was often surprised.

  For several moments only the clickety-clack of the train was to be heard. Doubtless his own minions were armed; it was a question of who would shoot first, and I could see in the chief’s eyes that the game was not presently worth the candle.

  “If you shoot me, you will never see the girl again.”

  “If your men return fire, you will never obtain the confession, but others will.”

  The last thing Rachkovsky wanted was an incident involving gunplay aboard the Orient Express. Even assuming he and his cohorts managed by some chance to emerge unscathed, such publicity as would inevitably accrue would shine a ruinous light on people best suited to conducting their endeavors in the dark.

  As if to confirm my intuition, one of Rachkovsky’s men leaned over, displaying his watch and whispering. The Okhrana chief nodded, then smiled at Holmes.

  “Very well. We approach the Austro-Hungarian border, where I must leave you. When you reach Budapest, we will contact you regarding the arrangements.”

  “Those arrangements must include Sophie Hunter’s passport and visas as well as her unharmed person,” Holmes stipulated.

  “Well thought on,” the other conceded with a thin smile.

  “How will you know where we are?” I asked.

  “We will know.”

  So saying, and careful not to make any sudden movements, the three Russians withdrew, leaving Holmes and myself alone with the horses and mail as the Orient Express slowed for the frontier.

  We knew that customs officials would shortly be asking for our papers and inspecting our possessions.

  “Holmes, where is the letter?”

  “Where they’ll never find it.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “May I trouble you for your homburg, Doctor?”

  Wondering, I handed over my hat. Running his finger around the inside of the headband, he deftly extracted the folded paper from its place of concealment.

  “Do you mean to say I had it the entire time?”

  “Yes, my dear fellow. I knew if they discovered me, I would be searched until they found it.”

  “But you never warned—”

  He smiled a trifle sadly, I thought, and lit another cigarette, offering me one, which I accepted.

  “I thought it might be best if you didn’t know.”

  “You mean my innocence would be more convincing.”

  He shrugged. It was typical of the man that he was at times capable of such a cold-blooded calculation. It was also true, I realized, that I had grown accustomed to my role as a packhorse in carrying out his sometimes labyrinthine schemes.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “That is indeed the question. Our cards are not very promising.”

  “It’s either the woman or the Protocols. And he’s already murdered another.”

  “You are very blunt.”

  “Very honest.” More honest than you have been, I was tempted to add, but hadn’t the heart.

  He nodded. “I know, Watson. I know.”

  We smoked for several moments in silence while the distant hissing of steam told us the boiler was taking on water. The Emperor Franz Josef’s civil servants would shortly be seeking to stamp our passports.

  “I expect we’ve little choice except to proceed to Budapest and learn their plan,” Holmes said, more or less thinking out loud. “Perhaps some flaw in their arrangements will inspire us.”

  I tried to take comfort from this idea, but didn’t get very far. It seemed the Okhrana had been ahead of us almost every step of the way. Why should they not remain so?

  We returned to my compartment, where those same civil servants did indeed give our papers a cursory examination before stamping them with more Hapsburg double eagles and, upon their exit, emphatically slamming our sliding door as if to demonstrate their unimpeachable authority. In the darkness they either failed to notice or did not care about the detective’s slashed cheek, now embellished with dried blood. Dueling scars were not their purview.

  The berths still being in place, Holmes with awkward movements began to clamber to the topmost.

  “You ought to clean that gash.”

  He made no answer, and I had to content myself by stretching my own weary frame on the lower berth. Holmes had not uttered a word since we put out our cigarettes in the baggage car. There seemed little enough to say at this juncture, and the rhythmic noise of the train lulled one into silence as we wound through mountains we could not see.

  “Transylvania,” I remarked, at last, “home of vampires.”

  After a silence, Holmes responded in a hollow voice.

  “Not exclusively Transylvania.” I knew what he meant. There seemed now to be vampires everywhere.

  “It’s a very pretty problem, as you would say.”

  Another silence.

  “Not that pretty.”

  With a pang I found myself recalling the overconfident telegram I’d sent Juliet from Varna, All’s well that ends well.

  “Holmes, even assuming we agree to whatever it is they propose, how can we be sure they will keep their end of the bargain?”

  “We can’t,” he reflected, “but they have every motive for doing so. As you reported his conversation, ‘the girl,’ as Rachkovsky terms her, is nothing but his means to an end. To kill her is to risk the wrath of the British and American governments. But they must be willing to kill her,” he added bitterly. “Never make a threat you are not prepared to carry out.”

  “They might kill her simply to insure she does not expose her own abduction and the reasons behind it.”

  Another silence.

  “They might.”

  “Her tale of being buried alive in a pine coffin might not endear Russia to the world at large.”

  “Watson,” said he very softly. Meaning, I knew, Enough.

  The train barreled through the night, as we lay silent, each aware we were fast approaching a moral cul-de-sac. Though my mind continued racing in fruitless circles, I was on the point of sleep, when I became aware of Holmes noiselessly descending the ladder.

  “Holmes?”

  “I’m going for some air, Watson.”

  “Would you like company?”

  More silence as he considered my offer.

  “Thank you, no. If you’ve no objection.”

  “Of course not.�
��

  Throwing on his ulster, he slid open the door and left.

  Fully awake now, I lay contemplating the truly awful choice that was only the detective’s to make. But no matter how I turned the conundrum over in my mind, it was unclear what that choice would or should be.

  Holmes was gone for a surprisingly long time. Waiting for his return, it was as if someone had dropped a single shoe. I had assumed he would come back within fifteen or twenty minutes, but in this I was mistaken. I must have entirely lost track of time when I was awakened by the soft sliding of our compartment door and the stealthy return of the detective.

  “I’m so sorry, old man.” He shook his head like a pugilist who has absorbed one too many punches. “I seem to have made off with your hat instead of mine.” He hung it up next to his own on the brass hook.

  “Did the air do you any good?”

  “Who knows? Who knows? What a mystery life is, Watson. What a damnable mystery. Do I mean mystery or misery?” he added, under his breath.

  I thought it best to say nothing. Holmes would see through any effort of false cheer on my part. He sat on the berth by my feet, hunched below the upper bed, and stared out the window at the coming dawn, peering at or oblivious to his own chiseled features reflected in the glass, motionless as a statue as the darkened landscape flitted behind it.

  * * *

  5 February. The weather was indisputably winter by the time the Orient Express crawled into Budapest. We trundled past the enormous, red-domed capitol and bone-white parliament building on the western bank of the Danube (the city formerly designated as Pest), before turning east and creeping to a stop at Keleti station, among the most modern in all Europe.

  I was unacquainted with Budapest and unprepared for the opulence of Hungary’s capital, still less for its indecipherable tongue.

  “They say it most resembles Finnish,” Holmes remarked, which made still less sense to me and helped neither of us. Hailing a taxi that skidded to a stop where we stood on bustling Rakoczi Avenue, Holmes simply said, “Hotel.” Taking his cue from this single noun, our driver wove expertly through snow-clogged traffic in this prosperous and animated metropolis. He took it upon himself to bring us over the Emperor Franz Josef Bridge to the Palace Hotel, doubtless one of the costliest in the city. There we registered in conformity with our passports as Mr. Gideon Altmont and Colonel Rupert Morcar.