The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part III Page 13

  Holmes looked at the dead mouse, and then up at me. “You were wrong, Watson. It seems that the client has been pleased to pay me after all.”

  Two Plus Two

  by Phil Growick

  “Watson, how much is two plus two”

  The question was so odd and abruptly put that for the moment, I stammered.

  Holmes and I had been sitting quite comfortably that morning, the eleventh of June, in our rooms, I, reading the morning Times, and Holmes lying on his sofa, in his usual state of morning dishevelment, just staring at the ceiling.

  “Pardon me,” I was finally able to utter, “could you please repeat that?”

  “Certainly. How much is two plus two?”

  Knowing Holmes, as much as any person could know Sherlock Holmes, I immediately judged this question to be one of some impenetrable import.

  Why would Holmes, with his Olympian intellect, ask such a seemingly foolish question? No, therefore it could not be foolish, and if not foolish, then it must have some profound meaning.

  The silence in the room began to weigh heavily, as a hostile humidity in a tropical clime, only abated by Holmes’s soft puffs of his pipe.

  As my mind spun the possible permutations of a solution to this riddle, Holmes turned his head just so to glance at me, gauge my predicament, and returned it to its former position, transfixed at the ceiling.

  If I answered the obvious, “Why, four, of course,” I might be the recipient of one of Holmes’s more biting barbs, such as, “Oh, really? Are you quite positive, Watson? Have you delved into your Hippocratic method to deduce that answer?”

  But if I said nothing, I would appear even more trivial to Holmes. A man of my profession and standing in the community not able to answer a question that a child of six could exclaim most readily? I had to say something, so I did.

  “Oh, no, Holmes; you shall not dally with me in such manner.”

  “Dally? Dally?” He had turned his head full round to my direction, his eyes though soft, still intense in their waiting for my explanation. “In what manner do I dally with you, Watson? Please explain yourself.” His head went back to studying the ceiling.

  “Holmes, you have given me the simplest of questions which only leads me to suspect a conundrum.”

  “A conundrum?” He chuckled. “Why, Watson, if I were to make present of a conundrum to you, it would be one of such an intricate nature that I, myself, would find it difficult to puzzle through, for were I to present you with such a conundrum, it would merely be me only listening to myself to hear me through my seminal solution.”

  Even for Holmes, that last statement was a conundrum in itself. The logic of his utterance was lost to me completely, which left me, once again, being coerced into giving him some sort of an answer.

  “All right, Holmes; all right. The answer to your question of how much is two plus two, is, plainly, four.” I found that I had raised myself from my chair with my arms pushing unknowingly against the arm-rests and upon the expulsion of my answer, I fell, somewhat heavily, back into my seat. He looked at me once more.

  “Four. Are you absolutely positive, Watson? Is there not an iota of apprehension in your posit?”

  “No; not one. Two plus two is most certainly four. It has always been four and it shall, until the end of time, be four.”

  And then I paused for a moment as I heard myself say, “What other possible response could there be?”

  Holmes leapt to his feet as suddenly as if he had been stung by a bee in his buttocks, pointed a nicotine-stained index finger at me and shouted, “You see? Watson, you’ve just opened your mind to the possibility of there being another answer.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  He advanced towards me with a self-satisfied grin that recalled a child who had eaten forbidden treats without his parents’ suspicion.

  “Did you not, just a moment ago, ask if there might be some other possible answer?”

  I stammered.

  Holmes twirled round in so graceful a manner that would do a ballet dancer proud and reclined himself once again on his sofa, eyes once again studying the celling for perhaps some hidden and eternal truths.

  “You stammer, Watson, yet you will not admit that you suspect that somewhere in the cosmos there may be another solution to this very simple question.”

  “It was merely a figure of speech, Holmes. I did not mean to suggest that there could be any other possible answer. Two plus two must be four.”

  “Must it?”

  “Of course, it must. I’ll prove it to you.”

  With that, I begged him turn his head in my direction as I borrowed some matchsticks from the area in which he kept his pipes and their attendant accessories and proceeded to put two matches down, then another two, counting as I went till I had come to the number four.

  “There, Holmes. I have taken two matchsticks and added two more matchsticks and by carefully counting, the sum I have arrived at is four.”

  “Bravo, Watson. You have just, in your most scientific manner, demonstrated empirical proof that your answer must be correct.”

  “Precisely.”

  “However, you are wrong.”

  “Wrong?”

  “Precisely.”

  I stood erect and stiff as I said, “What do you mean, wrong, Holmes? How can I possibly be wrong?” I believe my voice was rising in such a manner as to make one blush, should one have been in the company of several gentlemen.

  “Oh, it is quite possible, Watson, quite possible.”

  “How can it possibly be possible? Two plus two is four. How can it not be four?”

  “When it is not two plus two?

  “What on earth do you mean by that, Holmes? When it is not two plus two? For the last hour or so all you have done is bludgeon me with this ridiculous proposition.”

  “Watson, I have not bludgeoned you in any manner. Although to you, in so relaxed a disposition, a mental exercise may seem like someone has taken a truncheon to your brain.”

  “That is unkind, Holmes; even for you.”

  “I meant no insult, Watson, only that you have been led astray by your own ears and your own powers of total linguistic recall.”

  “I have not the foggiest notion of what you are talking about.”

  “Of course, not. Therefore, I will explain. Now, if you would be good enough to reseat yourself and try to return to that relaxed state from which you, yourself, escaped.”

  Reluctantly, I did as he asked; and when he was quite satisfied that my blood pressure had retreated from the volcanic heights of Vesuvius, he quietly and methodically began his explanation.

  “Watson, first, the questioned I posed was a trap.”

  “Ah, hah!” I exclaimed. “Just as I thought.”

  “Well, not really; for the trap was such that you could never see it coming. You could only hear it coming.”

  “Hear it coming? What can that possibly mean?”

  “Dare I say, elementary, Watson? Dare I say it?”

  I said nothing, which said everything.

  “Now, you heard me ask you how much is two plus two? Correct?”

  “Correct.”

  He leapt for exclamation and, it seemed, from the sheer joy of what was next to come, stayed in mid-air for an untenable amount of time.

  “Not so. Spell two plus two.”

  “T-w-o, p-l-u-s, t-w-o.” As I spelled it out, I took extra care in my reckoning.

  “All right and very good.”

  I smiled broadly.

  “But Watson, what if I did not mean t-w-o, p-l-u-s, t-w-o?”

  “What do you mean, Holmes?

  “Watson, how many words in the English language are there for the word ‘two’?”

  I had to t
hink quickly now, and came back with an answer and a question at the same time, “Three?”

  “Yes. Perfect. There is the number two, the ‘also’ too, t-o-o, and the adverb, t-o. So yes, there are three twos.”

  “But how could you ask me to add t-o to t-o?”

  “You see, Watson? To to to.”

  “Yes, well, to to to. But what about too to too?”

  “The same. Too to too.”

  “I believe I’m getting a headache,” said I.

  “Closer to an earache, Watson. We can go around for days with two’s and to’s and too’s, but that would only lead us to four.”

  “But that is what I have been saying all along. Two plus two is four.”

  “Is it really, Watson? Are you forgetting fore?”

  “The number four?”

  “No, how many four’s are there?”

  “What do you mean how many four’s are there?”

  “Exactly, just that. How many four’s are there in the English language?”

  I slapped myself on the forehead and dejectedly came up with the same answer that I’d come up with before.

  “Three.”

  “Precisely. We’re back at three from the two’s and the four’s.”

  I was shaking my head from side to side in resigned assignation.

  “Yes, Holmes: f-o-u-r, f-o-r, and f-o-r-e. Four for fore.”

  “Astonishing, is it not, Watson? And let us now dismiss one.”

  “One what?”

  “How many one’s are there in the English language?”

  “I would say three but that would be pressing my good fortune. So let me think, and I have it, two.”

  “So you are saying there are two one’s?”

  “I think I am. Yes, I am. There is the number one, o-n-e, and when you win a battle or game, you won, w-o-n.”

  “Marvelous. We’re making wonderful progress, Watson, wonderful progress.”

  “Progress to what?” My head was truly spinning and as it spun it was draining my energy and threatening to assume to rotation of our Earth.

  “Progress to the numbers, and the numbers, whether arithmetic or linguistic, are everything. So, tell me, Watson, how many eight’s are there in the English language?”

  “Please, Holmes, I beg of you. No more of these semantic gymnastics.”

  “What a marvelous phrase, Watson. Semantic gymnastics. No wonder you have had such success with your chronicles of our adventures. But I beg you to prolong your stated agony for only two more examples, Watson, only two. Which leads us to the conclusion that no matter what number you choose to study, there are only two or three homonyms.”

  “And for this, you have wasted a perfectly good morning?”

  “Not wasted, at all. I did this to show you that what you hear may not be what is truly meant. And that when you assume what is said by someone to be what that someone says, it may not be what that someone has said, at all. Do you see?”

  “See? I do not even seem to hear. Holmes, I am adrift. When this bizarre exercise of yours commenced I, as a physician, was quite positive that I was in the best of health. Now, after these numbers and words and arithmetic and not understanding what perfect strangers are saying to me, I am not sure of what you are saying to me. And you are most certainly not a stranger.”

  As I sank once more into my seat, Holmes slapped his right knee with his left hand, I suppose for some demonstrative emphasis, and gave a dindle of a laugh.

  Oh, please, forgive me here, for there is no such word as dindle. In fact, I believe I have just coined it. However, it seems eminently appropriate in this case, as the sound emitting from Holmes was not a full blown laugh, nor a snort, nor snicker, nor chortle, nor most certainly not a guffaw. It was the faintest of sounds of gleeful satisfaction; therefore, it must be considered in the diminutive, and therefore I christen the utterance a dindle. You may take the word or discard it, the choice is yours.

  “Watson, you still fail to grasp the importance of what we have been doing.”

  “I suppose so, Holmes; I will give you that.”

  “What if, Watson, I was paving the way for you and me to solve one of our newest riddles?”

  “And which one is that, if I dare ask?”

  “I am sure you will most certainly remember the young woman who sat precisely where you now sit, not more than two weeks passed. Miss Emily Kent.”

  “Of course, of course. She was quite young, very attractive, and she wanted to engage you to find some missing amulet, if I recall.”

  “Quite right. But the amulet gone missing was not just some amulet. It was the Amulet of Anubis.”

  “Yes,” I was still puzzling over whatever import Holmes seemed to hold so dear, at the moment.

  “The Amulet of Anubis was discovered by no one less than Miss Kent’s renowned father, the noted Egyptologist, Sir Lionel Kent. And though he perished shortly after that discovery, and many attributed it to an ancient Egyptian curse of some sort, that amulet is the only one found bearing the likeness of Anubis and is considered priceless.

  “Miss Kent stated that the amulet lay under lock and key in the home of Mrs. Annabel Brookfield, her grandmother. That only her grandmother, who was quite elderly now, I believe the dark side of ninety, kept that key secreted where only she knew its whereabouts.

  “Miss Kent further stated that it was she and her grandmother together who had discovered the amulet missing, and that she had immediately notified the police. After two desultory weeks of police work without success, she came to me to see if I could do what the police could not.”

  “Yes. But from what I recall, you accepted the challenge without your usual enthusiasm. It would seem to me that finding such a treasure would have given spark to your powers of deduction and elucidation.”

  “On point, Watson. But it was not any lack of interest. It was that I was in the middle of a coincidence, and as you are well aware, to me, there is no such thing as a coincidence.”

  “I do not follow.”

  “Then follow this. Do you ever peruse the Times for any retail news of substance?”

  “I feel I am falling further behind,” I conceded glumly.

  “It was approximately two weeks prior to the amulet’s theft that Brently & Crafton, perhaps London’s supreme fine arts and antiquities auction house, held an auction of the rarest Egyptian treasures and artifacts.”

  “No, I never bother with such information.”

  “Well, then, perhaps you should. For the coincidence of the Amulet of Anubis being stolen in so short a span after that auction, is too much of a transparent coincidence.”

  Once Sherlock Holmes had his mind onto a theory, it is best likened to a snapping turtle’s jaws snapping shut.

  “You see, Watson, with ancient Egyptian auction fever at high pitch, the Amulet of Anubis would fetch a much loftier price; especially to someone who had not been able to outbid others for specific pieces. And finally, there would be no seller’s premium fastened onto the item’s sale price.”

  “Yes, I see that now.”

  “Good. And now that you are in step, let us take this step by step.

  “Do you remember what Miss Kent said specifically about how she and her grandmother found the amulet missing?”

  After a moment of sorting through my mental file, I did remember.

  “I believe she said that she had asked to borrow the amulet, as she had in the past, to wear at a charity ball. When her grandmother went to retrieve the amulet, she found it missing, and would have fallen to the ground in a dead faint, had not Miss Kent been there to bear her up.”

  “Indeed. I am most happy to see your memory so facile.”

  I smiled. “I, as well.”

  “Now, another question to test tha
t impressive memory. How did Miss Kent get to her grandmother’s home?”

  “She said she rode to her grandmother’s home.”

  “Watson, please repeat what you just said.”

  “I said she told us that she rode to her grandmother’s home.”

  “Rode or rowed?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Words, Watson, words. R-o-d-e or r-o-w-e-d?”

  The import of the question hit me as hard as if Holmes had slapped a brick to the side of my head, and I believe my mouth opened to a width in which a hansom cab could easily have run through.

  “There is a rivulet that parallels the vehicular thoroughfare that leads from Miss Kent’s home to that of her grandmother. It is a rivulet quite narrow and because of its lack of girth it is not much travelled by boatmen or by the athletic among us who crew.

  “Now, do you further remember her answer when I asked her to be precise in the amount of time it took to get from her home to her grandmother’s home?”

  “Yes. She said it took her one hour.”

  “Don’t you see, Watson? If she had used the thoroughfare and gone by cab, it would have taken her, at most, only half that time. If, however, she needed stealth to sheath a nefarious design, she would have r-o-w-e-d, not r-o-d-e, and in the darkness would have easily needed that heavy hour. Her statement about the time was a casual remark, but a mistake which led, in part, to her undoing.”

  “But what led you to the contention of the words?”

  “If you remember, it was an unusually hot and humid day for London at this time of year.”

  “Of course I remember. I had even removed my waistcoat.”

  “And in such a situation, would not the average person remove any article of clothing adding to the discomfort caused by that heat?”

  “Yes, I believe so.”

  “But did you notice that she did not remove her gloves and that she winced upon me taking her hand in greeting, even in so ginger a manner?”

  “I recall that now, but at the time it meant nothing to me.”

  “In addition, as she was leaving, you touched her lightly on her shoulder as a gentleman would in guiding a woman through a doorway. She gave an almost imperceptible shudder.”