Sporting' Aspects
Shady Mr. Holmes
By J. P. W. MALLALIEU jOHN H. WATSON, M.D., was clearly a bad lot. His father, I suspect, was a heavy drinker, I know that his elder brother died of drink, and there is -evidence that Dr. Watson shared the family failing. Although his pension of I Is. 6d. a day was barely enough for necessities he was to be found lounging about in expensive bars. Indeed, it was while he was " standing at the Criterion Bar "—no doubt waiting for someone to offer him a drink—that he met Startiford, and thrdUgh Stamford Sherlock Holmes, and thus landed himself in the Study in Scarlet. At the beginning of The Sign of Four we find him throwing his weight about in Baker Street on courage derived from the bottle of Beaune he had swallOwecl with his -lunch. . , . .
True, in later years, when gossip about his habits became widespread, he" tried to create the imprttsion that he was or had been a hearty, athletic type who played Rugger for Black- heath, but I doubt that he ever 'played the game. When Cyril Overton, the Cambridge Rugger Captain and England's first reserve, arrived in Baker Street looking for a Missing Three- Quarter, Watson had never even heard of him. Worse, he makes Overton say things about Rugger -which no one who knew or played -the game could ever say. " Stevenson is fast enough," Watson reports Overton to have said when discussing possible substitutes for the missing winger, Staunton, " but he couldn't drop from the twenty-five line, and a three-quarter who can't either punt or drop isn't worth a place for pace alone."- Twaddle! A wing three-quarter virtually never gets a chance to drop a goal, and as for dropping out -from the twenty-five,If Stevenson can't do it, let someone-else try. No. I am satisfied that when Big Bob Ferguson, " the finest three-quarter Richmond ever had," came to consult Holmes about Vampires in Sussex, he was not thinking of Watson as a player when he said to him, " You don't look quite the man mit did when I threw you over the ropes into the crowd at the Old Deer. Park." What actually happened on that famous afternoon was that Watson, befuddled as usual with Beaune, strayed from the crowd on to the field, where he interfered with the play and had to be thrown out by Ferguson. Yes, Watson was a bad lot. I've known that for a long time. But now I am beginning to have serious suspicions even about Holmes. I have always thought that his- performance in The Five Orange 'Pips was lamentable—he allowed an innocent and defenceless man to walk out of 221b to certain death when he could easily have saved him by offering him the sofa for the night—assuMing that the sofa was temporarily unoccupied by Lestrade. Further, his activities in the matter of Silver Blaze were, to say the least of it, questionable. You will remember that, instead of *turning the missing favourite at once to its owner, he allowed it to remain concealed until the very day of the Wessex Plate, no doubt so that he could have plenty of time to place his own bets. Worse, in the race itself, Desborough, the second favourite, piled up, a big lead and then fell right away for no apparent reason to give Silver Blaze—and Holmes—a comfortable -win. The fact that Silas Brown, the trainer of Desborough, had had a private and painful interview with Holmes some days before the race speaks for itself. Now a - still more sinister light has been shed on Holmes' sporting. activities by Mr. Red Smith, who was recently invited by the New York Herald Tribune to make some investigations. Mr., Smith runs through the familiar history of Silver Blaze and .emphasises its more, sinister aspects. He also makes what to me is an -entirely new point. When the Wessex Plate had been run, and Colonel Ross, the owner of Silver Blaze, was begging Holmes to tell. him , what had been happening to the . horse in the past few days, Holmes replied: " As I stand to win a little on this next race I shall defer a lengthy explanation." Nothing remarkable` about that ? Just look at the phrasing! Holmes does not say, " I've got a bet on the next race " or ' I am risking some money on the next race." Instead he says "As I stand to win a little on this pext race." There was no risk. Holmes knew. It was not for nothing that he spent so much time in Baker Street.. experimenting with dope and - syringes.
Mr. Wilson also sheds new light on Holmes' connection with " Wilson, the notorious canary-trainer." How, asks Mr. Red Smith, could a canary-trainer become notorious if he stayed with canaries ? Wilson clearly' branched out, just as Hirsch Jacobs, who began by training pigeons, branched out, until ho became America's ,leading horse-trainer. Wilson became notorious because he allowed Holmes to dope the horses with which, at a quite early stage, he had replaced his canaries. Mr. Smith's most devastating indictment of Holmes. the sportsman, however, is over his handling of the Case of the Missing Three-Quarter, to which I referred earlier. Holmes first extracted an admission from the Cambridge captain that Cambridge had no chance of winning without Godfrey Staunton. That ,done, he carefully refrained from finding Staunton until,, the match was over. Twice, while dawdling through the investigation, he made sly remarks to Watson, e.g. " Wm must admit that it is curious and suggestive that this incident should occur on the eve of this important match and should involve the only man whose presence seems essential to the success of the side "; and, " Amateur sport is free from betting, but a good deal of outside betting goes on among the public, and it is possible that it might be worth someone's while to get at a player, as the ruffians of the turf might get at a race-horse."
Worth someone's while, eh ? comments Mr. Red Smith.
After these suggestive reflections, Holmes takes himself off to Cambridge, and realises at once that Dr. Leslie Armstrong holds the key to the mystery. But instead of tracking the doctor efficiently he follows him on a bicycle, knowing well enough that in the flat countryside of Cambridgeshire the doctor will spot him. Why did he not at once adopt the elementary dodge of squirting the doctor's brougham with aniseed and following the trail with a dog ? Because, say Mr. Smith, Holmes was too busy at the Post Office sending and receiving telegrams.
It is only when the result of the match is known and Oxford have won—just how much did Holmes " stand to win " on that one ?—that Holmes finally puts his finger on the Missing Three-Quarter. Having found him,' sobbing his heart out over the dead body of his beautiful young wife, did Holmes offer Staunton any consolation or any suggestions about how the news of the marriage. could be kept from Lord Mount James ? He did not. He was in a hurry to collect his winnings. " Come Watson," he said, and passed from that house of grief, telegrams rustling in his pockets.
Mr. Smith's revelations put many things about Holmes in a new light. Do you remember in-The Sign of Four how Holmes arrives at the closely guarded Pondicherry Lodge and is refused admittance by McMurdo, not the boss who put Fear into the Valley, but the ex-professional -boxer ? But the moment Holmes reminds him that he was the amateur who fought three rounds with him on McMurdo's benefit-night the door is swung open welcomingly. A likely story ! Any professional boxer who on his benefit-night of all nights is made a fool of by a ruddy amateur waits only for the moment when he can kick that amateur's seat. He certainly does not disobey orders to do him a favour. I now suspect that Holmes and McMurdo had gone into partnership to frame .boxing-matches for their joint advantage. I further suspect that the late Professor Moriarty, so far from being the arch-criminal depicted by Holmes, was in fact employed by various sporting bodies to clean up the turf, the ring and other sources of Holmes' income, and that this was the reason why the poor man was flung to -his death at the falls of Reichenbach. •
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