I am sending you two tickets for the Lord’s Pavilion on August 2nd.
Sebastian Moran (Col.)’
‘Aha! He’s back!’ Holmes exclaimed. ‘He kept his men at bay in order to challenge us to a duel. The wheel grinds ever onward.’
As I climbed the steep stairway to our rooms Holmes called back, ‘What takes place at Thomas Lord’s on August 2nd, Watson?’
‘The centenary Eton versus Harrow match,’ I replied.
‘We have something to look forward to. Our Colonel will want to redress the humiliation we’ve just inflicted on him, no matter what the cost to his well-being.’
‘Or to his life,’ I added, reaching the landing. I pointed at Holmes’s pocket containing the hip-picket Webley.
‘We shall be ready, Holmes,’ I said confidently. ‘If he dares to tangle with us at Lord’s, even on the Mound, he will quickly find himself on the London Necropolis Line with a one-way ticket to Brookwood Cemetery.’
‘Watson,’ Holmes said, unable to repress a smile, ‘no-one can say you are just a galumphing St. Bernard. There is something of the Kipling in you. May I interest you in a Trichinopoly cheroot?’
‘My dear Holmes, I would rather smoke an Old Bailey judge’s Full Bottom horsehair wig.’
Postscript
In 1907, two years after the publication of the paper, Einstein changed the first formulation L=mV² to E=MC², the most famous equation in physics. Over the next decades the esteem, even reverence, accorded this remarkable scientist, stemming from the Annus Mirabilis of 1905, became unstoppable. Had Holmes revealed his deduction to the world at that time, that this Newton incarnate had fathered an illegitimate child who was then subjected to a mercy-killing, it is no exaggeration to say that rather than ending Einstein’s career before it had begun, Holmes and Watson might themselves have become objects of derision, even of dangerous hatreds.
Holmes’s and Watson’s experience in Serbia was far from wasted. What they learnt in the search for Lieserl was to be of extraordinary value when, hardly a year later, at the behest of a British Prime Minister, Holmes and Watson paid a second visit to Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, on a most secret and sensitive mission. The ‘Sick Man of Europe’ was collapsing. Once again the Sword of Osman had gone missing. Was an uprising against the Caliph in the offing? With what consequence for Britain’s interests in the Middle East and India? And what devious part was Mycroft about to play in the proceedings?
Endnotes
Watson’s Army career in India and Afghanistan commenced with a medical degree from the University of London. The college validated credentials earned through hospital study rather than offering medical instruction of its own.
The Cullinan Diamond was named after Sir Thomas Cullinan, the mine-owner. At 3,106-carats, contemporary estimates of its value if cut into a dozen marketable stones were around £150,000, the equal in today’s money of £45 million. The stone was bought by the Transvaal government and presented to King Edward VII on his birthday. The task of transporting the stone to London involved a diversionary tactic worthy of Holmes. The rumour was deliberately spread that the diamond was being transported to England on a steamboat. Detectives crammed aboard. The stone on the ship was a glass replica. The real diamond was sent to England in a plain box via parcel post (albeit registered).
Strand Magazine. Except for the first two Sherlock Holmes novels, all the detective stories had their first UK publication in the Strand, a monthly magazine founded at the beginning of 1891 by Sir George Newnes, the creator (in 1881) of Tit-Bits, the weekly paper of miscellaneous information and entertainment. The Strand was introduced as a more respectable product, with the title taken from the fashionable West End thoroughfare. So, for instance, issues often contained short stories translated from the French or Russian, and it was - for Conan Doyle - a mark of success that his stories were included in this prestigious publication.
The Ghost of Grosvenor Square: by failing to explain this interesting case Watson does himself a disservice. After being shown around the site of a crime, a Mayfair mansion, he deduced the intruder was garrotted by a sightless man who knew the house well. Scotland Yard put out an international arrest order for the mansion’s owner, an American, who had fled the country and was indeed blind.
The Criterion, a famous restaurant located near Piccadilly Circus. Arthur Conan Doyle set a very early meeting (late 1880 or early 1881) between Holmes and Watson in the Criterion Long Bar, later a convenient meeting spot for the Suffragettes.
‘Napoleon Crossing the St. Bernard’: a propaganda painting by Jacque-Louis David depicting Napoleon in his famous crossing of the Alps. In reality Napoleon crossed the Alps on a mule, not a magnificent horse. Mules have better balance and traction, are lower to the ground, and do better in cold weather.
The Prince Regnant of Bulgaria. A central character in Sherlock Holmes and The Case of The Bulgarian Codex where Holmes was commissioned to find a stolen ancient manuscript of very considerable importance.
Hegira. Migration of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina, here used as ‘journey’.
Rara avis. A rare or unique person or thing.
En cas où. ‘just in case’
Redresseur de destins. A rectifier of destinies.
Junior United Service Club: a gentleman’s club in London founded in 1827 and based at 11 Charles Street. Membership was restricted to former or serving officers in the Navy or Army with at least five years active service. Unlike its senior, the United Services Club in Pall Mall, its fees were moderate, which was why it was attractive to Dr Watson.
Doctor Honoris Causa: Honorary Doctorate. These started to be granted by universities across Europe (including Oxford and Cambridge) in the fifteenth century. The ceremony usually includes a eulogistic statement in Latin and/or Greek justifying the grant by the University Orator, opening with the word ‘Whereas’ and the concluding statement with ‘Therefore’. Those granted doctorates ‘honoris causa’ do not usually thereafter term themselves Doctor unless they have a separate academic doctorate. In November 1919, on the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the University of Rostock, Albert Einstein and Max Planck (German physicist and Nobel laureate, 1858-1947) were awarded honorary doctorates, Einstein for Medicine ‘in recognition of the enormous work of his mind’, the only honorary doctorate Einstein was given in Germany. Einstein was granted a doctorate ‘honoris causa’ by Princeton University in 1921 and by Oxford in 1931.
‘Drumming a tattoo on his knee with his fingers’: this tell-tale habit has been used by several authors to give the villain away, for instance, Sir Edmund Appleton in Scottish author John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps, the first of five novels featuring Richard Hannay. Hannay was an all-action hero with a stiff upper lip and a miraculous knack for getting himself out of sticky situations.
Penang Lawyer. Walking stick having a bulbous head and made of the stem of an East Asiatic palm (Licuala acutifida).