The Perils of Sherlock Holmes (6 page)

The passage was narrow, dank, and musky-smelling. Once inside, Holmes exclaimed softly and lifted the lamp higher. A great metal contraption equipped with a glass lens stood upon a ledge at shoulder height. I smelled molten wax.

“It looks like a lantern,” I whispered.

“A
magic
lantern; or so it is fancifully known.” Standing upon tiptoe, Holmes reached up with his free hand, groped at the contraption, and slid a pane of glass from a slot behind the lens. He examined it briefly, then handed it to me. When I held it up against the light of the lamp, I recognized the image of our old friend the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come etched upon the glass.

“The image is projected through the lens when the candle is lit,” Holmes explained. “When I examined the room earlier, I found a small hole in the painting above the mantel, just where the light streams through the window to fall upon the lady in the dungeon. That is where our ghost gained access to the room. When I found the mechanism that opens the fireplace, I knew my suspicions were correct. I daresay if we look, we shall find similar panes bearing the likenesses of the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present precisely as they were described to us.”

“But Past and Present spoke to the earl!”

“It might surprise you to learn what a ghastly effect the echoes in a narrow passage such as this will lend to an ordinary human voice. But come!”

I was forced to hasten lest he outrun the light from the lamp. When I caught up with him several yards down that gloomy path, he was peering at a small bottle perched in a niche in the wall. Presently he removed it and held it out, asking me what I made of it.

“
Radix pedis diaboli
,” I read from the label. The old familiar name clamped my heart in an icy fist.

“I see that you have not forgotten the grim affair of the Tregennis murders. No doubt you remember also the rather melodramatic title under which you published your account of them.”

I shuddered. “‘The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot’! But the Devil’s-foot root is a deadly poison!”

“It is also a hallucinogen in small doses. Small enough, let’s say, to escape notice once it has been introduced into one’s sherry.”

“Richard,” I whispered. “Lord Chislehurst told us his clerk accompanied him to his tavern for a glass the night the ghosts first visited.”

“I suspected him the moment the earl told us how Richard had taken him into his confidence about his financial situation. That, and the picture of Richard’s wife in the counting-room, planted a suggestion in our client’s mind. Under the influence of the root tincture, it came back to him in his dreams, convincing him that Christmas Present was allowing him a peep into his employee’s private life.”

“But how do you explain the glimpse that Christmas Past provided into his own childhood?”

“Christmas is a time of remembering, Watson. No doubt the earl was reminded of his own impoverished origins, which sprang forth as a vision at the mere mention of the word
past
. Post-mesmeric suggestion is a fascinating scientific phenomenon. I should like to know how Richard came by his expertise, or if the talent was inbred. It would make an interesting subject for a monograph.”

“One moment, Holmes! His Lordship was haunted the same way last night, yet he said he came straight home from work. His clerk had not the opportunity to administer the drug again.”

“But Her Ladyship did. He said himself he had a cup of tea with her before retiring.”

“You’re certain they’re in it together? Richard and Lady Chislehurst?”

His expression was grave.

“It was she who insisted her husband prepare his will without delay. She is the beneficiary, but Richard is the Svengali in our little melodrama. ‘What evil one may do compounds when they are two.’ They already have our unfortunate client walking the streets in his sleep—mark you his sopping slippers! Who is there to say, when he is found some night murdered in an alley, that he was not set upon by some anonymous ruffian while in the somnambulant state?”

“Good Lord! And in the season of love and mercy!”

Holmes hissed for silence. Motioning for me to follow, he crept along the inside wall, and I realised belatedly that he was measuring the distance. Presently he stepped away as far as the outside wall would permit, scrutinising the other from ceiling to floor. He seized a stony protuberance and, with a significant nod towards the revolver in my hand, pushed with all his might. Again there was a grating noise, and then a section of wall eight feet high and four feet wide swung outwards upon a hidden pivot. Light flooded the passage. Together we stepped through.

We were in a chamber slightly smaller than Lord Chislehurst’s, with a cosy fireplace, a bed piled high with pillows and canopied in chintz and ivory lace, a dressing-table, and a huge oak cabinet quite as old as the house, before which stood a tall, handsome woman ten years our client’s junior, fully dressed and coiffed in a manner both expensive and tasteful. She appeared composed, but upon her cheeks was a high colour.

“Lady Chislehurst, if I may be so bold?” Holmes enquired.

“That is my name, sir. Who are you, and what is the meaning of this invasion?”

“My name is Sherlock Holmes. This is Dr. Watson, and unless I am very much mistaken, the gentleman hiding in the cabinet is named Richard.”

Her hand went to her throat. She took an involuntary step closer to the cabinet. “Sir! You are impertinent.”

“Just so; and yet so far it has not proven a failing in my work. Will you open the door, or has the gentleman the moral fibre to present himself and spare you that indignity?”

At that moment, the door to the cabinet opened and a slender young man stepped out. I recognised Lord Chislehurst’s clerk, dressed in black from collar to heels. I raised my revolver.

“That won’t be necessary, Doctor. I am unarmed.” He spread his dark coattails, revealing the truth of his assertion. I returned my weapon to my pocket, but kept my hand upon it warily.

“I fled from the passage when the fireplace opened,” Richard explained. “Not knowing who might be in the hall, and fearful of compromising Lady Chislehurst, I took refuge in the cabinet. I thought perhaps it was the earl, and that we had been found out.”

“So you have. You admit that you were conspiring to murder Lord Chislehurst?” Holmes’s tone was sepulchral.

The woman gasped and swayed. Richard put out his arm to steady her. His face was white. “Good heavens, no! However did you form that conclusion?”

“Come, come, young man. There is the business of the will, the paraphernalia in the passage between the walls, and your own admission just now that you feared you had been ‘found out.’ I suggest you hold your defense in reserve for the Assizes.”

“Thank you, Richard. I am quite well now.” The lady relinquished her grip upon the young man’s arm. Her expression was resolute. “You are quite mistaken, Mr. Holmes, as to our motives and intentions. I have been after Timothy for years to arrange his estate. I saw no reason that the fortune he has worked so hard to build should be dissipated in the courts. To whom he decided to leave it was his own affair, but I thought it would be appropriate if he named Richard as executor.

“I have known Richard for two years. I don’t think my husband realises how valuable he has been to the firm, nor how much of himself he has sacrificed to its operation. This I know from what I have seen. Richard does not advertise his worth.”

“Please, Your Ladyship,” protested the clerk.

She smiled at him sadly, dismissing his plea. “When you work closely with someone, as I have with Richard when the firm was shorthanded, you learn things his employer doesn’t know. Richard’s financial situation is heinous. Aside from his responsibilities as a husband, he has pledged to repay the many debts left by his late father, and his mother is seriously ill.

“Richard is the first member of his family to pursue a career in business,” she continued. “His father was a mesmerist upon the stage, and his mother was a magician’s assistant. When I learned that he had inherited some of their skills, a plan began to materialise.”

The clerk interrupted. “The plan was mine. Lady Chislehurst went along purely out of the goodness of her heart.”

“You needn’t claim responsibility,” said she. “I’m proud of the idea. My husband is a good man, Mr. Holmes, but his order of values is not always sound. When the firm suffered, he should have chosen an area to practise economy that would not affect his employees. When he told me there would be no Christmas gratuities this year, I knew from experience I could not change his mind through talk. I decided instead to work upon his conscience. I suppose you know the rest.”

Holmes appeared unmoved.

“Your plan was dangerous, Madame. Any number of tragedies might have befallen your husband as he wandered in his sleep.”

“That was unexpected, and alarumed me greatly.” Her expression was remorseful. “It did not happen the first time. I obtained the Devil’s-foot herb from Richard, but I misheard his instructions and misjudged the amount I put in Timothy’s tea. Afterwards, Richard and I decided not to use the drug again. If the mere image of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come did not bring about the desired conversion, that was that.”

“I am shamed.” This was a new voice.

“Timothy!” Lady Chislehurst turned to face her husband, who was standing upon the threshold to the hallway. None of us had seen him open the door, with the possible exception of Holmes, whose red-Indian countenance betrayed no reaction.

“I am not shamed for you,” he added hastily, “but for myself. Were I not so caught up in commerce, I would have seen what effect my measures to preserve the firm was having upon the people I depend upon.”

His wife stepped towards him just as he strode forwards. He took her in his arms. “I’m sorry, Beth. Can you ever forgive me?”

“There is one way,” said she.

“Of course.” He looked at his clerk. “Richard, I want you in early tomorrow.”

The young man was dismayed. “Tomorrow is Christmas Day!”

“All the more reason to start early, so we can count out the holiday gratuities, beginning with yours. If we work hard we should be able to deliver them all by midday. Then you and your wife will join us here for Christmas dinner. Mrs. MacTeague has a fair way with a goose and plum pudding, and the claret the late Mr. Scrooge put down in ’39 should be at its peak.”

“Bless you, sir!”

“Bless
you
, Beth!”

“God bless us everyone!” I exclaimed.

Four curious faces turned my way.

“Surely you are more familiar with those words than most,” I told the earl and his wife. “Lady Chislehurst especially. She must have studied ‘A Christmas Carol’ closely whilst engineering her little conspiracy.”

“I haven’t read it in years. My husband doesn’t approve of the story. I thought about it, naturally, but my real inspiration came when I discovered the secret passage and the equipment inside.”

Holmes said, “Do you mean to say the apparatus was there already?”

“The magic lantern is an old model,” explained Richard: “an ancestor, as it were, of the ones employed by the magicians with whom my mother performed. I replaced the bottle of hallucinative with one my father used in his act. The original would have been useless. It had probably been there forty years.”

“That is precisely when Scrooge lived here,” reflected the earl.

“Well, Watson, what do you make of our little Yuletide adventure?”

The next morning was Christmas. After I had breakfasted and exchanged greetings and gifts with my wife, I paid a call upon Holmes in the old sitting-room, where I found him enjoying his morning pipe.

“I should say Bob Cratchit was fortunate there was no Sherlock Holmes in his day,” said I.

“Crafty fellows, these clerks. However, they are no match for a Lady Chislehurst. I perceive that package you are carrying is intended for me, by the way. The shops are closed, Mrs. Hudson is away visiting, and you know no one else in this neighbourhood.”

I handed him the bundle, wrapped in brown paper and tied with a cord.

“It is useless to try to surprise you, Holmes. It is a first-edition copy of
The Martyrdom of Man
, which you once recommended to me. I came across it in a secondhand shop in Soho.”

His expression was pleased, but I detected a cloud behind it. “Splendid, but I’d rather hoped it would be ‘A Christmas Carol.’ This adventure has demonstrated to me that I’ve fallen behind in my reading.”

It was with no small satisfaction that I reached into my coat pocket and handed him the story, bound in green calfskin with the title wreathed in gold.

He appeared nonplussed, a singular event.

“I am afraid, old fellow, that I have no gift to offer in return. The season has been busy, and as you know I allow little time for sentiment. It is disastrous to my work.”

It may have been my interpretation only, but he sounded apologetic. I smiled.

“My dear Holmes. What greater gift could I receive than the one you have given me these many years?”

He returned the smile. “Happy Christmas, Watson.”

“Happy Christmas, Holmes.”

I
t is a common misapprehension of old age that the widower is of necessity a lonely man even in the press of a crowd. In the third year of the reign of George V, I had been in bereavement for the better part of a decade, and the tragic inroads that had been made upon the British male population during the wars in South Africa and China were such that for a solitary gentleman in relatively good fettle to show himself in society was to trumpet his availability to any number of unattached women of a certain age.

This situation was exacerbated by the appearance, since the deaths of our gracious Victoria and that good-hearted man Edward VII, of a breed of bold, independent female who would step up and declare her intentions before a teeming ballroom with no more blushes than a tiger stalking a hare. The struggle for women’s suffrage and unstable conditions upon the Continent had stripped the gender of its traditional reserve.

By the summer of 1913, I had long since abandoned my shock at such behaviour, but I found it wearisome in the extreme. I had reached that time in life wherein a cigar, a snifter, and a good book quite fulfills one’s dreams of bliss. However, to confess to it in the presence of one of these daring creatures must needs give offence, and ultimately lead to the undoing of one’s good reputation, which in the end is all any of us ever has.

“I jumped—it seems,” writes Conrad, in
Lord Jim
. The declaration is appropriate to the action I took that June, when in response to frequent invitations I bolted London for the South Downs and a holiday from eligibility in the company of my oldest and closest friend.

Those who are familiar with my published recollections may remember that Sherlock Holmes, after a lifetime of unique service to the mighty and humble, had retired to an existence of contemplation and bee farming in Sussex. The setting was isolated, and in lieu of neighbours the modest villa looked out upon the brittle Channel from a crest of severe chalk cliffs similar to those which are commonly associated with Dover. Keenly I anticipated this lonely (and unapologetically masculine) stretch of English coastline, and a reunion with the man with whom I had shared so many adventures. I disembarked from the train at Newhaven and engaged an automobile and driver to convey me along the twenty miles of seacoast ahead, light in heart.

Chugging along at a brisk fifteen miles per hour, I held on to my hat with one hand and the side of the Daimler with the other, remembering when a clattering ride in a horsedrawn hansom towards the scene of some impending tragedy represented the height of excitement for a man of any age.

We were slowing for the turn to the villa when I recognised the gaunt figure approaching at a trot with the sea at his back.

“Watson—good fellow, is that you? I am only just in receipt of your wire. We are but one more scientific improvement away from outdistancing even the genius of Mr. Morse.”

Holmes wore a terry robe, untied, over a bathing costume. Plastered to his skeletal frame, the damp wool told me that retirement from public life had neither increased his appetite nor lessened his distaste for inaction. But for the grey in his hair and the thinning at the temples, he did not appear to have aged a day since the attempt was made on his life by the blackguard Count Sylvius ten years before. It was the very last investigation we shared, and my final visit to our dear old digs in Baker Street.

I, meanwhile, had grown absolutely stout, a victim of my comfortable armchair and the bill of fare at Simpson’s. We remained as separate in our habits as at the beginning.

Years and weight notwithstanding, I alighted eagerly from the passenger’s seat and seized his hand, which was iron-cold from his late immersion in the icy Channel. At close range I observed the creases at the corners of his razor-sharp eyes and the deep furrows from his Roman nose to his thin mouth, cut by time and concentration. He put me in mind of a Yankee cigar-store Indian left out in the weather.

“I hope I have not inconvenienced you,” I said.

“Not nearly as much as you have inconvenienced your dog. I trust the kennel in Blackheath is a good one.”

I was so astounded by the mention of Blackheath that for a moment I could not recall if I’d ever told him I owned a dog.

He laughed in that way which many thought mirthless. “Time has not changed you, nor age sharpened your wits. An old athlete such as yourself cannot resist a visit to the rugby field of his youth, hence that particular dark loam adhering to your left heel. Fullness of age and greatness of girth might prevent a casual excursion, but you would travel that far to board your dog; a bull, if I am any judge of the stray hairs upon your coat.”

“It would appear an old detective such as yourself cannot resist the urge to detect, whatever his circumstances.”

Again he laughed. “A very palpable hit.” Before I could protest, he had paid my driver, relieved him of my Gladstone bag, and started up the path towards the house.

Presently we were in his parlour, he having bathed and put on the somewhat shabby tweeds of a country gentleman. The room was small but commodious, with a bay window overlooking the water and sufficient memorabilia strewn about to create the sensation that we were back at 221B. Here was the dilapidated Oriental slipper, from which he filled his pipe with a portion of his old shag; there the framed photograph of Irene Adler, and she in her grave these twenty years. I recognised the harpoon that had slain Black Peter Carey and the worn old revolver that had saved our lives upon more than one occasion, now demoted to a decoration on the wall above the hearth. A library of tattered beekeeping manuals filled the bookpress which had once contained his commonplace books. I asked him how his bees fared.

“Splendidly. Later I shall bring out the congenial mead I’ve developed from the honey. It may make amends for supper. My housekeeper is deceased, I have not yet replaced her, and my cooking skills are not on a level with my ratiocination. I say, old fellow, would you mind terribly if we have a third at table?”

“A client?” I smiled.

“A man in need of a favour, which in an unprotected moment I agreed to provide. You may find him entertaining company. He’s in the way of being a colleague of yours.”

“A physician? I’ve not practised in years. We shall not be able to converse in the same language.”

“A writer; or have you retired from letters as well as medicine? Sax Rohmer is the rather outlandish name.” Turning in his armchair, he rummaged among a jumble of books in a case which looked disturbingly like a child’s coffin, and tossed a volume across to where I sat facing him upon a sagging divan.

I inspected the book. It was bound cheaply, with a paper slipcover bearing the sensational title
The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu
. Holmes smoked his pipe in silence whilst I read the opening pages.

I closed the book and laid it in my lap. “I read this same story in serial form in a London magazine. I considered bringing suit against the author, but I couldn’t decide whether to base it on grounds of invasion of privacy or base plagiarism.”

“Indeed. I noticed the resemblance myself: a clipped-sounding adventurer with a pipe and a nervous manner and his storytelling companion, an energetic young physician. The late lamented Professor Moriarty might also have brought a case as regards this devil doctor. But the story itself is rather ingenious and, apart from borrowing your unfortunate practice of leaving out the most important bit of information until the last, his debt to your published memoirs seems negligible—altogether too fanciful to be taken as genuine. He sent me this inscribed advance copy along with his letter requesting my assistance.”

I opened the book to the flyleaf and read: “To Sherlock Holmes, Esq., with admiration. Sax Rohmer.” The
S
in “Sax” bore two vertical lines straight through it, in imitation of the American dollar sign. Perhaps it was this boastful reference to the author’s success upon both sides of the Atlantic that raised my ire. My own writings had required years of seasoning to attain critical and commercial acclaim.

“I never knew your head to be turned by flattery and a disingenuous gift,” I said churlishly.

“Good Watson, it was the problem which turned my head. This old frame is far too brittle to support any further laurels. But here, I believe, is the gentleman himself. You nearly arrived upon the same train, and might have fought your duel on board.”

Holmes opened the front door just as another automobile from town pulled away, greeted his visitor, and performed introductions. I was taken aback by the appearance of this straight, trim young fellow, whom I judged to be about thirty years of age; his aquiline features, keen gaze, and general air of self-possession reminded me uncannily of the eager young student of unidentified sciences who first shook my hand in the chemical laboratory of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, three decades and so many adventures ago. So close was the resemblance that I was startled into accepting his handshake. I had intended to be polite but cold and aloof.

“Dr. Watson,” he said, “I’m quite as excited to make your acquaintance as I am that of Mr. Holmes. You cannot know what an inspiration you have been to me; though you would, in the unlikely event you were ever to read my work. I am a shameless imitator.”

This confession—the very last thing I had expected from him—left me with neither speech nor ammunition. I had been prepared to accuse him of that same transgression, and for him to deny having committed it. In one brief, pretty declaration he had managed to turn a contemptible deed into an act of veneration.

I was not, however, disposed to respond to guile. I said, “You might first have sought the opinion of the imitated, to determine whether the honour would be welcome.”

He nodded, as if he were considering the matter. “I might have, and I should. I can only state in my defence that I thought you existed on far too lofty a plane to be approached by one of my youth and inexperience. Pray accept my apology, and I shall post the circumstances of my debt to you upon the front page of the
Times
.”

This sentiment, and the obvious sincerity with which it was delivered, unmasted me thoroughly. For all his seeming repose, young Rohmer was clearly flummoxed by the celebrated company in which he found himself. This was evident both by his attitude and by his dress; his Norfolk and whipcords, although quite correct to his surroundings, were new almost to the point of gaucherie. He had dressed to please, and his efforts to ingratiate himself touched that which remained of the youth inside me. I told him no public abasement was necessary, and in so doing informed him he was forgiven.

Moments later we were sharing the divan, enjoying the whiskies-and-soda which Holmes had prepared as carefully as his chemical experiments of old, and with considerably greater success than some. My friend—showing subtle signs of discomfort born of rheumatism—had assumed his Indian pose of listening, with legs folded and hands steepled beneath his chin.

Rohmer began without further preamble.

“Dr. Fu-Manchu, who is the antagonist of my little midnight-crawler, is not entirely a creature of fiction. He is based upon a Chinese master criminal known only as ‘Mr. King,’ who was the principal supplier of opium to the Limehouse district of London at the time I was researching an article on the subject for a magazine. He was a shadowy figure, and though I heard his name whispered everywhere in Chinatown, I never laid eyes upon him until long after I had filed the story, when I chanced to glimpse him crossing the pavement from an automobile into a house.

“I had not even heard him so much as described, yet I knew on the instant it was he. He was as tall and dignified a celestial as you are ever likely to meet, attired in a fur cap and a long overcoat with a fur collar, followed closely by a stunningly beautiful Arab girl wrapped in a grey fur cloak. The girl was a dusky angel, in the company of a man whose face I can only describe as the living embodiment of Satan.

“That, gentlemen,” he concluded quietly, “is Dr. Fu-Manchu, as I have come to present him in writing and to picture him in my nightmares.”

“Who was the girl?” I heard myself asking; and inwardly jeered at myself for harbouring the interests of a young rake in the body of a sixty-one-year-old professional man.

Rohmer, who like Holmes was a pipe smoker, shrugged in the midst of scooping tobacco from an old leather pouch into a crusty brier. “His mistress, perhaps, or merely a transient. In any case I never saw her again.”

Holmes intervened. “I take it by that statement that you did see Mr. King subsequent to that occasion.”

“Not according to the information I gave to my publicist, or for that matter anyone else, including my wife.” He struck a match off his bootheel and puffed the pipe into an orange glow, meeting Holmes’s gaze. “But, yes.”

“And has he anything to do with the parcel which you have brought?”

“Again, the answer is yes.” His eyes did not stray to the bundle he had placed atop the deal table where our host had once conducted his chemical researches, now a repository for the daily post. My own gaze, connected as it was to a curious mind, was drawn there directly. The item was roughly the size of a teacake, wrapped in burlap and tied with a cord. My fingers itched for my old notebook.

“Mr. King is no slouch,” said Rohmer, “and like Dr. Watson, recognised himself immediately when he read my description of Fu-Manchu. Beyond this fact, the opium lord and the good doctor have nothing in common. Vexed though he might have been by my little theft, I’m convinced that Dr. Watson would not stoop so far as to kidnap me and threaten my life.”

“Good Lord!” I exclaimed. In my foolish complacency I had formed the fancy that such incidents had been left behind with the dead century.

Holmes’s guest proceeded to exhibit his flair for narrative with a colourful but concise account of his recent adventure.

Whilst strolling the twisting streets of Limehouse in quest of literary inspiration recently, he had been seized and forced into a touring car by two dark-skinned brutes—Bedouins, he thought—in shaggy black beards and ill-fitting European dress, who conveyed him to that selfsame house before which he had first set eyes upon Mr. King. There, in a windowless room decorated only with an ancient Chinese tapestry upon one wall, he was left along with that weird Satanic creature, attired in a plain yellow robe and mandarin’s cap, who interviewed him from behind a homely oak desk, enquiring about the source of his novel. In precise, unaccented English, Mr. King expressed particular interest in the character of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the wicked Chinese ascetic bent upon world domination by the East.