Ten years or so before these events, a piece in The Lancet introduced the world to the concept and reality of adrenaline, a secretion of the adrenal gland in times of excitement, responsible for several physical sensations affecting the heart, blood pressure, respiration, etcetera. I was familiar with these symptoms long before they had a physiological designation. I had experienced them on the battlefield in Afghanistan, later on a police steam launch chasing Jonathan Small and his Horrible Companion down the Thames, and later still on the marshes of Dartmoor, confronted by a gigantic spectral hound.
So there was now no question in my mind what was overtaking me physically as once more I raced through the train, trying not to succumb to debilitating panic.
Where was Holmes?
Between the parlour and business cars yet again, and realizing I was starting to hyperventilate, I forced myself to stop moving, lean up against one of the trembling paneled bulkheads, and think. Sweat was trickling in rivulets from my scalp down the length of my body.
When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains must be the truth had long been a dictum of the detective’s, and I racked my mind now to eliminate all that was impossible.
I had searched the entire train by this point, including the galleys, dining, parlour and business cars, the coal tender, and the baggage cars. The mysteriously locked compartment I now knew contained only Director General Rachkovsky and possibly other members of the Okhrana, not the detective, whom they wished to see as eagerly as I, nor Mrs. Walling, whom they had spirited off the train during a momentary water stop. I was missing something obvious.
At which point, in one of those bizarre moments of unexpected, intuitive clarity—no doubt also a by-product of my adrenaline jolt—I knew.
The two monks were precisely where I had last seen them, side by side in their second-class compartment, pantomiming their familiar supplication, Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me. My heart leapt to see only one was seated with a missal in his lap. The other held what looked to be a volume that had been torn apart.
“Holmes!” I fairly shouted.
The monk looked up and smiled when he beheld me.
“This is the most wonderful book ever written, Watson. Notwithstanding all those Russian names, War and Peace is the nearest thing to the Iliad that was ever—”
“Holmes, she’s gone!” I slid the door shut behind me and tugged down the shades.
“Mrs. Walling?” He appeared thunderstruck. Clearly the detective knew nothing of what was happening.
“The Russians have her.”
The blood drained from his face.
“Tell me everything.”
He was already tugging off the strands of his false beard and stepping out of his cassock. All this commotion produced absolutely no effect on his fellow congregant, who, eyes closed, continued his silent chanting.
“Very obliging,” Holmes remarked, following my look. “I simply attached myself, and he appears neither to have noticed nor offered the least objection. Go on, man.”
“There’s not a lot to tell,” I responded, but related with mortification all that had followed after I’d awakened from my stuporous slumber.
He heard me out in gloomy silence as he adjusted his clothing.
“They want you, and they want the confession.”
He nodded. “Me they may have, the confession they may not.”
“But how will you—?”
“Come, Watson, let us hasten to where these gentlemen are to be found.”
He slid open the door and led me backward to where our porter, having bedded down all the passengers in our car for the night, was once again enjoying a nap in his chair.
At his feet rested a bull’s-eye for emergency use. Holmes delicately extracted the lantern without disturbing its owner and led me still further rearward to the baggage car, which we examined anew, this time with no conductor to intervene.
Erik von Hentzau’s polo ponies nickered nervously at the bull’s-eye’s beam.
Immediately the detective focused his attention on the two caskets, shining the lantern slowly along their lengths.
“Hullo,” he exclaimed, kneeling closer. “How often does one see a coffin with air holes?”
I knelt beside him, able to confirm his observation. Someone had indeed used a brace and bit to auger six apertures on either side of the pine box at the widened portion meant to accommodate the cadaver’s shoulders. Holmes nudged the casket, which moved easily. It took no great intelligence to understand it was empty.
“This is where they concealed her until the water stop,” the detective reasoned. Using the crowbar I’d employed to open what proved to be a crate of furniture, Holmes prised the lid to confirm the coffin was indeed empty. A fragment of red cloth caught on a pine splinter within, which I recognized as belonging to the shawl Anna Walling had been wearing, served to confirm his deduction.
Behind the box, almost lost in the shadows, I now spied a pile of stones. This was what the porters had labored to carry. We levered the lid off the second casket and found it weighted with more of the same.
Behind us, the horses whinnied. Holmes and I looked at one another.
“Why two coffins?” I wondered.
“The second may have been for you, Doctor. Had one kidnapping not served to motivate me.”
Before I had the chance to digest this prospect and its implications, we were interrupted.
“Sherlock Holmes, I presume.” Swiveling the bull’s-eye, we beheld in its feeble light the director general of the dreaded Okhrana flanked by two silent henchmen.
“Yes, I’ve been waiting for you,” the detective responded.
“You put my men to a great deal of inconvenience in Odessa.”
“They were clumsy and deserved what they got.”
Holmes offered the Russian a cigarette, which he declined.
“You know what I have to say,” Rachkovsky offered.
“You also know my answer,” the detective returned.
“Let me spell it out, so there can be no misunderstanding.” Rachkovsky seated himself on the other coffin. “I want Krushenev’s confession.”
“I do not have it.”
The Russian was first to blink.
“Where is it?”
“I posted it in Varna.”
The other considered this gambit for several moments, then dismissed it, smirking confidently. “That is a lie. You would not dare entrust such a precious document to the mails, not in this part of the world.”
“Nevertheless, I do not have it. You are welcome to search me and such belongings as I currently possess.”
With a suddenness that sent the detective reeling across the undulating floor, Rachkovsky smote Holmes across the face with the back of his hand, a blow so fierce that, enhanced by the pronged ring on his third finger, it served to open a vivid gash on his right cheek and send Erik von Hentzau’s polo ponies into a neighing frenzy of prancing hooves.
“You have no idea with whom you are dealing,” the Russian exclaimed.
Holmes coolly retrieved his cigarette, dabbing at his cheek with a handkerchief. “On the contrary, you have just convinced me—if your scurrilous Protocols had not already done so—precisely with whom I am dealing. In addition, Rivka Nussbaum had entirely persuaded me days ago.”
“Who?”
“And you poisoned Theodor Herzl.”
“Would I admit it if I had?”
“True. Invite the world to speculate as to his cause of death.”
The other inclined his head to concede the point. “I might.”
“Let us leave it at this,” Holmes concluded, seating himself insouciantly on the coffin opposite and blowing smoke. “My friend here has a revolver aimed at your heart. Move an inch and he will shoot you dead.”
I produced my weapon, its chambers full, trigger cocked. Rachkovsky was not a man who was often surprised.
For several moments only the clickety-clack of the train was to be heard. Doubtless his own minions were armed; it was a question of who would shoot first, and I could see in the chief’s eyes that the game was not presently worth the candle.
“If you shoot me, you will never see the girl again.”
“If your men return fire, you will never obtain the confession, but others will.”
The last thing Rachkovsky wanted was an incident involving gunplay aboard the Orient Express. Even assuming he and his cohorts managed by some chance to emerge unscathed, such publicity as would inevitably accrue would shine a ruinous light on people best suited to conducting their endeavors in the dark.
As if to confirm my intuition, one of Rachkovsky’s men leaned over, displaying his watch and whispering. The Okhrana chief nodded, then smiled at Holmes.
“Very well. We approach the Austro-Hungarian border, where I must leave you. When you reach Budapest, we will contact you regarding the arrangements.”
“Those arrangements must include Sophie Hunter’s passport and visas as well as her unharmed person,” Holmes stipulated.
“Well thought on,” the other conceded with a thin smile.
“How will you know where we are?” I asked.
“We will know.”
So saying, and careful not to make any sudden movements, the three Russians withdrew, leaving Holmes and myself alone with the horses and mail as the Orient Express slowed for the frontier.
We knew that customs officials would shortly be asking for our papers and inspecting our possessions.
“Holmes, where is the letter?”
“Where they’ll never find it.”
“Yes, but—”
“May I trouble you for your homburg, Doctor?”
Wondering, I handed over my hat. Running his finger around the inside of the headband, he deftly extracted the folded paper from its place of concealment.
“Do you mean to say I had it the entire time?”
“Yes, my dear fellow. I knew if they discovered me, I would be searched until they found it.”
“But you never warned—”
He smiled a trifle sadly, I thought, and lit another cigarette, offering me one, which I accepted.
“I thought it might be best if you didn’t know.”
“You mean my innocence would be more convincing.”
He shrugged. It was typical of the man that he was at times capable of such a cold-blooded calculation. It was also true, I realized, that I had grown accustomed to my role as a packhorse in carrying out his sometimes labyrinthine schemes.
“What are you going to do?”
“That is indeed the question. Our cards are not very promising.”
“It’s either the woman or the Protocols. And he’s already murdered another.”
“You are very blunt.”
“Very honest.” More honest than you have been, I was tempted to add, but hadn’t the heart.
He nodded. “I know, Watson. I know.”
We smoked for several moments in silence while the distant hissing of steam told us the boiler was taking on water. The Emperor Franz Josef’s civil servants would shortly be seeking to stamp our passports.
“I expect we’ve little choice except to proceed to Budapest and learn their plan,” Holmes said, more or less thinking out loud. “Perhaps some flaw in their arrangements will inspire us.”
I tried to take comfort from this idea, but didn’t get very far. It seemed the Okhrana had been ahead of us almost every step of the way. Why should they not remain so?
We returned to my compartment, where those same civil servants did indeed give our papers a cursory examination before stamping them with more Hapsburg double eagles and, upon their exit, emphatically slamming our sliding door as if to demonstrate their unimpeachable authority. In the darkness they either failed to notice or did not care about the detective’s slashed cheek, now embellished with dried blood. Dueling scars were not their purview.
The berths still being in place, Holmes with awkward movements began to clamber to the topmost.
“You ought to clean that gash.”
He made no answer, and I had to content myself by stretching my own weary frame on the lower berth. Holmes had not uttered a word since we put out our cigarettes in the baggage car. There seemed little enough to say at this juncture, and the rhythmic noise of the train lulled one into silence as we wound through mountains we could not see.
“Transylvania,” I remarked, at last, “home of vampires.”
After a silence, Holmes responded in a hollow voice.
“Not exclusively Transylvania.” I knew what he meant. There seemed now to be vampires everywhere.
“It’s a very pretty problem, as you would say.”
Another silence.
“Not that pretty.”
With a pang I found myself recalling the overconfident telegram I’d sent Juliet from Varna, All’s well that ends well.
“Holmes, even assuming we agree to whatever it is they propose, how can we be sure they will keep their end of the bargain?”
“We can’t,” he reflected, “but they have every motive for doing so. As you reported his conversation, ‘the girl,’ as Rachkovsky terms her, is nothing but his means to an end. To kill her is to risk the wrath of the British and American governments. But they must be willing to kill her,” he added bitterly. “Never make a threat you are not prepared to carry out.”
“They might kill her simply to insure she does not expose her own abduction and the reasons behind it.”
Another silence.
“They might.”
“Her tale of being buried alive in a pine coffin might not endear Russia to the world at large.”
“Watson,” said he very softly. Meaning, I knew, Enough.
The train barreled through the night, as we lay silent, each aware we were fast approaching a moral cul-de-sac. Though my mind continued racing in fruitless circles, I was on the point of sleep, when I became aware of Holmes noiselessly descending the ladder.
“Holmes?”
“I’m going for some air, Watson.”
“Would you like company?”
More silence as he considered my offer.
“Thank you, no. If you’ve no objection.”
“Of course not.”
Throwing on his ulster, he slid open the door and left.
Fully awake now, I lay contemplating the truly awful choice that was only the detective’s to make. But no matter how I turned the conundrum over in my mind, it was unclear what that choice would or should be.
Holmes was gone for a surprisingly long time. Waiting for his return, it was as if someone had dropped a single shoe. I had assumed he would come back within fifteen or twenty minutes, but in this I was mistaken. I must have entirely lost track of time when I was awakened by the soft sliding of our compartment door and the stealthy return of the detective.
“I’m so sorry, old man.” He shook his head like a pugilist who has absorbed one too many punches. “I seem to have made off with your hat instead of mine.” He hung it up next to his own on the brass hook.
“Did the air do you any good?”
“Who knows? Who knows? What a mystery life is, Watson. What a damnable mystery. Do I mean mystery or misery?” he added, under his breath.
I thought it best to say nothing. Holmes would see through any effort of false cheer on my part. He sat on the berth by my feet, hunched below the upper bed, and stared out the window at the coming dawn, peering at or oblivious to his own chiseled features reflected in the glass, motionless as a statue as the darkened landscape flitted behind it.
5 February. The weather was indisputably winter by the time the Orient Express crawled into Budapest. We trundled past the enormous, red-domed capitol and bone-white parliament building on the western bank of the Danube (the city formerly designated as Pest), before turning east and creeping to a stop at Keleti station, among the most modern in all Europe.
I was unacquainted with Budapest and unprepared for the opulence of Hungary’s capital, still less for its indecipherable tongue.
“They say it most resembles Finnish,” Holmes remarked, which made still less sense to me and helped neither of us. Hailing a taxi that skidded to a stop where we stood on bustling Rakoczi Avenue, Holmes simply said, “Hotel.” Taking his cue from this single noun, our driver wove expertly through snow-clogged traffic in this prosperous and animated metropolis. He took it upon himself to bring us over the Emperor Franz Josef Bridge to the Palace Hotel, doubtless one of the costliest in the city. There we registered in conformity with our passports as Mr. Gideon Altmont and Colonel Rupert Morcar.
“What will Mycroft say?” I wondered, as we ogled the gold-flecked foyer. Mycroft’s idea of accommodations, I knew, was the shoebox Hotel Esmeralda.
“Mycroft is the least of our problems.”
Rachkovsky had said he would find us and instruct us regarding “arrangements.” But who knew what portion of the truth the Russian Machiavelli was speaking? Had he made some alternative plan regarding Anna Walling? Was she already dead, her body, as he threatened, floating in the Danube, anonymous as Manya Lippman’s, or cached elsewhere, never to be found?
After depositing my bag in a room large enough to house a family of five, I strode down the wide carpeted hall and knocked on Holmes’s door. He didn’t answer at first, and when he finally did, his customary pallor had now metamorphosed into a sallow grey. He stared briefly, then admitted me without comment. As I passed him, I distinctly smelled cognac on his breath. Indeed, he presently extended a snifter in my direction. I had never known him to be incapacitated by drink and could only be grateful his syringe and its lethal contents were nowhere to hand.
“Thank you, no. Holmes, I think Mrs. Walling would be better served if you were sober.”
He considered this, passing a hand across his forehead in a familiar gesture, then nodded, seemingly incapable of either conversation or movement.
I rang for room service and ordered coffee, another noun that arguably required no Hungarian, and held up two fingers before the bellman that I hoped would be understood to indicate two cups. When they arrived, I coaxed Holmes into taking his black.
“How many hours has it been?” he demanded, not yet drinking.
“Almost three since we arrived.”
“What are they planning? Are they planning anything? What have they done to her?”
“They’ve done nothing! Holmes, remember your own irrefutable logic. They have every interest in getting hold of Krushenev’s confession. To do that, they must be able to produce Mrs. Walling.”
“Yes, yes, to be sure,” he acknowledged woodenly, finally raising the dark liquid to his lips.
Passivity did not suit Sherlock Holmes at the best of times; on the chase, he found it insupportable. It was foreign to his nature to wait in circumstances such as these, and yet his hands were tied no less securely than had they been bound with hoops of steel. On former occasions, he might have endured such stress with recourse to his violin or (a lifetime ago) cocaine; now he had neither. He paced. He sat. He smoked and sipped at his cold, unleavened coffee.
I saw the envelope first when it was slid under the door, but when I pointed it out the detective fell upon it like a tiger.
“It’s addressed to Professor James Moriarty,” he observed ruefully. “How they must enjoy their pound of flesh.”
“Not the association I think you want on this case,” I commented.
He looked up from the envelope. “This isn’t a case. It never was.”
“I wonder how they found us.”
“Elementary. They sent the taxi that so conveniently fetched us at the station. The driver’s instructions were no doubt clear. Had I said not a word, he still would have brought us to this place.” He handed me the envelope. “Here. Read it to me. There’s a good fellow.”
He closed his eyes as I slid open the flap and extracted a single sheet of paper, typed all in capitals: “ACROSS FROM YOUR HOTEL IS THE CHAIN BRIDGE. AT PRECISELY FOUR-THIRTY, YOU WILL BOTH CROSS IT ON FOOT. ON THE FARTHER SIDE AT ‘ADAM SQUARE PARK’ YOU WILL BE MET AT THE BOTTOM OF BUDAVARI SIKLO. FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS WILL BE ISSUED AT THAT TIME. YOU WILL BRING THE DOCUMENT. WE ASSUME COLONEL MORCAR WILL BE ARMED. AS WILL WE.”
I looked at my watch.
“Ten past four,” I informed Holmes. “Whatever it is, they are cutting it fine.”
“Deliberately. They do not wish to provide us with time to maneuver.”
Holmes stared out the window. The bridge in question was directly before our hotel, spanning the Danube and leading to the hilly portion of the city formerly known as Buda on the opposite bank, atop which sat its imposing eponymous castle.
I reread the note. “Budavari Siklo. I wonder what that could be.”
On the far side of the bridge, we beheld a funicular railway, whose two alternating cars passed each other carrying passengers up and down the steep hill below the impressive fortress.
“I think I know,” said the detective with mounting excitement. “Ingenious,” he murmured. Then, abruptly springing to life, in an instant the Holmes of yore, he threw on his coat. “Quick, Watson, there is no time to be lost. Let us fetch your warm things and our passports. And remember your revolver—and your hat!” he added almost as an afterthought as he dashed past me to the door.
“You are going through with this, then?”
He turned and regarded me, his grey eyes clouded with pain. “What would you have me do?”
“I only wish to point out that you went to considerable lengths to obtain Krushenev’s signed confession.”
His eyes closed briefly, as though he were remembering just what lengths had been involved. Then he opened them again and gazed frankly into mine.
“She went through much more, Watson.”
Of whom was he speaking? Anna Walling? Manya Lippman or Rivka Nussbaum? Perhaps all three.
It was bitterly cold and growing dark as we made our way across the windswept stone and iron suspension bridge. I judged the span to be about a thousand feet. At either end the structure was guarded by two stone lions that put one in mind of Landseer’s enormous sculptures in Trafalgar Square. The Danube that divided the city in two was far from its fabled blue; it rushed past below us as a muddy, icy torrent. As we passed one of the huge stone towers, a plaque informed the curious that the bridge had been constructed in 1849 by one Adam Clark.
Clearly the square on the farther side, alluded to in the note, with its non-Hungarian designation, had been named for the bridge’s architect. And at the end of that square at the base of an enormous incline was a sign above a small building—Budavari Siklo*—indicating the lower terminus of the twin funicular railways to the top. Waiting for us was one of Rachkovsky’s minions whom I recognized from the baggage car of the Orient Express. The fellow evidently spoke no English but handed Holmes a second envelope, the contents of which he now read aloud to me:
“YOU WILL ACCOMPANY IVAN TO THE BOTTOM CABIN NAMED ‘MARGIT,’ WHICH IS HELD FOR YOUR USE. YOUR WEAPON WILL GUARANTEE YOUR OWN SAFETY. THE OBJECT OF YOUR INTEREST AND I WILL BE AT THE TOPMOST CABIN, NAMED ‘GELLERT.’ AT MY SIGNAL, BOTH CARS WILL MOVE. AS WE PASS, THE EXCHANGE WILL BE MADE. IVAN WILL THEN COVER YOU UNTIL I SIGNAL I AM SATISFIED. IF THAT PROVES THE CASE, YOU WILL BE FREE TO GO.” There is no signature.
“Ingenious,” I was forced to acknowledge, producing my revolver so that Ivan could see it. There would be no forcing us to deliver Krushenev’s confession prematurely.
The man nodded and motioned us to follow him to the lower housing, where inside we boarded the waiting cabin, whose name, Margit, was painted in gold above us. Ivan nudged the detective into position at the open left-hand doorway. Holmes held out his hand, and I removed my hat and gave it to him, whereupon, with slow, deliberate movements, he allowed Ivan to see him remove the folded paper from my headband.
Opening it, he displayed the confession out of Ivan’s reach, but Krushenev’s signature was visible by the light of the lone bulb above us in the roof of the cabin.
Ivan nodded, satisfied, grunted and opened his bull’s-eye, flashing a beam up the steep hill, which I judged to be at least forty degrees.
After a pause, perhaps three hundred feet above us, there came an answering beam, then a whistle, following which both cabins began to grind towards one another. Holmes refolded the papers and extended them in his left hand, leaving his right free to grab hold of Anna Strunsky Walling. What would happen should he fail? Would the woman fall between the tracks? Rachkovsky I knew for a cold-blooded murderer. Would he let her slide from his grasp to her death as if by accident? The possibility was so unthinkable my mind refused it admittance.
Gears grinding, the cars moved slowly in opposite directions, theirs descending, and ours, Margit, climbing, guided by the cogs beneath them and the unifying cables that ensured an identical rate of progress. Our cabin was empty save for we three, and I assumed a similar configuration in the car that was nearing us. As it approached and gained in size, I suffered the optical illusion it was moving faster. Its painted name, I could now see, was Gellert. How Rachkovsky secured the exclusive service of the funicular for this occasion I could not guess, but Holmes read my mind.
“The device can be hired for weddings,” he surmised.
The clanking sound of the descending cabin added to our own, besides which my heart was now pounding like a pneumatic drill as the adrenaline once more coursed through my veins. What if Holmes should miss? I looked down to behold the parallel railroad ties blurring hypnotically past beneath me with vertiginous speed. What if, by the slightest miscalculation on his part, the courageous woman should fall to her death?
“Watson! Don’t look down!” Holmes’s stern command obliterated this terrifying prospect. I looked up in time to see the cars passing one another. In a flash, Rachkovsky’s hand shot out and reached the detective’s to snatch the precious paper, even as Holmes’s right arm encircled her waist and pulled Anna Walling across the distance of two feet, clutching her in an iron embrace.
She remained clasped to him, her eyes shut.
“Your travel papers?”
She nodded, eyes still closed.
In the next instant, the cabins parted, continuing their journeys in opposite directions without hindrance, Margit nearing the top and Rachkovsky’s Gellert approaching the terminal housing at the bottom of the hill. Holmes and Anna Walling never took their eyes from one another. I was unsure where to look, but could not help noticing their hands almost touching. Ivan was in no such confusion. He kept his revolver trained on us as we bumped to the end of our journey and then peered down the incline.
For the longest, agonizing time, there was nothing, but finally a bull’s-eye beam assured us Rachkovsky was satisfied the bargain had been kept. With a grunt, Ivan signaled we were free.
“Quickly!” Holmes yelled. “Find a taxi!”
At the top of the hill, near Buda Castle, there was no shortage of motorcars, and one of these was easily ordered to take us to Keleti station, which was, in fact, not far from the upper terminus of the funicular. There was no thought of returning for our belongings at the hotel.
“Are you all right?” Holmes asked Mrs. Walling, as the taxi slewed across melting snow, making its way to the station.
Mrs. Walling, pale in a way I could not have believed possible given her colouring, could only nod. We rode in silence, each preoccupied with our own reflections.
“You should not have rescued me,” said she finally, her Slavic accent fully returned. “You should have retained confession and exposed Protocols.”
“Oh, but I did,” responded Sherlock Holmes, endeavoring not to chortle.
To our mutual astonishment, he reached again for my homburg and extracted Krushenev’s confession.