cogitating. “See here, Watson. I defer to your superior experience in this one area and cast myself upon your mercy. Come with me to Whitechapel, and show me how a gentleman might see the place and might see opportunity there.”
“A gentleman?”
“A man of good character, at least apparently. You cannot deny that when you served in foreign climes you did not fail to sample the…recreational aspects of the locality.”
“I was in the Army, Holmes! And I am not a saint.”
“Exactly why I value your knowledge now. I was never in the Army, and while I do not aspire to sanctity, neither do I to sin. I had long considered this an advantage in my calling, but am discovering this to be a handicap in this particular case.”
“It is unlike you to admit a failing.”
Holmes laughed into the smoke welling up from the pipe. “It is humbling indeed when the lack of what is commonly considered a moral failing proves a stumbling block to my investigation.”
He leapt up as he was wont to, without warning, and made for the bookshelf. He returned with a slim volume I had not seen before, an odd stutter in his usually confident stride as he came abreast of the mantel and glanced at something on it.
I consulted it myself, for its terrain was as unvarying as the cursed wilds of Afghanistan. I saw nothing amiss: the jackknife pinning correspondence to the wood, the Persian slipper, the clutter, the cabinet portrait of the dead adventuress, Irene Adler, the wad of saved tobacco ends at the mantel’s opposite end.
“Do you read German, Watson?”
“I can stumble through it. Medical texts, you know. ‘Richard von Krafft-Ebing.’ I have heard of this doctor, although in a scandalous context.”
“Excellent.” Holmes cast himself into the basket chair and huffed away on the pipe like a steam locomotive. “Tell me what is so scandalous.”
“He claims to have discovered a class of killers that he calls ‘lust-murderers.’”
“And he means by that?”
“That the lust to kill is also a carnal urge.”
“And how does that make these killers different from those who slaughter in the name of greed or vengeance or pure madness?”
I perused the thick pages. “I am not sure. I have heard of but not read his work.”
“And how is it that I have escaped knowledge of this most useful volume?” Holmes asked a bit querulously. His voice was a trifle high-pitched to begin with. When he felt overlooked, or worse, offended, it would rise to a strident tone.
“Holmes, these matters are discreetly discussed among men of the world, in clubs, at gentleman’s bars. Such knowledge is not deemed fit for the public at large.”
“Nor for women.”
“Certainly not! I would shoot the man who would lay such filth before my Mary.”
“Yet women, and occasionally children, seem to most often be the victims of such lust-murders, if one is to believe Krafft-Ebing.”
Holmes may have eschewed certain knowledge. He was never not astute.
“First one needs to believe his theories, and they have been roundly abused.”
“So were Galileo’s.”
“I cannot recall that you ever cared one iota about whether the sun revolves around the earth or vice versa. We have had words on this very issue.”
“And I do not care one whit more about these tiresome empyrean arrangements,” he said with a dismissive wave of a long, lean hand. It struck me for the first time that he had a conductor’s hands, incredibly communicative when his face so often was not.
“I merely point out what is of more interest to me than the subject matter of the Baron’s speculations: that new ideas are often roundly rejected. I suspect that the theories of Baron von Krafft-Ebing are of more immediate use to me and my work than any roundabout made by heavenly bodies for untold millennia.”
I could not restrain a “ tsk ” of exasperation. That a man of scientific bent in the minutiae of evidence to be discerned by a microscope could ignore the
“A gentleman?”
“A man of good character, at least apparently. You cannot deny that when you served in foreign climes you did not fail to sample the…recreational aspects of the locality.”
“I was in the Army, Holmes! And I am not a saint.”
“Exactly why I value your knowledge now. I was never in the Army, and while I do not aspire to sanctity, neither do I to sin. I had long considered this an advantage in my calling, but am discovering this to be a handicap in this particular case.”
“It is unlike you to admit a failing.”
Holmes laughed into the smoke welling up from the pipe. “It is humbling indeed when the lack of what is commonly considered a moral failing proves a stumbling block to my investigation.”
He leapt up as he was wont to, without warning, and made for the bookshelf. He returned with a slim volume I had not seen before, an odd stutter in his usually confident stride as he came abreast of the mantel and glanced at something on it.
I consulted it myself, for its terrain was as unvarying as the cursed wilds of Afghanistan. I saw nothing amiss: the jackknife pinning correspondence to the wood, the Persian slipper, the clutter, the cabinet portrait of the dead adventuress, Irene Adler, the wad of saved tobacco ends at the mantel’s opposite end.
“Do you read German, Watson?”
“I can stumble through it. Medical texts, you know. ‘Richard von Krafft-Ebing.’ I have heard of this doctor, although in a scandalous context.”
“Excellent.” Holmes cast himself into the basket chair and huffed away on the pipe like a steam locomotive. “Tell me what is so scandalous.”
“He claims to have discovered a class of killers that he calls ‘lust-murderers.’”
“And he means by that?”
“That the lust to kill is also a carnal urge.”
“And how does that make these killers different from those who slaughter in the name of greed or vengeance or pure madness?”
I perused the thick pages. “I am not sure. I have heard of but not read his work.”
“And how is it that I have escaped knowledge of this most useful volume?” Holmes asked a bit querulously. His voice was a trifle high-pitched to begin with. When he felt overlooked, or worse, offended, it would rise to a strident tone.
“Holmes, these matters are discreetly discussed among men of the world, in clubs, at gentleman’s bars. Such knowledge is not deemed fit for the public at large.”
“Nor for women.”
“Certainly not! I would shoot the man who would lay such filth before my Mary.”
“Yet women, and occasionally children, seem to most often be the victims of such lust-murders, if one is to believe Krafft-Ebing.”
Holmes may have eschewed certain knowledge. He was never not astute.
“First one needs to believe his theories, and they have been roundly abused.”
“So were Galileo’s.”
“I cannot recall that you ever cared one iota about whether the sun revolves around the earth or vice versa. We have had words on this very issue.”
“And I do not care one whit more about these tiresome empyrean arrangements,” he said with a dismissive wave of a long, lean hand. It struck me for the first time that he had a conductor’s hands, incredibly communicative when his face so often was not.
“I merely point out what is of more interest to me than the subject matter of the Baron’s speculations: that new ideas are often roundly rejected. I suspect that the theories of Baron von Krafft-Ebing are of more immediate use to me and my work than any roundabout made by heavenly bodies for untold millennia.”
I could not restrain a “ tsk ” of exasperation. That a man of scientific bent in the minutiae of evidence to be discerned by a microscope could ignore the
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