The Fourth Circle Page 26

  "And that's not all, Dr. Watson," Sir Arthur interrupted me. "It is true that the year of publication of this enigmatic volume is one which is yet to come, but this is not its first edition. By studying the title page, I found that the original first edition had appeared in—this year!"

  "This year? Then you ought to be able to trace it. As far as I know, one copy of everything printed in Britain is obligatorily sent to the British Museum Library, is it not?"

  "Certainly, certainly. But nobody has published such a book this year, and so we do not have it on our list."

  "The year is not finished yet," said I, trying to be clever. "There are two and a half months to go, so possibly..."

  "Nothing will happen in the remaining months of this year, Dr. Watson," replied Sir Arthur with assurance. "A firm that does not exist is stated as the first publisher, but there is something else, more momentous. On the back folder of this future publication, a short biography of the author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is given. Could you make an assumption as to his profession?" "I have a feeling that he is not the director of the British Museum Library."

  "True, he is not. He is a doctor."

  "Then it is not you?"

  He eyed me suspiciously. I used to get that sort of look from Holmes when some remark of mine irritated him, who knew why. Fortunately, Sir Arthur's reaction was more restrained than Holmes's.

  "It would seem so," he answered in a mild voice. "By the way, the biography is accompanied by a photograph. We do not look at all similar."

  "Do you, perhaps, recognize that...other...Doyle?" asked Mrs. Simpson unexpectedly. Her voice sounded somehow distant, muted. Sir Arthur had obviously quite forgotten about her: he jumped a little when she spoke up.

  "No, he is completely unknown to me," replied Sir Arthur after a short hesitation, turning for a moment to her.

  "I thought it might be some cousin of yours. You know, relatives are sometimes capable of making mischief, out of envy..jealousy...Worse than complete strangers, more ruthless. For instance, I have a nephew in Devonshire...."

  "But, how is it possible?" I said, quite puzzled. My words prevented Mrs.

  Simpson from gathering momentum. "You said that there is no other Sir Arthur Conan Doyle."

  Sir Arthur did not answer at once. He looked down at his half-empty cup of tea, in which he turned the spoon. He was deep in thought, and he did it unconsciously, making a small monotonous tinkling. When he spoke, it was in a deeper, quieter voice.

  "Indeed there is not. At least not in this London."

  "Not in this London?" I repeated, understanding nothing at all. "To the best of my knowledge, there isn't another. Admittedly, there have been proposals that some towns in the colonies be named 'London,' or rather 'New London,' but—"

  "I do not mean the colonies, Mr. Watson," said Sir Arthur impatiently. It was becoming his habit—an unpleasant one—to interrupt me. He was beginning to acquire Holmes's manner. "I mean another London...in another England...on another Earth...."

  He fell silent, leaving me in a dilemma as to whether he had finished the sentence or left it dangling; in any case, it was an unfinished thought. What "other London?" "Other England?" What could the words "other Earth" possibly mean?

  There was nothing "other" in these matters. London and England and the Earth especially, are each unique.

  "What nonsense is this, Sir Arthur?" I asked, intending to give my voice a rough undertone, but it came out somewhat shrill and timid. "Of what 'other'

  places do you speak? There is no other London, far less another England. Or, God forbid, another Earth."

  There was no answer, at least not immediately. He continued to make circles in the tea with his spoon, first in one direction and then in the other; this motion undoubtedly had a hypnotic effect on him, making him seem somehow lost, dis-placed. One could see that he was finding it hard to continue, that he was struggling fiercely with evil spirits inside him. The underground stream on his neck still glistened, although the original flush of his face had long passed.

  The silence was broken by Mrs. Simpson. "Sir Arthur...Would you like to eat?

  You must be hungry. You can't have eaten anything for ages. I could quickly make you something tasty. Perhaps some nice scrambled eggs...."

  Turning once again, he gave her a short, vacant look, as if only the sound of the woman's voice and not the meaning of her words had reached him. "Don't you understand?" he said, turning to me. "There is no alternative explanation.

  None that I can see, at least."

  "Oh, there is," I said enthusiastically, like a man to whom all had been suddenly made clear. "And a perfectly visible one. Occam's razor!"

  "Occam's razor?"

  "Yes. In solving his complicated cases, Holmes often relied on the wise instruction of William of Occam, a Dominican churchman of the fifteenth century.

  'When assumptions start to multiply, choose the simplest one.' And I have already mentioned the simplest solution: in all likelihood, someone is playing a joke on you, a stupid joke. You said that nobody in his right mind would invest so much effort, the writing of a whole book, just for a joke. That is true, but who says this is a normal person? If I have learned anything in my years of association with Holmes, it is that a twisted mind is willing to undertake any and every effort in order to fulfill its schemes. In this case, we are dealing with such a mind. Somebody picked you as a target, Sir Arthur, somebody slightly unhinged but also very industrious and as you yourself said, endowed with literary talent. He wrote a book on Holmes—which, by the way, Holmes certainly deserves: it is a wonder that nobody has ever thought to write one before; I would very much like to read it—and then had it printed with false, misleading data on the title page. Small printing shops in the East End will do that for an appropriate sum of money, although this kind of forgery is liable to severe penalties. And then he managed to place it in your department of rare and antique books. This would involve quite an effort, but it would still be incomparably simpler than your idea of...another London, on another Earth.... "Wouldn't it?" I said all of this in one breath, triumphantly, incontrovertibly, like Holmes used to do when concluding a case. Everything fitted, everything was in place, there was a reasonable explanation for everything. If my friend could only see me at this moment! I was proud of myself.

  Not for long.

  "I would probably have reached that conclusion myself, Mr. Watson, had I not been holding in my hands that—volume. To begin with, it was made in a manner that is not in use anywhere in this country or, almost certainly, in any other. Every aspect of it was somehow...different, more perfect. The work, the binding, the luxury of the covers, the typeface. It simply does not belong to our time. No modest East End printer would be able to produce anything remotely similar. Not even the luxurious editions of the Royal Printing House can compare with this.

  Then there's the paper—"

  "There is extraordinary paper in our time also," I interrupted him, straining to rescue my daring assumption, which had suddenly begun to wobble though it had looked so steady, at least to me. "In Bologna, Italy, a signore Murratori...."

  I stopped in mid-word, struck by an idea that seemed quite mad. The thought of Murratori had started a long chain of associations, at the end of which stood one name: Moriarty! If all that Sir Arthur was saying were true, then behind the mysterious appearance of the book chronicling Holmes's adventures was not some idle prankster who had spared no effort to carry out his lunatic idea; no, the perpetrator of such a convoluted and twisted hoax centered on Holmes and not on poor Sir Arthur, could only have been the shadowy genius of Moriarty!

  But...how?

  He was just about to ask me something, but Mrs. Simpson spoke first. "I'll go and prepare a meal. You'll feel much better after you've got some scrambled eggs inside you. I've got some fresh eggs, you know, and—" As she walked out of the dining room and into the kitchen, she continued to discourse on the advantages of evening scrambled eggs and the importan
ce of regular nutrition in general for a healthy mind. We watched her go in silence, in which there was something conspiratorial, as if both of us were tacitly glad that the conversation that was to follow would be without a witness.

  When we were left alone, I spoke first. "Sir Arthur, does the name 'Moriarty'

  mean anything to you?"

  "Moriarty? You mean that arch-criminal who was recently, I think a few weeks past, found dead in a lake?"

  I nodded, but before I could continue, Sir Arthur raised his head, looked me piercingly in the eye, and added in a voice reduced almost to inaudibility: "Except that he did not perish there."

  I stared at him, my jaw dropping. This was too much. Not even his batty hypotheses about books arriving from the future and other Londons on other Earths had shaken me as much as this simple statement of a secret that I had thought nobody else besides me knew or could ever know. Only my ears had heard that horrendous, inhuman voice behind the locked door of the drawing room. Suddenly, I felt as if the rug had been pulled from under my feet. Everything around me seemed to sway.

  "How...how do you know?" I stammered.

  "Elementary, Dr. Watson," replied Sir Arthur in a tone now more brisk and energetic, as if my involuntary admission of the correctness of his statement, which he had barely dared to whisper, now gave him heart. "I read it in the book."

  "In which book?" I asked, aware of the stupidity of the question.

  This was confirmed by another penetrating glance from Sir Arthur, but his reaction was not violent this time either. "In The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" he said mildly. "I have read the book, naturally."

  "Naturally," I repeated mechanically, like an echo.

  "Exquisite reading matter," he continued enthusiastically. "I would not be in the least ashamed to be its genuine author. Quite the contrary."

  "But you are not?"

  "I certainly am not because among other things, I have never had much of an imagination, you know. I am a man with both feet firmly on the ground." He paused for a moment and added in a somewhat crestfallen manner: "At least I was, until recently."

  "What do you mean, imagination? Is it not a book about the real experiences of Sherlock Holmes, something like a romanticized version of his diaries? I thought...."

  "Oh, no, you had the wrong idea. As far as I can judge, nothing in it is real.

  Not one of the cases described in it has really happened. It's all fictional."

  "But why would someone go to the trouble of inventing Holmes's adventures when those that have actually happened are more than sufficient—in excitement, in mystery...."

  "I can only guess, Mr. Watson. And the simplest assumption, fully in the spirit of your beloved Occam's razor, tells me that the writer...whoever might be my mysterious namesake...simply did not know of Holmes's real adventures. What is more, he probably had no idea that Holmes exists. I mean, this Holmes, here...."

  His voice tailed off again. The sudden silence was penetrated only by the muffled noises of the preparation of food in the kitchen. This time Mrs. Simpson had not left the door open behind her, as she had done when she went to fetch the tea. It was obvious that she did not wish to hear anything more of the dialogue in the dining room.

  "Well, is there another Holmes? Are we returning to your extremely...er...strange idea of another London?"

  "I am afraid it is an inevitable idea, Mr. Watson, though I agree that it is certainly not the simplest possibility. On the contrary."

  A thought crossed my mind, filling me with a strange wave of anxiety, such as I had never before experienced. "Am I mentioned in the book? I mean, does another Watson go with the other Holmes?"

  "Oh, certainly. You are present in every story. Holmes's steady follower and assistant. His right hand, just as you are here."

  Although the cold fingers of dread had penetrated my chest, I was simultaneously flooded with a feeling akin to pride. I could not resist the urge to ask:

  "That other Watson...How is he described?"

  He did not answer at once. It seemed to me that he was taking some time to find the right words. When he spoke again, a smile played briefly on his lips.

  "Well...quite true to life, I should say. There are some minor differences, though.

  You, for instance, do not sport a moustache, while the other Watson does, but you are, for the most part, represented as you are: a good-natured man, loyal, useful, simple in spirit...."

  Sir Arthur fell silent, but his smile widened, as if he wanted to add something, but refrained at the last moment. "You would not be disappointed, Dr. Watson, especially in view of the fact that the character was not, of course, modeled on you. As far as I can judge, Mrs. Hudson is also represented with verity."

  "Mrs. Simpson," I corrected him.

  "Yes. Mrs. Simpson. I keep making that mistake because in the book her name is Hudson. Similarly, your address is given as 221-B Baker Street, while this is 221-A. That's why on my way here today I first knocked on the house next to yours, convinced that it was Holmes's. You see, these minor, seemingly unimportant discrepancies ultimately persuaded me that this book on Holmes's adventures is not from...this world. I first noticed it in the descriptions of London.

  Yes, it was the London we know, the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, Tower Bridge, Piccadilly, the West End—but everything seemed somehow misplaced, wrong, out of true, real and unreal at the same time. You could recognize things, but there was always some jarring inaccuracy in the details, something which did not fit, conspicuous to a greater or lesser extent. Then I asked myself what possible reason the author could have had for introducing such a multitude of differences, which would only confuse the reader. Do not these mistakes discredit him from being a reliable guide through plots of detective stories in which every smallest detail must be in its proper place? How is anyone to believe that the narrator holds all the threads of the dramatic action in his hands, if, for instance, Tower Bridge is quite needlessly shown to be a good two miles upstream?"

  The question was, of course, not directed at me, but as Sir Arthur had fallen silent for a moment, I felt it my duty to say: "I don't really know."

  "The answer was there, in front of my eyes," he continued, ignoring my remark. "But very hard to accept, precisely because of a prejudice emerging from respect for Occam's razor. Oh, by the way, Occam is frequently mentioned in the book, but as a Franciscan monk from the fourteenth century and not a Dominican one from the fifteenth, as he is here. Another discrepancy, you see. So, in fact there are no mistakes. London is, like everything else, shown with perfect fidelity; however, not this, our London, but another, different one."

  "Sir Arthur," I said, having thought of something I should have demanded much earlier, as soon as that unfortunate volume was mentioned. "Would you show me the book? The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes? I would like to see it myself.

  You brought it with you, I hope?"

  His gaze again drifted to his teacup, which had been empty for some time. He was still making circles in it with the teaspoon, clearly unaware that he was doing so. The monotonous clinking sound spread through the room like the distant, but ominous tolling of a bell.

  "I cannot show it to you, Dr. Watson," he said finally, looking up at me. "It has vanished."

  4. THE LAST CHAPTER

  "WHAT DO YOU mean, vanished?" I asked with incredulity. "Somebody took it?

  Stole it?"

  "Oh, no. I literally mean vanished, right before my very eyes. I was actually holding it in my hands at the time, and then—a sudden flash of white light, searing, blindingly bright. Every hair on my body stood up, my skin tightened into goose pimples...I sensed that sparks of some sort were crackling everywhere around, dancing on the surfaces of the surrounding objects in my study, on my clothes and uncovered parts of my body. There was no discomfort, no pain, quite the opposite. I experienced something akin to delight, exhilaration. As if I were...flying...in a trance. Everything was rattling around me, like an
earthquake.

  It lasted—I don't know—fifteen seconds maybe, no more. When the flash died down and my eyes grew accustomed again to the usual light at my desk—which took some time—the book was just not there. My hands were still in the same position, as if holding it, but the book had disappeared, I simply don't know how.

  I felt nothing, no motion...."

  I stared at him for a few moments wordlessly, filled with a mixture of disbelief and anxiety. Everything that this man had said since he set foot in Holmes's house sounded absolutely incredible and unreal, and reason was telling me that it was devoid of any sense, that it was lunacy...However, another part of my mind, that which kept reminding me of what had happened to Holmes in my presence, kept emitting signals that tightened my throat, sent shivers up my spine, accelerated my breathing...Being a doctor, I easily recognized the symptoms of catatonic fear.

  "Er...when did this happen?"

  "Oh," said Sir Arthur, taking his watch from the pocket of his waistcoat. It was a massive watch, on a thick gold chain; when he lifted the lid, the first few notes of "God save the Queen" sounded. "Exactly one hour and twelve minutes ago. The wall clock in my office was just striking four when the—event—occurred."

  "But, that was now! I mean, this afternoon."

  My talent for stating the obvious was again evident. This time he did not look suspiciously at me. The man seemed to be getting used to it.

  "That's right. I made my decision promptly. I simply had to see Holmes about the matter. All the reasons that had previously prevented me from doing so had become immaterial. I left immediately; I tried to catch a hansom along the way, but unsuccessfully. You know how it is, a free hansom is never at hand when you need it most. I lost count of how many passed me, but every one was taken, as if to spite me, so I was forced to walk all the way from the Library to here, which is, I am sure you will agree, quite an accomplishment for a man of my age and stature."

  I nodded in agreement, remembering my own suffering in similar situations.

  Sir Arthur was approximately my age and build, so we shared similar problems.