The Strange Case of Eliza Doolittle Page 18

  “Perhaps. If she were spirited away in the dead of night by the dark of the moon and then bricked up in the deepest dungeon of some haunted castle in the Outer Carpathians. But that is not the Grand Tour as Higgins envisions it. Hotel dining rooms, train stations, public streets? No, travel of that kind would be a hundred times more dangerous than remaining here in Higgins’s house with the faithful watchdogs of the British constabulary at the door.”

  “Then you do think Hyde will return?”

  “The answer lies in this question: why did Hyde break in to begin with, and what did he achieve?”

  “But Mrs. Pearce swears nothing was taken from Eliza’s room,” Pickering pointed out.

  “Nothing that Mrs. Pearce knew was there. But there were these.” Holmes pulled two glass ampoules from his pocket. I recognized one, which the inspector had found in Hyde’s room. Holmes had never returned it to him. The other one was alike in every way, save that it still held a few drops of some blood-red liquid.

  “Where did you find that?” I asked.

  “In the rolltop desk.”

  “You didn’t hand them over to the police?” Pickering asked.

  “Scotland Yard is searching for Edward Hyde. The contents of these two ampoules will not help them. But if I can extract a viable sample from each of these, it should help me understand the connection between Miss Doolittle, Mr. Hyde, and Dr. Guest.”

  “Eliza? What’s she got to do with this blighter Hyde?” asked Pickering.

  “I discovered this on her floor last night.” He produced a used syringe from his pocket. “I believe Hyde injected its contents into Miss Doolittle’s blood. If the residue matches that found in Hyde’s flat—”

  “Eliza and Hyde are using the same drug,” I said.

  We dropped Pickering at Wimpole Street and decamped to my rooms in Queen Anne Street. Holmes was relieved to shed the skin of Mr. Morello. He kicked offhis boots and stretched out in a chair before the fireplace. “I’ve had little chance to visit any of our old haunts since this case began, Watson. Fritz Kreisler is playing tonight at Queen’s Hall. I think we might indulge ourselves in Elgar, if you’ll join me. Tomorrow, I intend to see a doctor.”

  “Dr. Strachey in Harley Street?”

  The notion seemed to stop him in midthought. Then it clicked into place. “Should not be overlooked. If you could pay him a visit, Watson, he might be more inclined to share secrets with a fellow medico in confidence. As for me, I shall visit Dr. Stamford at Bart’s.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I rose the next morning at seven. Holmes had already left. My housekeeper seemed a bit put off by my sudden return, with guest in tow. The dust on the mantle was proof that she had not been the most conscientious steward in my absence. I will confess that I helped myself to a leisurely breakfast. I had not realized it, but playing the role of Hill Barton, secretary, for so long, had worn upon my nerves.

  The newspapers were still full of Freddy’s murder, but they offered little in the way of hard facts. The whole mystery of Eliza Doolittle seemed more muddled to me than ever, though I sensed from Holmes’s restless energy that he was close to the truth.

  Around ten I called Dr. Strachey’s office and spoke to an assistant. I explained that I was Dr. John Watson, and I hoped to consult with Dr. Strachey about a patient named Gabriel Guest. I was instructed to come around after three.

  Dr. Strachey’s establishment in Harley Street put my own poor squat to shame, with comfortably upholstered Sheraton chairs, a fireplace of Carrara marble, and the latest prints by Sargent and Whistler and Sisley—at least I hoped they were only prints. The young lady who greeted me was so pleasingly upholstered and so gracefully shaped that she might have been a Sheraton herself. She knocked on the door of Strachey’s consulting room and announced me.

  Strachey’s inner sanctum was as impressive as the outer precincts, with a mahogany desk as deep as a cricket pitch. There was no question of our shaking hands unless one or both of us climbed on top of the desk to reach across it. A wall full of morocco-bound volumes guarded his back.

  Strachey himself rather reminded me of a comic opera tenor. He had a fine prominent forehead, a gold-framed pince-nez perched daringly on his nose, and a lanceolate beard.

  “Dr. Watson, is it? I’ve been expecting you,” Strachey said.

  “You have?” It occurred to me that Guest might have warned him against me already.

  “Perhaps not in person. But I knew someone would come. I have his file right here.” He pushed across a fat file folder tied up with a red ribbon.

  “This is more than I could have asked for,” I said, straining across the desk to reach the folder.

  “Not at all. If you’re going to treat Gabriel Guest, you’ll need every iota of information on his condition. Sit, sit!”

  I planted myself in the chair before his desk and untied the ribbon on the folder.

  “You’re no longer treating him, then?” I asked.

  “I made that quite plain to him weeks ago, whatever he may have told you.”

  I opened the file and began skimming through it. There was so much German terminology scattered through it that I might have been reading a Wagner libretto.

  Strachey became impatient. “I’ve diagnosed his condition as folie circulate.”

  I could not hide my bewilderment.

  “Folie circulaire! Manic melancholia. What kind of a psychiatrist are you, sir?”

  I mumbled something about the Vienna school, which was the entire sum of my knowledge of psychiatry.

  “And you think you’ll be able treat him merely with analysis?”

  “What do you know of his antecedents?”

  “You won’t find much on that front. The condition is often hereditary, but it seems his father was the most placid type of fellow, law clerk to old Utterson, if you remember him. Represented half the doctors in Harley Street. A most somnolent pair of fellows when they were together.”

  “What was it that made you part ways with him?”

  “You haven’t noticed it yet? The damn fellow self-medicates. And I don’t just mean lithium salts. He’s concocted one ofthe strangest witch’s brews I’ve ever come across. Said he perfected it experimenting on soldiers in India. Can you imagine? Ought to have his license voided.”

  “What, he experimented on malaria patients?”

  “On mental patients.”

  “Well!” I shut up the file folder and pushed it back across the desk. “In view of what you’ve told me, I don’t think I’ll be taking him on, either.”

  He was nonplussed by my sudden turnaround. “Well, I don’t want to influence you unduly. Perhaps you want to take some time to review the file—”

  I rose from my seat. “No, I’ll leave that with you for the next fellow who comes around. I’m sure some young fellow will be eager to take him on. I can’t thank you enough for your counsel. Life’s too short, eh? Good afternoon to you.”

  In lieu of shaking his hand, I knocked on Dr. Strachey’s mahogany desktop like an aboriginal drummer sending signals from one village to the next. Then I said goodbye to Whistler and Sargent and Sisley and the Sheraton girl.

  I decided to stop at Bart’s and see if Sherlock Holmes was still there. St. Bartholomew’s was the oldest hospital in London, indeed in all of England. It had been a second home to me during my years in medical school. Yet by some strange twist of fate, I had not crossed the threshold of the old place since the day I had been introduced to Sherlock Holmes there all those years ago. Even stranger was the fact that after I climbed the stairs to the second floor, the first face I saw was that of Stamford, my former dresser, who had introduced us. I had not seen him since that day, either.

  “I’m in charge of the place now, believe it or not,” he said, shaking my hand enthusiastically. “I should have expected you, eh? Where goes Sherlock Holmes, there goes Dr. Watson.”

  I did not bother to point out that Holmes and I had largely gone our separate ways for the
last ten years. Stamford escorted me to the chemical lab, where Holmes was absorbed in his analysis of the contents of the two ampoules and the syringe he had found. It was a cavernous room with a high, arched ceiling. A long table was crowded with flasks and beakers and the long, jetting flames of etnas.

  “How goes it, Holmes?”

  “Ah, Watson! Having the devil of a time. Come see. Stamford, be a good fellow and find us some tea?”

  Stamford was now a greybeard and the chief of chemical research at St. Bart’s, a position of some prestige, but at Holmes’s request, he hesitated only a moment before he muttered, “Of course,” and headed off to wait upon us as if he were a nineteen-year-old assistant.

  “Have you been able to identify your samples?” I asked.

  Holmes frowned. “The contents of the syringe from Eliza’s room and the ampoule from the wardrobe appear identical. Some sort of powerful depressant. I expected heroin, but it’s not that. Nor any other opioid, apparently. Nor a cannabinoid. No drug I’ve come across before. But the sample is so small that I don’t expect to discover much more. The red liquid from the second ampoule would seem to be more promising, but also far more complex. There’s a phosphorus-based stimulant, but there are some puzzling elements involved. At any rate, the two compounds seem almost to be polar opposites.”

  “Like a poison and its antidote?”

  “A fair analogy. But you don’t give poison to one fellow and the antidote to another.”

  I asked whether he had found lithium salts in either compound.

  “An interesting question. Why do you ask?”

  “I had a talk with Dr. Strachey. It turns out this Strachey is a psychiatrist, and Dr. Guest suffers from a mental condition—”

  “Folie circulaire,” said Holmes.

  “If you already knew, why did you send me to talk to the man?”

  “I didn’t know, but it was indicated by Guest’s behavior, and by your mention of lithium salts. I am glad to have confirmation.”

  “I’m a practicing doctor, and I’ve never even heard of folie circulaire.”

  “How would you describe Dr. Guest’s character?”

  “I’m not sure I could. One moment he’s excitable and enthusiastic, and the next he’s in the grip of the deepest torpor.”

  “That, more or less, is folie circulaire. Periods of mania alternate with periods of melancholy. There are also periods of lucidity, especially under the palliative of drugs like lithium.”

  I told him what Dr. Strachey had said about Dr. Guest’s tendency toward “self-medication.”

  “If this is the stuff he’s treating himself with, he may have a delicate mind, but he has the intestinal fortitude of a Percheron.”

  “He experimented on mental patients in India.”

  “His experiments continued in London.”

  Stamford returned with our tea. He had even managed to scrounge up a few biscuits, though I suspect they were actually meant for himself. It was rare for Holmes to taste anything when deep into research.

  “By the way, you fellows owe me your thanks,” said Stamford, pouring the tea.

  “We appreciate the tea, old fellow,” I replied.

  “And the use of your excellent facilities,” Holmes added.

  “You are welcome any time. But I wasn’t speaking of that. Have you forgotten it was I who brought you two together thirty years ago?”

  Holmes grinned. “You introduced us, but it was not you who brought us together, Stamford. It was fate.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Holmes assured me it would be hours before he had any conclusive results, so I returned home alone. After my meeting with Dr. Strachey, I felt I could do myself good by going through some of the latest medical journals. I found something interesting in the Lancet on the symptoms of impending apoplexy, and settled into a chair before the fire.

  I awoke in darkness. The heavy drapes admitted only a thin mist of light from the streetlamp outside. I could not tell what had woken me, but I felt the hair on the back of my neck prickle with fear. I sat up, trying to brush away the cobwebs of whatever rancid dream still tugged at my mind. There was a draft, that was all.

  For the front door was standing open.

  The face that shuddered out of the shadows was inhuman. One word oozed from its blackened lips:

  “More!”

  I moved only just in time. The poker slammed into the back of the chair where my head had lain a moment before. I rolled across the floor and struggled to my feet, putting the chair between us. The poker swept round again, tearing a button from my waistcoat, sparking against the hearthstone.

  “Stand still, damn you!” The voice was a guttural whisper. Had I heard it before?

  “Hyde?” I gripped the back of the chair, but he grabbed the arm and sent it skirling across the room to smash into the wall. There was nothing between me and him. He seemed to stretch and grow, inhabiting every part of the room at once.

  He lunged. I snatched up the fire screen as a shield. I was driven back against the wall, but the poker jammed in the screen. He roared with frustration, tore the screen from my hands, and threw it and the poker across the room. I tripped and fell, which was all that saved me. I was on the floor, crawling on hands and knees, dodging and scurrying like a rat, as he groped for me, blind with rage. He caught a hank of my hair and jerked me to my feet, nearly snapping my spine. Then my hand came against something cold and solid. Admiral Nelson. I grabbed hold of the bust and swung it upward awkwardly. It glanced off his temple and flew from my hand. He swayed for a moment, then dropped like a stone.

  I staggered to the lamp and turned up the gas. I gazed down in horror. The man on the floor was not Edward Hyde, but Sherlock Holmes. The flesh of his face was taut against the skull and his color was a dead white. He seemed huddled and shrunken in his clothes. But then the whole room felt shrunken with him lying there. I moved to help him, but he stirred and I drew back in panic. His eyes opened like two lamps of fire. He got to his knees, groaning.

  “Holmes? Holmes, my God, man, what’s happened to you?”

  He looked up at me, his features twisted like a corkscrew, staring as the wolf stares at the lamb. He said once again:

  “More!”

  —and groped for me. I stumbled back. I knew not what madness had him in his grip, but I had to help him without letting him murder me. He lurched to his feet and rumbled toward me. I turned and ran. I made it to the surgery in time to bolt the door behind me. The door shook as he slammed his fists against it. The lock would not hold against a determined assault, I knew that. I looked about wildly for some kind of weapon. The blank eye sockets of the surgery skeleton stared at me. I thought of my scalpels.

  The pounding on the door continued. There was blessed silence for a moment, and then the head of the poker splintered the wood in the center of the door. He didn’t need to break the lock. He was going to come right through. And I could hear him under his breath, “More—more—more—more—”

  Then a roar: “Moriarty!”

  The door burst open. The first thing Sherlock Holmes saw was the casement window standing open and the light from the street. The second was the fingers gripping the window ledge, white in the light from the street. He crossed to the window and looked down at the shape of a man, hanging from the ledge, draped in a long dark coat. He grabbed both wrists and yanked.

  There was the clatter of bone on bone. Empty eye-sockets leered at him. He tottered backward, baffled to find himself hugging a skeleton when he had expected a man. That moment of confusion was my one hope. I leapt on his back and pressed the ether-soaked towel against his face. He whirled round the room like a typhoon, smashing tables and cabinets, trying to throw me from his back. I clung to him like a drowning man as the room eddied round. With a giant heave, he threw me across the room. I crashed to the floor with my shoulder under me and felt it sing with pain.

  He was coming at me, slower now, lumbering, but my right arm was dead. I couldn
’t get up, could only squirm helplessly. I traded the towel to my left hand. He grabbed me by the throat and raised me above his head as if I were a rag doll. I jammed the ether-soaked towel against his nostrils and prayed. The world broke against me like surf against a seawall and went black.

  I woke moments later, lying on the floor. Holmes lay next to me. He had finally succumbed to the ether.

  My right arm was numb. I couldn’t move Holmes from the floor. I stuffed a pillow beneath his head, then bound him as best I could. I had nothing but surgical tape to do the job. I wound yards and yards of it around his wrists and knees and ankles. If he woke in that same state of rage he might snap them in a moment. I mended his cuts and bruises, and then my own. The unnatural color and striction slowly left his face. I took that as a good omen. I laid a blanket over his sleeping form, turned out the light in the surgery, and returned to the chair by the fire, this time with a large brandy, hoping to calm my shattered nerves.

  I woke some time around four in the morning. Sherlock Holmes was standing over me, looking at me curiously. “My dear friend John,” he said, “why did you tie me up on the floor of your surgery? Why is your arm in a sling? And what have you done with Admiral Nelson?”

  The admiral lay upon his side on the floor, doughty as ever, but with his nose badly chipped. My housekeeper would ask me about the bust the next day, along with the smashed surgery door, the twisted fire screen, and the general ruin of the house. She did not receive the same explanation I gave Holmes.

  “Do you remember any of it?” I asked, after telling him the story.

  “I remember being filled with a wild energy, and deciding to walk here rather than take a cab. I remember a feeling of nausea coming over me near the Langham Hotel.”

  “You sampled the red solution, didn’t you?”

  “Of course not! At least . . .” He stood stock still, going over every action from the preceding day in his mind. Then he held up one finger.

  “I cut my finger on the pipette as I was transferring the solution to a slide. I remember swearing at Stamford. It seemed an insignificant cut.”