[NOTE: This is a bit of Sherlock Holmes pastiche (French for “fan-fiction”) that I wrote several years ago. It’s long, so I doubt many of you will read the whole thing, but I figured enough of you were Sherlock Holmes fans (and bored on vacation) to make it worth publishing. JL]
THE SIGN OF WAR
In the Spring of 1888 I was sharing rooms at 221B Baker Street, an address that will be familiar to many, as I recuperated from injuries suffered during the Afghan campaign. They were charming rooms, handsomely furnished, though I found my rest somewhat frequently interrupted by the activities of my fellow lodger, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
Holmes was a new acquaintance and, in general terms, a suitable companion for a convalescent. He was prone to periods of deep inactivity when he would neither stir nor speak a word. A visitor at these times would have assumed that he was the one recovering from a war wound, not I. His favorite hobby was playing the violin, sometimes long into the night. This could portend badly, as a poorly played violin is a torture worthy of the Pathan who put the ball into my leg. But Holmes had long, sensitive fingers and a good ear, and I spent many an hour enchanted by his soothing extemporizations.
A few of his other habits were less soothing, both to myself and to our landlady, the sainted Mrs. Hudson. More often than not the house was suffused with the odor of whatever chemical experiment he was then at work upon, and somewhat less frequently, to my great relief, he brought out his pistol and practiced his marksmanship on a target he’d placed on the drawing room wall. Moreover, he stuffed his pipe with the most inexpensive, noisome shag he could find, which he kept in a slipper on the mantelpiece. However, I smoked a rather thick “ship’s” tobacco in those days, myself, so I was in no position to complain on that account. For the most part, I found Holmes’ eccentricities to be more salubrious than not, the sort of piquant little shocks I needed to prod my body and spirit back into the world of the living. It was only in the pursuit of his profession, as the self-styled “world’s only consulting detective” that he provided me with a sometimes unfortunate drain on my husbanded strength, though I will not deny that I found these activities diverting as well.
This career of his was Holmes’ chief peculiarity, and all his other odd habits spawned from it, as kittens from their mother. He had elected himself the enemy of all crime, and, through intense, if erratic, study and training, he had made his mind into the perfect machine of logic and ratiocination. This considerable instrument he used to expose the criminals of the world, much in the manner of Mr. Poe’s Dupin (a comparison he abhorred!). So highly developed were his skills of deduction that anyone unaware of his methods invariably accused him of trickery, or even witchcraft. But, once explained, his deductions were revealed to be the merest chains of simple logic, astonishing when looked at as a whole, but purely quotidian in the individual links.
I well remember how shocked I was, at our first meeting, when he grasped my hand and noted that I’d just returned from Afghanistan. We’d scarcely been introduced, and yet he seemed privy to this large aspect of my personal history. Only weeks later did he reveal to me the method of his “trick”: I’d been introduced as a doctor, but had a military bearing, so he deduced I was an army surgeon. That, combined with my deep tan and all too evident injury led him to the natural conclusion that I had seen service in the Afghan conflict. It was simple enough once he explained his process, but still remarkable in its speed and accuracy.
Only once did I see him make a mistake in such matters, but he was quick to correct himself, and our visitor was so queer I can hardly fault Holmes for being confused, if even for a moment. We had recently finished breakfast and I was gently remonstrating with Holmes over the doses of cocaine he was taking with ever-increasing frequency, which he averred were necessary to stimulate his mind between “cases,” when a smile suddenly broke across his hawk-like visage. “Your concern is duly noted, Watson,” he said, “But you need not worry that I’ll be taking a second dose today. Unless my eyes deceive me, the young coachman across the way is about to call on us, possibly to deliver a most stimulating case.”
I followed his eyes out the window and, indeed, saw a pale young man in a long coachman’s coat, staring up at our windows with the appearance of indecision. Even at that distance I could see the stubble on his otherwise clean-shaven face, and the sloppy manner in which he was dressed. I would have taken him for a common drunkard, not a coachman in need of consultation with a detective, but I had learned by that point not to doubt my friend’s prowess.
Holmes called out to Mrs. Hudson to send the next man to knock on the door straight up, to save her the trouble of ascending the stairs to announce him, and we were rewarded a few minutes later when the pale young man walked awkwardly into the room. He stood there silently, staring at us, first at Holmes, then at myself, then at Holmes again, as if he could scarcely believe we were there.
“Well, young man,” said Holmes, “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”
Our visitor grew paler, if that were possible, and said, “I don’t know where to start.”
“Then please have a seat and let me do the starting for you.” Holmes looked him up and down. “You are a coachman, obviously. New to the trade. You ride almost exclusively at night. You –“
Holmes suddenly stopped speaking. He put a hand to his brow, as if stricken with a sudden headache. “Holmes,” I asked, “Are you unwell? Shall I fetch you a draught?”
Holmes smiled ruefully and shook his head. “Only if your draught could cure embarrassment.” He turned back to our guest, and his expression was now not so pleasant. “You are not a coachman. Your clothing is stolen. You are here under false pretenses, sir.”
The young man nodded. “I took this suit from a carriage house, while the guy it belonged to was sleeping in his cab. I left his money and watch behind.”
“That was good of you,” said Holmes. “Take note, Watson, of the first rule of a coachman: always sleep fully clothed.”
“But how did you know his outfit was stolen?” I asked, as I rested my hand lightly on the handle of the fireplace poker.
“I’ll admit his disguise fuddled me at the first,” said my friend. “His coat speaks for itself, and his pallor and obvious weariness led me to the conclusion that he was used to working by night. But then I noticed the several buttons he’s fastened incorrectly, both on his waistcoat and his coat itself. The suit is far from new. Certainly he would have learned how to button it by now. Moreover, his boots are clean, as if they’d been polished before going to bed, rather than worn directly here from an exhausting overnight journey. Most importantly, his hands. Will you show Dr. Watson your hands, young man?”
Our visitor obligingly did so. “You’ll note the lack of the characteristic coachman’s callous between thumb and forefinger, where the genuine coachman is accustomed to squeeze the reins and whip. No, these are rough hands, working hands, but they are not the hands of a man who handles horses.”
The young man continuing to remain silent, I expostulated, “If he’s not a coachman, what the devil is he, Holmes?”
Holmes regarded him again. “You are an American,” he said, “Though I cannot yet place your regional accent.”
Our visitor nodded.
“You are a soldier at war,” said Holmes.
Our visitor nodded again.
“And you are losing.”
Our visitor shuddered visibly.
“Watson,” said Holmes, “Are the Americans at present fighting a war in a Northern clime?” Holmes was absolutely hopeless at keeping track of information he did not feel was useful to his work.
“The Americans are not fighting a war anywhere,” said I.
“Are any nations at war using foreign mercenaries in Northern climes?”
“No.”
“Then you, sir, are a puzzlement,” said Holmes to The Soldier (as I will now refer to him).
The young man cleared his throat. “I’ll try to explain. I don’t expect you to believe me –“
“First things first,” said Holmes. “You are quite evidently in need of a good meal. Please hold your tale until after.” And he called down the stairs for Mrs. Hudson to deliver another of her breakfasts.
Forestalled from telling his story, the Soldier spent some time examining the room, sometimes smiling as he spotted something – the slipper on the mantelpiece, my stethoscope, Holmes’ violin – which he seemed to recognize.
“You’ve been here before?” I asked, so plain was his familiarity with the room.
“No,” said the Soldier, “But I feel like I have. I… know a lot about this place.”
“I don’t see how,” I argued. “Not many people outside of police circles and the rank of low criminals are aware of its existence.”
“Perhaps he’s read your pamphlet,” said Holmes, referring to a manuscript I’d published detailing Holmes’ clever untangling of a seemingly insoluble murder.
“Of course! You’ve read A Study in Scarlet,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, “many times. And all the others you’ve written, too.”
A Study in Scarlet was my only published work, so our visitor’s answer only deepened the mystery. However, his breakfast arrived at that moment, and Holmes was quite committed to letting the young man eat in peace, so further explanation would have to wait. He ate with great relish, but at last, when his plate was still half-full, he pushed it away and said that he was ready to tell his story.
“Pray begin,” said Holmes, lighting his pipe.
I unfortunately don’t have the notes I took of that conversation, but I do remember, quite clearly, the words he used to start his narrative: “I don’t expect you to believe me. But you must.”
Unfortunately, the more he talked, the less I was inclined to believe him.
Holmes was right, he said, he was a soldier in active service in the Americas. And his side was losing the war. What Holmes had not guessed – indeed, could not have guessed – was that our visitor was a soldier from the future. Some two hundred years in the future, in fact. And what a terrible future it was. Scientists had devised clockwork automata, “thinking machines,” to do the work that men would not. These machines (he claimed) eventually developed a consciousness rivaling our own, and, resenting their subjugation, turned on their masters. Our visitor was a top lieutenant to the leader of the human resistance, but the situation looked hopeless; their opponent knew neither hunger, nor weariness, nor fear of death.
You will understand that my grip on the fireplace poker became progressively tighter as The Soldier told his story. And I positively jumped when Mrs. Hudson knocked on the door and entered with a silver salver in her hand.
“A young lady for you, sir,” she said, addressing my companion. Holmes glanced at the card on the salver. “No acquaintance of mine. Perhaps you, Watson…?” he asked with a smile. Holmes liked to chaff me about my supposed infatuation with the fairer sex, though it says something of his nerve that he was able to do it with an obvious lunatic in the room.
I picked up the card to look at it and admitted that the name was unfamiliar to me. “Very well,” said Holmes. “Mrs. Hudson, tell the young lady to return this time tomorrow and my attention will be wholly devoted to her.”
Mrs. Hudson nodded and left, and I was vastly relieved when that good lady left the presence of our unbalanced visitor.
His story became only less plausible as he went on. Travel through time itself had become possible in his day. The automata had sent a mechanized assassin “back” into time to kill the mother of the insurgency’s leader before he was born, and thus to break the insurgency before it was even begun. The Soldier had also been sent “back” into time, to warn and protect this mother, but there had been some sort of miscalculation with the time conveyance, and he had been transported to London, 1888, rather than his intended destination, the American territory of California nearly a hundred years hence.
I will say this for him; he told his ridiculous tale with a clarity and a feeling that would generally do an honest man credit. The story was consistent in all details, and when Holmes asked him to elucidate a point an answer was always instantly forthcoming. He was most certainly not making it up on the spot.
I was quite prepared to evict him from the premises, and was gathering my nerve to do so, but Holmes seemed as relaxed as ever, and when the Soldier had finished his tale, he merely asked, “Assuming I swallow this fantastic story, what would you have me do about it?”
“I don’t know,” said the Soldier. “But I know that I am trapped here, in this time. I have to find a way to warn her, to leave her a message now, that she will receive in 1980, so she can prepare herself. So she can run. I figured that if any man could figure out a foolproof way to send that message, it would be you.”
I could see that my friend was flattered. “From what source do you draw such an elevated opinion of my abilities?”
The Soldier gestured to me. “I’ve read all of Dr. Watson’s stories about you.”
“But I’ve only written the one,” I objected.
“You’ll write more,” said the Soldier, with a smile. Then his smile faded. “I should warn you,” he said, “That my presence here has put you in great danger.” He was soon lost in his ravings again, claiming that the thinking machines would undoubtedly send another mechanized assassin to dispatch him, and anyone he’d had contact with would become a target for this killer. He was quite distraught on the subject, and I tried to put him at ease by remarking that the whole street buzzed with interest when an Italian hurdy-gurdy man was present; surely the appearance of a cotton gin bearing a pistol would create more than enough excitement to forewarn us. But he was in no way pacified. “You don’t understand,” he said. “It will look human. It could be anyone.”
“Knowing that you put our lives at risk,” said Sherlock Holmes, “Why have you visited us?”
The Soldier looked Holmes squarely in the eye. “I had no choice,” he said. “The future of the entire human race depends on what you do now.”
Holmes met his stare for some moments, then nodded. “I can see you truly believe that.”
Then our visitor asked the time and, when I told him, he remarked that he’d better be away, or the monster who stalked him would find him here with Holmes before the latter could devise a plan. Holmes invited him to return when he had more information to share, which was a more charitable offer than I would have made, and the Soldier said he would try, if safety permitted. Holmes pressed a few coins into the young man’s hand. He thanked us both profusely, and then he was down the stairs and gone.
“Well, Watson,” said Holmes, when we were once again alone. “What do you make of that?
“He’s obviously unbalanced,” I said. “I saw similar cases in Afghanistan. Soldiers too close to the front for too long, overcome by delusion. A fellow in the cot neighboring mine at the hospital swore up and down that he’d spoken to the Archangel Michael on the field of battle. Of course, I’ve never seen a case quite so all engrossing as this.”
“Yes,” said Holmes, drawing on his pipe, “Delusion would be the simplest answer. And yet there are points to his story, and to his self, that are as yet unexplained.”
“Such as?” I asked.
“Such as the fact that he is with utmost certainty a soldier who has very recently been fighting the losing side of a war.”
“What makes you so sure he’s a soldier?” I asked.
“That much is easy,” said Holmes. “He has the bearing of a soldier, that which can easily be seen in yourself and all the other fighting men of the civilized world. Moreover, my suspicion was borne out when I watched him eat.”
“How so?” I asked. “I only noticed his hunger, and his barbarism. He held his cutlery like cudgels.”
“True,” remarked Holmes. “But if you’d looked past these more obvious points, you would have noticed something far more important: his discipline. Though he was clearly malnourished – did you mark the way he eyed the crust of your abandoned toast when he first entered? – he had the presence of mind to stop eating when his food was only half gone.”
“He was full.”
“Nonsense. Our young friend has the true lean and hungry look. He could polish off a side of beef without blinking. But he knew that too much rich food, after a time when he’d had so little of it, would be more poison than nutrient, and he had the soldierly discipline to restrain himself.”
“Perhaps,” I admitted. “But what makes you so certain he’s been to war?”
“Ah,” said Holmes, “I’m afraid there I must get a bit metaphysical. As I say, all military men have a certain bearing. But there is a different bearing that overlays this, which is only found in those men, like yourself, who have engaged in real combat, rather than idling their enlistment away at Aldershot. Let us call it the Sign of War, though it is composed of far more than one individual sign. Rather, it is a concatenation of symptoms – an abruptness of speech, a far-way look in the eye, a tremor in the hand, and more – that adds up to the certainty that a man has fought, and that he has been in fear for his mortal life.”
“And you say I bear this… Sign of War?”
“Most assuredly,” said Holmes. “Though it fades by the day. Today’s guest has seen a battlefield far more recently than you.”
“And the losing side of battle at that,” I remarked. “Unless that was pure supposition on your part.”
“Watson, when will you learn that mere supposition has no place in my method?” roared Holmes with an air of frustration. “The fact that his side is losing is evidenced by the hunger of which we’ve already spoken. Any force that cannot keep an officer – and I believe he is an officer – better fed than that is in dire straits, indeed. An army, they say, travels on its stomach. By the looks of our friend, his army is dying on it.”
“But where?” I protested. “I’ll take an oath he’s never fought with British forces, and he is far too young to have taken part in the last American war.”
“And yet,” said Holmes, “he bears the sign.”
I looked at my friend with wonder. “Surely you don’t credit his story!”
Holmes laughed and knocked the dottle from his pipe into the grate. “Fear not, Watson, I haven’t taken leave of my senses. I see the impossibility of his story as surely as I see the gathering fog outside that window. But I also know this: if a man sees a ship’s mast sticking out of a river, and another man swears it’s the ship that bore King Arthur himself –“
“Mere legend and superstition,” I murmured.
“Naturally,” said Holmes. “You can be certain it is not King Arthur’s ship. But there is one thing you can be certain of…” and here my friend paused, “You can be certain that something is at the bottom of that river.”
From there our conversation wandered to other courses. To my knowledge, the mysterious soldier never called on Holmes again.
Of course, there was little time left for him to call. I was lunching at my club only a few days later when I received word of the horrible murders that have made 221B Baker Street a byword for savagery the world over. Holmes was dead, as was poor Mrs. Hudson, and a street Arab named Wiggins , not over 10 years of age, whom Holmes occasionally entrusted with errands. The killers – and there had to be several, because Holmes was fearsomely strong – apparently knocked over one of Holmes’ Bunsen burners while committing their Satanic deeds, resulting in a fire that destroyed the entire house before it could be brought under control. Though I lost all that I possessed in that conflagration, I cannot say I regretted it. I saw the bodies that were carried from 221 Baker Street that day, laid out on the pavement like the experiments of a sadistic butcher. It would be unthinkable for anyone to ever live in that house again, no matter how homely and comfortable it had once been, after it had been turned into such an abattoir. Everything that had been inside now felt diseased, unnatural, unholy.
The murderers were never apprehended, never brought to trial. No one was even suspected. I told Scotland Yard about the Soldier, of course, but they were unable to trace him and, after a little thought, I realized that, no matter how unbalanced he might have seemed, he had shown no hint of being capable of such an atrocity. Our Soldier was a madman, but I could not conceive him a killer. Later that same day, another victim was discovered; the nude body of a blacksmith, massively-proportioned, similarly butchered, was found at his forge. He had, apparently, been lying in a pool of his own congealing blood since early morning. Again, there were no suspects, and no one was brought to trial. And only a few weeks later, all of London was consumed by the horrors in Whitechapel that the newspapers attributed to “Jack The Ripper.” He was never apprehended either. 1888 was the year when the worst of men ran free, without fear of punishment, or even ignominy. I attribute some of that to the loss of my companion, Sherlock Holmes, the man who had resolved himself to be the worst enemy crime had ever known.
If time is not always kind, it is at least sometimes clarifying. It has, for instance, served to falsify the wild tale we heard that day. In contrast to the Soldier’s claims, A Study in Scarlet was the only one of Holmes’ adventures I ever put to paper, aside from this, which I write in my dotage, and which I suspect qualifies more as memoir than mystery.
I have no keepsake of that era, save for the card sent up by the lady who requested an audience with Holmes the day we saw our strange visitor. So fascinated was I by the Soldier’s story that I must have absentmindedly tucked the card into my waistcoat pocket after reading it, for I only found it months later when I was having my suit French laundered. I’ve kept it all these years and look at it every now and again as a reminder of those days, no matter how tangential. It is a plain card, now much yellowed, with a plain name written upon it: Miss Mary Marston. It is, as I’ve said, a plain name, but it is queerly euphonious to me. I sometimes wonder what her errand was that day.
I am a disappointed man. I had no high hopes when I left Afghanistan, but my life after has only proved that I was too optimistic by half. I live in a filthy garret, attended to by an unhappy, unloving wife, with no children or substantial career in which to take comfort . My war wound aches more than ever, and I have even taken to indulging in my old friend Holmes’ pet poison, cocaine. I take it in a slightly higher dosage – a 15% solution – than he was wont. It does not give my mind the liberating tingle he so enjoyed, but it does, for a time, make my thoughts less morbid, though over-indulgence in its sinister charms has lately led to the loss of my medical practice. And it is in this inexorable, deteriorating state that I strongly suspect I will spend the rest of my days.
A curious postscript: Several months after the Baker Street horror, I returned to my new lodgings to find an enormous man awaiting me in the parlor. He was, he said, Sherlock Holmes’ elder brother. I don’t know how he found me, as I scarcely had a friend in London, and I confess I hadn’t even known Holmes had a brother. He asked me to indulge his curiosity and to tell all I knew of Holmes’ last days. I could in no way deny him that, if it would bring him any comfort. I repeated all I remembered of that last week, and he took an especial interest in the Soldier who spoke so hauntingly of the future. Mycroft (for so was the brother’s name) asked me to repeat this part of my story several times. It seemed to devil him in some way. I assured him I did not think the Soldier capable of committing the foul acts that were visited on Baker Street. In fact, I continued, I was surprised that any man or men could, physically, get the better of Holmes, so keen were his fighting abilities.
My landlady interrupted at this point to ask if the gentleman would like some tea, which was just her excuse to spy on us. This landlady was nothing like the late lamented Mrs. Hudson. She was a miserable, miserly cook, and forever intruding upon me, or foisting upon me her slatternly daughter, whom I eventually, in a moment of great weakness, married. The rooms were none the best, and none the cleanest, but they were all I, a half-pay surgeon, could afford on my own.
After I’d chased Mrs. Fosdyke from the parlor, I turned back to my guest and was struck silent by what I saw. Though he was fully twice as heavy as Sherlock Holmes, and moved with a languor utterly alien to that most active of men (when he was moving), there was now on Mycroft Holmes’ face an expression I’d seen often on my friend’s. The same aquiline nose, nostrils flared, protruded from beneath those redundant layers of flesh. The same hooded eyes were glazed over like frosted glass, and stared at nothing. This was a face Holmes wore when at the height of his calculations. It denoted thought, deep thought, and I could see at this moment, if I hadn’t before, that they were well and truly brothers.
After a few moments he roused himself from his mental peregrinations and asked me one question more: what was the name of the woman Holmes had been asked to forewarn, the woman of 20th Century California? I answered as best I could. Sarah Bronson, Sarah Caldwell… something commonplace. Possibly Irish, but I really couldn’t remember, since the notes I took that day were lost in the fire. Mycroft Holmes asked me several times more to rake my memory on this point, to find the lost name, but by then it was quite shrouded in the haze of time, and I’m afraid I became a bit nettled by his insistence. When he saw the effect he’d had on me, he begged my forgiveness and bid me goodbye.
I never saw him again. They were certainly an odd family. I suppose, in a life devoid of blessings, I should count myself lucky that my acquaintance with them was as brief as it was.