The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (31 page)

It was a long and lonely walk. Upon my arrival there, I learned casually in the market place of the reported death of a young Englishman named Clement Moorcroft. His body and papers had been found by a group of Lhasa traders led by a merchant named Dharma Ratna, who came from Katmandu. Except for the gold knife, which eventually was returned to me, he turned everything over to Colonel Gillespie, the leader of the British military detachment that had chased the Farouk gang into Tibet. Gillespie had all the dead buried there at the sight of the tragedy. I returned to Amdo and the only people who knew of my former existence.

I had been gone only a month, but terrible changes had taken place. An epidemic of cholera had wiped out most of the village. Gyerong, my friend, was dead. Only his wife and one of his children, the boy Pasang, survived. They were weak and close to starvation. It took me several days to bring them back from the brink, but within a week of my careful ministrations they had regained much of their strength, and were out of danger.

Because of my success with Pasang and his mother, I soon found myself treating others who had survived the epidemic. I told the headman of the district of my intention to stay indefinitely, and he welcomed me, saying that I should become the husband of Pasang’s mother. Pasang’s mother and I readily assented to this, since a great affection had developed between us, and I settled down as a family man and sheep herder in Amdo.

For over thirty years I led this life. Pasang grew up into a strong, handsome, young man who became a soldier in the Tibetan army. His mother and I had several children together, but late in our lives she gave birth to a child who reminded us so much of Gyerong that we named him after my dead friend. We called him Tenzing Gyerong. Tenzing was a special child from the first, remarkable in his intelligence and physical precociousness. He was a great gift as I began to near old age.

During the same year as Tenzing’s birth, we learned that the Grand Lama, the so-called Dalai Lama, had died, and the search for his successor had begun.

As the reader may know already, it is the belief of all Tibetans that the soul of the departed lama reappears in the body of another, usually a young child, who must be found and identified. This child then is designated as the new Grand Lama. In this case, the search was an extensive one, but discouragingly difficult for the monks assigned to the task. Time and time again the monks thought that they had found the Grand Lama’s successor only to be disappointed in the last stages of their search. And so several years passed and the Grand Lama’s successor had yet to be found.

One day, three years after the search had begun, the committee of monks appeared in our village. There were three of them, old and senior monks of the Gelugpa sect. They came because they had heard rumors of the very bright child Tenzing who lived somewhere in Amdo. They came to our house and told us immediately of their mission. Tenzing saw them as he was playing with his friends, and ran towards them, smiling as if in recognition. He suddenly seemed to all of us older than his four years. We went inside together and the interview began. The monks had come with some of the personal possessions of the previous Grand Lama—his quill pen, a small silver bell, a manuscript of the
mangalasutra,
and a small silver statue of the Tathagata. Tenzing, as if recognising them, said that they were his. Increasingly encouraged by the results of the interview, the monks continued to ply our little son with all manner of questions. He appeared to give adequate answers to all of them. Finally, they asked to see his feet, to see if the infant shoes of the previous lama would fit. The monks looked at us as they took out the velvet slippers and told us that the previous lama had very narrow feet, unlike a Tibetan’s. The senior monk looked at me and said with a smile, “The Tibetan foot is flat on the ground from end to end, and has three equally projecting toes. It is as square as a brick, but look at these shoes. They would never fit such a foot. The previous Grand Lama had what we call
ar-ya pu-ta,
or the foot of the Aryan, like the Buddha. Let us see if these slippers fit the feet of your son.” Tenzing showed his feet, and the monk slipped the shoes on his feet. They fit perfectly, and at this moment the monks rose as one and bowed to Tenzing, who had passed all the tests. The boy was asked to leave the room, and there ensued a long conversation with his mother and me over the time and circumstances of the child’s birth. The monks then went outside to talk to other villagers and to survey the landscape to see if it fit with what the last Grand Lama had said would be the place of his rebirth. They returned in an hour to tell us that they believed that Tenzing was the next Grand Lama. So sure were they that they would dispense with the usual formalities and ask us to return to Lhasa with them. The ritual and legal authentification of Tenzing as the new Grand Lama in Lhasa took but a short time, so strong was the evidence, and the installation ceremonies took place shortly thereafter.

And so from a small village in Amdo, where I had lived so much of my life, I was transported to the Potala, and to a powerful position within the Tibetan hierarchy as the Grand Lama’s father. The regent appointed to serve during the child’s minority, an old man named Rinchung, died within two years, and I was chosen to succeed him as regent.

By then I was thoroughly familiar with the inner workings of the Tibetan government, and the conflicting desires of monk and layman, of aristocrat, peasant, and nomad. And it was then, too, that the first threats of foreign penetration began to affect the well-being of my adopted country. The British to the south insisted that their merchants be allowed to import the most abhorrent of foreign goods—liquor, opium, and firearms. I was able to block much of this, but the British became increasingly threatening. I began to see in the new overtures from the Russian and Japanese governments the only effective counterweight to British power. I soon realised, however, that the goals of these governments were equally if not far more dangerous to Tibetan interests and to Tibetan independence, for they themselves were anxious to remove British power from Asia and to divide the spoils, including Tibet, between themselves. Only the Chinese were no longer of concern, for despite the presence of the
amban
in Lhasa, their own growing internal weakness led me to disregard them, except when I found them useful.

I thus found myself in the difficult position of preserving Tibetan independence by avoiding embroilment in the rivalries of the Great Powers. I made a decision early on to educate my son in such a way that he would be aware of these problems when he came of age. In this way, I would leave Tibet with a leader who could act wisely during the great storms of the next century, storms that would sooner or later engulf even Tibet.

The first great crisis of my regency came in 1891. The Grand Lama was still young, and I was already eighty-one. The Russian agent, Dorjiloff, whom I had mistakenly allowed to enter Tibet, had ingratiated himself with a large number of monks, and Yamamoto, an agent of Imperial Japan, had emerged as a powerful influence among an ambitious group of aristocratic Tibetans. They wished to form an alliance with the Japanese to remove China as a political power and to restore Tibetan hegemony over large areas that had been incorporated into eastern China. Considering the political and military power of Tibet at that time, the latter was a silly fantasy, but it so entranced the ruling nobles in Lhasa that I had difficulty at times in reining them in. I had placed trusted associates in positions of authority within the army, including my adopted son Pasang, whom I had sent to Kham to pacify and regularise the border with the Chinese. But rude, pompous, and unaware of the consequences of their actions, some of the leaders of the Tibetan army on their own attacked a group of British merchants who had crossed the border. They had been encouraged in this I later learned by Dorjiloff and Yamamoto. The army’s action violated the treaty of Yarlung, and it not only raised a British protest but brought about a crisis of authority within the Tibetan government. The army officers had acted without my knowledge or permission. I had them immediately arrested and executed for insubordination. To counter Yamamoto’s influence I had Dorjiloff brought in honour to the Potala, where he was installed as a supreme teacher of philosophy. I did this at great risk, for it meant inordinate Russian influence, but it also meant that my agents could watch him more closely. I decided to ignore the British protest until I had successfully dealt with these two agents. I surmised that, despite the seriousness with which the raid on its merchants would be viewed in the English Parliament, the British government would not invade or attack us until the situation had reached a much more serious stage.

In this my supposition proved to be correct. The British were angry, but they temporised and decided to send a mission in the person of William Manning. With his arrival, the situation became very dangerous. When Dorjiloff and Yamamoto learned that the British had sent a diplomatic mission to Lhasa, they were greatly disappointed, for they had hoped for a military attack. They decided to kill Manning, disfigure his body, and announce that Tibet was now in open defiance of the British Government. This would result almost certainly in a British attack on Tibet. Learning of their plot, I had Manning brought to a secret location, where he was put under heavy guard. The house that he was placed in was owned by Pasang, my foster son, and his wife, the princess Pema. Except for these two no one knew Manning’s whereabouts.

Yamamoto and Dorjiloff were foiled for a time, but soon their agents learned where Manning was. Still, his guard was so strong that he was in little danger until events took a disastrous turn. Not long after the news that Pasang, the husband of the princess Pema, had been killed in battle in Kham, Manning confessed to the princess Pema his love for her and proposed marriage. Somehow this avowal became known publicly, and there was a general outcry. Dorjiloff and Yamamoto both came to me to denounce the presence of a British agent in Lhasa and to make sure that I knew that large crowds had gathered around the Jor-Khang to protest the union of a Tibetan woman with an Englishman. I issued a decree of silence, ordering that neither Manning nor anything concerning him could be uttered. I had no choice but to put Manning in a cell in the Potala, where I made sure that he was well cared for. He was kept there for several months, and the memory of his presence began to fade. In the meantime several letters came from the British Government inquiring about him. I ordered that no reply be made to any British demands. Suddenly, however, there appeared in Lhasa another diplomat, this time a Norwegian explorer and naturalist by the name of Hallvard Sigerson, another with a secret mission. I refused to see him formally, but learned that he had come with the specific purpose of finding Manning. It was also clear that this mission would be the last before the British sent a military expedition. I now had two British diplomats to protect from Dorjiloff and Yamamoto.

I decided to act in a way which was filled with danger and risk but if successful, one that could protect Tibet and my own authority as regent. Under no circumstances would I permit the death of William Manning. Indeed, I realised that he must leave Tibet at the earliest opportunity. To get him out of Tibet alive, however, I had to convince Dorjiloff and Yamamoto that he was dead. I issued a secret communiqué, but one that purposely reached their ears the moment it was issued, that Manning had been tried and sentenced to die by a Tibetan tribunal and that in accordance with Tibetan law he had been sent to the Garden of Punishment. There he would remain until dead. They were informed that they would be allowed to identify his body if they so chose.

I had Manning immediately transported to the Garden and put in the torturous bamboo cage, one of the great horrors of the Tibetan imagination. I had no intention of having him die, however, and after several days, when I was told by my agents that he was beginning to suffer unbearably, I had him removed in the night and Sackville-Grimes, a notorious criminal of London who had found his way to Lhasa, put in his place. Grimes had been mortally wounded in a fight, was near death, and bore an uncanny resemblance to Manning. In my desire to make sure that Dorjiloff and Yamamoto were convinced of the identity of the dead man, I remembered an old piece of clothing belonging to my father, William Moorcroft, that bore the initials WM on its buttons. I had Sackville-Grimes clothed in this coat. Manning was spirited away to a secret location kept by my good friend, the Newar merchant, Gorashar.

But my plans went awry. I was notified during the night that Sackville-Grimes had died. Rastrakoff, the agent of Dorjiloff, had been sent to verify Manning’s death, but had been overpowered and taken prisoner by Sigerson. Sigerson had returned to the house of the princess Pema, where he already held Yamamoto. Although I had good hope of deceiving Yamamoto and Dorjiloff with the dead Sackville-Grimes, I doubted if Sigerson had been fooled, and I had no idea if he would make his discovery public. I decided to act quickly. Dorjiloff, Yamamoto, and Sigerson must leave Tibet at once. I issued immediate orders for their arrests. Dorjiloff was found in his cell in the Potala and was subdued only with a great struggle. Yamamoto, however, had already been turned over to the Chinese
amban
for his criminal record in Shanghai, and Sigerson had disappeared from his quarters.

I ordered a search of the city for Sigerson, but he was nowhere to be found. I decided to direct the search myself, even if it took all night. This Scandinavian emissary had acted with remarkable resourcefulness, and I realised then that this was no ordinary agent, and no ordinary naturalist, as he claimed to be.

It was just before nightfall that I received a message from Gorashar, the Newar merchant who had been a friend for many years: “‘Sigerson’” will come to you. I have given him the gold knife.” I was astounded at the note, for it meant that Gorashar had found Sigerson to be worthy of the greatest trust.