The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (26 page)

“It has been said, Watson, that no stranger can enter Tibet without the knowledge of the Tibetan Government. And yet, in travelling with this large caravan, I entered unobserved. I was not questioned at the various checkposts, and at almost every point I was allowed to proceed without difficulty. Only on one occasion was I noticed, and that was just outside Shigatse, the last post before Lhasa. I produced the documents of the Norwegian naturalist Hallvard Sigerson, and stated that I was on a scientific mission to collect botanical and zoological specimens from the Tibetan plateau. I passed through without delay and continued on with my Kashmiri friends. The Tibetans appeared to have a high regard for Scandinavians, and regarded them without the suspicion that they reserved for British citizens and those of the major powers. My special status as an emissary of the British Government I was to reveal only to the authorities in the Potala, and I kept it hidden from the police at the border. Having passed through this last post, I was finally in Tibet, and as I gazed around me, I felt a singular elation, no doubt intensified by the great heat of the sun and the high altitude.”

The Tibetan plateau appeared to Holmes as it has appeared to so many travellers: a vast expanse of empty land, beautiful and severe, and at times forbidding. Fierce winds blew, and the sun scorched him and his companions, blistering the skin, almost blinding them as it shone from the high vault of cloudless sky that seemed unending. The air was thin and deficient at the highest altitudes, and the way therefore exhausting. Holmes survived—miraculously, he thought at times.

When they reached the valley of the Brahmaputra, Holmes had seen the worst of the trip. Though its elevation is almost twelve thousand feet, this valley in which lies the capital city of Tibet was filled with vegetation, and he travelled with far greater ease. One morning, shortly after they had resumed their journey beyond Gyantse, the city of Lhasa appeared—or rather, the Potala—that immense edifice that houses the Grand Lama—first became visible in the morning sun atop the hill on which it sits north of the city, an unexpected piece of Oriental splendour. It was in stark contrast to the city of Lhasa itself, which soon appeared at the end of a broad avenue lined with large trees, and it was not long before the caravan entered the central bazaar.

“Lhasa, my dear Watson, is no more than a small town, housing only a few thousand inhabitants in its stone houses and narrow lanes. Its appearance is better from afar, for closer inspection reveals a city covered with soot and dirt, with no orderly plan. The streets are full of dogs, some growling and gnawing bits of hide which lie about in profusion, emitting a strong charnel house odour. Despite this rather gloomy appearance, my first impression was, overall, a good one, for the poverty and primitive way of life notwithstanding, the people were friendly and courteous, varied and colorful, and the city was filled with the activity of an amiable, even innocent, humanity.”

Holmes was taken first to a small lodge where foreign guests were housed before they met their official hosts. It was from here that he made his initial attempts to make contact with the Tibetan Government. His papers were politely accepted by an official of the Potala, but he was informed that he would have to wait until the Regent himself reviewed his documents before his work could begin. It was soon apparent that Tibetan officialdom, although now aware of his mission, had not yet agreed to receive him. When he asked to meet with Mr. Manning, the official checked a list of foreign visitors and duly informed him that no one by that name had ever visited Lhasa. He was most cordial but firm, and Holmes knew then that his work would take extraordinary patience.

In the delay, he was afforded the time to explore the city and to begin private inquiries about Manning, who now, it seemed, had disappeared without a trace. In trying to locate him, Holmes spent the early days of his stay combing every inch of the old Lhasa. At its centre lies the most sacred of Tibetan temples, the so-called Jor-khang, a most ornate edifice, heavy with incense, and filled with monks, pilgrims, and the sacred idols of a superstitious people. Around it and in the adjacent alleys are the shops, residences, and offices of much of the Tibetan Government. These are all housed in grey stone buildings, with which Holmes soon became thoroughly familiar.

Those first days in Tibet also taught Holmes things he had not learned in the countless books that he had perused in Italy. Like all things human, the Tibetan character is complex, with much that is good in it, perhaps more than there is in ours. But there is a dark side as well, of which they are very much aware—of anger, greed, cruelty, lust, and mental as well as physical disease. The religious system is a highly developed one, with spiritual attainments that far surpass our meagre efforts. But the Tibetan life, despite these accomplishments, is for the majority of extreme difficulty and poverty. Tibetans are farmers and herders ruled by a small priestly class and an aristocracy who set the rules by which the majority lives. These rules are extremely harsh and resemble the criminal law of our own mediaeval epoch. The rack, the ordeal, various ancient tortures such as disembowelling, dismemberment, public executions, are all practised for the most heinous of crimes. The harshness of these rules appears to have little effect on the criminal classes, for crime is widespread and gangs of thieves and murderers roam the countryside, giving grief to villagers, merchants, and priests alike. No trade route is truly safe, and the large caravans that travel between the Tibetan plateau and the Indian plains are usually well armed.

“Despite its isolation and reputation for impenetrability,” said Holmes,” I soon became aware that Lhasa housed a number of people from other parts of the world. There were a variety of merchants, mainly Kashmiri, Nepalese, and Chinese, for the Tibetans in Lhasa are loath to engage in business on their own. There were also a number of Europeans. Some of these were engaged in honest activity and researches concerning Tibetan belief and practice. Among them were Sandor Halevy, the great student of Tibetan literature, and Marie le Carré, an exuberant and eccentric disciple of Buddhism from Provence. But others had bribed their way in with the collusion of corrupt officials. I quickly spotted Sackville-Grimes, the most dangerous of arsonists, Platon Gilbert, one of the cruelest murderers of modern France, the infamous German counterfeiter, Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, and finally, Sviadek, notorious as the Gallician cannibal. These and others were there as long as either money was to be made or they were protected by the Tibetan Government, petty criminals and quacks, most of them, who lacked the means or the energy to leave and so found themselves to be longtime residents of the so-called Forbidden City. None of these, when interrogated, professed any knowledge of William Manning.”

It was well within his first fortnight that Holmes met Gorashar, the most successful merchant of Lhasa. He was taken to his house by one of the Kashmiri merchants with whom he had travelled from Zanskar. Gorashar was a Newar from Katmandu, a short, dapper, man whose intelligent and impish eyes said at once that he believed in nothing and trusted no one. He welcomed Holmes warmly, offering him a rare Russian cigarette, and Holmes felt at once comfortable in his presence. In the evening Gorashar’s lavish home near the Jor Khang became the site of an elaborate salon which almost all of the peculiar denizens of the city attended. Evenings there included elaborate banquets, punctuated by games of mah-jong and gambling in almost all its varieties, all of which were accompanied by the constant consumption of intoxicants, either in their local manifestation known as
chang
, or in the more exotic varieties that Gorashar was able to import through his agents in St. Petersburg. The air was always thick with the smoke of tobacco and Indian
gunja
, and the ears were often assaulted by a band of Indian musicians from Calcutta who attempted peculiar Oriental renditions of the seductive ditties that one associates with the demi-monde establishments of London and Paris.

“As you might well imagine, Watson, it was not an atmosphere that I found in the least congenial, and were it not for my mission, I would have removed myself at once. It was clear to me, however, that Gorashar’s establishment was more than just a place for an evening’s entertainment. It was, among other things, a feast for the eye of the detective. I found myself constantly drawn to it. The room was filled with the riff-raff of four continents. What a delight, dear Watson. Here, in this large and crowded room in one of the most isolated corners of the globe, there mixed together the most dangerous criminals with the worst mountebanks and pious bewilderers known to the civilised world. Some of them taxed even my powers of observation. Imagine a host of criminals and quacks who had taken on exotic disguises—shaven heads and eyebrows, glass eyes, wigs, long beards, scars, tattoos, fake limbs causing the oddest limps, canes and crutches of exotic manufacture. On several occasions, I sat contemplating the scene before me, wishing that I could have uninterrupted observation. Remote Lhasa, the romantic destination of every middle-class heart in England, had become a cesspool not unlike London, far smaller perhaps, but one with its own poisonous aspects, one in which the profound religious life of the Tibetan people served as the scenic backdrop for the nefarious activities of international roguery. So many who had apparently disappeared from the face of the earth were here, perfecting their disguises in this exotic land before they returned—transformed, they hoped, beyond recognition. And to my delight, neither Scotland Yard, the French
Sûreté,
nor the New York Department of Criminal Investigation had any inkling of their whereabouts.”

I could not help but interrupt Holmes at this point in his story.

“Extraordinary luck, Holmes,” I said laughing, “considering your interest in disguise and charlatanry.”

“It was a room of Cagliostros, Watson, and I add the curious but interesting morsel that, according to some philologians, ‘charlatan’ is the only word that comes into English from the Mongolian and it does that through the Italian language.”

We both laughed heartily, and he continued.

“But of even more importance, Watson, was the fact that Gorashar’s salon was also one of the places where the most important matters of state were transacted. Monk, merchant, secret agent, Tibetan as well as other officials, mixed and made the arrangements that influenced the lives of the Tibetan people, almost all of whom were ignorant of what transpired late into the night in the confines of this one house. No contrast was greater than that of the daily life of the ordinary Tibetan, with its hardships and religious piety, but with its mirthful laughter as well, and the evenings at Gorashar’s, where the piety of the monk, the mysticism of the saint, the integrity of the ruler, and the honesty of the peasant, were often transformed into their dark opposites. One would think that in this atmosphere I would have come upon a clue, a trace, a word slipped into a conversation—even incidentally—about Manning, but there was nothing. This absolute silence paradoxically became the only clue: it was as if a command had been issued on high that even the name ‘Manning’ was not to be uttered. If the silence was absolute, then so must be the fear.”

As the first weeks passed, Holmes’s frustration grew. Yet he knew through his long experience of crime that if he persevered, his very presence in Lhasa would eventually force something to surface. Manning had disappeared completely, and every inquiry in his regard was greeted with a blank stare.

As in so many difficult cases that he had lived through in the past, however, there was a sudden and abrupt change. Events began to move rapidly, so rapidly that within two days he began to see the first dim outline of what had transpired before his arrival and what was about to unfold before him.

The first of these events was most extraordinary. One morning, a curious scene, seemingly unrelated to his mission, led him to the first clue. It was near noon, and he had walked already for almost two hours through the crowded bazaar to the outskirts of the city. A sentry stationed near the city wall prohibited him from venturing any farther and he turned back. The sun was already almost too bright to endure, and he sat for a moment under one of the few nearby trees. At that moment, a large man appeared in front of him, dragging the remains of a dead yak, leaving it to rot only a few yards away. A group of wild street dogs that had followed, ravenously hungry, began greedily gnawing at the abandoned carcass. Suddenly, a large group of vultures gathered in the sky above and descended, their large wings flapping furiously. These obscene creatures, abhorrent in their habits and appearance, began to fight for their rights to the carrion. A battle of loathsome proportions ensued, a battle in which the dogs, smaller in number but no less ferocious, were forced to retreat from the scene by the talons of these demons from the sky. In defeat, however, the wild dogs took their toll: one of the vultures lay mortally wounded, blood flowing from its neck, a strange unearthly noise emanating from its beak. As soon as they had finished with the yak, the other great birds descended on their moribund companion, and in a few minutes had reduced the unfortunate creature to a second pile of bones gleaming in the noonday sun.

It was only then, after the vultures had flown away, that Holmes noticed something stuck to one of the dead vulture’s talons. It had glinted in the sun. He walked over and saw that it was a piece of metal. He tugged it free. It was a brass button, obviously of English manufacture. There were several black threads still attached to it. It bore the letters WM, the initials of William Manning. He placed it in his pocket for later scrutiny. As he turned back towards the city, he found himself staring at the Potala. Only then did he sense how that immense edifice dominated not only the city of Lhasa, but his mission as well. The secret of Manning’s disappearance may lie within its walls, he thought. Eventually, if all else failed, he would have to gain entrance to it and pursue his search within its vast chambers.