My wife complied with a polite, bewildered smile. I suddenly realized that my nearly two decades of climbing the seventeen steps to 22IB Baker Street had not been entirely profitless for my mental faculties.
"You agree that this pile upon which you placed the last card is now odd? Now watch closely as I use my magic powers to switch the piles." She waved her hands gently and totally without effect about a foot over the two piles of cards.
"Now which pile is odd? Don't let me stampede you into anything."
Alicia frowned at her mistrustfully, then after a moment tapped the pile upon which she had placed the last card.
"Are you sure? Count them."
She counted them twice, and of course found eight cards in her "odd" pile and seven in her "even."
"How did you do that?" Alicia wailed, as I choked back a chuckle. "Ah, it's all in the mind, you know," said Miss Smith sunnily. Suddenly she frowned, looked down, and pressed her hands to her eyes.
"What is the matter?" I asked, instantly attentive.
"Nothing," she said, her frown belying her words. "Except... I just remembered where I learned that trick."
"Tell me about it," I said with studied casualness.
"I remember a man," she began in a low voice. "He was a big, red-faced, stringy-necked fellow with a great thick curling mustache. He's dressed in dungarees, long underwear, and a blue flannel vest. He chews tobacco, has bad teeth, needs a bath-you wouldn't want him in your Sunday school. He plays cards like a magician, knows a hundred ways to cheat. He has a crude, physical sense of humor. In a lot of ways he's not a very nice person, but he's not a coward and he stands by his friends. He was a friend to me."
"Can you remember his name?" "Crazy.. .Callaghan." "When did you know him?"
"I don't know. I just have this image of him in my mind, sitting at a cheap pine table with his feet up, laughing, saying, 'It's all in the mind, boy, all in the mind.' Where, when...I cannot say. He's American; it must have been in America."
I pressed her to go on, but apparently the bright and startling vision of her somewhat barbaric acquaintance brought nothing else in its train. I offered to start a card game, but she pushed the deck away sadly. "He taught me cards. I think he is dead now," she explained her lack of enthusiasm.
I took the opportunity to excuse myself, and returned shortly, bearing the package I had purchased that afternoon.
"Try this out," I suggested, handing it to her. Her mouth formed a soundless "O" of surprise as she opened it to reveal an inexpensive guitar. She held it a moment, strummed it, then began to tune it by harmonics.
"Oh, this is better," whispered Alicia to me, getting interested in spite of herself in the process of fishing for memories in my patient.
Miss Smith played a few scales, then began to play and sing in an untrained but pleasant alto.
"I am a roving gambler, I've gambled all around, Whenever I meet with a deck of cards I lay my money down. I've gambled down in Washington, gambled over in Spain, I'm on my way to Georgia to knock down my last game. Knock down my last game, knock down my last game."
Her playing was good, clear and rhythmic, although short of virtuosity. But, like the mathematics, the music trailed no personal memory in its wake, although her accent became pronouncedly more Americanized while singing. She then proceeded (I fear deliberately) to scandalize my wife with a version of "St. James Infirmary," but to my even greater astonishment made up for it by following with a sweet classical study by Carulli.
As we adjourned for bed, I found myself wishing Holmes had been there. I felt I had uncovered unexpected new facets of my patient's personality, but relate them by a chain of reasoning to the central mystery I could not. For that matter, where was Holmes?
***
That question was answered the next morning when the man himself appeared on my doorstep with a package under his arm. I welcomed him into my study and questioned him anxiously about his previous day's activities. He sat back with a grim, unpleased smile and lit his pipe.
"One would think, Watson," he said, "that a pair of individuals willing to go to such great and bizarre lengths to conceal their activities and evade the attentions of the police must have something rather remarkable to hide. Aside from that obvious deduction, I am no closer to knowing what than I was two days ago. By the way, we, or rather I should say, Inspector Lestrade found the house in Camberwell. Empty, of course. I spent yesterday morning chasing down cabmen while Lestrade and his merry men made the rounds of house agents. I had hoped to take a shortcut and beat him to it, but was foiled by my quarry Sacker's predilection for changing cabs. I did find the cabman who had driven Sacker and - Miss Smith, you say? it will do - from Bart's to Willesden, and had a look at the park she described. It confirmed her story in every particular, but as I had never doubted it, it did not advance me much. Although at least it will make courtroom testimony, if the case ever gets that far. I also found the cabman who had driven Sacker to Bart's, but he had picked up his fare at Victoria.
"At that point I got word from Lestrade of his success in Camberwell, and hurried down to have a look. The birds must have flown the nest within a few hours of Sacker's return night before last. Their departure was hurried but thorough, not so much as a scrap of writing or a dirty sock left anywhere. Someone in that partnership has his wits about him. But the Yard now has their fingerprints and a description out, and a warrant for attempted murder on Sacker, not to mention kidnapping and the forgery of passports. I'll wager Sacker's companion was ready to murder Sacker himself when he found out what he'd done. We also obtained testimony, such as it is, from the maid - not a devoted American, by the way, but a Camberwell charwoman who came in half-days to cook, clean, and shop. She had never seen the prisoner upstairs, who had been described to her as Sacker's mad younger brother, but she describes the doctor, who was going under the name of Aloysius Garnett, as always brewing up medicines for the poor lad upon his chemical apparatus. They must have been interesting, those medicines!
"Following the trail backwards through the passports, the Yard discovered that our trio had arrived in London a little less than three weeks ago from Charleston, South Carolina. They had sailed aboard the American Lines steamship DeWitt Hargrove, where they had passed their prisoner along under the brain fever story. Lestrade wired the Charleston police and port authorities. Their reply was received early this morning. They have nothing- nothing-upon Garnett and Sacker, either by name (not surprising, they are certainly pseudonyms) or by description, but promise to pass the inquiries along on their end.
"Leaving the official police with their larger resources to follow up the two ends of the tangle in their hands, I went home, sat down, and had a smoke. The results have brought me here. I am increasingly convinced, Watson, that we have the key to the puzzle in the person of Miss Smith. Her mind may be half destroyed, but surely there must be a clue or two left in the other half for a sufficiently alert mind to follow up."
"Ah, yes. About her mind, Holmes," I said. "I conducted a pretty thorough examination of her yesterday. I'm afraid your pithing idea is a frog that won't jump. She doesn't have organic brain damage to amount to half a thimbleful, I'll swear it. I am convinced her amnesia is hysterical in origin."