The Oriental Casebook Of Sherlock Holmes Part 17

Beyond the servants who attended to him regularly, he now saw only Benoit and Schaumberg. They had been delayed indefinitely by the troubles in Sind, and they felt almost as imprisoned as he.

One day, Holmes was summoned to Captain Fantome's room.

"You will recall," she said with some amus.e.m.e.nt, "that I promised you extraordinary comfort during your stay here. I am sorry that you have been confined to a single room for so long, but our agents have been slower than I would have liked in preparing your permanent accommodations. You will move now to what I trust will be satisfactory quarters for you through the coming years."

"She smiled," said Holmes, "with the smile of one who greatly enjoys her handiwork. I bowed, not without an ironic look in my eye, and followed the servant to my new quarters. I was filled with a certain wonder as to what they would be-an Oriental queen's view of an English Heaven perhaps. The servant stopped before a door, handed me a key, and left. As soon as I saw the key, I knew what she had done. I opened the door, Watson, and walked into what appeared to be at first glance a perfect replica of our quarters, a copy of 221b Baker Street. I laughed as I entered and threw the key on the table, sat in our easy chair, picked up my violin and began to play-and to think. Overall, the quarters were well copied, and I could not but marvel how the Frantzi and their agents, in a matter of only a few weeks, had been able to perform such a feat. Obviously, someone had entered our quarters, and secretly enumerated and described its contents, possibly photographing them as well. Then a band of local craftsmen were made to copy as much as possible. Not only our tables and chairs, Watson, but our pipes and tobaccos, the Persian slippers, my cocaine bottle and syringe, and a slight scent of the disorder which we live in were there. I found myself smiling with pleasure at what I saw, for I momentarily had the feeling that I had already extricated myself from my predicament and that miraculously I was back in London."

Holmes confessed that he soon came to his senses, however, and began to observe the minute differences between our quarters and this replica. As he went through, noticing pictures on the wall which the taste of neither of us would permit, he realised that there were some major faults as well as gaps in the picture as a whole. Much of the contents of our library had been duplicated, with the exception of the rarer items, but there had been no attempt to reproduce his files. All weapons, his pistols, his knife collection, and his poisonous experiments, were absent, no doubt as a necessary precaution, since he remained a prisoner. But as he went through his clothes and other possessions, he realised how thoroughly the agents of the Frantzi had gone through our belongings. But there was nothing of mine, he emphasised, only his things very selectively chosen.

As he ruminated over this unexpected gift, there was a knock on the door. He opened it and found Schaumberg and Benoit there to greet him: "Captain Fantome has asked us to visit you and bid you farewell since we depart tonight."

"Come in, my dear friends. Welcome to my London abode."

They entered, and Holmes could see a look of amazement cross their faces.

"Not bad, especially for this G.o.dforsaken place," said Schaumberg.

Benoit was as usual more reticent, but Holmes watched him closely as his eyes went over the room, occasionally resting on some object. They sat and talked as friends do who are about to leave each other and may not see each other again.

"We have been through a lot together," said Schaumberg. "'Tis a pity that we are on opposite sides in this b.l.o.o.d.y fight. I shall miss you, my friend, and thanks again for pulling me in during that b.l.o.o.d.y sandstorm."

"My duty, dear chap. As to our being on opposite sides, well, we can do nothing about that, can we?"

Benoit looked at his watch. "It is almost dark, and the time for us to go approaches. We shall leave in a few hours," he said, "and travel in the dark until morning. By then, we should have pa.s.sed through the British patrols safely into Sind."

"They left, Watson, and departed for Sind that night. And Sherlock Holmes remained in his quarters."

Holmes stopped talking, as if the story were over. He looked down at his plate, took several bites, and then took a long drink from his gla.s.s with obvious delight.

He laughed and said, "'Or so it appeared, Watson. For it was in those very moments that something happened that enabled me to escape easily from Mandor. After Schaumberg and Benoit left, I sat for a moment wondering whether to put my plan into action or to wait. My eye fell on the cocaine and the syringe when suddenly there was a knock at the door. It was Benoit. He came in, and for the first time he appeared distraught."

"You must help me," he said.

"How?" I asked.

"I need your cocaine for the journey."

"You shall have it," said Holmes.

"I seized the opportunity, Watson, and before he could change his mind I had made a strong mixture and plunged the syringe into his arm. He did not resist, but immediately went into a blissful stupor. I helped him to the sofa, and quickly set to work. In preparing the replica of our quarters, the agents of Captain Fantome had been unaware of the use of some of the items they reproduced. And so I found most of the paraphernalia of my disguises there ready for use. Wigs, powders, all my actor's magic was there. I worked quickly, transforming Benoit into a fair version of myself while he slept, and then, switching our clothes, I transformed myself into a fair version of Benoit. As I studied my face in the mirror, I smiled, for I knew that I had made myself into a good likeness, good enough even for Schaumberg in the dark. I delighted in antic.i.p.ation as I glanced about 221b Baker Street, with Sherlock Holmes fast asleep in a cocaine trance. To Captain Fantome I penned a short note which I pinned to Benoit's shirt: "My compliments and thanks to you for your hospitality. Herein lies a gift of appreciation, only a copy within a copy perhaps, but a rather good one, I trust. Sherlock Holmes."

Holmes ran out the door in time to meet Schaumberg as he left his room. They walked in silence to their caravan and without further ado began their long march. Holmes breathed a sigh of relief as soon as they pa.s.sed through the gates, and a few miles into the desert, he left the party and returned to Jaisalmer. There, he sent word to the British agent of the existence of Schaumberg's party. It was apprehended as it entered Sind that morning. At the same time, the replica of Sherlock Holmes awoke and was taken to Captain Fantome by a rather perplexed servant who judged that his somewhat changed appearance was due to sudden illness. Captain Fantome read the note pinned to his chest, realised what had happened, and escaped before our soldiers could apprehend her.

In the next few weeks, Mandor was captured despite the heavy defense by its mercenaries, the mines were closed, and the workers released. Captain Fantome fled to South Africa, where she oversees the new diamond mines there.

"And what happened to the Frantzi, the rest of the population of the city of Mandor?" I asked.

"Many of them moved to other parts of India, and some, Watson, have, I gather, come to England, where they move silently within the upper circles of society. Their town is but a ruin, sitting now unproductively above the large, silent caverns below. Considering my role in its destruction, I doubt if I have heard the last of the Frantzi. Captain Fantome is not the kind of person who forgets such injury."

Holmes became silent, then said: "And of course, Watson, dear Giacomo Schaumberg was the young Swiss lad who gave you the false message at the Reichenbach Falls, changed by his experiences in the meantime, but recognisably the same."

"Good Lord, Holmes, I should have realised this. When did you recognise him?"

"Immediately, Watson. That is why I decided to travel with them. But Giacomo did not recognise me until too late. Perhaps he was there at the falls for too short a time. He is now at large, having escaped from prison in Quetta, and I have no doubt that he will show up one of these days. Who knows when?"

AFTERWORD.

The READER WHO HAS TRAVELLED THIS FAR WILL inevitably be tempted to speculate about the effects of the Orient on Mr. Sherlock Holmes and the course of his work subsequent to his return to London. It will come as no great surprise to those familiar with the chronicles of these exploits that my friend's peculiar character has often eluded me. But since I remain close to him even now after these many years, my own observations on the matter may still prove to be of some interest.

It was, I remember, in that small cottage where we often stayed near Poldhu Bay at the further extremity of the Cornish peninsula that I first questioned him and put my thoughts on the subject in order. It was in the fall of 1894, a cool but bright October day. Holmes had begun to display his curious interest in the origin of the Cornish language and had expressed for the first time his notion that it was related to the Chaldean. He had just received a consignment of books upon philology but quickly abandoned them for the morning paper, which at our distant location arrived several days late.

I watched him carefully as he went about his business. To the casual observer, I thought, the Holmes who returned to London after a three-year absence was very much the same as before, a bit thinner perhaps, and somewhat older of course, but if anything more energetic and resourceful than ever. His near miraculous brain, with its almost magical ability to see beyond the appearance of things to their underlying causes, his uncanny power to deduce final solutions from the most trivial of details, and the tireless energy with which he pursued the most minute of clues, all of this was as before, if indeed not heightened by his many adventures abroad. He still disappeared on his nocturnal prowls about the city, the sleuth hound following the scent, and by day would sit in silent adumbration of the problem at hand. It was then, as he sat motionless in his easy chair, his eyes staring vacantly into s.p.a.ce, that his brilliant reasoning power would rise to the level of intuition, forcing those unacquainted with his methods to look askance at him as at a man whose knowledge was not that of other mortals.

To my frequent consternation, he had added remarkable skills in disguise and illusion through his training in the Orient. This was indeed a new aspect to his art. Yet, he remained philosophically a direct descendant of Galileo and Francis Bacon, contemptuous of anything not grounded in experiment and the practical. All of that high metaphysic that flows from Plato and ancient India through the murky Germanic schools of the last hundred years was anathema to his sombre and cynical spirit. For him, it was all sophistry and illusion, to be cast into the flames, were it not for his great tolerance of opposing ideas and his strong belief that all arguments needed to be preserved as well as heard. And yet, I sensed at times a deeper questioning of larger problems, the answers to which he had previously taken for granted.

In his outward personal life, the same abstemious habits prevailed, and he maintained his habitual clutter in the same inventive ways. The violin was still there, played as beautifully as ever. Inwardly, however, I sensed a difference. I have remarked in describing his singular character on its dual nature. The swings of mood still took him from extreme languour to devouring energy, and his great exactness and astuteness represented, as I have often thought, the reaction against the poetic and contemplative mood which occasionally predominated in him. But, as the reader well knows, Holmes had been subject to severe bouts of melancholia from the time of our first meeting. Before his long sojourn abroad, he had relied on various cures, which he administered himself. One was abstract reasoning, which led him to abstruse mathematical and logical problems which often, on a more practical level, became problems of cryptography. Another was his incessant probe of the world of chemistry in search of more precise tests useful in his criminal investigations. A third, more treacherous treatment was, of course, cocaine, in which he indulged frequently before his stay in the Orient, to my great displeasure.

After his return, however, I knew him to use cocaine but once, and to my knowledge, he never went near it again. Nor was he any longer content with the abstract puzzles which had entertained him and pulled him back in the past from the brink of depression. Although his despair at times was, if anything, stronger upon his return, he used nothing external to himself to relieve the black moods that descended upon him. He came out of them himself, never falling completely under their sway.

When I queried him about the difference that day as we sat looking out at the bay, he broke his usual reticence about himself and noted in explanation that the death of Moriarty was a far more significant event in his life than he had previously thought and it was only in the narration of the tales presented here that he realised how significant indeed it was. Until Moriarty's death, he said, he had seen crime very much as the creation of the individual gone wrong.

"You will remember, Watson, what I said so often in the past. There are some trees which grow up to a certain height, and then develop some unsightly eccentricity. You will see it often in humans as well. I had a theory that the individual represents in his development the whole procession of his ancestors, and that such a turn to good or evil stands for some strong influence which came into the line of pedigree. The person becomes, as it were, the epitome of the history of his own family. In the evil professor, I believed I had found the supreme example of this: the genius gone amok, preying always upon the innocent. With Moriarty gone, I believed that some part of evil itself was also eliminated. It was a simple matter of subtraction: remove Moriarty and we have a net gain of good for humanity. But, as I fought the good fight in the Orient and elsewhere, I realised that Moriarty's death meant nothing, that any number of criminal minds, some equally talented, his own brother for one, were available to take his place. Evil remained, therefore, as prevalent as ever: it was not a mere fact that could be changed, but something different. My theory of the evil genius explained nothing. I looked for a new explanation."

"And did you find it?" I asked.

"Let us put it this way, Watson. I speak in all candor. As you know, I have never been attracted by the deliberations of the metaphysicians. In my youthful career, I believed simply that I could eradicate evil, or large portions of it, for it had simple if commonplace origins in the hearts of men. When I felt thwarted in this, I suffered immediately from melancholia and boredom, the signs of an underemployed brain. It was then that I took cocaine until a new problem obviated the need for the drug."

He smiled broadly and continued. "But in Asia, Watson, I began to see things with a different eye, and it was in the very narration of these tales that I became most acutely aware of the profound effects of my Asiatic travels upon my thinking. Surely, so many of our countrymen who came to woe in these tales would have been far better off had they never left. Indeed, had Hodgson never left England, there would have been no Moriarty."

"Come, Holmes," said I, "surely you can't mean that we are to blame. Has Sherlock Holmes as well become another epateur of the bourgeoisie in the end?"

"I cast no blame, Watson. You know me far better than that. Nor do I insist on my theory. But as disagreeable as it may sound to you, the Orient begins in London, and it was in Benares one day, while sitting on the banks of the Ganges, that I realised that my Oriental adventures had begun long before I ever left England. As I stared at the murky water and the thousands of naked worshippers bathing in it, one of the chief villains of our early adventures together, Jonathan Small, suddenly came to mind. Surely, you have not forgotten him."

"No, indeed," I said. "You mean the nasty little man from the Sign of Four."

"Nasty indeed, but it was in the very holy waters that I then contemplated that he lost his leg to the bite of a crocodile, or so he thought, a loss which so embittered him that he had little mercy left in him for his fellow man. Small's miserable story and his hateful image remained with me as I travelled."

He paused briefly to light his pipe, and then said, "On my way to Java, the ship stopped for a few days in the Andamans."

"Where Small was imprisoned for his part in the murder in the Red Fort in Agra. But you omitted your stop in the Andamans from the account you gave me," I said.

"Ah, Watson, there is much that is omitted in my narration, otherwise our simple tales would rival those of dear Thackeray in length. Suffice it to say that I was allowed to disembark at Port Blair. I roamed the island at will, thinking often of Small and the other plotters in that G.o.dforsaken place. I climbed Mount Harriet and probably rested close to Small's mud hut in Hopetown. I saw dozens of men like Tonga, the Andamaner who helped him to escape and do his evil deeds in London. Small called him the bloodthirsty little viper, did he not? The inhabitants I saw went about their business as calmly and methodically as any Londoner. I mingled with them, feeling no fear. Our observers have cast them as G.o.dless, numberless, primitive without fire, and savagely cruel, ready to kill any foreigner. And yet, during my stay, I felt no threat.

"As I left, I noticed that a whole group of them had been placed in a small shed near the sh.o.r.e in preparation for their transport as labourers to the Dutch Indies. I was told by our captain that there were one hundred ten men and women stuffed into the small shed, over one hundred "Tongas" to be taken from their island to unknown places. How many of them arrived at their destination alive?"

He stopped for a moment in thought.

"Later, on my way north from Ceylon," he continued, "I stopped in Agra, reliving the horrible events that Small related to us, of the Mutiny, of his fellow conspirators, and the murder of the merchant Achmed. My interest in certain cases never leaves me, and in Jaisalmer I saw many of the same small brown Andamaners at work in the mines of the Frantzi, the slaves of Captain Fantome and her ilk. It was here that I began to distinguish between the scent of the criminal and the stench of empire."

He grinned as he tossed the morning paper in my direction. There on the front page was the report of the grisly murder of the Viceroy, Lord Elgin, on his visit to the Andamans. The shocking crime had been committed by a Punjabi imprisoned in the islands. He had acted so quickly and with such force that the Viceroy and his party were taken completely unaware. The Viceroy himself mumbled something about a slight pain in his back and fell forwards, dead in the water.

"What a ghastly affair, Holmes," I said.

"Yes, Watson, another gruesome crime, pointless in itself, but one that will have various repercussions. I have no doubt that Government will, as it usually does, act in such a way as to make matters worse. You see, Watson, it is no longer a battle from which I hope to emerge victorious. I fight simply because I must, and it is in the knowledge that there is no final victory to be had that I find solace. Shall we say, dear doctor, that we are all entrapped in an iron cage, the exit from which is hidden from us? I sense an east wind and the coming of a dark polar night. But let us not despair, lest we do nothing at all."

He said no more. He removed his shoes and went out to the beach, where I saw him striding rapidly in the surf, his trousers rolled up to his knees, his shirt hanging loosely about his waist. For the moment, I thought, he seemed free of all care, waiting only for the world to engage him once more.

JOHN WATSON, M.D.

My interest in Sherlock Holmes was aided and abetted first by Merrily Weisbord, a gifted writer and a good friend; by Michael Haggiag, astute critic and writer of great imagination; by Bob Loomis, the great jewel in the crown of Random House; and by Peter Riva, whose polymathic prestidigitations still fill me with wonder.

end.