"Monica-" It was almost a sob from Ralph Norton's lips.
The six of us took the long train ride back to Montreal together. Holmes telephoned Detective Leblond from a stop along the route and he was waiting for us at the station.
Holmes and I took a carriage to Irene Norton's home. He insisted on giving her the news in person. "Your son will be home soon," he told her. "He's gone to the Sûreté with Monica Starr."
"Have you solved the case?" she wanted to know. "Is my son innocent?"
"Innocent of all but a youthful love. Only time can cure him of that." He told her of Monica's confession.
"And the baby?" she asked. "Who is the father?"
"We didn't ask, but it seems Faber had reason to believe it was his. It may take Ralph some time to get over that."
She dipped her eyes, and may have shed a tear. "A scandal in Montreal. Who would have thought it? First me, all those years ago in Bohemia, and now my son."
"No one is blaming you, or your son."
She lifted her head to gaze at Holmes. "How can I ever thank you? Will you be going back now?"
He nodded. "I am retired and keep bees at my villa in Sussex. If you are ever in the vicinity, it would be my pleasure to show it to you."
"I'll keep that in mind," she said, and held out her hand to him.
The Adventure of the Field Theorems by Vonda N. McIntyre
Vonda N. McIntyre is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award-winning novel Dreamsnake. She is also the author of The Moon and the Sun (which also won the Nebula Award) and several other novels, including a Star Wars novel and several Star Trek novels. Other original novels include The Starfarers Quartet, Barbary (a book for younger readers), Superluminal, and The Exile Waiting. Much of her short fiction has been collected in Fireflood and Other Stories.
Readers have a tendency to identify authors with their characters, and this was certainly the case for Arthur Conan Doyle. He received piles of letters from readers asking for his help in solving actual crimes, to which he could only throw up his hands. Not only did Conan Doyle lack the rigorous, logical, machine-like Holmes-ian ability to penetrate subterfuge, but the author was also famously gullible. He repeatedly put his reputation on the line championing any hokey spiritualist who waved some ectoplasm at him. (In fact, the stage magician Houdini, who knew all the tricks of the spiritualists and who dedicated himself to unmasking them, displayed more Holmes-like behavior than the author ever did.) Perhaps the most embarrassing example of Conan Doyle's credulity was his publicizing the case of the Cottingley fairies-amazingly, the creator of Sherlock Holmes showed no skepticism when some mischievous teenage girls took photographs of themselves standing beside cardboard-cutouts of gnomes and fairies and then presented the images as real. This next tale shows us this side of Conan Doyle. Of course, in the wilds of an author's imagination, you can never be too sure what's real and what isn't.
Holmes laughed like a Bedlam escapee.
Considerably startled by his outburst, I lowered my Times, where I had been engrossed in an article about a new geometrical pattern discovered in the fields of Surrey. I had not yet decided whether to bring it to Holmes's attention.
"What amuses you so, Holmes?"
No interesting case had challenged Holmes of late, and I wondered, fearfully, if boredom had led him to take up, once again, the habit of cocaine.
Holmes's laughter died, and an expression of thoughtful distress replaced the levity. His eyes revealed none of the languorous excitement of the drug.
"I am amused by the delusions of our species, Watson," Holmes said. "Amusing on the surface, but, on reflection, distressing."
I waited for his explanation.
"Can you not discern the reason for my amusement, Watson-and my distress? I should think it perfectly obvious."
I considered. Should he encounter an article written particularly for its humorous content, he would pass straight over it, finding it as useless to him as the orbits of the planets. The description of some brutal crime surely would not amuse him. A trace of Moriarty would raise him to anger or plunge him into despair.
"Ah," I said, certain I had divined the truth. "You have read an account of a crime, I beg your pardon, the resolution of a crime, and you have seen the failings in the analysis. But," I pointed out, somewhat disturbed by my friend's indifference to the deeper ramifications, "that would indicate the arrest of an innocent victim, Holmes. Surely you should have some other reaction than laughter."
"Surely I should," Holmes said, "if that were the explanation. It is not." He shook the paper. "Here is a comment by Conan Doyle on Houdini's recent performance."
"Quite impressive it was, too," I said. "Thrilling, I would say. Did Sir Arthur find the performance compelling?"
"Conan Doyle," Holmes said with saturnine animosity, "attributes Houdini's achievements to-" Holmes sneered-"'mediumistic powers.'"
"His achievements do strain credulity," I said mildly.
"Pah!" Holmes said. "That is the point, Watson, the entire and complete point! Would you pay good money to see him fail to escape from a sealed coffin?"
"I suppose that I would not," I admitted.
"Were Houdini to tell you his methods, you would reply, 'But that is so simple! Anyone could achieve the same effect-using your methods!'"
As Holmes often heard the same remark after explaining his methods, I began to understand his outburst.
"I would say nothing of the sort," I said mildly. "I should say, instead, that he had brought the technique of stage magicianship to as near an exact science as it ever will be brought in this world."
Holmes recognized my comment with a brief smile, for I had often said as much to him about his practice of detection.
"But it is true, Watson," Holmes said, serious once more. "Anyone could achieve the same effect-were they willing to dedicate their lives to developing the methods, to studying the methods, to perfecting the methods! Then it is 'so simple.'"
When Holmes deigned to lead an amazed observer through his deductive reasoning, the observer's reaction was invariably the same: His methods were "perfectly obvious"; anyone, including the observer, could duplicate them with ease.
"Conan Doyle claims friendship with Houdini," Holmes said in disgust, "and yet he insults his friend. He dismisses Houdini's hard work and ingenuity. Despite Houdini's denials, Conan Doyle attributes Houdini's success to the supernatural. As if Houdini himself had very little to do with it! What a great fool, this Conan Doyle."
"Easy on," I said. "Sir Arthur is an intelligent man, a brave man. An inspired man! His imagination is every bit as exalted as that of Wells! His Professor Challenger stories compare favorably to War of the Worlds-!"
"I never read fiction," Holmes said. "A failing for which you berate me continually. If I did read fiction, I would not doubly waste my time with the scientific romances you find so compelling. Nor am I interested in the mad fantasies of a spiritualist." Holmes scowled through a dense cloud of pipe smoke. "The man photographs fairies in his garden."
"You are too much the materialist, Holmes," I said. "With my own eyes I saw amazing things, unbelievable things, in Afghanistan -"