The Fifth Heart Read Online Free Page B

many things in life do, with simple domestic conversations,” he began. “Those who have read Dr. Watson’s chronicles in
The Strand
are aware—from certain background information he has given—that in eighteen eighty, the good doctor was removed from the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, then on duty in India, to the Berkshires Sixty-sixth Foot. On twenty-seven July of that year, Watson was severely wounded during the Battle of Maiwand. For many weeks his life teetered in the balance—the intrusive piece of lead had been a jazail bullet, that kind of heavy slug fired by the long, heavy musket so commonly used by the rebels in Afghanistan—and it had done serious internal damage.
    “But Watson lived, despite the heat and flies and primitive regimental medical care available to him,” continued Holmes. “In October of eighteen eighty-one, he was dispatched back to England on the troopship
Orontes
.”
    “I fail to see how this proves or disproves . . .” began Henry James.
    “Patience,” said Holmes, holding up one long finger to command silence.
    “The wound from the jazail bullet was in Watson’s shoulder,” said Holmes. “At various times, in Turkish baths and once when we had to strip to swim a river while on one of my . . . adventures . . . I saw the ugly scar. But Watson had no other wounds from the wars.”
    Henry James waited. A waiter came by and Holmes ordered black Turkish coffee for the both of them.
    “But five years ago—I remember the date in eighteen eighty-eight,” said Holmes, “Watson’s spidery shoulder wound from the jazail bullet had suddenly become a bullet wound he was complaining of, even in print,
in his leg
.”
    “Could there not have been two such wounds?” asked James. “One in the poor man’s shoulder, the other in his leg? Perhaps he received the second wound in London, during the course of one of your adventures.”
    “A second Afghan
jazail
bullet?” laughed Holmes. “Fired at Watson in
London?
Without my knowledge? It would seem highly unlikely, Mr. James. And added to that improbability are the twin facts that Watson was never wounded, never shot, during any of our adventures he chronicled and . . . this I find most interesting . . . the original shoulder wound that I’d seen, a terrible spiderweb of scars and a livid entry wound still visible, simply had disappeared when Watson began talking and writing about his
leg
wound.”
    “Distinctly odd,” said James. He wondered what he should do if this Holmes-Sigerson person, almost certainly an escaped patient from some secured madhouse, should suddenly grow violent.
    “And then there is the fact of Dr. Watson’s wives,” said Holmes.
    James merely raised one eyebrow at this non sequitur.
    “He has too many of them,” said Holmes.
    “Dr. Watson is a bigamist then?”
    “No, no,” laughed Holmes. Their coffee arrived. It was far too bitter for James’s taste, but the madman seemed to enjoy it. “They simply come and go—as if they flicker in and out of existence—primarily depending upon what I take to be a fiction-author’s need to have Watson living with me at our apartments at two-twenty-one-B Baker Street or not. And their names keep changing almost at random, Mr. James. Now a Constance. Then Mary. Then no name at all. Then Mary again.”
    “Wives have a way of dying,” said James.
    “That they do, thank God,” said Holmes, nodding in agreement. “But in reality there is usually some warning of that, some illness, and—failing that—some period of mourning for the widower. Watson, bless his heart, simply moves in with me again and our adventures continue apace. Between these mythical wives, I mean.”
    Henry James cleared his throat but could think of nothing to say.
    “Then there is the odd fact of our residence itself,” bore on Holmes, taking no clue to stop based on his interlocutor’s obvious boredom. “I have lived—Watson and I have lived—at two-twenty-one-B Baker Street since