The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures - Mike Ashley [199]
“Pardon me,” said Holmes, “but with my colleague’s permission I would like to administer two simple medical tests. First, a trivial exercise in mental acuity. This lodging is 221b Baker Street, and it is the seventeenth of the month. How rapidly, Mr Traill, can you divide 221 by seventeen?”
As I marvelled and Traill took up the pencil to calculate, Holmes darted to his cupboard of chemical apparatus, returning with a heavy stone pestle and mortar. In the latter he had placed a small mirror about three inches square. Looking at Traill’s paper, he said: “Excellent. Quite correct. Now, a test of muscular reactions – kindly shatter this glass now.”
Traill performed the feat handily enough, with one sharp tap of the pestle, and stared in puzzlement. It resembled no medical procedure that I knew.
Holmes resumed his seat, rubbing his hands in satisfaction. “As I thought. You are not in the slightest superstitious, Mr Traill; I guessed as much from the tone in which you spoke of spirits. A mathematical result of thirteen does not make you flinch, nor did you hesitate before breaking a mirror. You are masking your real concern. Why do you consult a doctor? Because you fear madness.”
With a sob, Traill buried his face in his hands. I stepped to the gasogene and spirit-case, and mixed him a stiff brandy-and-soda with Holmes’s nodded approval. In another minute our client had composed himself, and said wryly: “I see that I have fallen among mind-readers.”
“My methods, alas, are more prosaic,” said Holmes. “Inference is a surer tool than wizardry. I now infer that there is some special circumstance you have yet to reveal to us, for I recall no history of insanity in the family of Sir Maximilian Traill.”
“You are troubled and overwrought,” I put in, “but speaking as a doctor I see no sign of madness.”
“Thank you, Dr Watson. I will begin again, and tell you of the red leech.
“My lodgings are in Highgate and – since the allowance from my father’s estate frees me from the need to seek employment – I have fallen into the habit of walking on Hampstead Heath each morning, in search of inspiration for the verses by which I hope one day to be known. (The Yellow Book was good enough to publish one of my triolets.) Some friends used to chaff me for being a fixed landmark at luncheon-time, when I generally enjoyed a meal of sandwiches and a bottle of Bass in the vicinity of the Highgate Ponds.” Traill shuddered. “Never again! I remember the day quite vividly: it was a warm Tuesday, perhaps six months ago …”
“Prior to your twenty-fifth birthday?” asked Holmes sharply.
“Why, yes. I sat on the grass in a reverie, idly watching someone’s great black retriever splash in and out of the water. I was thinking of foolish things … my sister’s maggot of distrust, and the structure of the sestina, and The Pickwick Papers – you will remember Mr Pickwick’s investigations of tittlebats and the origin of the Hampstead Ponds which lie across the heath. My thoughts were very far away from the heath. Perhaps I even dozed. Then I felt a hideous pain!”
“On the back of your right hand?” said Holmes.
“Ah, you have seen me rub it when troubled.”
“Already my methods are transparent to you,” Holmes remarked with pretended chagrin.
I leaned across to look. “There is a mark resembling a scald, or possibly an acid-burn.”
“It was the red leech, doctor. You will surely have heard of it. A repulsive, revolting creature. The thing must have crept on me from the long grass; it clung to my hand, its fangs – or whatever such vermin possess – fixed in me.”
“I know of no such leech,” I protested.
“Perhaps it is a matter which does not concern a general practitioner,” said Traill with a hint of reproach. He plucked a folded piece of paper from his wallet, and handed it to me; it was a newspaper clipping. I read aloud: “Today a warning was issued to London