Controversy equalizes fools and wise men - and the fools know it.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
It has been quite a 'Chaos in a Crockpot' here at Baker Street. My usually logical, 'low and slow' and contemplative friend, Sherlock Holmes, has been in what our mutual friend, Dr. Freud would term a manic state. I'm old fashioned and just call it what it is. Sherlock Holmes is off his nut. The deep end is there and he has gone off it. His marbles are clattering across our oaken floor and he can't find them.
It all started when he had received a summons from, her Majesty the Queen Victoria. Holmes had deduced, incorrectly, that it was a summons to elevate his castely status to 'Lord' and make him a Member of the House of Lords and our Parliament. Unfortunately, it was a summons to witness the knighting of Holmes arch enemy and master criminal, one Professor Moriarty. It turns out that the aforementioned Moriarty is about to rise to the very title that Holmes has long coveted.
As I write this, Holmes has been at the London Hall of Records on a quest that has consumed the last three days of his existence and, when the reference room and archives are finally closed, he comes here to our flat to brood and is given to fits of throwing inanimate objects. I have been given to fits of cleaning up after him in what will some day, undoubtedly, be referred to as co-dependent and enabling behavior.
Last evening, I could finally stand it no longer and confronted him in my best imitation of a psychological intervention. An intervention of one. Sadly, I am Sherlock's only friend and no relatives, save his brother Mycroft, to whom he won't speak, would be a part of any confrontational attempt to end his madness. I have my doubts that even Mycroft exists. So it is up to me. Mano a Mano...
"Holmes..." I said finally after a good hour of histrionics and after he had thrown a very expensive violin bow at the wall, where it remained firmly lodged, "I understand your anger at Moriarty for beating you to Lordship but this pedantic display is unseemly, even for you." I suppose that last was a bit pedantic as well.
Holmes ignored my jab for the longest time but, eventually, he rose to the bait. "It is particularly galling, Watson, on several accounts. Not the least of which is that I have incorrectly deduced his first name after all of these years and there it is on the Summons, staring at me and I should have suspected all along."
I raised an eyebrow as if I believed that his was the real reason for his anger. I played along. "You mean it isn't 'James'?"
He harumphed. "I have long eliminated that as a possibility as that is, actually, his brother's given name."
"What does it matter, Holmes? I rather deduce that you are angry that he is about to attain a title you covet dearly."
"Nonsense, Watson. I should have deduced that his real name would be something headstrong and pretentious. Something as ambitious as he pretends not to be. 'Professor, my arse!"
"And what, pray tell, is that name, Holmes?" I knew I shouldn't ask.
He paused and puffed a perfect ring from his Meerschaum, filling the air with bergemot and cherry, the blend that signals his anger to those who know his habits. "His name, if you must know, is 'Willard'"
"Willard?" I tried to suppress laughter.
"Yes; Willard. I suppose it is a bit more ironic than the name I have called him all these years in my private thoughts." Holmes never begged a question as much as demanded it... with an ellipse...
My own ellipse... "And that is..."
"I call him 'Glove'."
"Glove?"
"Yes.'Glove'..."
"And that is because..."
He arched a brow and leaned over as if others were listening, "Because he is 'hand in glove' in a league with Satan. Satan being the 'Hand' of the metaphor."
"I gathered that, Holmes." I saw an opportunity to shift to his manic obsession. "So what does that have to do with your huffery and puffery and spending all hours at the London Hall of Records.?"
He sighed and considered whether or not to share this, even with me, his closest friend. He relit his pipe and began. "I am, as you well know, not without considerable connection to the Crown. It is through those connections that I ascertained the true reasons for my being passed over for Lordship..." His puffs hung like an ellipse that wanted me to ask. I did.
"And...?" I hung my own ellipse by inflecting up. A habit that irritates him. I did it again. "And...?"
He snorted smoke from both nostrils. "It seems that someone has floated a false notion that I am not a British subject. That I am a foreigner. A foreigner of low birth."
I suppressed a laugh. Who was more British than Sherlock Holmes? "You? A foreigner?"
"Evidently, I was born practically at the foot of Kilimanjaro near Lake Victoria in a land we now call Kenya." He paused as if I needed time to let that sink in. "It is worse than that. Evidently, my father was a colonial mercenary and Hun and my mother a concubine of the British East Indies Company. They have also poisoned Her Majesty with word that I am a drug user and an addict of Tobacco."
I wasn't about to correct the obvious and inconsequential truths but the news of his parentage was most shocking, if true. I had to ask. "So is it true? Surely it wouldn't take three days to prove your birth."
"You would think so. Oh, it was easy enough to find a birth certificate, birth announcements and the like, but it seems just as easy to claim they were forgeries."
But then anyone can question anyone's birth. How does one counter that?"
"Elementary, Watson. The best defense is good offense and, as Sun Tzu notes in his timeless 'Art Of War' that 'Invincibility lies in the defence; the possibility of victory in the attack' If they deny me a defence then iI must mount an attack. And so my time has been spent in trying to counter the claims that arose to elevate this, now so-called', Willard to his impending Lordship in our Empire."
"And those claims are?"
"He claims to have been the governor of a British Territory where he didn't reside, he claims to have rescued the first Olympiad of the free world in 1896 and he further contends that he captained a large sea vessel ironically monikered, 'The Bain'."
"Ironically?"
"Yes, the sainted Oxford English Dictionary tells us it means, 'cause of great annoyance'. It derives from the word for 'poison'."
That is spelled, B-A-N-E. It is more a 'pun' that an 'irony'."
"Touche, but as my great Nephew Oliver Wendell will someday say, 'A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.'
I have long since ceased commenting on the doings and sayings of his imaginary relatives. "But Holmes; what does it matter if he was or wasn't the commodore of an ill named vessel, ironic or not?"
"Because when said vessel runs amuck in the bloody Thames and destroys the homes and employment of our subjects, it matters. It matters especially that he now claims he was in Greece at the time saving our dear Olympiad."
"So 'governorship', Olympiad, ships amuck and all should be quite simple to prove, no?"
Holmes leaned over again and whispered in the fashion of the truly paranoid. "You would think so, Watson, but there is just one problem..."
"Only one, Holmes...?"
"One is enough. All records of his tenure at anything has been erased. Even his professorship is in question. it seems that the only records that exist claim that his claims are true, but there is no paper trail. No proof of his existence nor is there anyway in which we can even assume that he is a true British Subject."
"Truly?"
"Truly. His father could not be a Lord for two reasons and, perhaps, that should apply to the junior, but it doesn't necessarily. His father was a refugee from Mexico and a noted member of a cult that still practices polygamy to this day. Now surely that shouldn't matter but he and his evil minions are calling me the 'foreigner'. The Gloved One has distanced himself from the cult but it appears that he was once a high priest and so powerful that he escaped conscription into Her Majesty's Service."
"So, Holmes..." I hoped to interrupt his rising tone and ire. "What the blazes can one do?"
"Deduction, Watson, deduction and reason. Logic, if you will. If this Willard Moriarty truly exists then, obviously he must have paid taxes. Everything we need to know about The Gloved One will be there. Am I right? The snag here is that those records are sealed, but I intend to challenge Mr. Willard Moriarty to produce his taxes or desist from his ascendancy to the House Of Lords. It's plain logic, a simple challenge to reveal his taxes will reveal all. Simple as that..."
"Yes, Holmes. Simple as that..."
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