My Sherlock Holmes Page 42

  China in the winter is a dull, drab, colorless place, with only the lacquered palaces of the Forbidden City providing hints of life and warmth. Still, we had seen quite enough of the Great Within, of the Outer City, of the entire city of Peking. We wished that the river might be the Thames, that the rolling clouds that threatened snow had passed recently over the English moors and not the immense Mongolian desert. I desperately wanted to see English flowers and hear English birds, to eat English food and listen to the laughter of English children at play.

  Perhaps Watson was a little bit right when he wrote of me that I possessed languid and courtly manners, and that I was not truly an adventurous type. I suppose that I am not, yet I have had my fill of adventure, more than most men ever dream of, and I submit that I have accounted well of myself. My wish to return home was not the exhaustion of my spirit, but the natural need of the wanderer to refresh himself among familiar surroundings.

  And so we sailed from Tientsin shortly after Christmas, on our way home. When our association began, Holmes was a brash, cocky young fellow. His experiences in China matured him and taught him more than he had learned in all his years of schooling. As the eastern coast of China disappeared astern, Sherlock Holmes had become very much the genius described by Dr. John H. Watson. It had been my privilege to observe and document that transformation.

  There is one unusual aspect of the brass box episode that must be recorded, although it did not occur until many years after the events of this memoir. I received a letter from Sherlock Homes in 1908, thirty-three years after the Peking affair and some five years after the most recent appearance of one of Dr. Watson’s stories in the popular press. Holmes enclosed a letter he’d received from China. I reproduce here both his note and the other.

  My dear Musgrave.

  I apologize for the long delay in replying to your last letter. I have had a few interesting riddles to engage me batt nothing of particular importance, and nothing that my esteemed biographer has seen fit to immortalize in his magazine articles. The only event worth mentioning to you—and indeed, the primary reason for this letter—is the enclosed communication.

  I received it only today. I trust you will find it as absorbing as I did, and that the terrible implications and consequences will not be lost on you. At this moment I am not certain how I shall respond to it. I find myself in an unfamiliar state of despair.

  Yours as ever,

  Sherlock Holmes

  The letter from China was written in a careful and precise script, oddly angular but not altogether unpleasant. I confess that a shiver of revulsion shook me as I stared at the signature: it was, of course, from Dr. Fu Manchu—the monster was alive! He had been alive all these years. He’d escaped after all, and had used the intervening decades to rebuild his nefarious secret Oriental empire. Here I quote his final message to Sherlock Holmes.

  Mr. Holmes:

  It has been many years since last we spoke, and in that time I have learned that I did you a great injustice. I owe you some sort of recompense, if not apology. It is unusual for me to be in this position, and I fear that I may be unskilled in the practice of admitting error.

  Not long ago the Empress Dowager passed away under somewhat dubious circumstances. It was revealed after her death that your reasoning concerning her illicit and treacherous activities was entirely correct, and my version of events completely mistaken. It was indeed Tzu Hsi who instigated the rise of the secret societies, those which banded together to bring about what you English. called the Boxer Rebellion.

  We share in the responsibility for that insurrection, you and I, for we had the power to avert it and we did nothing. I confess my blindness and my error. Had I listened to you, I would have been saved many years of struggle. I have paid for that gross blunder of my younger self, and I promise you and the world that such a thing will never happen again.

  I am sending to you something to relieve my mind of a sense of obligation to you. It is the formula for the Elixir of Immortality, one of the Celestial Snows. I have made great strides in deciphering the ancient texts, and I am including all data pertinent to the ambiguous terminology used by my forebears, even that which derives from my recent laboratory successes. Only you and I in the whole world share this knowledge. I do not begrudge you this You are the only person who has ever impressed me with the discipline and integrity of his intellect.

  There is but one missing bit of information, the finding of which would make the elixir complete: the ancient texts speak of a particular kind of honey, made by bees from the nectar of the HO KUO flower. I do not know what is meant by HO KUO. The words mean only “pale bird,” and none of the commentaries of antiquity shed any further light on this matter. I have begun an elaborate campaign to collect honey made from every sort of flower, those native to China and species that may have been introduced by explorers and traders. I believe this project justifies such an effort. Perhaps, however, you will have better luck than I

  Dr. Fu Manchu

  Six years later, in 1914, Holmes and Watson accepted the challenge that Watson would chronicle in “His Last Bow,” Sherlock Flolmes’s final adventure. In that story, we read the following interesting exchange:

  “But you had retired, Holmes. We heard of you as living the life of a hermit among your bees and your books in a small farm upon the South Downs.”

  “Exactly, Watson. Here is the fruit of my leisured ease, the magnum opus of my latter years!” He picked up the volume from the table and read out the whole title, Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen

  This must answer the often-asked question, “Why did Holmes retire at so young an age?” Given the Chinese formula with every unknown quantity deciphered but one, Holmes disappeared to find the missing ingredient. Did he succeed? I have already mentioned that I learned of his death through the university alumni letter, but that notice may have been false and misleading. After all, the world had been notified once before of Sherlock Holmes’s certain demise. Dr. Fu Manchu has returned again and again throughout the present century to devil the forces of civilization and order. Perhaps his old adversary—my friend, Sherlock Holmes—is yet alive to shield a sleeping world from the dire threats about which we do not even dream. My old companion may be watching even today, an invisible guardian angel, protecting us as we go blindly through our lives. I prefer to think that this is true, as irrational as it may sound. I prefer to believe in Sherlock Holmes.

  GILES LESTRADE, WILHELM GOTTSREICH SIGISMOND VON ORMSTEIN, BEVIS STAMFORD, ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, M.D., JAMES MORTIMER, M.D.

  “It has always been my habit to hide none of my methods, either from my friend Watson or from anyone who might take an intelligent interest in them.”

  —“The Reigate Squire”

  by C. D. EWING

  And the Others …

  A Pause in the Day’s Occupation

  One of the casualties of the Great Hurricane of 1907, which did extensive damage to much of London, especially around the older wharves along the inner bend in the Thames, was the entire press run of the September ’07 issue of Hoghine’s Illustrated Monthly. The printing plant, which had been off Lower Thames Street, near the Tower, slid off what turned out to have been an ancient pier, and into the Thames, where it disintegrated and bits and pieces of it made their way to the North Sea.

  The magazine struggled on for a few more years before combining with Pickwick Magazine, only to cease publication entirely during the paper shortages of World War I. But the September ’07 issue, which was reputed to contain a scathing indictment by George Bernard Shaw of all contemporary drama but his own; a memoir called “My Brother-in-Law, the Doctor,” by E. W. Hornung; and an article entitled “The Dirigible Balloon—Is Count Zeppelin’s Airship Ready for Passengers?” seemed to be forever lost.

  And then in July 1952, in one of those wonderful moments of serendipity, the Continental Enquiry and Protective Services Agency Ltd., the British branch of the
Continental Detective Agency of the United States, opened its new offices in what had been the Hogbine Building on Fetter Lane, off Fleet Street. The name “Hogbine Building” was still carved into the gray stone slab above the front door, although nobody for a mile in any direction knew who Hogbine had been or what he had done, or why he had needed a building in which to do it. In the process of knocking down a wall to turn two offices into one large file room——a detective agency generates acres of files—a long boarded-up closet was uncovered. In it were a model of the Eiffel Tower; a bound set of photographs showing a rather buxom young woman prancing about in her camisole with the title “In My Lady’s Boudoir” stamped in gold-leaf on the cover; a box of printed rejection slips; a series of French postcards showing La Tour Eiffel in various stages of construction; a program book for a production of Lucia at the Drury Lane; and a complete stitched galley proof for the missing September ’07 issue.

  One of the articles in the lost issue, the existence of which had been completely forgotten with the passage of time, was the monthly installment of a series called “As They Knew Him” (or, of course, “Her” if the subject was a woman). Among the celebrated subjects over the years had been Charles Dickens, Gustave Dore, Eleanora Duse, W. S. Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan (as a pair, which annoyed them both), James McNeill Whistler, and Pope Leo XIII. Benjamin Disraeli had been the subject the month before, and Queen Victoria herself the month after. The subject for the September ’07 issue was the man generally acknowledged to have been the greatest consulting detective of the nineteenth century.

  The Continental Agency, which proudly considered itself to be the greatest consulting detective agency of the twentieth century, sent the relevant pages back to its headquarters in New York City’s Flatiron Building, where they were framed and hung on the walls of the corridor leading to the general manager’s office. There they stayed for nearly a half century, their significance even more completely forgotten, until by chance, in October of 2001, a young editor at St. Martin’s Press happened upon them while waiting in the hallway for a chance to convince “Pop” Gores, who was retiring as general manager after forty-four years with the Continental, that having led an exciting life wasn’t enough by itself to create a best-selling memoir—you also had to have some ability to write English sentences, and even paragraphs.

  “You might consider using a ghost,” Keith Kahla, the St. Martin’s editor told Pop. “And what do you know about those magazine pages hanging in the hallway?”

  “Speaking of ghosts,” Pop enthused, “did I tell you about the time back in Ogallala, Nebraska …”

  Kahla was eventually able to persuade the Continental’s office manager to allow him to take down the pages and photocopy them. After a fair amount of research involving a trip to London and another to Amsterdam—how we suffer for our art—it was possible to establish the history and provenance of the pages. We print them here for the first time in the belief that they are long out of copyright, and that any copyright holders must be long deceased. If we are mistaken in that, and if the rightful heirs of Scotland Yard Assistant Superintendent Giles Lestrade, Dr. Bevis Stamford, or any of the other contributors to these pages of reminiscences will contact the rights and permissions offices of St. Martin’s Press, they will know how to deal with you.

  From Hogbine’s Illustrated Monthly for September 1907:

  AS THEY KNEW HIM

  THIS MONTH—SHERLOCK HOLMES

  We have a considerable treat for our readers this month; a rare view of one of Britain’s most celebrated sleuths, from some of those who knew him well during the period that he was England’s—nay, the world’s—foremost unofficial detective. Since he has retired to his farm in Sussex and refuses to give interviews, Mr. Holmes has left the public eye, but he still looms large in the public imagination. We think our readers will be fascinated, and perhaps enlightened, by these brief memoirs of a man who, thanks to Dr. John Watson’s Boswellian efforts, was as well known in the fin de siecle English-speaking world as Eleanora Duse, Benjamin Disraeli, Cecil Rhodes, Sitting Bull, or Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan.

  As usual we will allow our guest writers to speak for themselves, and we remind our readers that the writers’ opinions are their own, unedited (except for spelling, grammar, and punctuation, where necessary), and we at Hogbine’s Illustrated Monthly have done nothing to encourage them to agree or disagree with the known record. And so, stretch your legs before a warming sea-coal fire and settle down for a good read as, with real pleasure, we begin:

  Assistant Superintendent Giles Lestrade,

  Criminal Investigation Division, Scotland Yard (Retired)

  In his own words:

  Did I know Sherlock Holmes? What a question! What a joke! The man was a constant thorn in the side of Scotland Yard, a pest and a nuisance from the day he set up shop at 221B Baker Street until the day he retired. And I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if he didn’t continue to pop up now and again to bedevil the Yard in cases that the Criminal Investigation Division could handle perfectly well without his much-vaunted “assistance.”

  Now don’t get me wrong, I actually liked Mr. Holmes, as much as the insufferable prig would allow himself to be liked. More than many of my fellows at the Yard, I can tell you that much. Gregson would turn positively red about the ears whenever Holmes’s name was mentioned. On the plus side, he did help us with one or two of our more obscure cases. His spe cialty—his ‘forte,’ you might say—were the sort of problems that didn’t lend themselves to being solved easily by ordinary police work. Oh, we would have solved the cases eventually. But we were bound by routine and regulations, as is necessary in any organized body of men, whereas a freelancer like Holmes went his own way, and often was able to cut straight through to the solution. Then again we of the CID had to find the sort of evidence that would stand up in court. All Holmes had to do was point an accusing finger, intone in that high, squeaky, annoying voice of his, “There’s your culprit, Lestrade,” and he was done with it, leaving it for us to gather together, if we could, the details that would actually make the case.

  It might surprise the reader to know that Holmes did not solve every case he undertook, although you could never tell that from the writings of his amanuensis and companion Dr. Watson. Often, and this might come as an even bigger surprise, after Holmes gave up on a case, we at Scotland Yard, with our plodding, as he would say unimaginative, methods, managed to work our way through to a solution. And when I say he gave up on a case I don’t mean to suggest that he threw up his hands and admitted that he was baffled. Oh, no. Not Holmes. It would be more like, “Well, now that I’ve pointed you in the right direction, Lestrade, I’ll be off. Have to consult with the King of Norway on a matter of grave national importance, don’t you know.”

  If you were to ask me, I would say that Holmes’s greatest gift was his ability to make pronouncements that sounded as if he knew what he was doing, whether he did or whether he didn’t. Even when he didn’t have the slightest idea in—in a blue moon—as to what had actually transpired in a given case, no more than what we poor coppers did, he was never at a loss for something to say, and it was always something that made it sound like he knew something as we didn’t.

  Let’s take the case that I am going to call “The Case of the Corpulent Plutocrat,” when I publish the first volume of my memoirs—Lestrade of the Yard, as I plan to call it—in a year or so.

  Wadlington Skitherbiggins (pronounced “Wiggins”), the banker, was found dead in the parlor of his home on Fortinbras Court near the Embankment. A portly man—no, to be honest he had passed portly some time before and was headed toward obese—with mutton-chop whiskers, he was dressed in blue-white and gold motley. He lay in a grotesque heap on the floor and had a sword, of the sort known as a fencing saber, run through his neck from side to side. Some sort of small wooden stock had been fastened about his neck and, in going through the victim’s neck, the sword penetrated both sides of that ridiculous-looking contraption
. A vile-smelling cheroot cigar sat half-smoked in a stand-alone ashtray by what would have been his side were he still standing. I was assured by his butler that motley was not his usual attire, nor did he normally go about with a wooden stock in place of a cravat, or a sword thrust through his neck.

  Just as I was settling down to question the housemaid, Dr. Sempleman, the police surgeon, arrived to examine the body, and Mr. Sherlock Holmes arrived to poke his long nose once more into police business. He began by staring at the body from one side and tapping his nose, and then crossing over to stare from the other side and pulling at his ear. When he had enough of that, he commenced crawling about on the floor and picking up bits of fluff and cat hair and the like and putting them into these small envelopes which he carried about, and which I believe he had made special because I have never seen their like used by anybody else for any purpose whatsoever.

  “What do the servants have to say, Lestrade?” he asked upon arising from the floor and dusting off the knees of his trousers.

  “Very little, Mr. Holmes,” I told him. “They were not here when the murder occurred, having been given the afternoon off by their employer.”