First appearance in The Baker Street Journal, March 1973, but not quite the first thing I ever did on Sherlock Holmes, that being my introduction to my self-published collection of John Kendrick Bangs’ Shylock Homes: His Posthumous Memoirs stories, which came out the same month. A NOVEL TREATISE “Of all the problems which have been submitted to my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes for solution during the years of our intimacy, there were only two which I was the means of introducing to his notice, that of Mr. Hatherley’s thumb and that of Colonel Warburton’s madness.” So wrote Doctor Watson in The Engineer’s Thumb, a case which took place in the summer (probably early September) of 1889, and which was published in The Strand Magazine of March 1892. It is surprising that this statement has been so silently passed over, for it would appear, if taken in conjunction with other evidence from the Canon, to be manifestly incorrect. There was one other case which Watson had ostensibly brought to Holmes’s attention: that of Percy Phelps and the missing naval treaty. In late July 1889,1 it will be remembered, Watson received a letter from his old school-mate Percy Phelps, who implored Watson to bring his friend Sherlock Holmes out to Woking to hear of the extraordinary occurrence that threatened to ruin a promising career in the Foreign Office. Watson did so — and yet later failed rather conspicuously to include this case as among those which he had brought to Holmes’s attention. This could be dismissed as merely one more instance of Watson’s forgetfulness. Such is possible; and yet, I think not. Rather, after scrutinizing Watson’s account, I submit that The Naval Treaty was not included in that list because, as Watson was to discover at a later date, Holmes had already been aware of it for some time. “My interest is already awakened in the case,” Holmes remarked after having heard Watson out, and he was saying rather less than he meant. His interest had indeed been awakened, prior to the Phelps letter; and thereby hangs a mystery of its own, for it immediately becomes obvious that the full story has not been told. The Naval Treaty is presented as an espionage case of sorts: a draft of a secret naval treaty vanishes one night under mysterious circumstances from the Foreign Office, and Phelps, to whom it had been entrusted by the Foreign Secretary, Lord Holdhurst, retains Holmes to find it nine weeks later, after recovering from an illness. But one feature of this case must instantly strike the Sherlockian as curious. It is, after all, rather like the incident of the dog in the night-time: Holmes — England’s most capable sleuth — had been doing nothing. Why was Holmes not called into the case by Lord Holdhurst from the beginning? Why did he not enter it until nine weeks after the document’s disappearance, and then only by acting for Phelps in the latter’s capacity as a private individual? Holmes had already handled at least one espionage case — The Second Stain — in an apparently successful and discreet manner. Why, then, did Holdhurst not refer the problem to him immediately? And why not thereafter, when weeks passed without the document coming to light? Certainly not because Holdhurst was unaware of Sherlock Holmes and his abilities: “’Your name is very familiar to me, Mr. Holmes,’ said he, smiling.” But this is only one more anomaly. Holdhurst might well have smiled, had he really said anything quite so silly. “Holdhurst,” of course, is a Watsonian invention. The Foreign Secretary in 1889 was Robert Cecil, Lord Salisbury.2 He was also none other than the Prime Minister who had retained Sherlock Holmes in The Second Stain. For some reason, then, Salisbury had not seen fit to bring Sherlock Holmes into this case. Yet it is clear that Holmes knew about it nonetheless. On the train back from Woking after meeting Phelps and hearing him out, Holmes discussed for Watson’s benefit the background of Joseph and Annie Harrison, concluding with the remark, “I’ve been making a few independent inquiries, you see.” But, as Guy Warrack once wondered, “from whom and, above all, when?”3 Taken together, these points indicate but one answer. If not from Salisbury himself, then from what other person could Sherlock Holmes have heard the details of the case, considerably in advance of the Phelps letter? Only from Mycroft Holmes, that shadowy figure of Her Majesty’s Government, who without a doubt moved, as Baring-Gould so cogently argued, within the world of the Secret Service. Elementary; Mycroft recommended at the time of the document’s disappearance that Sherlock Holmes be called in to investigate the case. But, surprisingly, he was not; nor was he to be, as weeks passed without a single new development. The case remained in the hands of Scotland Yard’s “young and inexperienced” Forbes. Mycroft was not allowed to solicit Sherlock’s aid on an official basis, and we must ask who prevented this. And that person, it seems, could only have been Lord Salisbury, the very person, one would think from Watson’s account of The Second Stain, who would be the first to turn to Sherlock Holmes. Why not, then? Holmes himself disposed of the question as to whether Salisbury might be directly implicated. Who stands to profit, he had asked rhetorically — the French ambassador, the Russian ambassador, the thief, and Lord Holdhurst. What, Lord Holdhurst? “Well, it is just conceivable that a statesman might find himself in a position where he was not sorry to have such a document accidentally destroyed. . . . It is a possibility, and we cannot afford to disregard it.” Afterwards, however, he absolved Salisbury of any complicity. Young and inexperienced though he might be, Forbes had admittedly been thorough (for a Scotland Yarder) in his investigation, and Salisbury himself, at his interview with Holmes, was obviously deeply concerned. But this does not at all preclude the possibility that Salisbury, with the passage of uneventful time, might have come to hope that nothing untoward would occur until after the situation was defused, and disclosure would no longer matter. Potential political repercussions offer an insight into the problem, for it seems that premature revelation of the document could have had disastrous political consequences at home. Watson dropped a telling remark when he wrote that the case “promised . . . at one time to be of national importance.” Why not international, if the repercussions would have been abroad, as one would expect with a secret naval treaty? No, its nature was such that the repercussions would instead have been felt primarily inside Britain, quite probably resulting in the downfall of the current Government, and with it the destruction of Salisbury’s career. Salisbury may well have thought much as Phelps did: “No allowance is made for accidents where diplomatic interests are at stake.” Lord Salisbury had once learned about political repercussions at first hand, and this presents the solution. In 1886 Sherlock Holmes had handled the case of The Second Stain. Let us recall what Watson first had to say about it — notably enough, in the first paragraph of The Naval Treaty: “It deals with interests of such importance, and implicates so many of the first families of the kingdom, that for many years it will be impossible to make it public. . . . he demonstrated the true facts of the case to Monsieur Dubuque, of the Paris police, and Fritz von Waldbaum, the well-known specialist of Dantzig, both of whom had wasted their energies upon what proved to be side-issues.” When The Second Stain finally appeared in print years later, Watson wrote of his past promise to publish “when the time was ripe.” Publication came in December 1904, following Salisbury’s death in 1903. And yet the case, as recounted by Watson, failed of the promise he had given in The Naval Treaty: No first families of the kingdom were mentioned, nor were Dubuque or Herr von Waldbaum anywhere to be found. As a result, some scholars have concluded that there were at least two cases associated with a “second stain.” This view has not been held unanimously, however. One Sherlockian has suggested that Holmes had prevented Watson from disclosing the details of the “spy-hunt” that followed the recovery of the letter.4 I concur with this view of the situation, and would argue further that the results of this spy-hunt led to the near-disastrous political events at the end of the year. As Felix Morley has pointed out, the period between Christmas Eve, 1886, and 12 January 1887 saw the unexplained resignations of Lord Randolph Churchill, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and W. H. Smith, Secretary for War, and the ousting and subsequent death of Lord Iddesleigh, the unfortunate Foreign Secretary known in The Second Stain as Trelawney Hope.5 It is not difficult to imagine Salisbury’s dismay at that time. The missing letter had been recovered, and he breathed a sigh of relief — the soul of discretion, that Holmes. But then he stood aghast, and watched — with mounting shock — as this, this detective, this Sherlock Holmes, plunged on, hunting out everyone even remotely connected. Prominent families are embarrassed, and Salisbury’s influential friends begin to drop away. The French and Prussian police bureaus are apprised of many of the facts. Finally, a cabinet crisis erupts, followed by the wave of resignations, and then Iddesleigh’s untimely death at Salisbury’s own residence . . . outcries are heard from Fleet Street . . . questions are asked in Parliament . . . unpleasant interviews with Her Majesty. . . . Can one wonder at Salisbury’s reaction? Political careers hardly prosper in the midst of such upheavals. He had survived this crisis, but no doubt became fully determined to avoid such an experience again, if at all possible. “Diligence is all very well,” one can picture him saying to Mycroft Holmes, who must himself have been taken somewhat aback, “but this is a bit too much!” And then, in 1889, Lord Salisbury found himself confronted once more with such a case; and one can almost sympathize with his decision to let fate take its course, rather than challenge fate by placing the case in what he must have felt were the clumsy hands of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the regrettably less-than-private inquiry agent. Fortunately, Sherlock solved the case satisfactorily, and recovered the secret naval treaty. And he also seems to have learned his lesson — for he let Joseph Harrison escape — “why, all the better for the Government.” _______________________________ 1 There is little disagreement among the chronologists as to this date. All concur on the time of month, and the majority choose 1889 over 1888. See Andrew Jay Peck, “The Date Being—?” Whether 1888 or 1889, the case occurred prior to The Engineer’s Thumb, and thus the problem remains. 2 At one point, the text has Holmes refer to Holdhurst as “the Cabinet Minister and future premier of England.” This presents a bit of a problem, as Salisbury was Prime Minister at the time, as well as Foreign Secretary. The account of the case, however, was originally published in two installments, and the first one ends with that statement. While one cannot be certain, the addition of the word “future” may have been the act of the Agent, who was not above altering Watson’s text, and who may have wished to add to the cliffhanger effect of the concluding words of the first installment. 3 “Passed to You, Admiralty Intelligence,” Sherlock Holmes Journal, Spring 1959. 4 Anatole Chujoy, “The Only Second Stain,” Baker Street Journal (NS), July 1954. 5 Felix Morley, “The Significance of The Second Stain,” Profile by Gaslight, (ed. by Edgar W. Smith, Simon & Schuster, 1944), pp. 253-254.

First appearance in The Baker Street Journal, March 1973, but not quite the first thing I ever did on Sherlock Holmes, that being my introduction to my self-published collection of John Kendrick Bangs’ Shylock Homes: His Posthumous Memoirs stories, which came out the same month.

A NOVEL TREATISE

“Of all the problems which have been submitted to my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes for solution during the years of our intimacy, there were only two which I was the means of introducing to his notice, that of Mr. Hatherley’s thumb and that of Colonel Warburton’s madness.”So wrote Doctor Watson in The Engineer’s Thumb, a case which took place in the summer (probably early September) of 1889, and which was published in The Strand Magazine of March 1892.

It is surprising that this statement has been so silently passed over, for it would appear, if taken in conjunction with other evidence from the Canon, to be manifestly incorrect. There was one other case which Watson had ostensibly brought to Holmes’s attention: that of Percy Phelps and the missing naval treaty. In late July 1889,1 it will be remembered, Watson received a letter from his old school-mate Percy Phelps, who implored Watson to bring his friend Sherlock Holmes out to Woking to hear of the extraordinary occurrence that threatened to ruin a promising career in the Foreign Office. Watson did so — and yet later failed rather conspicuously to include this case as among those which he had brought to Holmes’s attention.

This could be dismissed as merely one more instance of Watson’s forgetfulness. Such is possible; and yet, I think not. Rather, after scrutinizing Watson’s account, I submit that The Naval Treaty was not included in that list because, as Watson was to discover at a later date, Holmes had already been aware of it for some time. “My interest is already awakened in the case,” Holmes remarked after having heard Watson out, and he was saying rather less than he meant. His interest had indeed been awakened, prior to the Phelps letter; and thereby hangs a mystery of its own, for it immediately becomes obvious that the full story has not been told.

The Naval Treaty is presented as an espionage case of sorts: a draft of a secret naval treaty vanishes one night under mysterious circumstances from the Foreign Office, and Phelps, to whom it had been entrusted by the Foreign Secretary, Lord Holdhurst, retains Holmes to find it nine weeks later, after recovering from an illness. But one feature of this case must instantly strike the Sherlockian as curious. It is, after all, rather like the incident of the dog in the night-time: Holmes — England’s most capable sleuth — had been doing nothing.

Why was Holmes not called into the case by Lord Holdhurst from the beginning? Why did he not enter it until nine weeks after the document’s disappearance, and then only by acting for Phelps in the latter’s capacity as a private individual? Holmes had already handled at least one espionage case — The Second Stain — in an apparently successful and discreet manner. Why, then, did Holdhurst not refer the problem to him immediately? And why not thereafter, when weeks passed without the document coming to light? Certainly not because Holdhurst was unaware of Sherlock Holmes and his abilities: “’Your name is very familiar to me, Mr. Holmes,’ said he, smiling.”

But this is only one more anomaly. Holdhurst might well have smiled, had he really said anything quite so silly. “Holdhurst,” of course, is a Watsonian invention. The Foreign Secretary in 1889 was Robert Cecil, Lord Salisbury.2 He was also none other than the Prime Minister who had retained Sherlock Holmes in The Second Stain.

For some reason, then, Salisbury had not seen fit to bring Sherlock Holmes into this case. Yet it is clear that Holmes knew about it nonetheless. On the train back from Woking after meeting Phelps and hearing him out, Holmes discussed for Watson’s benefit the background of Joseph and Annie Harrison, concluding with the remark, “I’ve been making a few independent inquiries, you see.” But, as Guy Warrack once wondered, “from whom and, above all, when?”3

Taken together, these points indicate but one answer. If not from Salisbury himself, then from what other person could Sherlock Holmes have heard the details of the case, considerably in advance of the Phelps letter? Only from Mycroft Holmes, that shadowy figure of Her Majesty’s Government, who without a doubt moved, as Baring-Gould so cogently argued, within the world of the Secret Service.

Elementary; Mycroft recommended at the time of the document’s disappearance that Sherlock Holmes be called in to investigate the case. But, surprisingly, he was not; nor was he to be, as weeks passed without a single new development. The case remained in the hands of Scotland Yard’s “young and inexperienced” Forbes. Mycroft was not allowed to solicit Sherlock’s aid on an official basis, and we must ask who prevented this. And that person, it seems, could only have been Lord Salisbury, the very person, one would think from Watson’s account of The Second Stain, who would be the first to turn to Sherlock Holmes.

Why not, then? Holmes himself disposed of the question as to whether Salisbury might be directly implicated. Who stands to profit, he had asked rhetorically — the French ambassador, the Russian ambassador, the thief, and Lord Holdhurst. What, Lord Holdhurst? “Well, it is just conceivable that a statesman might find himself in a position where he was not sorry to have such a document accidentally destroyed. . . . It is a possibility, and we cannot afford to disregard it.” Afterwards, however, he absolved Salisbury of any complicity. Young and inexperienced though he might be, Forbes had admittedly been thorough (for a Scotland Yarder) in his investigation, and Salisbury himself, at his interview with Holmes, was obviously deeply concerned.

But this does not at all preclude the possibility that Salisbury, with the passage of uneventful time, might have come to hope that nothing untoward would occur until after the situation was defused, and disclosure would no longer matter. Potential political repercussions offer an insight into the problem, for it seems that premature revelation of the document could have had disastrous political consequences at home. Watson dropped a telling remark when he wrote that the case “promised . . . at one time to be of national importance.” Why not international, if the repercussions would have been abroad, as one would expect with a secret naval treaty? No, its nature was such that the repercussions would instead have been felt primarily inside Britain, quite probably resulting in the downfall of the current Government, and with it the destruction of Salisbury’s career. Salisbury may well have thought much as Phelps did: “No allowance is made for accidents where diplomatic interests are at stake.”

Lord Salisbury had once learned about political repercussions at first hand, and this presents the solution. In 1886 Sherlock Holmes had handled the case of The Second Stain. Let us recall what Watson first had to say about it — notably enough, in the first paragraph of The Naval Treaty: “It deals with interests of such importance, and implicates so many of the first families of the kingdom, that for many years it will be impossible to make it public. . . . he demonstrated the true facts of the case to Monsieur Dubuque, of the Paris police, and Fritz von Waldbaum, the well-known specialist of Dantzig, both of whom had wasted their energies upon what proved to be side-issues.”

When The Second Stain finally appeared in print years later, Watson wrote of his past promise to publish “when the time was ripe.” Publication came in December 1904, following Salisbury’s death in 1903. And yet the case, as recounted by Watson, failed of the promise he had given in The Naval Treaty: No first families of the kingdom were mentioned, nor were Dubuque or Herr von Waldbaum anywhere to be found. As a result, some scholars have concluded that there were at least two cases associated with a “second stain.”

This view has not been held unanimously, however. One Sherlockian has suggested that Holmes had prevented Watson from disclosing the details of the “spy-hunt” that followed the recovery of the letter.4 I concur with this view of the situation, and would argue further that the results of this spy-hunt led to the near-disastrous political events at the end of the year. As Felix Morley has pointed out, the period between Christmas Eve, 1886, and 12 January 1887 saw the unexplained resignations of Lord Randolph Churchill, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and W. H. Smith, Secretary for War, and the ousting and subsequent death of Lord Iddesleigh, the unfortunate Foreign Secretary known in The Second Stain as Trelawney Hope.5

It is not difficult to imagine Salisbury’s dismay at that time. The missing letter had been recovered, and he breathed a sigh of relief — the soul of discretion, that Holmes. But then he stood aghast, and watched — with mounting shock — as this, this detective, this Sherlock Holmes, plunged on, hunting out everyone even remotely connected. Prominent families are embarrassed, and Salisbury’s influential friends begin to drop away. The French and Prussian police bureaus are apprised of many of the facts. Finally, a cabinet crisis erupts, followed by the wave of resignations, and then Iddesleigh’s untimely death at Salisbury’s own residence . . . outcries are heard from Fleet Street . . . questions are asked in Parliament . . . unpleasant interviews with Her Majesty. . . .

Can one wonder at Salisbury’s reaction? Political careers hardly prosper in the midst of such upheavals. He had survived this crisis, but no doubt became fully determined to avoid such an experience again, if at all possible. “Diligence is all very well,” one can picture him saying to Mycroft Holmes, who must himself have been taken somewhat aback, “but this is a bit too much!” And then, in 1889, Lord Salisbury found himself confronted once more with such a case; and one can almost sympathize with his decision to let fate take its course, rather than challenge fate by placing the case in what he must have felt were the clumsy hands of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the regrettably less-than-private inquiry agent.

Fortunately, Sherlock solved the case satisfactorily, and recovered the secret naval treaty. And he also seems to have learned his lesson — for he let Joseph Harrison escape — “why, all the better for the Government.”

_______________________________

1 There is little disagreement among the chronologists as to this date. All concur on the time of month, and the majority choose 1889 over 1888. See Andrew Jay Peck, “The Date Being—?” Whether 1888 or 1889, the case occurred prior to The Engineer’s Thumb, and thus the problem remains.

2 At one point, the text has Holmes refer to Holdhurst as “the Cabinet Minister and future premier of England.” This presents a bit of a problem, as Salisbury was Prime Minister at the time, as well as Foreign Secretary. The account of the case, however, was originally published in two installments, and the first one ends with that statement. While one cannot be certain, the addition of the word “future” may have been the act of the Agent, who was not above altering Watson’s text, and who may have wished to add to the cliffhanger effect of the concluding words of the first installment.

3 “Passed to You, Admiralty Intelligence,” Sherlock Holmes Journal, Spring 1959.

4 Anatole Chujoy, “The Only Second Stain,” Baker Street Journal (NS), July 1954.

5 Felix Morley, “The Significance of The Second Stain,” Profile by Gaslight, (ed. by Edgar W. Smith, Simon & Schuster, 1944), pp. 253-254.