Most cases arrive on the instant - a soft footfall up the stairs followed by a knock at our sitting-room door, or a summons from Scotland Yard. Others lie like a virus in the blood, dormant for years. I am storing a length of parchment received some months before. Over the signature of the wife of a British Ambassador it read:
‘Yuan Shih Kai is the Chinaman of the future, and on his success or failure to maintain himself in his present exalted and powerful position depends much of the future of China. He stands almost alone for reform, progress and education. He is honest in money matters, a thing almost unknown in Chinese public life. But his enemies are many and powerful. It is to be hoped he may prevail against them. The present time in China is intensely interesting, and her destiny is rapidly shaping itself.’
She warns Yuan’s life might be in danger if he comes to England, any attack designed to provoke an international incident.
Holmes’ announcement that a new chemical investigation was in train was not entirely welcome. His engagement in this endeavour made it clear I was in for a pottering day. Perhaps I would walk to Stamford’s in Long Acre and pick up the latest maps. Or drop into one of the Bond Street picture galleries, though it was not a very fine morning for a stroll. More likely I would return to one of Clark Russell’s fine sea-stories. I opted for my favourite seat at the fireside, tucked under the ornate overmantle laden with Holmes’ correspondence. One letter in a bold, masterful hand brought round from the Upper Baker Street Post-office, opened but apparently unanswered, invited him to seek a seat in Parliament for a Party ‘whose name and location on the political spectrum you yourself may choose’.
As I settled in I recalled my friend Eddie Marsh asking how I turn my notes into pamphlets. I told him I always started with a dash -some such phrase as ‘I had never before encountered such a singular case’. I pepper the pages with ‘Inspector Lestrade and John Yates of the Yard (and/or the local police) were baffled’ or best of all, ‘Our official detectives may blunder in the matter of intelligence, but never in that of courage’.’
Lost in these thoughts and impervious to Holmes’ light snore (he often fell asleep pipette in hand), it seemed but a moment later our clocks chimed a quarter to ten. I imply that the several pendulum clocks struck as one at the half quarter but because we usually failed to set each in turn, and we prohibited Mrs. Hudson from undertaking this manly task, they took to serenading us across a length of time, almost continuously, like the chiming bells of the great Cathedral at Rouen when the Dukes of Normandy and Brittany were crowned.
Sharp at eight minutes to ten the last of the quarter chimes ceased. Almost immediately the front-door bell rang.
‘What is it, Watson?’ Holmes asked, opening his eyes. ‘Surely the morning post comes at eight o’ clock and twelve?’
We listened to the sound of footsteps coming hurriedly up the stairs and crossing the landing accompanied by audible expressions of excitement upon our landlady’s part. One of her crisper knocks followed. At Holmes’ ‘Enter, Mrs. Hudson!’ she rushed in, breathless and excited, holding out a telegram on a brass salver.
Holmes glanced at the envelope and threw it over to me.
‘A reply-paid telegram, Watson, and delivered by the district messenger service. As you have your eye-glasses on your nose already, do read it aloud. Mrs. Hudson, please return shortly for our response, and be ready to hasten to the post-office at Wigmore Street.’
Mrs. Hudson departed with unconcealed reluctance.
I took a letter-opener to the envelope. My heart gave a leap when I espied the sender’s name.
‘Holmes,’ I reported, ‘you are invited to Crick’s End. By the President of the Kipling League.’
A Jacobean mansion in Sussex, Crick’s End was the home of David Siviter, a poet (or to some more cynical, ‘versifier’) whose work was much published in the Westminster Gazette. While not held to be a writer of Rudyard Kipling’s genius, he had much talent of the supple kind which lent itself to the popular vein - novelist, journalist, critic or historian as occasion suited.
‘I am invited by the President of the Kipling League?’ Holmes asked, incredulous. ‘Who might that be?’
‘Why, David Siviter,’ I responded.
‘David Siviter?’
‘Surely you have him in your great index volume? Rumour has it he rivals Bridges as a future Poet Laureate. They say he is nearly the equal of Rudyard Kipling in knowledge of the East.’
‘So the President of the Kipling League - acolyte to the great verse-maker himself, and author of many a tale from East of Eden, you say?’
‘Yes, Holmes. That is he.’
‘Invites me to his home?’
‘He does.’
‘Crick’s End, you say?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which is where, exactly?’
‘In the east of Sussex.’
‘And when?’
‘At once. He invites you to catch the three-ten train this afternoon from Charing Cross.’
Holmes sat bolt upright in his chair. A look of anger crossed his face. ‘At once, you say? This afternoon no less? He who I now recall speaks to the orang-utans and elephants at the Regent’s Park Zoo? He demands my presence at once!’
I protested, ‘Many of us speak to the orang-utans and elephants at the Regent’s Park Zoo!’
‘In Malay and Hindustani?’
The angry expression gave way to one of enquiry.
‘Watson,’ he went on, ‘why would this poetaster not send the invitation a week or more ago on featheredge hand-wove or foreign notepaper, in envelopes at a shilling a packet, as parvenus do, rather than by the district messenger service at 3d the half-mile? There is haste in this invitation, surely?’
‘I admit it is not a Saturday-to-Monday but your asperity may lie with telegrams. They are the origin of that cousin of brevity - curtness - in us all, at sixpence for each and every word.’
He emitted a further burst of indignation. ‘Reply-paid! How kind of this Kipling League to save us five shillings! Is that a courtesy... or contempt? But do go on, my dear Watson,’ he urged in a more emollient tone. ‘From your expression even a Scotland Yard inspector could see how flattered I should be.’
I returned to the telegram and read aloud. ‘‘Dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes, we would most earnestly ask you...’’ I looked up. ‘Hardly imperious, Holmes,’ I demurred, repeating, ‘‘we would most earnestly ask you...to take the three-ten train from Charing Cross to Etchingham where you shall be met by a motorised barouche with Mr. Dudeney at the wheel’.’
The telegram took on a more confidential note, ‘Inclement weather in the form of a thin rain has disrupted our outdoor plans’. This was followed by a witty parenthesis, ‘Holding members of the Kipling League together, indoors or out, is harder than herding cats’.
The message ended in an admiring tone, ‘Unanimously we have elected to invite you to pass to us some of that insight into the criminal mind for which you are so famed’.
At this recitation, Holmes wrenched the small brier-root pipe from his mouth. He leapt up so quickly from his chair it was as though he spoke in flight. Not known for strength of voice, on this occasion he managed a bull-like roar.
‘They have pre-empted my choice of acceptance!’ he cried. ‘Do you note how he refers to his chauffeur by name? Clearly he assumes we are shortly to be acquainted! ‘Inclement weather in the form of thin rain has disrupted our outdoor plans’! They wish me to entertain them like a performing seal? Am I to be a visiting jester or a calf for baiting? Should I attend as though in pantomime at the Richmond Theatre, with an eye-patch, a salt tang about me and a parrot on either shoulder?’