 The Naval Treaty
 Synopsis
Watson receives a distressed letter from an old school friend, PERCY “TADPOLE” PHELPS, pleading for help. Phelps was a brilliant, prize-winning student, happily engaged to MISS HARRISON, and his uncle got him a responsible job at the Foreign Office. One day he was entrusted with copying out a vital secret treaty between Britain and Italy – but it vanished when he went downstairs in search of a cup of coffee. As he was working late, the building was almost empty and suspicion fell on the commissionaire ’s wife, MRS TANGEY. She was followed home, searched and questioned, but the treaty was not found.
Phelps, a sensitive man, collapsed when he got home, and was given the best guest room (which had been occupied by JOSEPH HARRISON, Phelps’ fiancee’s brother). Phelps was ill with brain fever for weeks, and was nursed by Miss Harrison. He has only just recovered enough to face his situation. Luckily, no attempt has seemingly been made to sell the treaty to a foreign power.
Phelps’ room is broken into but he wakes in time to scare off the intruder. Holmes realises it is an inside job, and pretends to go away, instructing Miss Harrison to stay in Phelps’ sickroom all day. He waits for Harrison to return to the room for the treaty, which he stole and concealed in the gas pipe, apprehends him and recovers the treaty – to Phelps’ delight. Harrison was supposed to meet Phelps at the Foreign Office on the day the treaty was stolen. He arrived as Phelps was out on his search for coffee, pocketed the treaty and hurried back to Phelps’, where he hid it in the most convenient place before being rushed out of his room to make way for the sick Phelps.
Comments
The opening of this story provides a humorous insight into English public schools. In a shocking revelation, it seems that our beloved Watson was actually something of a bully at school! (He bullied Phelps, anyway, and doesn’t seem to show any remorse.) Because Phelps was very intelligent, hard-working and well-connected, says Watson,
“it seemed rather a piquant thing to us to chevy him about the playground and hit him over the shins with a wicket”.
The weapon of choice, a sporting implement used in the very English game of cricket, is a lovely touch. The wicket would be available, appropriate, and potentially very painful!
The Naval Treaty also contains an uncharacteristic but rather beautiful speech from Holmes about how roses prove the existence of God, and of goodness:
“ ‘There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion,’ said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. ‘It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.”
This is an unusually positive speech from Holmes, whose work usually encourages him to dwell on the dark side and to distrust beauty – for example, in The Sign of Four, he says that,
“The most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money”.
Does beauty prove the existence of God? What is necessary for life? What is the meaning of life? It is interesting to see Holmes – and Conan Doyle – getting so philosophical! |
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