The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (6 page)

“What else?”

“I shall want three of your most trusted Gurkhas to accompany me to my destination, to my meeting with the culprit. They are to be dressed as peaceful pilgrims and to carry no weapons save their knives. I wish at all costs to apprehend this criminal alive. You can see from the deed that he is no ordinary criminal, but one of great cruelty and intelligence, with whom, if I am correct, I have grappled before. He is capable of the greatest violence, and there is no question in my mind that he would like to put an end to me.”

“Holmes, simply give me the word and I can supply you with an entire regiment of Gurkhas.”

“Your Excellency, I believe that three of your best men will be ample, even in these circumstances.”

Holmes left the Viceroy and sat with books and maps, gazetteers, and guides, until he found what he needed. It was as he had suspected. He believed that the criminal awaited him at a temple to Kali, a temple to a particular form of this divinity, the goddess of the severed head. This was the message he had read in the drawings on the wall. The temples to this special form of Kali for which he was searching were very rare. Indeed, to this goddess, or Chinnamastika as she is known to the Hindoos, there was only one possibility, an old medieval temple just on the northern outskirts of the city, isolated enough to provide safe refuge for the man he wanted. As he studied the maps of the area and the approaches to the temple, he received the information that one of Maxwell’s peons, Karim, a man described as a recently arrived Kashmiri emigrant, had disappeared. It was he who had ushered Holmes into Maxwell’s office. That was all he needed. He now knew how the culprit had entered Maxwell’s office and stolen the file. He had been hired because he came with excellent recommendations “and seemed to be of above-average intelligence.” Above-average indeed, he thought.

It was about six in the evening when he had finished. He went directly to Curzon’s office. Three Gurkhas, now in the peaceful dress of Nepalese pilgrims, were sitting, awaiting his arrival. They rose as he entered. Curzon had personally supervised their choice.

“They are the bravest and the most skilled that I can give you, Holmes. They are a match for at least fifteen to twenty ordinary men, and I pity those who come in conflict with them.”

Holmes looked at the men carefully. Curzon had indeed chosen well. They were not only strong but appeared calm. Holmes told them that we would be going to a temple, that they were to worship in the ordinary way, that he was trying to apprehend a dangerous murderer, that he wanted him taken alive if possible, and that they should be ready to come to his aid when he gave the signal: the lifting of his left hand to his ear. They appeared to understand. He described to them the man that he wanted. He was short, thin, fair-skinned, and would be dressed as a yogi or fakir. He gave them minute directions to the temple, telling them that they would arrive separately, and that he would arrive shortly after them dressed as he then was. On no account were they to acknowledge his existence, but they were to keep their eyes on him at all times. At the signal, they were to seize the man to whom he was talking, if possible without injury to him.

“I took my leave of the Viceroy and, walking a safe distance from the palace, I took a rickshaw to the temple of the goddess of the severed head. It was a long ride, some five or six miles. I remember going through a Muslim quarter, with the attendant abattoir, filled with hundreds of vultures gorging on the remains of the day’s kill. By the time I reached the temple precinct, it was dusk. Along the way, I had mentally reviewed the plans of the temple. It was a small shrine located in the middle of a rectangular courtyard. At one end was an ashram that housed the chief priest and some Hindoo mendicants. I was sure that my quarry was living there in disguise.”

As he spoke now, Holmes became greatly agitated, for he was reliving the final events of his long tale with an even greater vividness than before.

“‘I walked slowly up the few steps to the temple compound. It was almost dark. There was the usual evening religious activity, the ringing of bells, offerings, the wailing of infants. As I entered the courtyard, I tried to locate my Gurkha confederates, but could not. I could only hope that they would arrive in time.”

Holmes acted the part of the English tourist, curious, befuddled, without direction, for he assumed that the culprit would find him easily. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he could see the usual conglomeration of human derelicts that is so often present at Hindoo institutions of this kind—the crippled, the limbless, the dumb, the starving. In the flashing of the oil lamps, he could also make out the temple, a gaudy hideous affair, covered with skeletons, images of horrible spirits, and monsters. In the main sanctuary itself stood the headless goddess herself. Suddenly, a young girl, one of the many derelicts, dumb, dressed in filthy rags, accosted him and began tugging at his coat, pulling him toward a large peepul tree that was situated at the back of the shrine. In the darkness he made out a figure seated in yogic posture under the tree. His face was hidden by a shawl draped over the upper half of his body. The dumb child pulled Holmes to him, and he motioned to him to sit down in front of him. Two oil lamps placed in front of him provided the only light.

“Welcome, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.” The voice had a pronounced foreign accent, and he hissed my name through his teeth. “I was expecting you.”

“So,” said Holmes, “we meet again. If I am not mistaken, I sit before Karol Lissonevitch Rastrakoff, one-time member of the Oriental Institute at St. Petersburg, now secret agent for the Tsar in central Asia, an infamous figure throughout the murky underworld of Asia. We tangled in Tibet, Rastrakoff, and I would judge the contest a draw. Your message of blood was clear to me almost immediately, for your initials and part of your last name conveniently spelled
ka
and
li
, and
rastra
, the word for ‘nation’ in the native tongue. I shall not waste time or mince words: I want the return of the file, for which I am willing to offer a reasonable sum and your safe passage out of India.”

“Mr. Holmes, Mr. Holmes, please, dear sir, you move too quickly.”

As he talked, he lowered the shawl from his face, and Holmes saw once again the cruel countenance that recorded so many evil deeds.

“A most impressive jump into my rickshaw, Rastrakoff. My compliments.”

Rastrakoff smiled. “It was nothing,” he said, “with our training. But we have more important matters before us. First, let me explain to you that I have no desire to bargain for the file. It is already on its way to its intended destination. It was of the utmost importance to my employers, and I stopped at nothing to obtain it. The deaths of Maxwell and Hamilton were unavoidable, for they entered the office unexpectedly in the evening after hours. They interrupted me in my search. I was able to hide when they entered, but then they began a long interminable conversation, punctuated by Maxwell’s loud accusations. I had little time to waste, and at the height of their argument I shot them both, intending at first to make the crime into one of murder and suicide. I then found the file. It was while I was seeking it that I thought of the grand opportunity that had been thrown my way. The file, once I had it, was my triumph. But if I could cause the Viceroy to think of this murder as an act of terror against Britain, then I would have caused even greater havoc among our enemies. I decided then to make the crime look like an act of thugee.”

“A foolish move,” said Holmes,” for it did not look like such an act at all. Thugee victims are strangled alive, Rastrakoff.”

“Only one such as you would be aware of such niceties. Your countrymen are pitifully ignorant of the people they rule. It was only after I severed their heads that I decided the third part of my plan: to lead you here, for I had recognised you immediately upon your first visit to Maxwell. I reversed the heads, added the word
rastra
to my message and arranged my initials so that they could be read in two different ways. I knew that you would read the message instantly. I gather now that I have been completely successful. The Viceroy has put all troops on the alert, arrested most of the political leaders of Bengal—and all on the eve of the visit of Edward the Seventh, the so-called King-Emperor.”

He stopped then and looked at me, his eyes narrowing evilly. “And finally, I shall rid the world of Sherlock Holmes.”

Rastrakoff squealed the last few words in a high falsetto, and the quick action that followed almost took Holmes by surprise. Rastrakoff lunged forwards, a dagger in hand. Holmes fell back pinned to the ground, the point of the knife now grazing his chest. He was unable to free himself. Suddenly, he was covered by a shower of warm liquid that he at first took for his own blood. He looked up, however, to see Rastrakoff’s severed head hurtling through the air, and he knew that the blood that covered him came from his severed jugular. One of the Gurkhas, aware of the situation and Holmes’s helplessness, acting instinctively and with lightning speed had rid the world of one of its archfiends.

Holmes’s eyes were now ablaze as he recalled the perilous situation into which he had fallen. I listened in amazed silence and cold fear, for even though he was before me he had related the last events with such realism that I thought he might have been slain before me.

“The rest, unfortunately, is history. I reported immediately to the Viceroy that Rastrakoff was dead, that he could call off the emergency, that the file was already on its way to its destination, and that we had failed to recover it. When hostilities broke out between Russia and Japan thereafter, we knew that the documents had been used for their evil purposes. That short war, Watson, the first lost by a European power to an Asian one, will have untold repercussions for the white race as we move further into this century.”

“What an incredible story, Holmes. And to think that Maxwell and his brother were killed needlessly.”

“Yes, Watson. Though there was more to that part of the story, a part which had to wait until my return to England. It was shortly before my meeting with you, Watson. You will recall that I was disguised as an old book dealer when we first met after my return?”

“Yes,” said I.

“A few days before, I had journeyed to Yorkshire in the same guise, to find Rose Hamilton, the mother of James.”

“Why on earth did you want to do that?” said I in great puzzlement.

“Because I had a hunch, a mere suspicion, that Reginald and James were not brothers. I had examined them in death very carefully and my knowledge of skeletal and craniological types had made me suspect that it was unlikely that they were related at all. And in fact there was something in Hamilton’s face that struck me. There was a clear resemblance to someone, but it was not to Maxwell, though there was a surface similarity that had struck his wife early on. As soon as I returned to England, I went to Wyck Rissington in disguise, located the old Hume estate, the natal home of Lady Maxwell, and then found the house where James Hamilton had grown up. It was now an abandoned shack. His mother had died several years before in an alcoholic fever. Her place had been boarded up by a man in the village so that it would not be easily vandalised. I entered the hut one night, prying off the boards on a back window. I spent several hours looking through the woman’s possessions. There was a small metal box in one of the drawers of an old cabinet that had been hidden amidst her clothes. Inside it was a small diary. It contained the information I had been hoping for. An entry, dated 5 June 1865, read: “My little son, to whom I have given the name James, was born to me one week ago. His father is Jeremy Hume, who refuses to recognise him.”

“Good lord,” I cried, “Hamilton, then, was Lady Maxwell’s half-brother!”

“Precisely, my dear Watson. I had noticed the resemblance. Hence her father’s violent reaction when he found that an amorous relationship had developed between them. It was during the telling of her story that I initially became suspicious. Hume, a man of position, could not admit either to his family or publicly that his liaison with the wench Rose Hamilton had produced unwanted progeny. Hence his violent outbursts and the actions that followed.”

“And what of Maxwell’s father, and the information conveyed to his son? Surely, Maxwell believed that Hamilton was his half-brother.”

“I thought that this part of the case would be forever lost to us, since the last conversation between Maxwell and Hamilton was heard only by Rastrakoff. Its contents had died with all of them. Here again, however, my dear Watson, luck was with us, for another entry in Rose Hamilton’s diary made it clear that after the death of his wife, Humphrey Maxwell, Reginald’s father, did begin to visit her as well and to take solace in her arms. When Hume failed to recognise his son, or to support her, Rose Hamilton turned to Maxwell, claiming he was the boy’s father. Maxwell believed her, and secretly supported her and the child.”

“Extraordinary,” said I.

“Yes,” said Holmes, “as I look back the story is perhaps unique in your annals. One day you might bring it to public attention.”

“Indeed, I might. And what of Lady Maxwell?”

Holmes now looked out the window wistfully. He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I wonder, Watson. I have often wondered.”

THE CASE OF

HODGSON’S GHOST

I
T WAS LATE IN
M
AY, 1894, THAT THE DEATH OF
B
RIAN
Houghton Hodgson was announced in the London newspapers. One of the great Oriental scholars of the century, Hodgson passed away quietly in his sleep at his home in Aldersley at the age of ninety-four. His life had spanned, therefore, all but the last few years of the nineteenth century.

It was on seeing his obituary that I decided to put together these few notes from my portfolio concerning Sherlock Holmes’s years in the Orient. In a curious way, Hodgson had played a major role in the singular events that I have set down here, but it was only after Holmes returned to England that he was to meet him in the flesh. My friend often spoke of the great scholar of Buddhism, and his lasting influence on the intellectual life of Europe.