by Jason Rouby
It was the first weekend in September of the year 1912 that I toddled over to 221B Baker Street to drop in on my old friend Sherlock Holmes to inquire about his health, although I took care not to ask him outright about his condition. At 58, he was touchier than ever, and I often congratulated myself for having the good sense to take rooms of my own around the corner.
I remember it was brillig. I was standing at the window watching the slithy toves gyre and gimble in the wabe, waiting for Holmes to put a little dye to his graying temples (he told me he was working on a case for Mycroft, something to do with a German espionage agent; but I think it was his vanity.)
As I stood there, chuckling at the antics of the toves, a Rolls-Royce limousine came to a soft stop in front of the house, and a liveried footman hurried to open the door. I could see two gentlemen, or at least the top of their high silk hats, step out, look about for an address, and then start for our door.
"Holmes," I called, "are you expecting a client? If you are, I'll just pop off and pop around another time."
Shrugging into his mouse-colored robe, Holmes came to stand beside me at the window.
"No, Watson, I have no clients, except for Mycroft, of course, but I am sure these two are coming for help. Stay, I pray you," he added, as I reached for my bowler and bumbershoot.
"Who can they be, Holmes? Do you recognize them?" I asked.
"No. Outside of the fact that one of them is a retired Army man who has seen staff duty in India, comes from Cheltenham and was educated at Harrow and Cambridge, and the other is a Home Office nabob with a predilection for salmon fishing in Scotland and the wheel at Monte Carlo, I know nothing about either one of them."
"Come now, Holmes," I expostulated. "This is really too much! How the deuce can you tell anything about the roulette wheel at the Casino by a mere glance?"
"Watson, by now you should know my methods. Let me suggest to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, the remainder, however improbable, must be the truth."
At that moment, Mrs. Hudson knocked on the door and entered.
"Two gentlemen," she wheezed, and passed two calling cards to Holmes. Holmes glanced at them and passed them to me. "Colonel E. Gerard Pickering." "Hon. Brewster Budgin."
"Show the gentlemen up, Martha," Holmes said.
"They'll find their way up themselves, beggin' your pardon," Mrs. Hudson retorted. "Me legs ain't what they used to be back in '81."
In a moment, the two callers entered. One of them, with a military bearing, spoke first.
"Which of you, may I inquire, is Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the private consulting detective?"
I have that honor," Holmes acknowledged. "This is my friend, chronicler and associate, Dr. John Watson."
The military man bowed slightly.
"I am Colonel Pickering, late of His Majesty's Army in India" -- Holmes winked at me -- "And this is my old friend, Boozy Budgin, who does something or other at the Home Office."
Holmes chuckled softly to himself, but loudly enough so that I could hear. He always did that.
Budgin, a short, soft, pompous man, sat delicately on the edge of the chair Holmes had indicated for him.
"I hardly know, Mr. Holmes, where to begin," he said softly, twiddling a small disk between his fingers. "As a matter of fact, I hardly know why I am here, except to do a favor for Pickering here."
"Home Office push and all that, Boozy, of course," Pickering interrupted with a laugh. "One can't just barge in on a fellow like Holmes, like popping into one's tobacconist, can one? But I don't have the time for appointments and all that rot. Don't know what Higgins is liable to do if I don't get some action in a hurry, what?"
Steepling his fingers before his face, Holmes leaned back in his chair.
"I am afraid, Colonel Pickering and Booz, --er, Mr. Budgin, that your errand has been in vain. My time and thoughts are taken entirely by a mission of such delicacy and international import that I could not take time to look for a lost collarbutton, let alone to save this fellow Higgins from himself."
Pickering rubbed his hands in apparent glee.
"Go ahead, Boozy, do your stuff. This is what I brought you for."
"Mr. Holmes," Budgin said, "you must understand that Colonel Pickering and I do not come to you without knowing of your reputation and without being aware of the demands upon your attention. In my position at the Home Office, I have the opportunity to make suggestions, from time to time, to various branches of His Majesty's Government, and upon occasion, to the Government as a whole, as it were, in the person of your brother, Mycroft. It is at his suggestion and with his permission that we are here."
"Well gentlemen, why did you come? Pray, enlighten my friend Watson and myself."
Pickering spoke first.
"We have come on behalf of my good friend and fellow scholar, Professor Henry Higgins, the eminent philologist, whom you may know. Last spring, on a sort of a dare, for which I am afraid I am responsible, Higgins took into his home, most properly I assure you, a young girl from Covent Garden, named Eliza Doolittle, with the intention of teaching her proper language, manners, and carriage so that she could pass as a lady."
"He did and she did, last night, brilliantly, at the Embassy ball for the Queen of Transylvania. But this morning, the girl had disappeared, run away, as a matter of fact. Higgins is distraught, though he won't admit it, Mrs. Pearce is crying, the maids are upset, and I haven't had a decent cup of tea today."
"Bless my soul, Mr. Holmes, but that bloody idiot Higgins has fallen in love with the girl and doesn't have the sense to know it. Will you help us find her?"
"Have you advertised in the morning papers? I saw nothing in the Agony Column today," Holmes said.
"No? Well, it may be too late for that. Have you had the Thames dragged? Young girls do foolish things, you know. What about the Dover coach? She could have taken a run for Paris. I daresay she might have been taken in the white slave trade and even now is on her way to a sultan's tent in the Sahara."
With each suggestion as to Eliza Doolittle's fate, Pickering blanched.
"Mr. Holmes," he pleaded, "you must find her. I can assure you that though Higgins hasn't a farthing, I myself will be most generous."
"Colonel Pickering, Mr. Budgin," Holmes said as he arose, "I suggest you retire to the Home Office or a nearby pub, and then return in, say, one hour. By that time, I may find that I am in a position to help you. And by the way, bring that fellow, er, 'Higgins,' I believe you called him, when you return."
Not another word would Holmes say -- not to Pickering and Budgin, nor to me, after they had taken their departure.
For almost a solid hour, on his violin, he scraped tunes and airs which he knew would irritate me. I tried in vain to start a conversation with Holmes, but eventually I gave up and stood at the window, watching the toves in the wabe.
Precisely one hour later, the Rolls-Royce came to a stop in front of our -- that is -- Holmes' house. I noted with some satisfaction that there was a third man with our two earlier visitors.
"Jove, Holmes," I said to him, "Professor Higgins is with them this time."
He nodded but made no other acknowledgment, continuing his scrapings.
As the door from the hall opened to admit the three men, Holmes suddenly played one of the Gypsy airs from Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies and the door of his bedroom opened.
A stunningly beautiful young woman, wearing a diamond tiara and a dazzling white gown flowing from her bosom walked through, stopped a few feet into the sitting room, and said softly to the three astounded men who had just entered, "How kind of you to let me come."
The next moments were bedlam. Amid cries of "Eliza!" from the stranger, who was evidently Professor Higgins, "Miss Doolittle!" from Colonel Pickering, and "I say!" from Mr. Budgin, as well as my own questions to Holmes, he haughtily played wild Gypsy dances on his violin while the young woman stood silent.
After what seemed an eternity, Holmes bowed a flourish and rose to greet his visitors.
"Gentlemen, please be seated, while I present the young lady you know as Miss Eliza Doolittle."
Holmes escorted Miss Doolittle to his own arm chair, where he seated her with as much grace and respect as if she were royalty.
"Miss Doolittle," he said with a low chuckle, "I believe you know two of these gentlemen, Professor Henry Higgins, the celebrated philologist, and Colonel Pickering. Allow me to present the Honorable Brewster Budgin, a friend of Colonel Pickering, and my own friend and associate, Dr. John Watson."
"Holmes," I said, "this is preposterous. I was here when these men came to you to request your help, and I have been in this room ever since they left. You have not stirred from your chair. How came the girl here? What is the meaning of this? What trick have you played on them, and on me?"
There were further outcries from the three men, which Holmes ignored.
"Professor Higgins," Holmes said, "although you have met Miss Eliza Doolittle, some six months ago, I believe, permit me now to introduce to you and to the rest of the company present Her Highness, the Princess Berengaria von Ormstein, Grand Duchess of Cassel-Felstein, an heir to the Kingdom of Bohemia, who traces her maternal blood lines to the plains, not in Spain, but in Hungary."
"Yes, Professor Higgins, Eliza Doolittle is an Esterhazy, and Zoltan Karpathy came nearer to the truth than you imagined."
Turning to the young woman in his chair, Holmes bowed low and said, "Your Highness, if you desire, you may retire now, with the satisfaction of knowing that you have recompensed me completely for the services I was able to render to your illustrious father."
Giving her hand to Holmes and smiling condescendingly to our three still astonished visitors, the Princess rose and walked gracefully back into Holmes' bedroom, closing the door behind her.
"Sherlock Holmes, what is the meaning of this little puppet show we have just seen?" Higgins asked agitatedly. "What is this joke of Eliza Doolittle being a Hungarian Princess? She's a Tottenham guttersnipe, and I taught her every bit of decent language she knows, and decent manners, too, damn you!"
"No, she is a Princess from Bohemia, with a descent through her mother from the royal lineage of Hungary, and she is not Eliza Doolittle. There is no such person as Eliza Doolittle, Higgins, because I invented Eliza Doolittle!"
Holmes laughed, but there was no humour in his laughter.
"Explain yourself, if you please," Colonel Pickering said.
"Yes, Holmes, you must. You owe it to all of us," I added.
Reaching for one of his favorite briars and filling it from the Persian slipper, Holmes sat back in his chair.
"You may remember, Watson," he said to me, "that some years ago, in 1897 to be exact, I published a little monograph on the similarity between our own Cornish tongue and the Chaldean language, remarking their own derivation from the Phoenician. It was a simple little monograph, but one I believed had merit."
"Shortly after its publication, my monograph was criticized by a certain Professor Henry Higgins in a paper read to the Imperial Institute. I became a laughingstock, and Professor Higgins suggested I refrain from learned topics and 'stick to plaster of Paris and other thingamajigs'."
"I resolved to show Professor Higgins for what he was, a charlatan and a tradesman. I waited for the right combination of persons and events to come together, and when they did, I sprung the trap."
"Reminding Princess Berengaraia, whose godfather I am, of her father's coming to me for help, I asked her help, which she gladly gave and entered into the game with enthusiasm to match my own."
"I taught her Cockney ways and Cockney talk, and then I turned her loose that rainy night at Covent Garden to catch my prey."
"You fiend," Higgins hissed.
"After that, it was merely a case of my sitting back and waiting, while Professor Higgins taught the little Cockney flower-girl how to speak proper English."
"Believe me, Professor, the Princess and I enjoyed every bit of it, and it was worth the few pounds I put up for her lessons from you. Her daily reports to me will make good reading at the Imperial Institute, I dare say."
"And Colonel Pickering, would you be surprised to learn that the tiara and the gown you rented for the ball for the Queen of Transylvania belonged to the Princess? The fees you paid were donated to the fund for widows and orphans at Scotland Yard."
By this time, Holmes was laughing so hard he could hardly control himself. Fuming, Higgins strode to the door, followed by Pickering and Budgin.
"My statement of fee will follow. Be generous, Colonel Pickering," Holmes managed to say amid his laughter.
Picking up my own hat and umbrella, I prepared to leave.
"Holmes, how could you? After 15 years? How could you bear a grudge so long, after everyone had forgotten the whole issue? This is unlike you."
Holmes stopped laughing and looked at me hard and long. "Nemo me impune lacessit," he said, as I closed the door behind me.
I walked slowly back to my own flat, moodily kicking toves back into the wabe.
"Imagine that Holmes," I said to myself, "thinking about and staying mad at that silly ass Higgins for 15 years. There is but one Sherlock Holmes."
I chuckled softly, remembering the look on Higgins' face when Holmes identified the girl as an Hungarian princess.
At home, I splashed whiskey and soda into a tall glass and lifted a toast to my friend, "the best and wisest man -- ever known."