Sherlock Holmes and the Golden Bird

As the butler disappeared, Holmes looked at me with that twisted half-smile that I knew sprang from self- reproach.

'Oh, what a fool am I!' he said.

Holmes was never quite satisfied. When a solution was in his grasp, and from experience I knew that it was, he most frequently regretted not having arrived at it sooner. The life of a perfectionist is not an easy one.

'I had but to consider the career of Basil Selkirk,' he continued. 'He was infatuated with communications. His business success was based on information accurately and rapidly transmitted. How reasonable that he would fancy four paintings by Samuel Morse.'

'I never heard of him.'

'As an artist, I daresay you haven't. Morse was an art student in England and, later, Professor of Art at the University of the City of New York. He was an American, you see. After devoting the early part of his life to painting, he realized that fame would never be his in the world of art so he applied his energies to other things. In 1844, the first message was sent by wireless telegraphy, which he invented.'

'Most interesting,' I commented, 'but the association with our missing diamond eludes me.'

'Because I have not touched on the relevant matter. The former artist also invented a telegraphic code based on dots and dashes, which bears his name. An interesting feature of the Morse code is that eleven letters of the alphabet have opposites. As an instance, the distress signal given at sea.'

'S.O.S.' was my automatic response. 'In Morse, the letter S consists of three dots or short sounds. The letter O is its opposite, being three dashes or longer sounds. Let me make this perfectly clear, Watson. What are the opening notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony?'

'Dot . . . dot . . . dot . . . daaaaah,' I hummed quickly. I had not attended all those concerts at Albert Hall and elsewhere with my friend for nothing.

'You have just signaled the letter V, old fellow. Three dots followed by a dash. The opposite of V is B, by the way.'

'Wait,' I said, excitedly. 'The Selkirk cipher uses opposites based on the Morse code.'

'Exactly,' replied Holmes, seating himself at the desk and extracting the financier's letter from his pocket. I fiddled in my coat for a pencil and found one, handing it to him.

'Now,' continued the detective, 'the first line reads: Q-M-K-T-X-Y-N-C-T.'

'With the C off line.'

'The very thing that might have alerted me. In Morse, the letters C, H, J, and Z have no opposites. Therefore, in this first line, I assume C is legitimate as well as the H in the second line. Now the opposite of Q is F. M becomes I, K gives us R, and T indicates E. X is P, Y is L, N represents A, the C is natural with T again indicating E. Watson, the first word is fireplace.'

As my eyes swiveled to the fieldstone fireplace in the very room we occupied, Holmes worked out the next two lines in jig time and then regarded me triumphantly.

'Fireplace—Fifth—Rosette.'

Sure enough, the mantle was adorned by a row of rosettes and I crossed to it eagerly. Counting from the left, I fiddled with the fifth rosette, but to no avail.

'Try counting from the right,' suggested Holmes.

I did, of course, and in but a moment experienced one of the greatest thrills in my long association with the master sleuth. The wooden ornament turned a full forty-five degrees. There was a click and a section of the wood paneling over the mantle swung noiselessly open. I reached inside the aperture and removed a small casket. It was a work of art in its own right, but I curbed my natural inclination and crossed to the desk and placed it before Holmes.

'After all, you found it,' I stammered. Holmes waved this thought aside. 'After you, ol' chap.'

There were simple release catches on both sides of the casket, which moved under my thumbs, and I was able to raise the lid. The interior was lined with black satin and on it lay the oval-shaped gem, cut by a master. The incredibly hard stone seemed to drink in the light of the room and return it in magnified form. It was dazzling to the eyes, emitting a pure, yet dancing, whiteness like the fires of Arcturus burning in the blackness of unlimited space. This miracle of crystallized carbon, glowing with a life of its own, secreted within its flawless form, needed no expertise to pronounce it as genuine—for what cunning artisan could ever recreate such a miracle of nature. It rendered me speechless but not for long.

'Holmes, 'tis said that men, Selkirk probably among them, are absolutely dotty over such gems. I'm dashed if I blame them. It is something, is it not?'

'Cold to the touch with a fire that will not burn but a dazzling brilliance that can sear the soul.'

I did not know if Holmes was merely musing or quoting.

'Yes, Watson,' he continued, 'it is, indeed, something.'

With a visible effort, Holmes broke the mood of the moment and his long, flexible fingers extracted the diamond from the casket. He handed it to me.

'Ol' chap, your pocket handkerchief will protect the beauty.'

As I carefully swathed the gem in linen and placed it in my breast pocket, my friend scooped up the casket, which he replaced in the hiding place over the mantle. Closing the small hidden panel, he regarded me for a long moment, his eyes dreamy with thought.

'You know, I have espoused a pragmatic philosophy throughout our long association. But at this moment, it is hard for me to conceive that such a majestic and quite unique creation of nature is not guided by an inevitable destiny. Can it not be that this ageless and invulnerable thing, which has seen empires fall and generations vanish, is simply passing from hand to hand down a preordained path to its fate.'

I had certainly never heard Holmes speak in such a manner. As we departed from the castle of Basil Selkirk and returned to Baker Street, ours was a silent journey with my friend and myself buried in our thoughts.

21

The Resolution

227

It was late in the afternoon that our expected visitor from Berlin arrived. On our return from St. Aubrey, Holmes did not divest himself of his suit clothes as was his habit, but instead had extracted the small salon piece, which he fancied as a weapon, from a drawer of the desk. Alerted by this precautionary move, I had secured my revolver as well. Questions pounded at my brain, but I quieted their siren call and applied myself to the answers that had already come my way during the events that had crossed the sky of our lives like scud clouds in a high wind. The silence in our chambers was unusual and complete. Finally, with my thoughts collected, I regarded Holmes. His tall and whipcord frame stood by a window gazing with unseeing eyes at the passing scene.

'I say, Holmes, am I interrupting a chain of thought?'

'Not really,' he said, without turning. 'I was likening the gem in your pocket to a creation of that Oscar Wilde fellow. If you recall, Dorian Gray remained ever young, unsullied by the passage of time. In similar fashion the Pigott Diamond has burned with an everlasting flame for years on end.'

'Possibly fueled by its effect on so many lives,' I said, almost without thought, and was surprised when Holmes turned toward me with a look of interest. 'I was just thinking that our pursuit of the statue and the gem has been a tortuous one, with a variety of incidents, but it has resolved itself to where the unknown elements are few.'

'My dear Watson, ofttimes you amaze me. Please don't let your thoughts dangle in thin air, but elucidate.'

If there was a twinkle in his eye, I chose to ignore it.

'Once you divined that the Golden Bird was nesting on a crystal egg, the motives became clear. As a dedicated collector, Basil Selkirk was schooled in the history of diamonds and, given the clue of the year of Ali Pasha's death, figured out that the Pigott Diamond still existed. Naturally, he wanted it and was quite willing to give