The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (43 page)

The present tale remained a series of bizarre and fragmentary references for the longest time. They were conveyed to me between Holmes’s adventures in 1895 and ’96, and I have edited them into one continuous narrative. During this period, Holmes had travelled frequently to the Continent, his now considerable fame having brought him into the employ of kings and other heads of state, and even the Church of Rome. It was during a short gap in his schedule, after the notorious case of Busoni’s daughter, to be exact, that he gave me the portions of the account that enabled me finally to put the story in order.

Holmes’s extensive travels in the Orient for a period of almost three years had led him to contemplate the voyage homewards. His original plan was to begin his last journey in India from Delhi, travel westwards through Rajpootana and Sind, and then board a freighter in Karachi bound for the Mediterranean.

It was in Delhi that he met a Frenchman, one Louis Benoît de Boigne, who was travelling to Rajasthan with his companions: Shiva, his Indian servant boy, and a young Swiss painter, known only at first by the name of Schaumberg. Finding the company congenial, Holmes, still in the guise of Roger Lloyd-Smith, suggested that they travel together for a time. Benoît acquiesced enthusiastically to the suggestion, for he had already made the arrangements for a trip through the desert and thought that the addition of a third member to their party would increase the interest of the journey. Having overextended himself a bit financially in his previous travels, he was happy to have someone share the costs of his latest adventure: a third traveller, he thought, would make little difference to their hosts along the way.

Benoît had prepared a varied route that included the chief cities of Rajpootana—Jaipur, Udaipur, and Jodhpur, and some of the least-known ones, including Jaisalmer, the one farthest west into the desert. Few Europeans had visited this city, and the descriptions of its fabled beauties had led Benoît to make it the final objective of his long journey. Holmes too saw it as his one of his last destinations before going south to Karachi. Little did he know that his visit there would bring him into a chain of events that would threaten to delay indefinitely his return to England.

“Our journey really began once we had outfitted ourselves, Watson,” said Holmes at the beginning of his narration. “In Nizamuddin, just outside the old city of Delhi, we hired two guides who knew the desert well, and, bought our supplies. We were to travel on horseback to Jodhpur. Once there we would continue on by camel for the rest of our journey, for, according to our guides, the desert becomes a sea of shifting dunes once one leaves that city. Our last destination together was to be the city of Hyderabad in Sind, where my companions and I were to part company, they to journey northwards to Lahore, and I south to Karachi, where I planned to board the first ship bound for Europe.”

I interrupted my friend at this point.

“Surely, Holmes, there was more to it. I find it difficult to believe that you chose merely to tag along with these two.”

Holmes grinned. “Your power to see through my accounts has increased, I see. You are quite right, Watson. I could easily, and preferably perhaps, made the journey myself. I had had little luck with travelling companions either on the high seas or in the mountains and often found myself bored into the dullest of conversations. But in this case I was intrigued immediately by the discrepancy between their account of themselves and what I could observe. Here were two European gentlemen travelling through India, one a painter, the other a writer, or, as he put it, a diarist. Their story as they told it was quite unremarkable. They had met casually in Marseilles as they boarded the steamship that was to take them to Bombay. Finding each other compatible, they decided to journey together and to produce a book of travels, one of the kind that now commonly adorn the bookshelves of the English middle class.

“On the face of it, there was no contradiction. Their behaviour was impeccable, and their relations with the native Indians extraordinarily proper. Both were well attired, spoke English tolerably well, and did precisely what they said they did. The young painter, Schaumberg, spent every morning setting up his easel at his newly chosen site, and returned only at midday. The other, Benoît, rose before dawn and wrote until they were ready to travel.

“So much for the untrained eye, Watson. But for him who not only sees but also observes, there was much more. And here, dear doctor, I must say that I saw much that did not agree with the account that my new acquaintances had given of themselves. Their story was meant to mislead, and though I had no evidence as yet, I felt a sinister motive lurking beyond their quite innocent demeanour.”

Schaumberg Holmes judged to be in his early twenties. He was of average height and very thin, almost gaunt, but wiry, with his hair cut quite short. He walked with a slight limp, the only physical infirmity Holmes observed. The limp he judged to be the result of a wound of some sort, and later this was confirmed when he saw a scar that was clearly the result of a recent bullet wound. His eyes were blue, and he avoided direct contact with them, as if there were something he was trying to hide.

Benoît was much older, in his early forties, not quite as slender, but taller, almost exactly Holmes’s height. He had deep scars on his hands and one long one on his neck. His English was almost perfect except for a slight French accent that occurred from time to time, which he suppressed with great effort. He spoke softly and appeared extraordinarily calm, but his tranquillity seemed to Holmes to cover a deep tension that might erupt at any moment.

“Both men were muscular, their faces worn and hardened by long periods in the sun,” said Holmes. “Their military carriage was therefore unmistakable. Their hands, strong and rough, spoke of the same life of heavy physical activity. There was nothing of the painter or writer in the body of either. And so, Watson, from the time that I first heard their story, I knew them to be something other than what they represented themselves to be.”

For the first few days, Holmes continued, their trip was uneventful enough. They stopped at the end of the first day just outside Bharatpur, then continued on to Amber, where they spent the night in the great palace. In the morning they greeted the Maharajah of Jaipur in the Rambagh Palace, one of the truly magnificent domiciles of the Subcontinent, indeed of all of Asia. Like the succeeding monarchs whom they visited, the Maharajah of Jaipur was exceedingly courteous, British in his education, and most forthcoming in his generosity. He invited them to stay as long as they wished, but they begged leave after a few days and continued on their journey south towards Udaipur, stopping in the kingdoms of Kotah and Bundi and visiting the fabled wooden city of Tonk.

“It was in Tonk that I had my first inkling that something was newly amiss with my travelling companions. I must say, Watson, that despite the natural beauty that surrounded us, I was already becoming a bit bored. We were by now six days out of Delhi, out of touch with the world, and had arrived tired and hungry after a full day’s journey in the hot sun. Tonk appeared towards evening, and we pitched our tents just on its outskirts. While the servants were preparing our food, we walked into the town, which lay about a half mile from our camp.”

By this time, Holmes and his companions had become accustomed to being importuned by a variety of touts, mainly small boys in the employ of merchants in the city, who surrounded one, hoping to lead one into the greedy, wretched, hands of some thieving shopkeeper. But here in Tonk the expected touts failed to materialise and the three entered the city almost unnoticed. The town was silent, its streets and arcades empty of any persons, and only after they saw the entrance to the central mosque did they realise that they had entered at the time of evening prayer, and that the entire population was on its knees facing Mecca.

“Tonk, unlike the other kingdoms of Rajpootana, Watson,” said Holmes, “is Mahometan, and is alone in this respect in the vast deserts in which a militant Hindooism holds sway. It is, unlike the other marble and stone cities of the Rajpoot, entirely constructed of wood, ornately carved and painted in greens, golds and reds, and a variety of other hues.”

As they stood staring at the Palace, Schaumberg took leave of his companions. He said that he wished to wander alone through the town in order to sketch, and that he would meet them back at the camp. Benoît and Holmes sat for a few minutes under one of the arcades, delighting in this mirage of a kingdom. They then began to wend their way back to the main gate of the town. It was with some surprise, therefore, that Holmes saw Schaumberg stealthily entering a small house not far from the mosque. He said nothing to Benoît, for he thought that it would serve no purpose. They returned to the camp towards sunset, and retired immediately after a light supper.

Towards midnight, Holmes awoke to voices in the dark. Benoît and Schaumberg were seated by a small fire, trying to keep their voices down but without appreciable success.

“We have to get rid of him,” said Schaumberg. “We should never have allowed him to come along. It was a big mistake, I tell you. Captain Fantôme is upset that we have a stranger in our midst, or so his agent told me in Tonk this evening. They are already investigating who he is. If he finds out what we’re up to—”

“Don’t be so jumpy, and be quiet or you’ll waken him, you fool,” said Benoît excitedly but in a whisper. “I told you he will be with us through to Sind. He is harmless enough. His presence is necessary. He is an Englishman—that keeps the Maharajahs happy and unsuspecting. They see and hear him, and they see and hear nothing else, least of all us. And he gives them medicines for their ills. How many times do you think we can make this trip without discovery? No, I will be the one to decide when he goes, if he goes before Hyderabad. And to hell with Fantôme! That bloody crew in the desert will take orders from me! When we arrive in Jaisalmer, then we shall decide, only then.”

“A most interesting conversation, Holmes, if I say so myself,” I interjected. “You must have been elated at the developing mystery.”

“Well put, my dear Watson. I am no lover of landscape for its own sake, as you know. And the Maharajahs and their palaces are a bit trying after a few days. Their pieties as well as their crimes are all well known. There is nothing to observe or deduce about them beyond the commonplaces that pertain to royalty. But, with this conversation in my ear, I smiled in the darkness of my tent. My two companions then retired for the night, and I heard their heavy, peaceful breathing as I too fell asleep in the brisk desert cold.”

When Holmes awoke at dawn, Schaumberg was already at his easel, trying, he said, to capture on canvas the first rays of the morning sun across the desert. Benoît was writing in his diary a short distance away.

“You have slept well, I trust,” said Benoît, in greeting.

“Very well, indeed,” Holmes replied. “You both are most industrious this morning.”

“Perhaps more than you will have noticed, my dear Roger. I have already been out, hunting up our breakfast. Look, three wild partridge and a peacock!”

Benoît pointed to a large pile of feathers that the cooks had plucked from the unfortunate birds that were already roasting on spits over the fire, and it was not long before the three companions set upon devouring them, washing the meal down with large cups of Indian tea.

Invigorated by this most luxurious of breakfasts, they mounted fresh horses and proceeded towards Udaipur. Here they again visited the Maharajah, who, after he read Lloyd-Smith’s letter of introduction from the Viceroy, insisted that they stay with him as his guests. It was here that they experienced the fabled land of enchantment that Tod, the great chronicler of Rajasthan, had made justly famous in England. The royal palace of Udaipur faces a beautiful lake and is surrounded by a ring of low hills. The city itself is a cluster of white houses that lies nestled in a small valley, visible from the top of the palace. After several days, they were loath to leave this happy vale. Indeed, it was difficult for Holmes to recollect by now the nocturnal conversation between his two companions and its implications, for his companions acted well and appeared, more and more, to be what they said they were: two travellers on tour in the desert. Benoît explored every alley of the city, bargained for trinkets, and wrote constantly in his diary. Schaumberg sketched and painted incessantly, never, it seemed to Holmes, approaching the true beauty of the landscape, but every so often producing a few strokes that gave some intimation of the beauty of the place. Benoît reiterated to the delighted Maharajah that his diaries would form the text for a book about India and that he would include in it Schaumberg’s sketches as illustrations. No more benign labours could be imagined, and Holmes resisted the temptation to equate exterior behaviour with the reality of his companions’ true but hidden mission. Having somewhat of a literary bent himself, the Maharajah expressed keen interest, opened his vast library to Benoît, and ordered his chief scholar, one Shyamal Das, to produce whatever Benoît needed to embellish his accounts.

“It was during one of our visits to the royal library, Watson, that I learned something, purely by accident, which gave me pause to reflect and brought me back to an ever more serious contemplation of my companions,” said Holmes. “While idly perusing a large tome dedicated to the history of the Mughal Empire, I learned that there had been several soldiers of fortune who had served in the armies of the Mughal emperors in their long battles with the Maharajahs of Rajasthan over two hundred years before. These soldiers of fortune were mostly French. The most famous of these was one Jean de Bourbon, who had served the emperor Akbar. My interest, and my consternation, were prodded even more when I learned a few paragraphs down that two others of these early adventurers had borne the names of Captain Fantôme and Benoît de Boigne.”

“How extraordinary, Holmes. What a strange coincidence! A name from that nocturnal conversation that you overheard and the name of one of your companions—”