The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (23 page)

which means simply: “Enter through the Vishnu outside; Leave by the Ganesh inside.”

If not a full explanation, at least it provided a clue that exiting had something to do with a statue of Ganesh inside. Holmes looked around. He was alone. The old man had taken the opportunity of his distraction to disappear. The opening was still there.

“At that moment, I chose to enter, knowing full well that I might be wrong, that I did not know with any certainty how I would escape if the opening closed above me, but knowing also that I had been through narrow escapes before, and that my brain had at the last moment saved me.”

He peered into the abyss, then lowered his feet into it and slowly let go. He fell only a short distance onto a dirt floor. He could still see the moon in the sky through the opening above. He was now in some sort of pit. A large statue of the god Ganesh stood inside where he had entered. Holmes smiled at him. Then the sky above him disappeared. The opening had closed, and he heard the idol of Vishnu moving back to its earlier location.

Holmes peered into the darkness. There was a corridor in front of him, at the end of which he could see a small light flickering. All else was darkness. He walked slowly towards the light. The corridor was wide, and the ceiling high enough for him to walk without bending over, though he could touch it if he extended his arm upwards. The air was damp and stale.

As he approached, he could see that the light emanated from a small tuki, or oil lamp, placed on the floor well ahead of him. Beside it, as if asleep, was the figure of a man. As he neared, he saw that it was Levi, alive or dead he did not know, but he was there amidst untold treasures—gold, jewels, precious stones, sculptures, and images of every sort—strewn everywhere, all sparkling in the flickering flame of the lamp. There was no one else.

When he got close, Holmes realised that Levi was in a deep sleep, but breathing slowly and comfortably. In front of him was a large sheaf of papers. Holmes was amused with his scholarly dedication, for rather than worry about finding his exit, he had begun to describe and record what he saw. The sheets that he had filled were well over fifty, and he had fallen asleep with exhaustion, his pen still in hand.

Holmes took a moment to examine what he saw. There were treasures, to be sure, everywhere, jewellery, coins, images, manuscripts in abundance. But his eye was immediately taken aback by a skeleton seated on a throne, covered in now crumbling attire, a gold tiara on its skull. This was presumably the ancient king Dharmadeva, who had entered never to return, eloquent testimony to the difficulty of exiting alive. Taking the lamp, he examined the walls and floor of the room for any indication of a hidden opening. He found nothing, save the bones of others who had wandered in but had not been able to exit.

As he finished his preliminary examination, Levi stirred and awoke. Holmes went over to him.

“‘Ah, my dear Kaul! How good to see you! I must have fallen asleep. How clever of you! When did you arrive?”

“Only a few moments ago,” said Holmes, “but I must tell you frankly that I am most anxious to test my idea of how to exit.”

Holmes explained to him that the Maharajah had summoned him and by what reasoning he had been able to follow him, taking the inscription on his desk as his chief clue. Holmes’s tone of voice was one of irritation, for he made it clear that his quest had inconvenienced them all, even possibly costing them their lives.

Levi smiled and stood up. “You need not worry, Monsieur Kaul. I am not nearly as brave as you. I am but a simple scholar, and I never take large risks. You see, I was almost sure how to leave before I entered. Granted, I took some chance, but I was very certain. I have already been out twice this very night. The air in this small space is limited, and I would have been asphyxiated by now. But look, I have completed a preliminary inventory of what is here—there are over one hundred ancient sculptures alone, and the manuscripts number in the hundreds. Just a few more notes and we shall leave—in time for me to greet Henri, the Prince of Orleans.”

Levi spoke the last few words with a grin, and Holmes had no recourse but to wait until he had finished his tasks. As he wrote, he continued to speak: “There is a third person of importance here with us, Monsieur Kaul, the illustrious king Dharmadeva, who sits there, dead for almost fifteen hundred years. I examined his remains very carefully. He was murdered, Monsieur Kaul, but before he died he wrote out his own account of what had transpired. It is a long tale of intrigue, but more of that on our way back.”

Levi pointed to a manuscript of birch bark that lay near his papers. He then carefully packed his notes and the manuscript, and then, taking the lamp, he motioned to Holmes to follow down the corridor whence they had come. As they approached the end, Levi took from his pocket a large metal key and placed it firmly in the right hand of the large statue of Ganesh that Holmes had seen when he entered.

“The key!” exclaimed Levi. “Another lucky find. But any long object would work.”

Loud reverberations were heard, and the sky appeared in an opening above their heads. Levi motioned Holmes forwards and, standing on the shoulders of Ganesh, he pulled himself up through hole. Levi followed quickly. Within seconds, they stood breathing the fresh early-morning air. The opening from which they had exited had disappeared without a trace into the temple wall.

It was just dawn, and the sun was about to rise. Nepal was covered by a thick silver mist. Unnoticed in it, they made their way back to the Prime Minister’s palace, which they reached just as the mist burned off in the sun. On the way, Levi explained his discoveries.

“You see, Monsieur Kaul, I had available to me the entire text of the inscription now, due to the excavations that had been performed. King Dharmadeva’s own writing clears up many of the difficulties. This enabled me to translate to the end. It also enabled me to read a new beginning.”

In his last few words, peculiar in their intent, Holmes realised how Levi had learned what he knew, and how he had known how to escape from the abyss beneath the temple, for he had guessed the same just before entering the treasure house.

“You mean that the entire inscription is also what the ancients called a
rama shabda
, a composition that can be read in two directions, one that, therefore, can also be read from right to left. I surmised this, just as I entered,” said Holmes.

“Indeed, Monsieur, that is precisely what I mean. It came to me as I worked at my desk. So excited did I become that I left without saying anything to my poor wife. Nor did I register it in my notes. This inscription is a brilliant work, written by a poet who had complete knowledge of the Sanscrit poetic system. Read in the ordinary way, beginning at the left and reading to the right, one has one reading. Reading it in reverse gives you a totally different but completely coherent, if not always grammatical, composition. Almost no one knows this, of course, since the beginning of the inscription had been buried for centuries. Read in the usual way, from left to right, one had the public account of events. Read from right to left, from the end forwards, one had the private account of what had happened. . . . and the secret of how to leave the treasury.”

“And who was the poet who composed this and how did he come to know what he knew?”

“We do not know his name so he remains unknown. In answer to your second question, he was obviously someone well placed at the court, someone who knew the royal family intimately and could observe them closely without arousing their suspicion. Obviously of the Brahmanic caste, he may have been a teacher in the royal palace. The first line of his work immediately struck me: Enter by the Vishnu outside; leave by the Ganesh inside. It was a clue to the meaning of the whole and was was all I needed to have the courage to enter. Once there, I saw lying in the dust at the feet of Ganesh a great key. I placed it in the space in his hand made for it, and suddenly the way out appeared. I had tested the meaning of the line and, seeing that it worked, I began the examination of this secret treasury. It was almost immediately that I noticed the dead figure of Dharmadeva seated on the small throne to one side. He had in his hands a birch bark manuscript, which I immediately took and read. It gives in detail his own account of what happened at the court, and how he found himself trapped in the treasury.”

Holmes listened as Levi gave his account.

“‘Dharmadeva was a king whose sole interest was in justice and in non-injury to living things. As he grew older, he became in his thought closer and closer to Buddhism. He refused to send his army on missions of conquest and began shifting much of his government’s resources to the building of temples and monasteries. His interest in the gods began to waiver and he grew estranged from his wife, Rajyavati, whom he had once loved but now treated with respectful distance. Rajyavati, of a different character from that of her husband, had a love of royal power that was not shared by her husband. One day, Dharmadeva called her and told her that he had decided to give up the throne and announce his abdication. He had decided to become a monk and to enter a monastery. He expected her and their son, Manadeva, to follow him in this. Controlling her anger at his words, Rajyavati gave her consent, but decided secretly that Dharmadeva must be removed. With Dharmadeva dead, Manadeva would become king, and she would rule through her son, who followed her every whim. She took as her chance the day when the king walked in the royal temple garden and visited the treasury to bring the annual gift of gold to the god Vishnu. She requested that she and their son be allowed to enter the treasury since this would be the last visit before they entered the monastery. Once inside the treasury, the unsuspecting king revealed to them the secret of how to leave. He showed them the key. Manadeva then hit his unsuspecting father from behind on the head, rendering him unconscious. They left him for dead and returned to the palace. Dharmadeva awoke to find himself alone and without the key. Realising that his fate was sealed, he wrote as fast as he could an account of what had happened, an account that was unknown and unread until now.”

Levi stopped for a moment as if in deep thought. “And, as luck would have it,” he said, “Manadeva had dropped the key on his way out. Had he known that it was there, Dharmadeva could have excaped his fate. Too fearful to return to the scene of patricide without the key, Manadeva issued a royal edict forbidding entrance to the treasure house.”

“An incredible tale,” Holmes remarked.

“Yes. I shall write it up in the
Journal Asiatique
and send you a copy.”

“I shall enjoy it immensely,” said Holmes.

By now he had reached the palace. He bade good-bye to M. Levi, and returned to his hotel.

The next morning a group of soldiers arrived from the Maharajah’s palace, deputed by him to accompany Holmes to the Indian border. As he had promised, Gorashar came part of the way. They left around ten and a short time later they reached the top of the Chandragiri pass. Holmes looked down and bade good-bye to the valley of Katmandu and to the dear friend who had brought him there. He then turned his gaze southwards, towards the plains of India.

I found myself at this moment gazing at Holmes’s drawing.

“Who would have thought, Holmes, that so much meaning could be contained in this temple, and so easily hidden from us?”

“Light and word had come together in this temple, Watson. The words of the inscription were registered in its astronomy, if you will, in its relation to the sun and moon and other stars. The people of the twilight were the guardians of the relation, there to make sure through the millennia that the minute adjustments necessary to the preservation of its meaning were made. Indeed, these people, the lowliest of outcasts, made the system work and kept well its secrets. Levi and I saw what is only a small fragment of a vast machine. But enough, Watson, it is late. The tale is told, such as it is.”

Holmes suggested a walk before bed, and we went out into the early spring night. He said no more about the French savant, but instead spoke rapidly about his latest enthusiasm, the polyphony of Orlando di Lasso. Then we talked of many other things, none of which merit recounting here. It was almost light when we returned, and as we mounted the steps to our quarters, Holmes quoted two lines of the greatest of Italian poets:

Così andammo infino alla lumiera,

Parlando cose che il tacere è bello.

AN ENVOY TO LHASA

I
N THE PAGES WHICH
I
HAVE DEVOTED TO THE ADVENTURES
of Sherlock Holmes, I have often alluded to the contradiction between the impeccable order of his logical faculties and the extraordinary disorder that he allowed to reign in the world of physical objects immediately about him. Such thoughts again crossed my mind one morning as I looked up from my book and watched my friend slouched low in his favourite easy chair, his eyes half closed, his mind apparently far distant. A year had passed since his return to London, and he was in the grip of another of the long melancholic fits that still seized him from time to time.

It was now the spring of 1895, a day in late March to be exact, and as the rare London sun began to pour through our sitting room window, I again looked up and cast a glance around our quarters. As my eyes moved over them, I was struck this time not only by Holmes’s continued untidiness, but by his ability to maintain such by now familiar disarray almost unchanged over many years. It was as if in the depths of his boredom he had somehow managed to cultivate a hidden order within the clutter.

As usual, his papers, chemicals, and test tubes were scattered everywhere. His cigars were still in the coal scuttle, and his tobacco was tucked into the toe of one of his Persian slippers. There were some new elements in the overall design, however, added in my absence no doubt during his more disconsolate moments. One of his recently acquired criminal relics, what appeared to be a large, sharp tooth, had now invaded the butter dish. A few bullet holes in the form of a “P” and an “M” had been added to the wooden mantel, this time presumably in honour of the present prime minister, and his unanswered correspondence was still pinned to the wall by a knife. It was only when I looked at this last object more closely, however, that I noticed another alteration, seemingly slight at first but important enough in the entire picture. The knife on the wall, originally an old jack-knife, had been replaced by a different instrument, what appeared to be, from where I was seated, a knife of an entirely novel character, one with a golden handle. A quick glance about the room informed me that the jack-knife had been transferred to the breakfast table, where it had been thrust to the hilt into an open jar of marmalade.