Eight Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

by Bill Crider

  “Indeed we have. But what else have we heard? Nothing at all, I think. Why not ask him a medical question, Watson. See if he can answer you.”

  I thought it an odd request, but recalling the Jezail bullet, I asked Van Helsing if he could tell me the location of the subclavian artery. Judging from the look on his face, I might as well have asked him if he could fly around the inside of the crypt like a bat.

  “It is as I had concluded,” said Holmes after a moment of silence. “Van Helsing is no more a doctor than I am a vampire. The masquerade is over, and is now time for the unmasking.”

  As so often happened when I was in the company of Holmes, I had only a dim idea of what he must be thinking.

  “Masquerade?” I said. “Is Stoker, too, playing a part?”

  “He is real enough,” said Holmes, “but the errand on which they have brought us is all part of a game. I have known from the beginning that it was, but I wanted to see what they had planned.”

  Stoker was crestfallen, and he did not try to deny anything.

  “How did you know?” he said.

  “There are too many things for me to list them all,” said Holmes.

  “Please,” said Stoker.

  “Very well. First of all, there are no vampires.”

  Something heaved against the door at my back, and I wondered what it could be.

  “Perhaps,” Stoker said, “but that is not enough evidence of anything.”

  “No,” said Holmes. “It is not. There is much more. For instance, you did not mention how you came to be in the company of Van Helsing when you are a theater manager, an odd choice for a vampire hunter.”

  “How did you know about my occupation?”

  “I do read the newspapers,” said Holmes. “At times I even see the theater section.”

  “And Van Helsing?”

  “Almost too easy. While van is a Dutch prefix, I have made a study of the patronyms of various countries, and the name Van Helsing does not exist. Then too, there was the man’s German accent and his use of a German expression. Clearly he is an actor, most likely recruited for this work at the theater you manage. As was the supposed vampire outside, who is not very strong for a supernatural creature.” Holmes turned to me. “Open the door, Watson, and invite him inside.”

  I recalled something I had once read. “Inviting a vampire inside can cause certain problems, Holmes.”

  “There is no vampire, Watson, I assure you.”

  “I know,” I said, “but nevertheless….”

  “Please, Watson,” Holmes said, with a broad gesture, and I opened the door.

  Outside it stood a man shrouded in darkness and wrapped in a black cape. When he saw me, he spread the cape and began to speak with a thick accent.

  Startled, I stepped back.

  “It is no use, Oliver,” called Stoker. “They are onto my game. Come inside and meet Sherlock Holmes.”

  The man called Oliver dropped the ends of his cloak and entered the crypt.

  “How did they know?” he asked.

  “Sherlock Holmes is not so easy to fool as a member of your audience,” said I, and he glared at me.

  Van Helsing was not yet willing to give in. “But the stake, the blood. Did that not give you pause?”

  Holmes gave him a contemptuous look. “Pig’s blood, which is easily obtained at a butcher’s shop and which is thinner and more watery than human blood. Even the odor is not exactly the same.”

  I knew there had been some subtle difference and felt I should have known.

  “Only an expert could tell the difference, I grant you,” Holmes continued, and I felt marginally better. “You should not, however, have left a pig’s bristle in it.”

  So he had not discovered a hair, I thought.

  “Besides all that,” Holmes said, “there is the stake.” He reached into the casket and took it out. “Had you pounded it into the heart of a vampire instead of merely staining it with the blood of a pig, the head would have been marked by the hammer, yet it is as smooth as the rest of the stake.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Why would anyone create such a scheme?”

  “I would not be surprised,” said Holmes, “if a reporter showed up quite soon, someone to confirm for the press that a vampire had been enclosed in this crypt, escaped, and then returned to attack as we sought him.”

  Almost as if on cue, another man stood at the doorway of the crypt.

  Leaning casually against the frame, he said, “Did someone mention a vampire?”

  “It is nothing,” Stoker said. “Please leave us.”

  “You promised me a story,” the man said. “A sensation, you said. Something that would make a name for me and sell out ten editions of the newspaper.”

  I looked at Holmes, who wore a look of grim satisfaction.

  “There will be no story,” he said. “I think it best that you leave now.”

  “I know you,” said the reporter. “You are Sherlock Holmes. If you are involved in this, there must be a story.”

  I could see that Holmes was pleased to be recognized. He had a forgivable touch of vanity.

  “No story worth the writing,” he said, with a glance in my direction as if to warn me not to record the adventure myself. “I believe this was a mere bit of playacting arranged to drum up business for Mr. Stoker’s theater.”

  “Is that true?” the reporter asked.

  Stoker shook his head but did not speak.

  The reporter waited for a few moments as the silence gathered in the dank crypt.

  “It is rather unpleasant in here,” he said at last. “I believe I shall take Mr. Holmes’s advice and go on my way.”

  With that he turned and left us. Holmes waited until he was well away and then said, “Now, Mr. Stoker. Will you not tell us why this was all arranged?”

  Stoker sighed. “As you have no doubt guessed, I had hoped to create a sensation for the newspapers, trading on your name and your reputation. For that, I apologize.”

  Holmes did not appear satisfied.

  “And for having us come out to a graveyard on this dank evening?” said I.

  “For that, too,” said Stoker.

  “But this was not to drum up business for a play?” said Holmes.

  “No. You see, I have written a novel.”

  “Ah. A novel. About a vampire, I assume.”

  “Yes,” said Stoker. “I hoped to create a sensation and make my fortune.”

  “What about this, Watson?” said Holmes. “Have you heard of this book?”

  I admitted that I had not. I seldom read the reviewers, though they have been kind to my own modest efforts.

  “The book has been praised,” said Stoker, “but it has not sold as well as I had hoped.”

  “So you believed that the publicity you received from tonight’s adventure, had it been successful, would have propelled your book into prominence.”

  “Yes. It would have benefited you, too, of course.”

  “No,” said Holmes. “It would not. I have no wish to be associated with such schemes, and I believe it is more becoming for a writer to devote himself to his work rather than to such things as this.”

  “But Dickens travels the world to boost his sales. While Byron—”

  “Is long dead,” said I. “This was unworthy, Stoker, both of yourself and your actors.”

  Van Helsing and Oliver were not shamed by my comments. I suspect that, being actors, they regarded any kind of notice by the newspapers as a good thing.

  “Had you not thought that you might throw an entire city into panic?” I asked. “Vampires on the loose, lives threatened?”

  “No,” said Stoker. “I had not. I believed that with Mr. Holmes on the case, the populace would be calm enough.”

  “Let us leave this place, Holmes,” said I, out of patience with the man. “The dampness begins to affect my temper.”

  Holmes nodded his agreement, and we departed, leaving Stoker and his friends in the blood-stained crypt wi
th their useless stake.

  Later that evening, I asked Holmes if he thought Stoker’s plan might have worked had someone other than Holmes been called in to help perpetuate it.

  “Certainly the police might have been taken in,” said Holmes.

  He had no great respect for the police, though occasionally they did their jobs well, I thought.

  “At least,” I said, “the fiasco has cheered you up remarkably well.”

  “Ah,” Holmes said. “But for how long? I need something to challenge my abilities, not something as simple as tonight’s affair.”

  He sank down upon the couch.

  “Something will turn up,” I said. “Something always does.”

  “I hope that you are right, Watson, but no more vampires. I have done with them.”

  I thought of how I had felt in the cemetery, of how for a fleeting moment I might even have believed there was a vampire nearby.

  “Indeed,” said I, and I gave him a smile. “No more vampires.”

  The Adventure of the St. Marylebone Ghoul

  November is often a dreary month in London, with its dampness and its yellow fog that slides along the streets and creeps into the crannies of stone walls. But in one particular November, the rooms I shared with Sherlock Holmes at 221B Baker Street were snug, and there was already a fire in the hearth as I enjoyed the breakfast provided for us by Mrs. Hudson. It was a breakfast prepared especially to keep off the chill of the outdoors: kedgeree of the English type, not unlike a dish that I had once eaten in India; toast and eggs; hot buttered oatmeal; freshly baked scones; and coffee contained in a silver-plated pot polished to such a shine that I could see my face comically mirrored in its rounded surface.

  Holmes, not being an early riser, had not yet partaken of the food, and was, in fact, preparing his pre-breakfast pipe. He stood at the mantelpiece carefully packing his pipe with the tobacco that remained from all his smokes of the previous day, and when he had done so satisfactorily, he got the odorous mixture alight. After taking a few puffs, he sat on the sofa and began to turn through the pages of the Times. Often he turned first to the agony column, but today his attention was caught by something else, and I watched him as he read with mounting agitation.

  “My dear Holmes,” said I, wiping my fingers on a napkin, “you appear to be a bit perturbed. Allow me to speculate upon the reason why.”

  Holmes removed his pipe and set it on a nearby table. Then he turned his piercing eyes on me and said, “Do as you will, Watson. There have been times when you have surprised me with your ability to apply my methods. Perhaps this will be another of those times. What do you believe to be the cause of my supposed perturbation?”

  “It is plain to anyone with eyes to see. It is something that you have read in the Times.”

  The paper rustled in Holmes’s fingers, which were stained from some sort of chemicals, as they often were.

  “Indeed,” said he. “Anyone could have deduced that, Watson. Can you not be more specific?”

  “I can,” I responded with spirit, enjoying the game, for I felt sure of victory. “You are reading an article about the ghoul of St. Marylebone’s cemetery.”

  “Very good, Watson. You have hit your target with the first shot. And how did you arrive at your conclusion?”

  I relaxed in my chair and launched into my explanation. “I know that you prize rationality above all things, so that only something on the irrational side of things could cause you such disturbance. Therefore you must be reading something about the supernatural, and the only supernatural events of note concern the infamous ghoul.”

  “I am sometimes disturbed by things that are not entirely irrational,” said Holmes.

  I smiled. “But not in this case, I believe.”

  Holmes rustled the newspaper again. “You will concede, however, that there are other articles with irrational content.”

  “It is, after all, the Times,” I admitted.

  “And will you also concede that you arrived at your conclusion by devious means?”

  “What do you mean by that, may I ask?”

  “I mean that you reached your answer by having read the paper earlier today. That you saw the page which I was reading, and knew at once the kind of article that would catch at my attention.”

  “And if I did, would that not be a matter of deduction?”

  “Not in the least. It would merely be a matter of glancing at the page of the newspaper and seeing the article.”

  “But that is not what I did,” I protested. “I did read the article, of course, but I based my conclusion on both your agitation and my knowledge of your way of thinking.”

  Holmes rewarded me with a thin smile. “Very well, Watson. I believe that your deductive powers are indeed improving. You will soon prove to be my equal.”

  “You are jesting, Holmes, but I suspect you found little to jest about in your reading about the St. Marylebone ghoul.”

  “You are correct in that assumption.”

  “Deduction,” I said.

  “Deduction, then. At any rate, I confess that it does irritate me somewhat that our countrymen should be so gullible as to believe in the presence of some supernatural creature, and practically in our own neighborhood, at that.”

  “You do not believe in the ghoul?” I said.

  “The agents of the devil need not be of supernatural origin,” said Holmes. “Flesh and blood will serve as well. Indeed, they often serve better.”

  “Having spent a bit of time in India and Afghanistan, I perhaps know more about such creatures than you do,” I responded.

  “Of the supernatural kind? I do not doubt it.” Holmes folded the paper and took up his pipe. It took several puffs to get it going again, but when he had succeeded, he said, “Tell me what you learned of ghouls.”

  I did not have to gather my thoughts. My reading of the article had brought back to me some of the things I had heard during my military days.

  “First of all,” I said, “the word ghoul comes from the Arabic al ghûl. It means something like ‘to grab hold of.’”

  “Your arcane knowledge amazes me, Watson,” said Holmes. “Am I to assume, then, that ghouls are in the habit of grabbing hold of their victims?”

  “I am not quite sure on that point,” I admitted. “Ghouls may indeed have that habit, or it is possible the name comes from the fact that, unlike ghosts, ghouls have a corporeal existence. You could, if you wished, take hold of one of them.”

  “But I would not wish to?”

  “Indeed not. Their faces are terrifying. Their skin is putrefying, and their breath that reeks past their yellowed fangs carries the foul stench of the rotting corpses upon which they feed.”

  “An unpleasant meal indeed,” said Holmes, looking at the table where I sat. “Not at all like the repast you have before you.”

  “Had before me,” I said, following his gaze. “I believe that I have done away with the lion’s share of it.”

  “And you believe a ghoul would prefer a rotting corpse to such a thoroughly filling breakfast?”

  I hesitated. “The ghoul seems like an unlikely creature, I know, and during the time we have been acquainted, I have learned that there is a logical explanation for all the things we have encountered, from vampires to seemingly preternatural hounds. But I also know that the people who told me of the ghoul believed in it whole-heartedly. One man even swore that he grappled with one of the creatures that, before he interrupted it, had been feeding on the corpse of a recently buried child dug up from the ground with the thing’s spiky talons.”

  “Talons, eh?” said Holmes. “Quite handy for digging, I am sure. But why, pray tell me, has this ghoul begun to plague the St. Marylebone cemetery?”

  I thought about what I had read in the Times. There had been no explanation for the ghoul’s presence, but rather a colorful, and no doubt exaggerated, description of the creature’s supposed depredations.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “
And we are to believe that this creature of the night has come here to London, sought out that cemetery in particular, and begun to haunt it?”

  “Haunt is not precisely the right word. Ghosts haunt, but ghouls have other unpleasant habits. And it did not necessarily come here. It could have been here all along.”

  “Surely,” said Holmes, “even ghouls must come from somewhere, have an origination. Whence this one?”

  I could not answer his question, of course, and I confessed that I had never heard where ghouls might originate.

  “That, then, is not a powerful argument in the favor of their existence,” Holmes said. “But what’s this?”

  He rose, stepped to the window, which was closed against the morning chill and fog, and opened it. Only then did I hear the muffled sound that Holmes’s keen ear had already detected, the sound of footsteps on the street outside. Then came a knocking on the outside door.

  “Someone is in dire need of your help, to have risen and come here at this early hour,” I said, exercising my deductive powers.

  “Perhaps,” said Holmes. “Or perhaps it is someone who has not yet been a-bed. But we shall soon find out.”

  In that he was correct, for it was only moments later that Mrs. Hudson showed our visitor into our rooms. He was a short but stout young man with brown skin. He peered around the room, his liquid brown eyes appearing somewhat smaller than normal behind the lenses of his thick spectacles. He gave me the merest of glances before focusing on Holmes.

  “Mr. Sherlock Holmes?” he said. He had a light, high voice.

  “Yes,” Holmes responded. He indicated me. “And this is my friend Dr. Watson.”

  “I am honored,” our visitor said. “My name is—”

  Holmes did not allow him to finish, saying, “Benjamin Swaraj.”

  The young man was taken aback, though of course I was not surprised. I had seen Holmes perform similar feats all too often.

  “You are the night caretaker at the St. Marylebone cemetery,” Holmes continued, “and you have come here directly from your work as the night caretaker.”

  “Astounding!”

  I was not quite as astonished as our visitor, having by now recalled his name from the article in the Times, though I confess I had no inkling of how Holmes had deduced that the caretaker was our visitor.