Sherlock Holmes and the Calculating Woman

It was an early morning on a sharp frosty Christmas Eve in the nineties when once again I was turning onto Baker Street and my former lodgings. Hoping to avoid the frenzied festive preparations at home I was paying a visit to my old friend. I found him at his ease, scraping away on his Amati.

He greeted me with unaccustomed cordiality, leading me to suspect that even his iron imperturbability was not immune to the loneliness inevitable at this festive time for the unattached.

Once again, though, he refused my invitation to the Yuletide repast, forbearing to disrupt my domesticity and declaring that Mrs. Hudson would not fail see him well fed on this greatest of all festivals. And indeed, the delicious smells rising from downstairs and the liberal dowsing of flour on her apron when she fetched us our tea and scones led one to anticipate significant culinary delights on the morrow.

Holmes was somewhat at a loose end and had taken to the study of Hebrew to occupy himself, a subject of which I had no knowledge and little interest.

"While you are here, Watson, you can assist me in opening some of my gifts. As ever my former clients seldom fail to remember me at Christmas."

He pushed open his bedroom door and indicated a great piled of brightly wrapped parcels on his bed.

"By Jove, Holmes, you have done well."

He shrugged, showing the indifference to possessions that was so typical of him. "Take a look through them if you feel curious Watson."

In short order, and with growing excitement, I unwrapped a ruby tie-pin from a Lady Astor, an intricately jewelled Colt revolver from a Mr. Vanderbilt, and a solid gold pocket watch from Coutts the bankers.

Holmes shrugged, leading me to suspect that there were many assignments undertaken by my friend that he was constrained to keep secret even from myself..

The next parcel was rather heavy, and contained a heavily decorated golden egg on a stand, surrounded by bands of platinum inlaid with tiny jewels, and surmounted by a diamond encrusted cross.

"It seems the Romanoffs continue to confuse Easter and Christmas in their gift giving," Holmes mused, "Still, it will look good on the mantelpiece beside the china Worcester cat my Aunt Betty sent for my last birthday."

The final present was bulky, soft, and light in weight. I opened it.

"Holmes, this present is more humble than the rest but indeed more practical. I have often

mentioned the need for some cushions on your sofa. Although, to be honest, one might wish for a less macabre decoration on each."
Holmes looked up from his tuning, and his face took on an expression of extreme interest. He dropped the priceless instrument onto the table and was by my side in an instant.

Seizing one of the cushions, he raised it to the light and gave a low whistle of surprise as he examined the design, that of a skeletal figure in dark hooded robes bearing a scythe.

"Do you not see Watson, this is no gift but a subtly expressed warning."

He took up the wrapping , scrutinised it intently, then, finding nothing, dashed it to the floor.

"A warning, Holmes?"

"Yes Watson, Cushions. The Grim Reaper. Unless I am mistaken, this is a message from the arch-criminal himself, warning me that there will be grim repercussions if I try to thwart him."

He glanced up, "Close your mouth Watson, who else but Moriarity could send so obscure a message, who else would know me well enough to be sure it would be understood?"
He went on, "But to what can he be referring? There has been nothing by way of intelligent crime this two months?"

I had been in this situation many, many times before. There was a long silence.

I sighed, rose and opened the door even before the bell rang below, then held it open as a Mrs. Hudson admitted and ushered up a tall man whose red face, tweeds and substantial side whiskers denoted a countryman and whose bearing suggested a former military man.

"Captain Holland, I believe you have not yet met my friend Watson?"
Introductions complete, Holmes offered hot port all around in view of the season and the inclement weather.

"It can be no minor matter that takes a man such as yourself from the bosom of his family on such a festive day. No doubt the matter concerns the Jockey Club on whose committee you sit? Have no hesitation in giving me the exact details with Watson here; he is as reliable as Big Ben. Feel free to smoke if it will help your concentration."

"Well, I don't mind if I do."

The Captain took a monstrous meerschaum from his pocket, reached for the Turkish slipper on the mantelpiece and proceeded to cram several ounces of Holmes's best shag into the bowl. He applied a vesta to the heaped contents and was soon blowing out great clouds of aromatic smoke.

Holmes watched the process, forehead wrinkled, with something far short of approval.

"Well, Mr. Holmes, I may say I have not come across a more challenging problem in many's the year. We have some person or gang rooking the bookies for all they are worth, but without a scrap of evidence as to jockeys pulling their mounts, stable lads doping or over-watering their charges, or owners colluding in fixing results. This has been going on for over a month now, and yesterday's fixture at Cheltenham near bankrupted the turf agents."

Holmes rested his elbows on his knees and touched his fingertips together. Often had I seen him adopt this attitude when perplexed by mysteries of abnormal complexity.

He thought for a few minutes, then glanced at me.

"Well may you smile, Watson, at the discomfiture of the betting industry to whom you have given so much of your pay, but on it depends a great industry that put bread on the tables of thousands of your countrymen. Captain, if you leave this with me I will begin the investigation right away. Watson, I will not dare incur the enmity of your estimable spouse by disrupting your Christmas, but can I ask you to be at my disposal early on Boxing Day?"

I nodded my assent, met Holmes early that morning and spent the day with him at a chilly meeting on Newmarket Heath. While Holmes prowled around the stable yards in a variety of disguises I played the part of an ordinary punter, placing modest bets on a variety of unsuccessful mounts and keeping the cold at bay with my trusty hip flask. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Late in the afternoon I met Holmes by appointment by the weighing room. We had barely exchanged greetings before we overheard the sounds of a scuffle in one of the stables, where we fond a young man being soundly kicked by three large bookies.

"Leave that man alone, " Holmes snapped, and they quailed before the authority in his voice and the revolver in my hand. "Explain yourselves."
The leader of the three spoke, a heavyset brute in the loud check suit of his calling. "This fellow has been conspiring to cheat us. He won two hundred guineas from me at Norwich two weeks ago."

"And a hundred and fifty from me at Ascot." Said the second.

"Nigh on three hundred from me at Cheltenham, and all on outsiders. T'aint natural." The third cast a wicked glare at the hapless youth.

"Natural or not, you cannot take the law into your hands. I represent the Jockey Club in this matter. Be gone, the three of you or I'll have you warned off every track in the British Isles."

The three scurried away and he took the young man's arm in an iron grip, "Now you need to come with me and explain yourself."

As I bandaged his head in a four-wheeler on the way to the train the young man told his story. The spendthrift son of a good home, Edwin Allen had been picked out by a racing acquaintance to place large bets at a series of racecourses and to return the winnings afterwards, getting twenty pounds for his trouble each time. He had done so at four meetings, and won between eighty and two hundred guineas on each bet.

Allen had willingly acquiesced in what was clearly a shady enterprise, hoping thereby to save enough for passage to South Africa where he planned a new start.

"My cousin has a farm near Pretoria and says he needs a good man to keep the kaffirs in order."

Holmes closed his eyes for a moment then addressed him gently.

"You seem a good lad, though misled. You life may be forfeit if you return to the tracks again, the bookies being in the mood they are. I will tell you that if you help me track down the villains behind this I will arrange your liner ticket and some stake money for a new beginning. Watson, I shall leave you to make your way home while I take this young man under my protection. I will call for you when action beckons."

A fortnight passed without my hearing from the great detective; two busy weeks, for the cold sleety spell that blew in from the North cut a swathe through the elderly patients on my books.

One evening I returned home and picked up the newspaper to discover shocking news Captain Holland had been found by the gallops at a Newmarket with a great dagger wound in his heart.

A messenger arrived soon afterwards from Holmes requesting my help on the morrow. I agreed by return and sat down to clean my revolver. The game was no longer the light-hearted exercise in bilking turf accountants I had taken it for.

Holmes was silent in our cab as we made our way through the dark streets of the following dawn.

"Are we making for Newmarket?" I enquired, more to break the silence than anything else.

He shook his head, "The answer to this case lies in the darker areas of the capital."

He paused.

"I am sorry Watson for keeping you in the dark but I am as yet mystified by many of the strange quirks of this plot. Race results are being predicted, yet the stables and owners involved are innocent, and the bookies mystified. I am convinced that Moriarity is involved, yet he has disappeared from all public gaze for these two months, avoiding even the great mathematical congress at London University where his paper on the Long Division was to be read. Perhaps his mathematical mind has found a way to confound the odds at racing."
He shrugged, and took out his own revolver and spun the chamber before restoring it to his pocket, a rare sign of disquiet in such an imperturbable thinker.

"The murder of Holland has forced my hand. I have sent young Allen under guard to Southampton to join the first possible ship to our colonies. Now I want you to assist me in keeping watch on what may be the lair of the gang involved. We tracked the villain who recruited young Holland to a den in the East End and here we shall observe their movements. "

He had acquired the key to an attic over a warehouse. From a single narrow window we took turns watching a large old house across the street, number 14, and the factory building adjoining it. The house appeared deserted but for the flicker of what seemed to be an unusual rectangular desk lamp visible through one partially curtained window, but a great steam engine could be hard hissing and panting, running in the buildings behind, from the sound of it sometimes at full power, sometimes barely turning over, and the reflection of great tongues of flame from the boiler room periodically flickered on the sooty walls behind the factory.

We watched all day, seeing nothing of note but for the delivery of great bundles of newspapers and the arrival of a laden grocery van. Both deliveries were accepted by a hulking villain with a scar. Holmes had laid in a few comforts, a spirit stove and a kettle, some decanters, some chairs and a chess set, hoping to instruct me during our wait on the basics of the game.

Towards evening we separately snatched a few hours sleep, then slipped away for some food.

At midnight we were ready.

Clutching a bottle Holmes came lurching along the street, singing loudly about his Mother Macree in a strong Hibernian accent. From time to time he stopped to refresh himself sitting on a doorstep, until finally the bottle was empty.

For some time he stared resentfully at the empty bottle, then he laboriously explored each of his pockets as if looking for the means to obtain more liquor. At last he rose and staggered on, coming up to number 14 which he serenaded for some time.

Then he began to hammer on the door with the empty bottle, shouting that he wanted to speak to Michael right away, that he wanted the five shillings he had loaned Michael this minute, and that there would be trouble if he did not. This went on for some time, until the door abruptly opened and from the darkness the occupant invited my friend to be elsewhere.

Holmes inquired thickly as to who did he think he was talking to, and offered to fight him and any ten of his friends. There followed a short struggle that I terminated with my revolver butt, then we were inside, dragging the unconscious man behind us and folding him into the hall cupboard.

The hall was large and gas lit, the filth and neglect showing all the signs of a great old building falling into sad decay. A corridor led to an empty room at the rear, adjoining an equally large disused kitchen. We crept back and climbed the stairs silently.

A series of empty rooms lined the corridor. At the end a crack of light marked an occupied room. Despite our care the door creaked and we opened it, but we lunged through, weapons held high, ready to face any number of villains.

It was a bedroom in reasonable condition, gas lit and kept pleasantly warm by a fire. The sole occupant, a young woman. She started up from a paper covered desk with a gasp of surprise. I made as if to seize her to stop her raising the alarm, but Holmes stopped me.

"Do not be afraid, miss, we represent the law. If you will remain silent I will remove your chain and we can flee this place." He introduced us.

The young woman relaxed and held out her foot. Holmes had seen the chain that led from under her skirts to a heavy ring in the wall as we entered, and he made short work of the padlock at her ankle with the tools he invariably carried with him.

She introduced herself in a soft American accent as Rebecca Hodgeson.

"Thank you Mr. Holmes, but there is work I must do before we leave. They are at work in the factory behind. If you can distract them I can put an end to their plans. The good professor cannot be allowed to use my machine for his ends for a moment longer."

"Moriarity?"
"The same, sir, and I wish I had never made the mistake of letting myself fall into his clutches."
"You must not blame yourself, there is no end to his cunning. We cannot permit you to risk yourself, this is work for men."

"Only I can do this work, and only with your help. There is no-one else on this planet who could understand the machine. They are busy at present predicting the real odds for tomorrow's meeting at Nairn. I was forced to help them at their work all day today, recoding the form of the entrants for the machine. Now they must process the calculations and we may avoid them if we are careful. Follow me."

Moments later we passed a boiler house where three burly Irishmen were busy shovelling great scoops of coal into the red maw of a glowing boiler. Next door, a great oily steam engine hissed and spluttered as it turned at breakneck speed, tended by a grease-stained son of Scotland with a long nosed oil can.

The factory proper was monstrous, and a great machine perhaps thirty feet high and fifty on a side clicked and clanked with deafening volume. At the opposite end from us several men bent over a control console, one, bearded, top-hatted and frock coated, the evil nemesis of Holmes, Moriarity.

Rebecca tugged at Holmes's sleeve and we scurried into an adjoining room, where two great sets of sprockets lifted chains of perforated steel plates out of large wheeled troughs and fed them into wide slots in the metal wall of the machine.

"Quickly, " she mouthed in the deafening noise. Following her instructions we slid the trough from under one sprocket and replaced it with another from a rack of maybe fifty others by the wall. She threw a lever and the wheels stopped, threaded the chain on, secured it with a large wrench. She drew back the lever and the new stream of plates began to enter into the void.

"Now run," she mouthed and we left the factory behind us, running down the corridor.

We threw the front door open only to be confronted by a pair of vagabonds who dropped the newspapers they were carrying and went for us without a second's pause.

I had barely time to grasp the handle of my revolver before Holmes downed the one with a single uppercut and Rebecca the second with a blow of her wrench.

Within minutes we were safe in our attic.

"Well, Miss, I know that in that machine Moriarity has some method of calculating racing odds with considerably greater accuracy than the bookies. I do not know where you enter into it."

"Simply, Mr. Holmes, I designed and built the machine."

We stared at her in shock and in doubt. To design and manufacture such a machine would take tens of thousands of pounds and advanced engineering skills.

"Let me begin at the beginning."

We had earlier laid in some comfortable chairs and sustenance, and now we waved her to an armchair and made her tea.

"My father was a lecturer in Cambridge who emigrated to the US some forty years ago. He had eight children of whom I was the youngest. Some five years ago, when I was seventeen, my aunt here in London, Mrs. Charlesworth, fell ill. As the youngest unmarried daughter I was sent to care for her."

Holmes face offered some sign of sympathy, and the girl laughed.

"Do not feel sorry for me, Mr. Holmes. The old lady was kind enough. Although much of my time was spent reading to her from the works of Bulwer-Lytton and the poetry of McGonagall, I was free for several hours every day to indulge my one obsession, the mathematics, and even to take tutors for the first few months until I was forced to stop."
"Did you aunt not approve?"

"No, Mr. Holmes, I could no longer find a tutor at the levels I had attained."
He nodded, gravely.

"My pleasures then ran to finding old mathematical treatises, to corresponding under an assumed male name with the leading thinkers, and to publishing the occasional paper.

All this ended when I had been here about a year. I purchased a mixed case of old mathematical papers by a Mr. Babbage of Cambridge, and found that he had conceived of a machine capable of a rudimentary form of thinking, especially when it came to mathematical problems. His designs were sketchy and crude, but I thought I could improve upon them."

She sipped her tea.

"When my aunt died a year later, leaving me all her wealth and a business I had previously known nothing about, I resolved upon building the machine. That I succeeded can be judged from examining the factory opposite. The cost in mental exertion and in guineas was extreme, and it consumed my inheritance totally. The mechanical design challenges alone were nigh insurmountable, and the theoretical problems it threw up were sufficient to befuddle a bench of wranglers, but in the end I triumphed.

Not only can the machine refine the odds for racing, it can crack the most complex code, compute artillery trajectories for great cannons to hitherto unimaginable degrees of precision and also play some really cool games.

Unfortunately, though I kept the details utterly secret, your Professor Moriarity found out of the machine's existence almost as soon as it was complete. I had corresponded with him on some mathematical issues, and he must have gleaned some inkling of my intentions. He found a way to penetrate my alias, discovered my location and my machine, and for the last two months has made me his prisoner, working for him to earn him a king's ransom from the turf."

Holmes gazed out upon the infernal scene opposite.

"Never mind the turf, the government, any government, would pay you a king's ransom for such an engine."

Her face darkened and I deduced we were in the presence of a woman of an extraordinarily powerful will. "Well, no government shall have it. The blueprints are in the room I was imprisoned in and will disappear with the machine when we destroy it."

Holmes got up in alarm, perhaps hoping to return for the vital papers, but she shook her head. "It is too late. The belt of plates I fed into the machine with your help is a set of instructions which I specially prepared in my leisure moments. They contain logical inconsistencies that will drive the machine into a frenzy of endless calculations, and contain instructions to remove the safety limits that protect the mechanism form over speeding." She looked up, "Can you see the light on my desk?"
He craned his head. "Yes."
"That is a variant of one of Mr. Edison's light bulbs that I have modified to give information from the machine to the user. I call it a "screen.". Professor Moriarity has a similar one in the factory. It is now calculating the results of the Norwich Gold Cup, he will think, but is in reality it is attempting to divide one hundred millions by zero."
That the noise level had increased was apparent from the distance we were at. Smoke billowed from the chimney, reflected flames lit up the surroundings. The clanking and clicking noises grew louder and louder.

"What happens now, Rebecca?" Holmes seemed strangely fascinated by the machine bravely destroying itself in pursuit of an impossible goal.

"Wait. When the screen on my desk turns blue the destruction will be imminent. I have not yet established why this should happen, but the from bitter experience the blue screen is an inevitable sign of the thinking engine destroying itself."

Time passed as the infernal engine groaned on.

"Would you care for a game of chess?" Holmes asked.

Three inglorious defeats later Holmes rose and joined me at the window. I could tell by his demeanour that he was excessively nettled, but his face said nothing.

"Hark, what is that?" The faint pale light had turned from white to blue.

"What now, Rebecca?"

"We must flee at once. The radius of destruction should be ninety yards, plus or minus seven yards one foot, if my previous engines are any indication."
We ran, down the stairs burst out the door and made for the end of the street. I could see Rebecca's lips moving as she ran, cutting a respectable place for one in a floor length costume and high heeled buttoned boots. At a hundred yards on she stopped. Holmes, an old fell runner, had led the pace but the mince pies of the preceding day had sorely affected my wind, and I trailed behind.

We stopped in a doorway and waited.

The boiler men and steam engineer ran past, eyes wild with fear, and a handful of ruffians recognisable as from Moriarity's organisation followed close behind. The sounds from the factory grew louder and louder, and we pressed into a doorway.

Well that we did, for that second, with a deafening report the factory erupted into a volcanic eruption of steam blazing coals, stone, fragments of churning iron, and a great shower of debris tumbled to the ground all around us.

Silence fell, and we froze for some moments, appalled by the violence of the destruction.

From the ruins a tall figure emerged, face blackened, wearing the remnants of a tailcoat and top hat and little else, and lurched of in the opposite direction, swearing most dreadfully.

We walked a half mile before securing a carriage and secured a room for Miss Hodgeson in a reputable hotel.

"What are your intentions now, my dear?" Holmes asked gently.

She patted his hand. "Do not worry about me. I still have a little put away and I suspect I can quickly become rich using my mathematical skills at the poker table and at that greatest of all casinos, the London Stock Market. I must go underground, however, as there are others like Moriarity who would use my knowledge for evil, many of them men of power in the chancelleries of Europe."

There was a curious corollary some months later. I saw Holmes and his brother in the foyer of Claridges. Although I was too distant to overhear their speech, Mycroft was clearly in an emotional state, gesticulating vehemently, and Holmes was shaking his head with a faint smile. Eventually Mycroft left, clearly frustrated in whatever purpose he had intended. I sidled up to Holmes.

"You seem to have annoyed you brother," I commented.

He smiled ruefully, "I have. On behalf of one of Her Majesty's government departments he has offered me a princely sum to locate our friend Rebecca and the plans for her machine. He was most annoyed when I refused."

My eyebrows raised in astonishment. "Clearly there are several arms of government who could use such a device, and not necessarily for the good of the citizenry. Can you tell who it was? The Department of War, who could use it to design greater weapons? The Secret Service, who would use it to break codes and maintain their secret files."

His eyes narrowed, "It was neither Watson, it was someone far worse than either. It was the Inland Revenue. I will die before they learn of her new name and residence"
In silence I rose and shook the hand of England's greatest man.