Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #20. Arthur Conan Doyle
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By implication, the patriotic Holmes puts the good of the state over enhancing his professional reputation by notching up another case he solved.
In the opening paragraph of “The Naval Treaty,” Watson refers to “The Adventure of the Second Stain,” which he said “deals with interests of such importance and implicates so many of the first families in the kingdom that for many years it will be impossible to make it public.”
And in fact he never did, most scholars agree. “The Adventure of the Second Stain” that Watson wrote later takes place during some autumn while he is still or again living in Baker Street, not the July after his marriage to Mary Morstan as did the one mentioned in “The Naval Treaty.” It is clearly a different case with the same name.
Watson calls it “the most important international case which he (Holmes) has ever been called upon to handle.” Appropriately, the client is no minor Foreign Office official out of Watson’s past. The Prime Minister himself, to whom Watson assigns the pseudonym of Lord Bellinger, calls on Holmes at Baker Street, along with the Right Honourable Trelawney Hope, Secretary for European Affairs. A saber-rattling letter from a foreign potentate—often identified by commentators as Kaiser Wilhelm II—has disappeared. If the letter becomes public, war almost certainly will result. The Prime Minister appeals to Holmes and Watson’s honour—there’s that word again!—and to their patriotism, “for I could not imagine a greater misfortune for the country than that this affair should come out.”
Critics have noted the parallels between this affair and that of “The Naval Treaty.” In each case a document of international consequence—the McGuffin—has been lost. And in each case the document was hidden beneath a carpet, although not permanently in “The Adventure of the Second Stain.”
If Holmes experienced déjà vu, he did not say so. Rather, he emphasized how difficult the case was: “Every man’s hand is against us and yet the interests at stake are colossal. Should I bring it to a successful conclusion, it will certainly represent the crowning glory of my career.” He did, and it did, and yet Holmes attempted to hide the achievement from his client in order to protect the honour of a lady. But Lord Bellinger was no fool, which leads to a marvelous closing scene:
The Premier looked at Holmes with twinkling eyes.
“Come, sir,” said he. “There is more in this than meets the eye. How came the letter back in the box?”
Holmes turned away smiling from the keen scrutiny of those wonderful eyes.
“We also have our diplomatic secrets,” said he and, picking up his hat, he turned to the door.
One suspects that Holmes had secrets from Watson as well. Surely—as commentators have speculated—his older brother Mycroft must have sent the Prime Minister to Baker Street on that occasion. But only in “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans” does the indolent co-founder of the Diogenes Club himself appear at 221B. Sherlock Holmes decides then that it is finally time to tell Watson the truth about Mycroft’s unique role at Whitehall.
“You told me that he had some small office under the British government.”
Holmes chuckled.
“I did not know you quite so well in those days. One has to be discreet when one talks of high matters of state. You are right in thinking that he is under the British government. You would also be right in a sense if you said that occasionally he is the British government.”
Mycroft arrives in a state of high agitation. His normal bored demeanour gone, he strives to impress upon his sibling the importance of the case: “You must drop everything, Sherlock. Never mind your usual petty puzzles of the police-court. It’s a vital international problem that you have to solve.” Mycroft even tries a carrot, “If you have a fancy to see your name in the next honours list—” But only after he assures Mycroft that “I play the game for the game’s sake” does the great detective agree to look into the matter.
Mycroft’s last push is an appeal to patriotism: “In all your career you have never had so great a chance of serving your country.” The response? “Well, well!” says Holmes, shrugging his shoulders. Perhaps that was a pose, an attempt to appear blasé before his big brother. As the case nears its end, Holmes strikes a much different note to Watson: “If time hangs heavy, get foolscap and a pen and begin your narrative of how we saved the State.”
Before they can do that, however, Holmes suborns Watson into burglary. At first the good doctor resists—which he did not do in “A Scandal in Bohemia.”
“I don’t like it, Holmes.”
“My dear fellow, you shall keep watch in the street. I’ll do the criminal part. It’s not a time to stick at trifles. Think of Mycroft’s note, of the Admiralty, the Cabinet and the exalted person who waits for news. We are bound to go.”
My answer was to rise from the table.
“You are right, Holmes. We are bound to go.”
He sprang up and shook me by the hand.
“I knew you would not shrink at the last,” said he and for a moment I saw something in his eyes which was nearer to tenderness than I had ever seen.
Apparently Holmes chokes up when he is about to commit a felony. Later, he confesses his law-breaking to his brother and to Inspector Lestrade. The Scotland Yarder warns him that some day his penchant for burglary will get him and Watson into trouble. “For England, home and beauty—eh, Watson?” Holmes responds in the words of a Royal Navy toast. “Martyrs on the altar of our country.”
Instead of suffering martyrdom, though, Holmes eventually is called to Windsor where he receives a remarkably fine tie-pin “from a certain gracious lady.” Watson, pushing his own deductive talents to their limits, tells us, “I fancy that I could guess that lady’s august name and I have little doubt that the emerald pin will forever recall to my friend’s memory the adventure of the Bruce-Partington plans.”
That was in that hallowed year of 1895. In 1902, Holmes refused a knighthood (“The Adventure of the Three Garridebs”). Why refuse, given that he accepted the French Legion of Honour (“The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez”)? I suspect that Holmes thought that service to crown and country was its own reward. But why was that knighthood-worthy adventure never told? Perhaps it was too sensitive, the same reason that we have been deprived the story of “the lighthouse, the politician and the trained cormorant”—which was surely another affair of state.
The last recorded meeting of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson took place on the evening of August 2, 1914, “the most terrible August in the history of the world.” We know about it from the account originally published in The Strand under title of “His Last Bow: The War Service of Sherlock Holmes.”
In this fourth espionage story in the Canon, it is Holmes who is the spy. During two years of undercover work in America and Ireland, he has supplied the master spy Von Bork with false plans and arranged for some of the German’s best men to be arrested. Posing as an Irish-American named Altamont, Holmes has disguised his rather public face by adopting what Watson calls “that horrible goatee.” “These are the sacrifices one makes for one’s country,” says Holmes, pulling at his little tuft. “To-morrow it will be but a dreadful memory.”
Watson asks him how he got lured away from his bees. “Ah, I have often marveled at it myself. The Foreign Minister alone I could have withstood, but when the Premier also deigned to visit my humble roof—” One can’t help but think that Altamont is engaging in a bit of blarney here. That was at least the third Prime Minister to visit Holmes at home; the old sleuth-hound should have been used to it by then. But he goes on:
“It has cost me two years, Watson, but they have not been devoid of excitement. When I say that I started my pilgrimage at Chicago, graduated in an Irish secret society at Buffalo, gave serious trouble to the constabulary at Skibbareen and so eventually caught the eye of a subordinate agent of Von Bork, who recommended me as a likely man, you will realize that the matter was complex.”
No doubt the