Work Text:
Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of Dr Juan Hermoso Guanzon y de San Rafael Panganiban, late of Las Islas Filipinas
In the year 1870, after I had earned my bachiller en artes at the Ateneo Municipal, I enrolled in Santo Tomas to continue my pursuit of a medical degree. There, disgusted and increasingly disillusioned by the unequal treatment of our professors between us natives and the insulares, I found myself wondering whether it was still worth it to withstand the abuse, or if it would be more prudent to simply return defeated to the countryside with my head bowed in shame.
It was providential, then, that I received a letter from my cousin Román as I was pondering on my fate in my dormitory. Román was studying painting under the masters in Madrid, and he had written to entice me to join him abroad, hearing of my domestic academic woes. Better still, he had already asked permission from my parents on my behalf, enclosing within the envelope their wholehearted agreement, as well as enough money for passage on a steamer.
On arriving in Europe, Román introduced me to his libertine circle, fellow compatriots who, like me, were sent abroad by their families to complete their educations under a more permissive atmosphere. I was quickly swept up in their ideas of equality and reforms, and as I earned my licentiate and my doctorate, so, too, did I sharpen my quill in exposing the truth of what was happening under colonial rule.
When it was finally time for me to open up a practice, I decided to leave the now–familiar confines of Mother Spain. After a night of goodbyes and far too much toasting with friends, I set out to find my fortunes in a very different set of isles, that of the Anglo–Saxons.
I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air — or as free as an income of fifty pesos a month will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances I naturally gravitated to London, where men of all classes and races are irresistibly drawn. There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leading a comfortless existence consisting solely of attending lecture halls and transcribing Morga’s Sucesos into Tagalog, and spending such money as I had, considerably more freely than I ought. Hearing of the bad harvest in our parcel of land that threatened my finances even further, I made up my mind to leave the hotel, and to take up my quarters in some less pretentious and less expensive domicile.
That very same day, as I was breaking my fast in a coffee shop at St James’s, I felt a sharp tapping on my shoulder. Turning round, I found myself face–to–face with Santander, who had been in the year below mine at Ateneo. The sight of a friendly face in the great wilderness of London is a pleasant thing indeed to a lonely man. In old days, Santander had rarely run around in the same circles as I, aside from some chance encounters in Madrid, but now I hailed him with enthusiasm, and he, in his turn, appeared to be delighted to see me. In the exuberance of my joy, I asked him to lunch with me, summoning the waiter to bring us more victuals.
“Whatever have you been doing with yourself, Guanzon?” he asked in undisguised wonder, as we ate. “You are as thin as a lath and as brown as a nut.”
“As the English climate has paled out your own mestizo complexion, I fear,” I replied, grinning ear–to–ear with gladness on having someone to speak my native tongue with once more, and I gave him a short sketch of my adventures, and had hardly concluded it by the time we finished up our meagre feast.
“And what are you up to now?” he asked, after he had listened to my tale.
“Looking for lodgings,” I answered. “Trying to solve the problem as to whether it is possible to get comfortable rooms at a reasonable price.”
“That’s strange,” remarked my companion; “you are the second man today that has used that expression to me. Well, in English, of course.”
“And who was the first?” I asked.
“A fellow who is working at the chemical laboratory up at the hospital. I heard him complaining to himself this morning that he could not get someone to go halves with him in some nice rooms which he had found, and which were too much for his purse.”
“¿De verdad?” I cried; “if he really wants someone to share the rooms and the expense, I will gladly take him up on it. I should prefer having a partner to being alone.”
“You don’t know Sherlock Holmes yet,” Santander said, peering at me curiously through his glasses; “perhaps you would not care for him as a constant companion.”
“Why?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “What is there against him?”
“Oh, I didn’t say there was anything against him,” Santander shrugged. “He is a little queer in his ideas — an enthusiast in some branches of science. As far as I know, he is a decent fellow enough.”
“Ah, a medical student, then?” I asked, knowing the rather peculiar inclinations those in my profession engaged in at times.
“Not quite. I have no idea what he is in university for, only that he is well up in anatomy, and he is a first–class chemist,” Santander said, attacking the olives with much gusto. “As far as I know, he has never taken out any systematic medical classes. His studies are every which way, but he has amassed a lot of out–of–the–way knowledge which would astonish his professors.”
“Did you never try asking him?” I asked, as I finished up what was left of my coffee.
“No; he is not a man that it is easy to draw out, though he can be communicative enough when the fancy seizes him,” said Santander, with a curious twinkle in his eyes as he looked askance at me.
“I should like to meet him still,” I said. “If I am to lodge with anyone, I should prefer a man of studious and quiet habits. How could I meet this friend of yours?”
“He is sure to be at the laboratory,” he replied. “He either avoids the place for weeks, or else he works there from morning till night. If you like, we can drive there after lunch.”
“Certainly,” I answered, as I paid for our meal, hoping that this would be my last grand purchase in a long while.
As we made our way in a hansom to St Bart’s, Santander begun to paint me a clearer picture of the man who was to be my fellow–lodger.
“Do not blame me if you and he don’t get along,” Santander said. “I don’t know much about Holmes except what I have gleamed from our occasional laboratory encounters. You were the one who proposed this meeting, so do not hold me responsible.”
“If we don’t get along, it would be easy enough for me to simply find someone else to lodge with,” I said, shifting in my seat so I could fix my companion a hard stare. “And I’m beginning to suspect there is something amiss with the man that you keep washing your hands off the matter.”
“Oh, do not get me wrong,” Santander said, waving his hands about with a laugh. “Holmes is just a little too scientific for my taste — to a point that one may call him cold–blooded. I can imagine his giving a friend a little pinch of the latest vegetable alkaloid, not out of malevolence, you understand, but simply out of a spirit of inquiry in order to have an accurate idea of the effects. To do him justice, I think that he would take it himself with the same readiness. He appears to have a passion for definite and exact knowledge.”
“But is that not commendable instead?” I asked.
“Yes,” Santander nodded sagely. “But in a man like Holmes, it may be pushed to excess. When it comes to beating the subjects in the dissecting rooms with a stick, it is certainly taking rather a bizarre shape.”
“Beating the subjects!” I exclaimed. “Why in the world would he do that?”
“To verify how far bruises may be produced after death,” Santander shrugged, as nonchalant as if he were talking about the weather. “I saw him at it with my own eyes.”
“And yet you say he is not a medical student?” I pressed further, as my face contorted into a baffled expression.
“No. Heaven knows what the objects of his studies are,” replied Santander, shaking his head as he peered out through the hansom’s window. “But here we are, and you must form your own impressions about him.”
As he spoke, we turned down a narrow lane that led to a small side door opening up into a wing of the great hospital. It was familiar to me, and yet at the same time, it was not. The same bleak stone staircase winding down to long corridors of whitewashed walls and dun–coloured doors seemed to me as if a long–buried memory coming back to life. Vaguely, I wondered whether all hallowed halls of academia were modelled with the same well–worn and nostalgic image in mind.
Near the farther end, a low arched passage branched away, and Santander approached one of the closed doors, turning the brass knob and beckoned for me to follow him inside.
This particular door entered into a lofty chamber, lined and littered with countless bottles. Broad, low tables were scattered about, bristling with retorts, test–tubes, and little Bunsen lamps with their flickering little blue flames. There was only one student in the room, who was bending over a distant table absorbed in his work.
At the sound of our steps, he glanced round and sprang to his feet with a cry of pleasure. “I’ve found it! I’ve found it!” he shouted to my companion, rushing towards us with a test–tube in his hand and a lopsided grin on his lips. “I have found a reagent which is precipitated by hæmoglobin, and by nothing else!” he explained, and greater delight could not have shone upon his steel–grey eyes if he had discovered a gold mine.
“Dr Guanzon, Mr Sherlock Holmes,” Santander smoothly said, introducing us with a patient smile.
“How are you?” Mr Holmes said cordially, gripping my hand with a strength for which I should hardly have given him credit, considering his lithe and wan appearance. “I dearly hope you have found England as much to your liking as you did Spain.”
“How on earth did you know that?” I asked in astonishment.
“Never mind,” said he, chuckling to himself with a small shake of his head. “The question now is about hæmoglobin. No doubt you see the significance of this discovery of mine?”
“It is interesting, chemically, no doubt,” I nodded, “but for practicality’s sake—”
“Why, man,” Holmes interjected, clicking his tongue with impatience. “It is the most practical medico–legal discovery for years. Don’t you see that it gives us an infallible test for blood stains? Come over here now!” he said, seizing me by the coat–sleeve in his eagerness, and drew me over to the table at which he had been working.
“Let us have some fresh blood,” he said, pricking at his thumb with a needle, and drawing off the resulting drop of blood in a chemical pipette. “Now, I add this small quantity of blood to a litre of water. You perceive that the resulting mixture has the appearance of pure water, yes? The proportion of blood cannot be more than one in a million. I have no doubt, however, that we shall be able to obtain the characteristic reaction.”
As he spoke, he threw into the vessel a few white crystals, and then added some drops of a transparent fluid. In an instant, the contents assumed a dull mahogany colour, and a brownish dust was precipitated to the bottom of the glass jar.
“Ha! ha!” he cried, clapping his hands, and looking as delighted as a child with a new toy. “What do you think of that?”
“It seems to be a very delicate test,” I remarked. “But beautiful, nonetheless. Will it work whether the blood is old or new?
“Yes!” Holmes gleefully confirmed. “The old guaiacum test was very clumsy and uncertain. So is the microscopic examination for blood corpuscles. The latter is valueless if the stains are a few hours old. Had this test been discovered earlier, there are hundreds of men now walking the earth who would long ago have paid the penalty of their crimes.”
“Indeed,” I said, finding myself agreeing with the merits of Holmes’s discovery. “And it is rather convenient to know whether an odd stain might be blood, or some other less suspicious material.”
“Criminal cases are constantly hinging on that exact point, the question which has puzzled many an expert. And why?” he asked, answering himself without waiting for a response. “Because there was no reliable test. Now we have the Sherlock Holmes’s test, and there will no longer be any difficulty.”
Holmes’s eyes continued to glitter as he spoke, and he put his hand over his heart, bowing as if to some applauding crowd before him.
“You are to be congratulated, then,” I exclaimed, shaking his hand once more.
“There was the case of Von Bischoff at Frankfort last year. He would certainly have been hung had this test been in existence,” Holmes pondered, as he corked up the test–tube of his blood exam fluid once more. “Then there was Mason of Bradford, and the notorious Muller, and Lefevre of Montpellier, and Samson of New Orleans. I could name a score of cases in which it would have been decisive.”
“You seem to be a walking calendar of crime,” said Santander with a laugh. “You might start a paper on those lines. Call it the Police News of the Past,” he remarked, drawing a bar with his hands as if he were unfurling an invisible sign.
“Very interesting reading it might be made, too,” Holmes nodded, sticking a small piece of plaster over the prick on his finger. “I have to be careful,” he continued, turning to me with a smile, “for I dabble with poisons a good deal.”
He held out his hand as he spoke, and I noticed that it was all mottled over with similar pieces of plaster, and discoloured with strong acids.
“We came here on business, actually,” said Santander, perching on a high three–legged stool, and pushing another one in my direction with his foot. “My friend here wants to take some decent lodgings, and you were complaining this morning that you could get no one to go halves with you, so I thought that I had better bring you together.”
Sherlock Holmes seemed delighted at the idea of sharing his rooms with me. “I have my eye on a suite in Baker Street,” he said, “which would suit us down to the ground. You don’t mind the smell of strong tobacco, I hope?”
“I have been known to dabble with tabacalera myself on occasion,” I responded, as Santander snickered beside me.
“Excellent,” Holmes decreed. “Now, I generally have chemicals about, and occasionally do experiments with them. Would that annoy you?”
“If they are anything like what you had just demonstrated, then not at all,” was my response. I had, after all, come to Europe in the first place for my pursuit of higher learning, and this did not seem that all different from lecture hall demonstrations.
“Let’s see…” Holmes said, scratching at his clean–shaven chin. “What are my other shortcomings? I get in the dumps at times, and don’t open my mouth for days on end. You must not think I am sulky when I do that. Just let me alone, and I’ll soon be right. What have you to confess now? It’s just as well for two fellows to know the worst of one another before they begin to live together.”
I laughed at this cross–examination, a much more lighthearted one than I had previously experienced from port authorities. “I keep a bull pup gifted by my cousin in Madrid,” I said, “and I object to rows for I prefer the silence myself. I get up at all sorts of ungodly hours to write, and I am extremely lazy.”
“Do you include violin playing in your category of rows?” he asked, worrying at the folds of his sleeves anxiously.
“It depends on the player,” I answered. “Though I am a rather harsh critic, being a bandurria player in our town’s rondalla myself. A well–played violin is a treat for the gods, a badly–played one—”
“Oh, that’s all right, then,” he cried, with a relieved laugh. “I think we may consider the thing as settled — that is, if the rooms are agreeable to you.”
“When shall we see them?”
“Call for me here at noon tomorrow, and we’ll go together and settle everything,” he answered.
“All right — noon exactly,” said I, shaking his hand for the third time that day.
We left him working amongst his chemicals, and we walked together towards my soon to be former residence.
“By the way,” I asked suddenly, stopping and turning upon Santander, “how did he figure out I was recently in Spain?”
My companion smiled an enigmatical smile, as if he was expecting me to ask. “That’s just his little peculiarity,” he said. “A good many people have wanted to know how he finds things out.”
“Oh! A mystery is it?” I cried, twirling the handle of my walking–stick around in my hand. “It’s all very exciting. Thank you, Santander, for bringing us together. Mr Holmes certainly piqued my interest.”
“He’s a mystery, alright,” Santander said, as he bade me goodbye at the hotel entrance. “Though I’ll wager he learns more about you than you about him. Goodbye.”
“It’s just as well. Goodbye,” I answered, and strolled on to my rooms, considerably interested in my new acquaintance.