A Case of Insanity

Chapter Six

The crowds had begun to disperse by the time I left the club, although not quickly enough for my liking. I found my way blocked by dawdling women and grinning children. A drunken porter, who had started his celebrations earlier, threw an arm around my shoulder and told me I was his best friend. Finally free of the beer-soaked fellow, I turned into a side road and straight into the path of a constable with an imperious expression on his face and wanting to know why I was not joining the rest of the populace in heading over to St Paul's Cathedral for the finale of the day, the Service of Thanksgiving.

He took some convincing that I was a doctor on my way to see a patient, but did at last finally let me go, announcing as he did so that it all seemed rather rum to him that anyone would take ill when the sun was shining. I did not stay to debate the issue; I had already suffered enough delays and time was not on my side. The hands of my watch were eating away at the hour I had to attempt some rehabilitation of an ailing mind before Dr Rochdale came to take Holmes into his care.

I ran the length of Baker Street as fast as the twinges in my leg would allow and arrived home with half an hour to spare. Mrs Hudson had yet to return, a fact of which I was glad, for if it came to the worst, it would have distressed her greatly to see her tenant taken ignominiously from the house.

All was quiet when I let myself in. As I had no wish to have a repeat of our earlier encounter, I called up the stairs to alert Holmes to my presence.

The blood smear on the leaf of the aspidistra that stood on the landing table was my first warning that all was not well. Still glistening, I could follow its trail along the wall and beyond the closed door. It was unlocked, but the knob slid in my hand, coating my palm red. My heart was thudding in my chest as I used my handkerchief to get a firmer grip and pushed the door wide.

A scene of devastation met my eyes. The books had been torn from the shelves in a frenzy of excitement and every file, folder and journal turned out onto the floor. The drawers of the tallboy teetered on the edge of falling, so far had they been pulled out and Holmes's desk, not tidy at the best of times, was a confusion of blotches where the ink well had been overturned and its contents allowed to spill out over the blotter and a strewn collection of cuttings. At the heart of this turmoil, sitting in the chair beside the fire, sat Holmes, knee-deep in a mass of newspapers that had accumulated around his legs and staring listlessly at his trembling hands.

I approached warily, avoiding the red splashes on the papers underfoot that marked his passage across the room. From between his clenched fingers, drying rivulets of blood showed where the damage had been done. He did not acknowledge me nor say anything as I prised his fists open to find bleeding cuts on his palms and fingers, the wounds showing the glint of broken glass buried deep in the flesh. Relieved that it was not more serious, I went in search of a bowl and water, and returned to his side to find that he was as unresponsive as before.

"Holmes," I said gently, trying to rouse some spark of interest in him as I cleansed the gashes on his hands. "Can you tell me what happened?"

For the first time since I had entered the room, he slowly became aware that he was not alone. He seemed bewildered and I saw from the pained look that came into his eyes that he was struggling to make sense of what I was saying.

"Your hands," I urged. "How did you cut them?"

"Intruders," he murmured fiercely. "They came here. They took my manuscript." He pulled his hand abruptly away and a spray of bloody water soaked my trousers as he gestured about the room. "I've searched, everywhere. It's gone. Years and years of study, the work of half a lifetime. They've taken it from me."

"No, Holmes." I grabbed his waving hand and forced him to look at me. "You gave me the manuscript earlier. Don't you remember?"

His brow furrowed. "Gave it to you? Why?"

"You wanted me to take it to Scotland Yard."

"No, no, I never would. Fools and blunderers, I wouldn't entrust a loaf of bread to their safe-keeping."

"Yes, you did. It's safe, my friend."

With his free hand, he rubbed his eyes, unwittingly daubing his face with red smears. "Safe?" he grunted. "Who in this world is safe when a man may be molested in his own home? But how, how did they gain entry? They took me entirely by surprise. Yes, a diversion, clever. Curse those dogs that howl and yap beneath my window! Then, when my back was turned, there, I saw them in my room."

I looked to where he pointed with shaking finger to see the broken remains of the cheval mirror. Jagged edges stood up from the frame like tiger's fangs, glinting with the blood where unwary fingers had been slashed by the razor edges when reaching for intruders who existed only in the tortured imagination of the beholder.

"Their cunning was extraordinary," he went on fervently. "They tried everything. I heard them first, outside my window, describing how they would force it to gain entry. I pulled the curtains; that stopped them. Then gas under my door to try to flush me out. An unexpected stroke, that – I was obliged to open the window. That's how they must have got in. But I soon put a stop to their game. I took up the poker and sent them scurrying away like mice back to their holes!"

I deeply dismayed by this violent and rising excitement and the sheer brutality of his speech, so far removed from his usual eloquence and ordered thinking. Had I not held him fast, he would have been up out of his chair and attacking the mirror again.

"Holmes, concentrate!" I said, forcing him back down. "There is no one there. There never was. You know this."

For all this wild talk and his emaciated state, his strength still proved to be the greater. He pushed me harshly away, and was up on his feet in an instant. Then about the room he began to prowl, glancing fiercely about the walls, as though he expected to find intruders secreted in every corner of the room.

"These people," he muttered, grinding his fist into his hand, "I knew them to be minions of Professor Bennett. Oh, he's a clever man and no mistaking. A genius, some might say the natural heir of his illustrious predecessor, Moriarty. The one has trained the other - yes, yes, I see his hand in this. How have I been so blind!"

"Holmes, Moriarty is dead."

He did not hear me, I am sure of it, for he was too wrapt in this rambling train of thought. "Now I come to think of it, the resemblance is too close to be mere coincidence. They are surely the same person. Hah! See the cunning, the workings of a criminal mastermind behind this scheme of his. He cannot be allowed to continue. He has the colleges under his control. All those students – willing and intelligent menials to his unbounded ambition! Without my manuscript, I am discredited and cannot move against him. As surely as night follows day, then must we say in this case – QED."

He clapped his hands in paroxysm of triumph, heedless of the blood from the reopened wounds that began to course down his fingers as he kept up his wanderings.

"And night, my dear fellow, that is the time we must fear. Or rather dusk and dawn, for despite mankind's best attempts, those remain our most vulnerable times. We must keep our lights on, that will keep them at bay, day and night, and drive them from our door."

Scurrying to the window, he let up the blinds. As they clattered upwards, he gasped and drew back in alarm.

"No, stay back," he commanded me. "Do not let them see you. One must admire their determination if not their ambition. They have regrouped and mustered their forces for yet another attack."

Although he would not permit my drawing any nearer, I could just make out the roof of a brougham in the street below. Dr Rochdale had arrived. My hour of grace was almost at an end.

"We must make preparations," said Holmes with decision. "Barricade the doors, block the windows. But, dear heavens, where is he? He should be back by now. He went… he went for…" He was struggling again. "Perhaps he has gone for good. I could not blame him. But no, of all men, I know he would never fail me, not Watson. Where can he be?"

Nothing could have sent a greater sorrow through my heart. I needed to hear that masterful confidence from him, that certainty when one could believe whatever the odds that somehow everything would turn out for the best. Instead, I was trying to reason with the unreasonable, a mind in the grip of deluded agitation. His brother had instructed me to look for some spark of the Sherlock Holmes of old. In his unfocused eyes, nervous manner and incomprehensible words, muttered either to himself or some unseen agent, I found none.

If there is nothing more deplorable than the ruin of a noble mind, then the greater sadness must belong to those forced to witness to such lamentable decay. The sufferer knows only the confusion of the present, a small mercy granted by an otherwise merciless illness. Friends and family, however, are left to witness the relentless march of slow decay and that exorcising of character and the very essence by which a man's nature might be known.

The dread which had been my constant companion during the early years of our association had returned to haunt me and manifested itself in this poor addled wretch before me now, unable to remember anything of the past and lost in a world of confusion. It had always appalled to me to think that some day I might be witness to the first signs of permanent damage, of a weakening in mind and the gradual loss of those powers by which he was distinguished.

We had gone over the arguments so many times that a single look had became enough to register my disapproval. We had had our battles, each fancying ourselves to have emerged victorious. In the final reckoning, however, we had both lost. All that remained was for me to fulfil the promise I had made to his brother.

"Would you have me look for him?" I asked. "Perhaps he has already returned."

"Watson would have come straight up if he had," Holmes murmured. "He is not here, of that I am sure. I know the sound of his foot upon the stair. Even so, the noise is so great that I may have been mistaken. No, you must remain in this room. It is a risk to leave with the forces of evil at large."

"Well worth it, if it would set your mind at rest." He was as meek as a lamb as I gently guided him back to his chair. "Wait for me here. I shall be back."

I went not to search for my missing self, but up to my room. There, from my medical bag, I collected what I needed and returned downstairs. In my absence, Holmes had armed himself with the poker and had it clutched tightly against his body as though expecting the assault to begin at any moment.

"Do you hear them?" he hissed. "Those dogs again! Will their howling never cease?"

Of course there was nothing to hear. Arguing with him would only cause further distress, so I kept my silence and, with my back to him, poured a measured dose of sedative into the brandy I had prepared.

"They are the warning of worse to come," he said insistently. "Yes, hell-hounds all, sent to worry at our throats. But we shall not be distracted. Not this time!"

I had one last moment of pause. I glanced across at Holmes, seeking, in vain I knew, for some remnant of his magnificent intellect. It is the nature of hope, to endure when all other certainties have been dashed, even when all indications point to the contrary. While I hesitated, fostering an indulgent fancy that it was not yet too late, from the street outside, I heard the clatter of hooves and the rattle of another approaching cab. I heard it halt and then came the murmur of voices. Most likely it was Dr Rochdale's assistants, arrived to take the patient away. Time had run out. If it had to be done, there was nothing to be gained in further delay.

"I cannot spare the time or energy to waste in adding superfluous fluids to my body," Holmes declared when I offered him the glass. "That is the nature of water, to dilute the concentrate. It is pure poison to the logical mind and I shall have none of it."

"Yet without it, how can you hope to withstand what the night may bring?"

He wavered. "I am a little thirsty, it is true."

I helped him raise it to his lips and held it there while he swallowed the concoction. A little of the fight seemed already to have gone out of him, as if capitulation on so minor a point had exhausted him. While he was quiet, I took the opportunity to re-dress his hands and waited for the sedative to take effect.

"Did you find him?" he asked absently.

"Who?"

"Watson, of course. Confound the man, what can be delaying him? I expect he's run into one of those acquaintances of his and I have been quite forgotten."

"He is on his way, I am sure of it."

"Yes, I dare say you are right. He is a good soul, if a little forgetful at times."

"I had not noticed."

"No? Well, it is the least of his faults and the most forgivable." He chuckled. "Do you know, there was a time… a time when he…"

"Go on," I urged. Suddenly it felt important to hear whatever it was he had remembered. "A time when he did what?"

He shook his head and struggled to stifle a yawn. "No, I cannot think. This tiredness will be the death of me. When he comes, I think I shall risk a few hours of sleep. Even now, I feel that if I could close my eyes for just a minute, all would be well."

His eyelids were indeed drifting down.

"Sleep if you must," I said. "I will keep watch."

"No, not until Watson gets here. Something I must say to him…"

I never learned what it was that he had to tell me. A long sigh carried away his final words. His head lolled and his grip on the poker relaxed. When I eased it from his hand, he did not try to stop me. All the same, I have been deceived by Holmes before and so I watched him for several minutes. After I was convinced his sleep was genuine, I went downstairs to admit the waiting Dr Rochdale.

Continued in Chapter Seven