A Soul of Steel (51 page)

“Irene! Godfrey! It is Quentin’s medal.”

“Yessss,”
Irene hissed under her breath, her glowing eyes resting on it with a nameless emotion. “Is there a message?”

I turned over the medal, and moved the cotton fabric upon which it rested. “Nothing. Who has sent it?”

Irene was already scrambling for the wrapping paper, which had slipped off my lap in the excitement. “How provident that you were so agonizingly cautious about opening the parcel, Nell. Ah! As I feared. It has been posted from Marseilles.”

“What is wrong with being posted from Marseilles?” Godfrey inquired.

“Only that it is a port city,” she retorted. “The person who sent this could be on his way... anywhere.”

“The person?” I asked.

“Oh, Nell, don’t you see? It must have been Quentin!”

I stared again at the humble package in my lap, at the bright bit of brass, as he had named it, and shook my head. “There must be another explanation. You found no trace of him in London. Perhaps this was recovered at his lodgings and—”

“And the landlady immediately knew to mail it to you at Neuilly. Ridiculous! Besides, I believe that he kept it upon his person after I returned it to him. There was no medal among his effects. Nell, do not be such a dedicated dolt! Of course Quentin sent it. Who else knew where we lived?”

“Irene,” Godfrey began in a warning tone, putting his hands on her shoulders.

“Of course it is Quentin,” she repeated to me, her beautiful face even lovelier, abrim with the hope she meant to give me. “There is no other answer.”

“Irene,” Godfrey said, turning her to face him. “There is another.”

She stared at him for a confused moment, she who so delighted in out-thinking everyone, who was so adept at it unless concern for another clouded her judgment.

“Who else would care to send Nell—us—a message that he still lived?” she demanded.

I looked gratefully at Godfrey for sparing me unfounded hope. “Colonel Sebastian Moran might, Irene,” I said. “He might wish to tell us that
he
still lived and that Quentin did not.”

Irene twisted back to face me.

“Oh, no... Nell. No.” She sighed as Godfrey released her, and cruel inescapable reason returned.

“Yes,” she said, “Colonel Moran, if he survived, could have. He could have wrested the medal from Quentin’s... form. He did know we lived at Neuilly since he shot at Quentin here, but he is not the kind of man to tease his game in such a way. His message would come on a bullet, or the fang of a serpent.”

“Perhaps it already did—” I nodded to Messy’s lean brown form; the mongoose was pattering along the flagstones making for her cage “—and was stopped.”

Godfrey spoke suddenly. “I congratulate you, Nell, on your gruesome turn of mind. You outdo Irene. But in this case I think Mrs. Norton is right, however overhasty she may have been. Moran would go for Holmes, not us. We are incidental to his downfall, at least as far as he knows.”

“Perhaps,” I said.

Irene lifted the box. “Quentin left the medal here before, only I returned it. I thought then that he sought to elude his past, and the glory due him. I was wrong. Quentin left the medal for you even then. Now he has survived this duel with Moran and sends the medal to announce his triumph, and to acknowledge yours.”

“Which is?” I demanded incredulously.

“You are an admirably adventuresome woman, Miss Huxleigh.” Irene pinned the token to my shirtwaist below my left shoulder. “If not for you, Quentin Stanhope would have never gone home and Dr. Watson would be dead.”

“Then why has he not come himself?” I had not meant the words to blunder out in such a childishly distraught way.

Godfrey lent the matter its final fillip. “Perhaps Colonel Moran survived the contest, too. Perhaps Quentin dares not show himself, not with a man of Moran’s mettle on his trail.”

“Then he is an exile again, after all that has happened! Why must everyone I know be presumed dead? Except that... that miserable Sherlock Holmes?!”

Irene’s expression grew bittersweet. “But Quentin is alive, my dear! Surely that is better than the alternative.”

“And we shall never know for certain what transpired?” I asked.

They were silent. Finally Irene spoke. “At least you know that he is alive.”

I remembered what I had said to Godfrey on our way to England. I caught his concerned gray eyes and smiled ever so wanly. “I have concluded before that knowing is better than not knowing.”

Irene leaned back against Godfrey’s shoulder, her half-shut eyes sharpening in sudden speculation. “And even better is knowing of ways to find out.... Another tantalizing question arises: Do you think that in future Mr. Sherlock Holmes should be on the watch for cobras?”

A BRIEF AFTERWORD

The foregoing
selections from the Penelope Huxleigh diaries and newfound Watsonian fragments in my possession shed welcome new light on two areas dear to minutiae hunters in the so-called Holmes canon: Dr. Watson's vacillating wound and the hitherto unknown history of the man Holmes would later call “the second most dangerous man in London,” Colonel Sebastian Moran.

Sherlockians have long debated the whys and wherefores of Watson’s injuries at Maiwand. The author of these tales (i.e., John H. Watson himself) first mentions a shoulder wound and later refers to a leg wound, with no explanation of how the second occurred, if it actually did.

We can now see plainly in these additional Watsonian fragments and the new Huxleigh material that the good doctor was wounded unawares in the second instance, and was naturally sensitive to admitting to his loss of memory in Afghanistan, especially in the presence of his prescient detective friend. No wonder his accounts are inconsistent; he never made peace with this situation, or fully understood that both wounds were attempts on his life, made not in the heat of battle but through the cold-blooded designs of a murderous spy.

As for the revelations of the history of Watson’s attacker, the spy “Tiger” who is revealed to be Colonel Sebastian Moran, anyone acquainted with the Sherlockian canon must heave a sigh of comprehension. Diplomatic considerations compelled Watson to delay recounting what he called
The Adventure of the Naval Treaty;
the same reasons forced him to suppress all mention of the first encounter between Holmes and Moran, that was to bear such bitter, better-known fruits in latter escapades of Holmes that Watson was free to relate. These newly narrated events clearly show how Moran lost his credibility as a spy, thanks to the efforts of Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler acting in unknowing (on Holmes’s part) concert. His livelihood cut out from under him, Moran was forced to enlist his nefarious but formidable talents in the service of Sherlock Holmes’s archenemy, Professor James Moriarty. Of that association came only grave ill, with which every dedicated reader of the Watsonian canon will be familiar.

As for the Nortons and their chronicler, further probes of the Huxleigh diaries will indicate whether the events in this narrative had equally severe repercussions on their lives.

Fiona Witherspoon, Ph.D., F.I.A.*

November 25, 1991

*Friends of Irene Adler

NEXT. . .

Also enclosed below, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story,

“The Naval Treaty,” which plays a role in
A SOUL OF STEEL
.

The Readers Guide follows the story.

[Note: the original British spellings remain in the below story, which includes Sherlock Holmes’s famous “meditation” on life and the beauty of a rose.]

THE NAVAL TREATY

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

T
he July which immediately succeeded my marriage was made memorable by three cases of interest, in which I had the privilege of being associated with Sherlock Holmes and of studying his methods. I find them recorded in my notes under the headings of “The Adventure of the Second Stain,” “The Adventure of the Naval Treaty,” and “The Adventure of the Tired Captain.” The first of these, however, deals with interests of such importance and implicates so many of the first families in the kingdom that for many years it will be impossible to make it public. No case, however, in which Holmes was engaged has ever illustrated the value of his analytical methods so clearly or has impressed those who were associated with him so deeply. I still retain an almost verbatim report of the interview in which he demonstrated the true facts of the case to Monsieur Dubugue of the Paris police, and Fritz von Waldbaum, the well-known specialist of Dantzig, both of whom had wasted their energies upon what proved to be side-issues. The new century will have come, however, before the story can be safely told. Meanwhile I pass on to the second on my list, which promised also at one time to be of national importance and was marked by several incidents which give it a quite unique character.

During my school-days I had been intimately associated with a lad named Percy Phelps, who was of much the same age as myself, though he was two classes ahead of me. He was a very brilliant boy and carried away every prize which the school had to offer, finishing his exploits by winning a scholarship which sent him on to continue his triumphant career at Cambridge. He was, I remember, extremely well connected, and even when we were all little boys together we knew that his mother’s brother was Lord Holdhurst, the great conservative politician. This gaudy relationship did him little good at school. On the contrary, it seemed rather a piquant thing to us to chevy him about the playground and hit him over the shins with a wicket. But it was another thing when he came out into the world. I heard vaguely that his abilities and the influences which he commanded had won him a good position at the Foreign Office, and then he passed completely out of my mind until the following letter recalled his existence:

Briarbrae, Woking

My Dear Watson:

I have no doubt that you can remember “Tadpole” Phelps, who was in the fifth form when you were in the third. It is possible even that you may have heard that through my uncle’s influence I obtained a good appointment at the Foreign Office, and that I was in a situation of trust and honour until a horrible misfortune came suddenly to blast my career.

There is no use writing the details of that dreadful event. In the event of your acceding to my request it is probable that I shall have to narrate them to you. I have only just recovered from nine weeks of brain-fever and am still exceedingly weak. Do you think that you could bring your friend Mr. Holmes down to see me? I should like to have his opinion of the case, though the authorities assure me that nothing more can be done. Do try to bring him down, and as soon as possible. Every minute seems an hour while I live in this state of horrible suspense. Assure him that if I have not asked his advice sooner it was not because I did not appreciate his talents, but because I have been off my head ever since the blow fell. Now I am clear again, though I dare not think of it too much for fear of a relapse. I am still so weak that I have to write, as you see, by dictating.