Sherlock Holmes: The Case Of the Strange Erasures

By Stefan Kanfer

Not only was the tape doctored deliberately, but it probably occurred on the machine that Miss Woods used. Certainly a very limited number of people in the White House would have had access to that machine. Sherlock Holmes has solved a lot tougher cases than that, either by induction or deduction.

--Representative John B. Anderson, Republican of Illinois

There had been celebrated clients before. My friend Sherlock Holmes had solved the little matter of the Vatican cameos for His Holiness the Pope, as I noted in my modest chronicle The Hound of the Baskervilles; he ad elucidated The Adventure of the Second Stain for the Prime Minister. We had also known curious cases. There was, for example, the puzzle of the politician, the lighthouse and the trained cormorant, referred to in The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger; and the singularity of Isadora Persano, the journalist and duelist who was found stark mad with a matchbox in front of him that contained a remarkable worm, said to be unknown to science (The Problem of Thor Bridge). But never had there been a case as complex and fraught with such grave worldly consequences as The Case of the Strange Erasures.

It was very late one Friday in the frightful winter of the year 19--. Holmes was filling his pipe with the noxious tobacco he kept in a slipper upon the mantel. I sat by the gasogene, trying to ignore the chill worrying my old Jezail bullet wound. It was not a very keen period for the world's first consulting detective; like all Englishmen, he only worked a three-day week. We could get little fuel, and warmed ourselves by burning pictures of coal from newsmagazine accounts of the miners' strike. Suddenly there came peremptory knocking at the door of our humble rooms at 221-B Baker Street. In strode an American visitor, whom I shall call the Secretary of Hope.

"I see that you suffer from acute dyspepsia," said Holmes, as he ushered our guest to a chair. "I see further that you have not slept in two days, do a lot of praying at odd hours, and have been experiencing great difficulty with a tape recorder."

The Secretary fixed his eye on Holmes and demanded:

"How do you know and how much do you know?"

"Nothing and everything," Holmes assured him. "The white rim of Alka-Seltzer around your lips informs me of your gastric distress; the dark circles under your eyes broadcast sleeplessness; the shiny knees of your trousers bespeak prayer in the office."

"And the tapes?"

"The slight indentation in the sole of your shoe, indicating experimentation with a type of pedal used only to operate a tape recorder."

"Besides," I added helpfully, "we heard all about it on the wireless and the telly. Even with the British power shortage the tube doesn't go off until 10:30 p.m."

Holmes shot me a look of concentrated venom. Strange chap, Sherlock, skittish as an undergraduate sometimes.

"Be that as it may," continued the Secretary, "we find ourselves in the center of a profound and baffling mystery." I suddenly became the object of his suspicious concern.

"Feel free to speak in front of Dr. Watson," Holmes assured him. "He's been dead for 50 years. I myself am a living legend."

"Very well." Our reassured client leaned forward in his seat, fingering a curious device in his lapel that resembled nothing so much as an American flag. "You know about the taped conversation between the Head of State and one of his former advisers. You know that the erasures were done not once but from five to nine times."

"Strange," remarked my colleague with a wild cackle. "Most Americans work from nine to five."

"In any case, Mr. Holmes, one of our aides once suggested that 'some sinister force' might be responsible."

"Moriarity!" I cried.

"Nonsense," expostulated the consulting detective. "I annihilated the Napoleon of crime at the Reichenbach Falls. No, no, Watson, heroes may be summoned from the annals of fiction, but this villain rises from reality. Whoever made those erasures is an intelligent, living, breathing human. Well, living and breathing, anyway."

"Sir," our visitor desperately dug his fingers into the arms of the chair, "if you ever put forward your full powers, I implore you to do so now."

Holmes took down his violin and played an air that fortunately our guest did not recognize: Berlioz's March to the Scaffold. Then he brightened. "I have but one motto, Watson."

Dutifully I parroted his famous slogan, "When You Have Eliminated The Impossible, Whatever Remains, However Improbable, Must Be The Truth."

"Excellent," said Holmes. "Mr. Secretary, these are the facts as I understand them:

"1. The Uher machine is ordered from a reputable dealer and delivered to the White House Secret Service's Technical Security Division at 12:30 p.m., Oct. 1.

"2. At 1:15 p.m. the aforesaid machine is delivered to a White House special assistant.

"3. Shortly thereafter, it is installed --with foot pedal--in the office of a lady secretary.

"4. At 2:08 p.m. the lady enters the Head of State's office to report that her foot has mischievously erased a portion of the tape, causing a hum.

Lapsed time from delivery to report, 53 minutes."

"That is correct," said our visitor glumly.

"You are undoubtedly familiar with my monograph," continued Holmes loftily, "entitled 'Uses and Abuses of Various West German Tape Recorders.' " "Actually, I don't have time for much light reading," replied the Secretary.

"Nor did the lady secretary have time for much erasing," said the detective. "A period sufficient to listen to and eliminate conversation in five to nine separate operations would have taken from 37 to 60 minutes. That consumes virtually all of the time available from the installation of the machine to discovery of the error."

"Ergo, she is the culprit!"

I concluded.

"Not necessarily," speculated the chilly detective. He piled his violin on the fire and went on. "Consider the alternatives, the ambiguities. The lady herself had three secretaries. Any one of them might be implicated. A presidential assistant could have had access to the machine. Or the Secret Servicemen who purchased the recorder. Or the Head of State himself."

"Or a professional, hired just for this assignment," I interjected.

"No, old fellow. We may not know who the perpetrator is, but we may be sure who he, or she, is not. These frantic attempts to expunge evidence are the marks of the rankest amateur."

"Can we confine our searches to the office in question?" asked our visitor plaintively.

"Unfortunately not." Holmes put on his deerstalker hat and his cape-backed overcoat. "We must cover far sunnier climes than the Oval Office. Key Biscayne, for instance, where the machine traveled for a weekend. Who knows who might have had access to it there--perhaps the very adviser whose voice is heard upon the tape."

Our guest rose wearily to his feet.

"The assignment is overwhelming," he complained. "The list of suspects grows by the hour."

"Balderdash!" exploded Holmes. "It narrows by the minute. Why, that dimwit Inspector Lestrade could have solved this in a trice. We are not discussing the dank recesses of the Musgrave Ritual. These corridors and villas of which I speak are the most minutely monitored square feet in history. Agents, assistants, diaries, logs--all are at the disposal of examiners. Any plodding policeman could run this criminal to earth. We know that the lady secretary has made, shall we say, a 'mistake' somewhere in her testimony. Trace the flaw back to its roots, and we have our culprit."

Holmes opened the door and beckoned us out. "Quick, Watson, the game is afoot! For some malefactor, the comeuppance is at hand."

Indeed it was. As the world now knows, Holmes' methods were promptly employed by the investigators. They microscopically examined the rugs to see whether the short hairs were King Ti-mahoe's or those of the Head of State's crew-cut former adviser. They subpoenaed the lady secretary's lady secretaries, and checked logs and discrepancies.

The suspects were few indeed, the time of the crime precisely delimited, the terrain connu. The conundrum was cracked and, not surprisingly, there followed sensations in the courts. None but a chosen few ever knew the role that my old friend had had in directing the solution.

I still remember the day when, after weeks of intense meditation, Holmes revealed the perpetrator of the strange erasures. He wrote the name on a slip of paper and handed it to our old visitor at his club in Washington.

The man blanched. "But, this is impossible, unthinkable," he protested. He immediately produced a cigarette lighter and ignited the paper.

Holmes shook his head. "It was your own American journalist Lincoln Steffens who wrote: 'Men do not seek the truth. It is the truth that pursues men who run away and will not look around.' " The Secretary of Hope abruptly ran away without looking around. Sherlock Holmes picked up the check, sighed, and gazed in the direction of Congress. There was the suspicion of a tear in his eye.

But then again, it may have been illusion. There was a lot of it going around in those days.

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