The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (46 page)

“I have but one request,” said Holmes.

“And what is that?”

“I should like to visit the mines.”

“Easily done,” she said. Turning to her servant she said,
“Ramon, abhi he possible dekhvoir les mines?”

“Uiji, mon Captain.”

“We shall go now. The entrance is only a short distance down from this room.
Mes monsieurs Schaumberg et Benoît
are also welcome. They have not seen the source of their wealth as yet.”

Led by Captain Fantôme, they walked a short distance from the room of their meeting to a stair that led down to a lower level of the palace. There, directed by Captain Fantôme, a guard opened a door and announced their entry.

‘We entered what was, to my amazement, Watson, a small, beautifully appointed theatre, circular in shape, with a large curtain that encircled us,” said Holmes.

“This theatre,” said the Captain, “was built over one hundred years ago by one of our ancestors, so that the family could view in comfort the work in the mines, which hitherto had required that we actually enter them, a rather unpleasant task at times. Now from this vantage point, we can see all of it.”

They were led to their seats in the first balcony, and as Captain Fantôme gave a signal to her servants, the curtain drew back on all sides. There below and in front of them, in the light of dozens of large oil lamps, was a gigantic pit, filled with a groaning humanity, digging, and sorting what it found. As far as the eye could see, in every direction, men and boys from all parts of our far-flung empire, all almost naked, slaved through the earth in a sweltering hot darkness. The digging was completely disciplined, thousands of pick-axes hitting the ground at the same time. Another group of workers, on all fours on the ground, pulled the rubble towards them, loading it by hand into carts that were wheeled away by a third group. Overall stood tall, dark overseers, who carried whips and
lathis,
the deadly Indian hooked stick.

“This is the only viewing tower of its kind in the world,” said Captain Fantôme. “Originally an English idea, we have adapted it to the mine. We sit exactly one hundred feet above the pit itself. This is our largest and most valuable mine, though hardly the only one. It is volcanic in origin and its channels produce most of our raw diamonds.”

Schaumberg and Benoît gazed in awe, for on their three previous trips, they had seen none of this. As Captain Fantôme spoke, Holmes could see that Schaumberg had become enamoured of the scene below. He plied Captain Fantôme with question after question, to which she gave immediate answers. The workers were recruited by agents stationed not only throughout the Subcontinent but all of Asia, she said. The more varied the workers, the better, for this made communication and rebellion difficult. Andaman Islanders thus worked next to Tamilians. The raw recruits were taken to a processing camp in a lonely desert area near Bikaner, where the strongest were chosen, the others released to die in the desert. This smaller group was then brought to a training station south of Mandor, where they were trained in particular operations of the mine: digging, gathering, and sorting. They worked for exactly twelve hours, when they were relieved by another group. All their physical needs were met in order to maintain efficiency, and they were given a few hours per month of recreation and at least two hours in the sun on the surface. They had wives, but in common, and no attachment to one person was allowed. Male children immediately became part of the worker pool, and the females, except for the few necessary to the men, were sold in the bazaar in Bombay, where they worked as prostitutes. The best ages for work were between twelve and thirty-six. Those who reached the higher age of their service, if still healthy, became servants to the Frantzi. Otherwise, they were destroyed. No one of them, of course, ever left. In this system, she said, there was no waste.

“And who are the guards?”

“Ah! They are very special,” she said. “They are the only remaining descendants of the Abyssinians brought in the thirteenth century by the Sultans. They are the infamous Habshi and have been in our employ for generations.”

Captain Fantôme appeared suddenly to tire of the scene below. She stood up abruptly, motioned with her hand, and the curtain again closed, hiding the dreadful picture that had just been before them. They followed her to the room from which they had come and she dismissed them. Schaumberg and Benoît were led to their quarters, and Holmes followed a servant to a rather large room that was to be his home for the next few weeks.

“What an incredible experience, Holmes. Who would believe that such a place could exist under the very nose of Government?”

“And yet there it was, Watson. As you know, my nature and training forbid exaggeration, and you may take what I have told you to correspond to the literal truth. There, underneath the deserts of Rajasthan, labored untold thousands of slaves brought from the four corners of the empire for the benefit of a very few. And I was made to look upon their tragedy as if I sat in the luxurious comfort of Covent Garden viewing a performance of
Aida
.”

“Extraordinary, my dear Holmes, absolutely extraordinary.”

“Yes, dear Watson, and I must add that at no time did Captain Fantôme show any sympathy to the people in the mines. It was as though they were not human beings, but creatures of a lower order, separated from her by some invisible barrier greater than the one which separates us from the mere brutes of the natural world. Physically, Captain Fantôme was in all ways a French peasant woman, of no great beauty, plain in every feature. But her ordinary appearance hid a will of iron and a massive intelligence, both of which were in the service of an ever-increasing avarice and quest for power.”

“You must continue, Holmes. I am most anxious to learn how this adventure concluded.”

Holmes glanced about the room slowly, as if studying every detail of our quarters, and then said brightly: “What happened next was most surprising but led to the inevitable dénouement. There is a new Turkish restaurant on Museum Street, Watson, and if we leave now, I can finish this tale for you over some rare delicacies from the Levant and a bottle of Syrian red wine. Come, let us hurry, for all this talk has given me a bit of an appetite.”

Before I could protest, Holmes had already bolted from his chair and donned his coat. We walked at Holmes’s fast pace and reached the front of the British Museum in a matter of minutes. Then we turned to the right on Museum Street and entered the small Turkish eatery which Holmes had referred to. He had said nothing as we walked, and it was only after he had taken his first approving sip of the dry red wine that he continued.

“For the first few days of my stay in Mandor, I was in total isolation, except for the servants who brought me food and served my other needs. I saw nothing of Schaumberg and Benoît, and nothing of Captain Fantôme. I was allowed to take some exercise in the garden adjacent to my room, and I read several bad novels that had found their way into the Mandor Palace. Escaping, I knew, would be difficult, but escape I must. From the garden I could walk to the palace wall and peer out at the city. There were no guards or patrols in the direct vicinity, but I immediately became aware of sentinels who were placed in the buildings across from the palace. Nothing could escape their notice either by day or night. And so I continued to observe, to let my eyes and brain put things in order. Schaumberg and Benoît, I learned from the servants, had yet to depart and since stopping them was inevitably part of my goal, I was content to bide my time, for I knew that escape would not be easy.”

Several weeks passed. During that time, Holmes ventured forth little. He spent it in deep contemplation of his eventual escape. He finally formed a plan, but it was risky, and he knew that it might not succeed.

Beyond the servants who attended to him regularly, he now saw only Benoît and Schaumberg. They had been delayed indefinitely by the troubles in Sind, and they felt almost as imprisoned as he.

One day, Holmes was summoned to Captain Fantôme’s room.

“You will recall,” she said with some amusement, “that I promised you extraordinary comfort during your stay here. I am sorry that you have been confined to a single room for so long, but our agents have been slower than I would have liked in preparing your permanent accommodations. You will move now to what I trust will be satisfactory quarters for you through the coming years.”

“She smiled,” said Holmes, “with the smile of one who greatly enjoys her handiwork. I bowed, not without an ironic look in my eye, and followed the servant to my new quarters. I was filled with a certain wonder as to what they would be—an Oriental queen’s view of an English Heaven perhaps. The servant stopped before a door, handed me a key, and left. As soon as I saw the key, I knew what she had done. I opened the door, Watson, and walked into what appeared to be at first glance a perfect replica of our quarters, a copy of 221b Baker Street. I laughed as I entered and threw the key on the table, sat in our easy chair, picked up my violin and began to play—and to think. Overall, the quarters were well copied, and I could not but marvel how the Frantzi and their agents, in a matter of only a few weeks, had been able to perform such a feat. Obviously, someone had entered our quarters, and secretly enumerated and described its contents, possibly photographing them as well. Then a band of local craftsmen were made to copy as much as possible. Not only our tables and chairs, Watson, but our pipes and tobaccos, the Persian slippers, my cocaine bottle and syringe, and a slight scent of the disorder which we live in were there. I found myself smiling with pleasure at what I saw, for I momentarily had the feeling that I had already extricated myself from my predicament and that miraculously I was back in London.”

Holmes confessed that he soon came to his senses, however, and began to observe the minute differences between our quarters and this replica. As he went through, noticing pictures on the wall which the taste of neither of us would permit, he realised that there were some major faults as well as gaps in the picture as a whole. Much of the contents of our library had been duplicated, with the exception of the rarer items, but there had been no attempt to reproduce his files. All weapons, his pistols, his knife collection, and his poisonous experiments, were absent, no doubt as a necessary precaution, since he remained a prisoner. But as he went through his clothes and other possessions, he realised how thoroughly the agents of the Frantzi had gone through our belongings. But there was nothing of mine, he emphasised, only his things very selectively chosen.

As he ruminated over this unexpected gift, there was a knock on the door. He opened it and found Schaumberg and Benoît there to greet him: “Captain Fantôme has asked us to visit you and bid you farewell since we depart tonight.”

“Come in, my dear friends. Welcome to my London abode.”

They entered, and Holmes could see a look of amazement cross their faces.

“Not bad, especially for this godforsaken place,” said Schaumberg.

Benoît was as usual more reticent, but Holmes watched him closely as his eyes went over the room, occasionally resting on some object. They sat and talked as friends do who are about to leave each other and may not see each other again.

“We have been through a lot together,” said Schaumberg. “’Tis a pity that we are on opposite sides in this bloody fight. I shall miss you, my friend, and thanks again for pulling me in during that bloody sandstorm.”

“My duty, dear chap. As to our being on opposite sides, well, we can do nothing about that, can we?”

Benoît looked at his watch. “It is almost dark, and the time for us to go approaches. We shall leave in a few hours,” he said, “and travel in the dark until morning. By then, we should have passed through the British patrols safely into Sind.”

“They left, Watson, and departed for Sind that night. And Sherlock Holmes remained in his quarters.”

Holmes stopped talking, as if the story were over. He looked down at his plate, took several bites, and then took a long drink from his glass with obvious delight.

He laughed and said, “‘Or so it appeared, Watson. For it was in those very moments that something happened that enabled me to escape easily from Mandor. After Schaumberg and Benoît left, I sat for a moment wondering whether to put my plan into action or to wait. My eye fell on the cocaine and the syringe when suddenly there was a knock at the door. It was Benoît. He came in, and for the first time he appeared distraught.”

“You must help me,” he said.

“How?” I asked.

“I need your cocaine for the journey.”

“You shall have it,” said Holmes.

“I seized the opportunity, Watson, and before he could change his mind I had made a strong mixture and plunged the syringe into his arm. He did not resist, but immediately went into a blissful stupor. I helped him to the sofa, and quickly set to work. In preparing the replica of our quarters, the agents of Captain Fantôme had been unaware of the use of some of the items they reproduced. And so I found most of the paraphernalia of my disguises there ready for use. Wigs, powders, all my actor’s magic was there. I worked quickly, transforming Benoît into a fair version of myself while he slept, and then, switching our clothes, I transformed myself into a fair version of Benoît. As I studied my face in the mirror, I smiled, for I knew that I had made myself into a good likeness, good enough even for Schaumberg in the dark. I delighted in anticipation as I glanced about 221b Baker Street, with Sherlock Holmes fast asleep in a cocaine trance. To Captain Fantôme I penned a short note which I pinned to Benoît’s shirt: “My compliments and thanks to you for your hospitality. Herein lies a gift of appreciation, only a copy within a copy perhaps, but a rather good one, I trust. Sherlock Holmes.”

Holmes ran out the door in time to meet Schaumberg as he left his room. They walked in silence to their caravan and without further ado began their long march. Holmes breathed a sigh of relief as soon as they passed through the gates, and a few miles into the desert, he left the party and returned to Jaisalmer. There, he sent word to the British agent of the existence of Schaumberg’s party. It was apprehended as it entered Sind that morning. At the same time, the replica of Sherlock Holmes awoke and was taken to Captain Fantôme by a rather perplexed servant who judged that his somewhat changed appearance was due to sudden illness. Captain Fantôme read the note pinned to his chest, realised what had happened, and escaped before our soldiers could apprehend her.