The Fourth Circle Page 27

  "It seems that I do not partake of sufficient exercise. I was quickly out of breath and managed to keep going only because I so strongly desired to see Holmes. At times I thought my heart would leap out of my chest. Besides, I was burdened by the foreboding that I would not find him here...that I was too late.

  As in fact turns out to be the case."

  My gaze drifted involuntarily to the underground stream of sweat on his neck. It had dried up, leaving only a dry meandering trace. I felt sorry for him, knowing what an effort he had put into getting here, but I did not quite understand the hurry. There were several incomplete or undivulged elements to his story. For one thing, I did not understand why he had not come to Holmes immediately after the discovery of the book. He would have been too late, of course, since the book's mysterious arrival had, apparently, coincided with Holmes's equally mysterious disappearance, but he could not have known that. He had mentioned something from the book's contents in this regard, but nothing that he later told me of the book, strange though it might seem, could have explained the delay. Quite the opposite: knowing Holmes well, he could easily have imagined that he would be delighted with the entire matter which, to him, would surely have posed the case of all cases, more challenging even than those Moriarty had created for him. And then, after four whole days of restraint, this great, almost panic-stricken urgency at the hour when the key item of evidence had vanished, leaving one with no choice except to trust or not to trust Sir Arthur's word. On top of everything else was his feeling that Holmes would not be here. On what might that have been based? Something did not fit.

  Either Sir Arthur was not telling me the whole story, or he was inventing the whole thing. But why would he do the latter? Oh, I could think of several fairly convincing reasons. Adhering to Occam's razor, I would gladly have plumped for some of these, rather than the more fantastic possibilities, if Holmes really had absented himself for some new case. In light of what really had happened to my friend, however, Occam's razor was no longer a reliable guide. Hence I had to assume that he was telling the truth, however incredible it sounded, but also that he was holding something back. He had left out some key element. I did not know why—perhaps because the entire affair was too unbelievable, and he feared I would not accept it. Or was it because of his unfulfilled storyteller's tendency to delay the denouement, to build up the tension? If it were the latter, I had to let him know that I did not hold much appreciation for that sort of thing. In literature, perhaps, I can tolerate it, though it irritated me there too—so that I frequently read the end of a novel first, which usually made Holmes angry—but in reality, certainly not, and least of all in a situation like this. His last remark gave me an opening to clarify matters.

  "What makes you think that you are too late, Sir Arthur? And in what sense too late? If the volume has already...gone, then I see no cause for hurry, particularly as I do not anticipate Holmes's early return. He is, as I say, traveling...out of London, so that...."

  "I know where Holmes is," said he in a tone of quiet confidence that brooked no disagreement.

  "You do?" I said dully.

  "I do...He is out of London, all right, very far outside London. So far, actually, that I myself refused to believe it until the expression on your face at the front door when I asked you if Holmes was at home confirmed for me, finally and fully, that the book was telling the truth."

  "The book? I do not understand."

  "Aye, the book. The last chapter of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The book is so coherent, so unified, except for that closing chapter, which differs completely, in style, point of view, genre, as if written by another writer with an entirely different intention, and not by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—I mean, not by that other Doyle."

  He paused, losing track for a moment at the thought of this strange duality of his person, which gave me time to accustom myself to the new turn of events. The bristling of short hairs on the back of my neck told me clearly that this was not just another divergence. I knew the symptoms: I had experienced it many times while working with Holmes. The unraveling was about to begin; the case would now be solved. The time for unnecessary postponements was finally over. It was then that I envied Sir Arthur: he had had the opportunity to read the whole thing in advance, the end first and then all the preceding chapters; he had not had to exert himself unduly, like me.

  "The final section is titled 'Sherlock Holmes's Last Case,'" he continued. "Unlike the rest of the book, it is narrated in the first person: Holmes himself describes his last and most marvelous adventure, a case that is not at all of a detective nature, at least not in the sense that the others are, the ones about which Doyle writes."

  "Not of a detective nature?" I asked perplexed. "Holmes was...I mean...is the greatest detective genius of our age. What other occupation could he have?"

  He gave me a look in which there was a hint of rebuke, perhaps even anger.

  "How odd that you should ask that, Dr. Watson. One would expect you to know better the man in whose company you have spent so much time. Hasn't it ever crossed your mind that he might be deeply dissatisfied by the fact that he was squandering his unique talents—his intelligence, ingenuity, education, ex-ploratory enthusiasm—on something as trivial as sifting the dregs of human society? And that is what he has been doing, is it not—investigating criminal cases, the most debased expression of human nature, behind which stand such low passions as avarice or sick perversion or pathology. They may have been complex cases, beyond the range of the ordinary police intelligence, but unraveling them soon ceased to give him pleasure, lost the magnetism of challenge. Admittedly, he continued this work but without enthusiasm, by inertia, because it was expected of him."

  "You are mistaken, sir," I said energetically, feeling a new wave of anxiety and unease. Sir Arthur had touched a very painful and well concealed place. "Holmes took on new cases with excitement and enjoyed solving them...."

  "Because you...helped...him, Dr. Watson." The rebuke in his eyes turned into open accusation.

  "Oh, do not overestimate me, Sir Arthur. I was only his companion and assistant, and should not be credited with—"

  "I don't mean that sort of assistance. I mean morphine."

  He said it flatly, as if stating an ordinary fact. The simplicity of the statement disarmed me completely, so that I did not even try to pretend or to defend myself.

  "How...do you know?" I stammered.

  "From the book, of course, from the last, confessional chapter. Holmes describes how he sank into ever deeper depression, even hopelessness, from which he was rescued by your injections. They were all that kept him from falling headlong into the abyss of utter despair, which yawned all around him. Time slipped away inexorably, and his life was getting more and more bogged down in the monotony and grayness of banal criminal cases: an occasional mysterious murder, an inexplicable disappearance, a cunningly planned theft, and similar petty matters. Despite the fame he gained by solving them, he began to loathe them, longing for true spiritual challenge. He desired to face some of the great, ultimate questions because they were his match. He felt terribly misused and slighted, and even thought of suicide." Of course, this description of Holmes's condition fit the truth perfectly, although Sir Arthur could not, should not know it. How did he—I had the most awkward feeling he saw through me. And then, as the icy fingers of panic tightened around my chest, a thought occurred to me, and I clutched at it like a drowning man at a straw and said: "But the book...it is not about this Holmes, you said it was about that other...." I halted, surprised by my own readiness to accept, when in dire straits, this hypothesis that I had thought only a moment ago to be insane.

  "Only partly, Dr. Watson. Most of the book does indeed refer to the 'other'

  Holmes, the one that flowed from Doyle's pen. But the last, confessional chapter was written by your friend personally—by 'this' Holmes, as you say."

  "How do you know? How is that possible?"

  "I do not know how it i
s possible, but I know for certain that it is so. To begin with, there are no discrepancies, everything fits reality as we know it. There is no other London; our London is depicted, this one in which both of us are now. Besides, events are mentioned that we both know truly happened here. For instance, your visit to the Library with Holmes's instructions to fetch certain books for him."

  "That does not prove anything yet," I said, interrupting him again but for the moment not caring about courtesy. There was no more time for beating about the bush—open discussion was unavoidable. "I mean, with all due respect, even without this supposed...confession...by Holmes, you knew I came to the Library.

  If you wish to persuade me that it is genuine, you must describe some event...some phenomenon...about which you could not have known anything."

  This time Sir Arthur's look was conspicuously pitying. That was precisely the way Holmes looked at me when I dared to doubt some of his extravagant theories merely because they sounded impossible to me. I was noticing in general an increasing similarity between the two men—at least in the range of looks at their disposal.

  "Gladly, Dr. Watson. Do you wish to start from the very beginning— from Moriarty's epistle containing the circle? On Murratori's paper?"

  5. LIGHT

  OF COURSE I surrendered at once. It was the gesture of an experienced chess-player who knows when the game is over and respects his opponent too much to waste his time with superfluous additional moves. I decided not to interrupt Sir Arthur with any further suspicious and inappropriate questions, but nodded briefly and became all ears.

  "In fact, we must go back another step," he began. "To Moriarty's death in the lake several weeks ago. It was not, as officially declared, an accident. Oh, no, don't worry—Holmes did not kill him, as has just occurred to you, judging by your face. It was a premeditated suicide."

  I barely repressed an exclamation; only my firm decision not to interrupt stopped me, but not before my mouth had gaped open. The sight must have been rather comical since my companion smiled briefly before continuing.

  "It seems that Moriarty, who—you will agree—was no less intelligent or astute than Holmes, suffered from the same ailment as his rival. The initial pleasure in carrying out perfect crimes soon faded, leaving behind a void, which could only be filled by greater intellectual challenges. Unlike Holmes, who sank into moodiness and hopelessness and waited for such challenges to come knocking at his door, Moriarty was more enterprising and went looking for them, and in the right place—the British Museum Library."

  The "Ah!" that escaped from me was quite involuntary. I pulled a penitent face, which drew another brief smile from Sir Arthur.

  "It was only from Holmes's confession that I managed to piece together what had in fact happened right under my nose. About half a year ago I noticed a steep increase in interest in some of our ancient volumes. Various people of both sexes began to visit the department of rare and antique books, always studying the same few titles. I did not attach any great importance to this, thinking it was part of the recent fad for esoteric subjects. How could I have known or even suspected that it was always the same person, the proven master of disguise—Moriarty.

  Whatever it was that he was trying to find in the ancient tomes, he wished the search itself to be as inconspicuous as possible. Not long after, the interest suddenly waned, and this attracted my attention, but by then it was too late. The only remaining trace was the fact that several pages had been torn out the disappearance of which could not be explained, because we strictly scrutinize every user of rare and antique titles. Of course, the puzzle would have been much easier to understand if we had known who, in fact, had been visiting us."

  I nodded mutely, to show my full understanding. I remembered how many times I myself had been a victim of similar tricks of Moriarty's. On one occasion, he deceived me by disguising himself as a statue in a park, from whose hand a jet of water was flowing. Luckily, I had taken an oath of silence, so I was not tempted to reveal this embarrassing incident. To think I had so gladly quenched my thirst from that fountain following a hard chase after Moriarty....Holmes shook with laughter for a good fifteen minutes when I told him the story, and he had explained to me the nature of my "fountain."

  "I tried to find out by reconstruction what was on the missing pages that was so important that somebody should act with such vandalism, but I failed, of course. It would have been an act of vanity to expect success. Who am I, after all, to measure myself against the genius—dark though it be—of a Moriarty? Only now, from Holmes's confession, I have an idea, though incomplete, about it."

  The sudden sound of the wall clock in the dining room striking six o'clock interrupted Sir Arthur. We both looked for a moment at the great pendulum under the clock face. It was swinging hypnotically. I think that the unexpected sound startled him a little more than me. He was obviously one of those people who "lived" their own story as they were telling it. For him, it was as if Moriarty were somewhere near, in the room with us, disguised maybe as the wall clock, or even as me....

  "Apparently, Moriarty accidentally came across this idea about the existence of another world. The other Earth, with the other, differing London and all the rest. It was, at last, the great challenge, the ultimate adventure of the spirit, something that he had yearned for and would never share with his main rival—if he did not have to. But the powers he possessed, though great, were nevertheless not great enough to carry out the plan that inevitably followed from the discovery of that parallel world: an attempt to communicate with it."

  "Communicate...with...." I whispered.

  "Aye. All the more so because, as Holmes claims, the stolen pages indicated that from the other side too efforts to establish such contact are constantly being made—known for some reason as 'completing the Circle,' a metaphor no doubt that somehow infiltrated into our world, or grew here parallel to it. I do not know.

  In any case, the trail Moriarty began to follow, the signpost concealed in some ancient book, the founding stone on which he was to erect this entire edifice, was this: a circle."

  I remembered at that moment my conversation with Holmes regarding the circle from Moriarty's letter and his excitement at the time. How angry he had been with me when I had failed to see in the message of his arch-rival anything more than just a circularly drawn line! But how was I to know? To me it was just a plain, ordinary circle. I have always been one to take things at face value.

  "However, to open such a channel," Sir Arthur continued, "it was essential to jettison certain hindrances, certain items of ballast, the first of which was one's own corporeality, materiality. You see, nothing material can penetrate the barrier between the two worlds. Holmes, in his confession, explains in detail why this is so, and mentions some discoveries that are only to be made in the future; unfortunately, my familiarity with physics is really very modest, so that I did not understand much. What I did comprehend was, that there are some tiny particles that rotate in opposite directions and have opposite electric charges—but why they cannot mingle with each other, I cannot explain."

  There was in his voice an undertone of dismay, almost as if he were ashamed.

  I hastened to encourage him.

  "You may omit the technicalities, Sir Arthur. I do not know much about physics either."

  "Thus, Moriarty had to fulfill the necessary condition. To divest himself of his own body...to die...at least, in one sense."

  "How does one die 'in one sense'?" In my voice there was no surprise. My capacity to be surprised had long since faded in this conversation.

  He shrugged. "Well, the body dies, but the...soul...does not. I am aware that in other circumstances this would sound like mere babble, religious mysticism, but do not forget that these are special circumstances, very special."

  The warning was quite superfluous. Even had I wanted to, how could I forget?

  "Holmes was most impressed by Moriarty's achievement, although in fact Moriarty succeeded not so much through his
own ingenuity, as through his experiences in the Orient, where he learned some extremely bizarre techniques from Tibetan monks: astral projection, levitation...."

  Holmes's intuition had been correct, then. One enigma in Moriarty's life had finally been explained: he had reached the Dalai Lama and had not fallen into the trap of becoming a radish or a ladybird. But how had he got them to reveal to him their most precious secrets? Then I thought of Holmes's ominous warning that the man should never be underestimated, not even when dead, let alone alive.

  "So, Moriarty 'died' in the lake," Sir Arthur went on. "Accidental drowning after his boat overturned was the official report, and you did indeed identify the body, but the body only. His spirit was, in the meantime, preoccupied with the greatest of all challenges—an attempt to establish contact with the Others. However, the first attempt failed. Moriarty alone was just not enough to achieve this.

  He was, thus, faced with a terrible dilemma: to abandon the entire project at the moment when he was so near to accomplishing it, or to ask for assistance."

  The sound of the kitchen door opening interrupted him. A moment later Mrs.

  Simpson came into the dining room, carrying a laden tray. The smell of fresh scrambled eggs and onions roasted in oil filled the room.

  "You will soon feel much better, Sir Arthur," said she. "Nothing like a good bite to eat for overwrought nerves. Dr. Watson will tell you. We've often spoken about it, and just today I mentioned to him a cousin of mine in Kent who...."

  I looked at her crossly, and she stopped talking. The old woman coughed a little in embarrassment, placed the plate on the table in front of Sir Arthur and added, "I made this for you too, Dr. Watson, in case you're hungry. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to tidy up the kitchen."

  She left hurriedly. In her movements I recognized a mixture of emotions: she was glad to leave the dining room because then she would not have to listen to things unpleasant to her, but she was also angry because I had not allowed her to expound her views on medicinal matters.