“I do. It is my modus vivendi.”
“In that respect you are typical of your era and your milieu. A pre-eminent Victorian. For you and your peers, everything is explicable. Everything can be rationalised through logic and science. Everything must bow before the might of industry, the miracles of technology and the march of progress. You British have built an empire on empiricism. You pay lip service to religion and the mysteries of the divine, but it is cold, hard fact that you really worship. You look upward with your telescopes and downward with your microscopes, and there, in space and water drops, the stars and bacteria, do you find God.”
“A pretty sermon.”
“Wasn’t it? Thank you. Yet you, Mr Holmes, and you, Dr Watson, are ignorant. Quite blinkered. You think you know so much, and you know so little. It is rather sad. The universe is far larger and far deeper than you can possibly suspect.”
“These metaphysical maunderings of yours are becoming tiresome,” said Holmes. “I am aware that your race has a long tradition of mysticism. The Taoist philosophy. The eternal struggle for harmony embodied by yin and yang. Alchemy. Meditation. Confucianism. Neidan. Qigong. All of that. I find it bizarre that a man such as yourself, so inherently contemporary and westernised, should start making reference to practices he left behind in his homeland years ago.”
“Ha ha. I do not refer to China at all, as it happens, but to a cosmology more ancient than that country’s, than any country’s – one that has lain long dormant, hidden from view, known only to a handful.”
“Elucidate.”
“I wonder…” Gong-Fen fixed Holmes with a steely gaze. “What if I were to give you the opportunity to learn everything you need to? To discover all the answers you could conceivably want?”
I sensed that the interchange between the two men was arriving at its climax. The conversation had been somewhat like a chess match – full of feints, gambits, sacrifice and forced moves – and now the endgame was upon us. Perhaps this was where Gong-Fen had intended it to wind up all along. He had been manipulating the board cunningly, arranging his pieces to leave Holmes in a position of checkmate, with no alternative but to capitulate.
“What precisely are you offering?” Holmes said. He was wary but obviously more than a little intrigued.
“A form of enlightenment. Come with me, today, right now, this moment, and you will be given the chance to see things as they really are.”
“Don’t listen to him, Holmes,” I urged. “It’s a trap.”
“I swear I will not harm you,” said Gong-Fen. “That is a solemn promise. On my honour.”
“A quality you signally lack.”
“On the contrary, Dr Watson, I am a man whose word is his bond. Ask anyone who knows me. Well, Mr Holmes?”
“These answers – they will include the truth behind Stamford’s fate and the emaciated corpses?”
“The revelation will be all-encompassing. You will emerge from the experience with a broader, profounder appreciation of how things are than ever you had before.”
So does the witch in the fairy tale entice Hansel and Gretel into her gingerbread cottage, by blandishment and the lure of sweetmeats galore. So does the spider weave its web, waiting for the fly to buzz by and ensnare itself.
“All right,” said Holmes. “I accept.”
“No!” I said. “Holmes, what are you doing?”
“Taking steps to solve the case, Watson.”
“You have no idea what he’s offering. This is hazardous beyond reckoning. He will whisk you away and no one will ever see you again. There will be an ambush and you will end up like Simple Simeon and the others. No, worse, like Stamford.”
“I cannot turn down an opportunity like this.”
“You jolly well can, and you will,” I said. I braced him on both arms, as though to pin him to the spot. “I forbid it. We have not been friends long, but I feel I have earned the right to tell you that you are acting rashly and I cannot countenance it. Having only just met you, I would consider it a great misfortune then to lose you almost immediately.”
“This is very touching,” said Gong-Fen.
“Keep quiet, you,” I said, jabbing a forefinger at him. “Holmes, if you insist on going through with this, at the very least let me come along. I can protect you. I can watch your back.”
“No,” said Gong-Fen. “Just Mr Holmes, alone. That is my one stipulation, and it is not negotiable.”
“Then…” I lunged for the poker that lay beside the grate. “Drastic measures. I will brain you, Gong-Fen.” I brandished the implement above my head, fully as though I was about to bring it down with force on his cranium. “That will render the whole issue moot. How about that?”
The Chinese millionaire regarded me levelly, maintaining the same damnable imperturbability with which he greeted almost everything. If I intimidated him at all, he gave not the least outward indication of it.
Out of sheer spite, I swung the poker. It was not my intention to strike him. I merely wanted to see him blink and perhaps cringe – to wipe that smug look of imperviousness off his face. But if the poker were to connect by accident, would that be so terrible? I thought not.
In the event, my hand was stayed by a powerful grip. Holmes, moving with astonishing speed, intercepted the blow, catching my wrist and at the same time wresting the poker from my clutches.
“Enough, my boy,” said he. “I am going with Gong-Fen, and that’s final. And in case you get it into your head to try that little stunt again…”
He grasped the poker at either end and, by sheer muscular force of his arms, bent it, first into a horseshoe shape and then further until the ends crossed and it resembled a lower-case Greek alpha. He accomplished this with very little apparent effort, yet a circus strongman might have struggled to replicate the feat. Angry as I was, I could not help but be impressed.
“There we have it.” The now-useless poker clattered to the floor. “My mind is made up. Gong-Fen? Allow me to wash, shave and dress, and then I am all yours.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Holmes was ready. Meantime Gong-Fen and I had sat in awkward silence, I glaring at the Chinaman, he purporting not to notice whilst flicking idly through a copy of Blackwood’s which happened to be lying around.
They departed together, with an extraordinary kind of genteel bonhomie, and I was left impotent and fuming. I fully anticipated that Holmes would never return. He was putting his head in the lion’s mouth, and the creature would snap its jaws shut.
It may seem surprising to readers of this chronicle – not that there will be any, save its author – that Holmes would so readily put himself in danger. I have characterised him elsewhere as a cerebral calculating machine, never one to head off into the unknown without carefully assaying the pros and cons first.
But the Holmes of 1880 was still a young Holmes, with a young man’s streak of recklessness and impetuosity. In later years his dynamism would be tempered somewhat by intellect, although it would never fade completely. In the early days, however, he was prone to going out on a limb without necessarily ascertaining first whether it would support his weight.
After Gong-Fen’s clarence had clattered off into the night, all I could do was pace and fret. Come dawn, I dressed and continued to wait. Mrs Hudson brought up breakfast for two and then lunch for one. I touched not a morsel of the food. My appetite was gone. Afternoon shaded into evening, with still no sign of Holmes. My anxiety only deepened. Night fell around five o’clock. In the wake of an overcast day, rain set in. All was dismal.
I may have slept, but if so it was only in snatches, a fitful few minutes here and there, ensconced in an armchair, restless, unhappy. At dinnertime Mrs Hudson lay a plate of delicious-smelling hot stew in front of me and took it away cold a while later, with a cluck of disapproval.
At last, as the hour was closing in on midnight, a key turned in the front door. I sprang to my feet and took the stairs three at a time down to the hallway.
> The man who staggered across the threshold was Sherlock Holmes, of that there was no doubt.
But it was not the same Sherlock Holmes who had left the house almost twenty-four hours before.
HAGGARD OF FACE, BLOODSHOT OF EYE, HOLMES all but collapsed into my arms. I helped him up to our rooms, noting the mud that caked his boots and trousers and the extensive grass stains on his jacket. Scratches criss-crossed his cheeks, forehead and hands, and he was shivering almost uncontrollably. I coaxed the fire to a searing burn, sat him before it, and plied him with brandy. His clothing, damp from the rain, steamed as it dried. His shivers abated, although not completely. Some colour returned to his cheeks.
“What did that monster do to you?” I asked.
In response, his head lolled and he moved one hand listlessly, holding up a finger, begging patience. Eventually, collecting himself, he spoke. The voice that issued from his mouth was scarcely a croak.
“He was right, Watson. Gong-Fen. When he said that the universe is far larger and far deeper than I could possibly suspect. Damn him, he was right.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither did I. But now I think I do.”
Holmes reached for his pipe with a trembling hand. He selected the cherry-wood rather than the clay, but when he tried to fill it, shreds of tobacco tumbled everywhere, despite its broader bowl. I had to perform the task for him, and apply the match as well. It was distressing to see so able a man reduced to such febrility that he was incapable of carrying out the most basic of actions.
After a few restorative puffs, he gathered enough strength to begin recounting his recent exploits.
* * *
At first Holmes had presumed Gong-Fen would be taking him to Limehouse, until the clarence turned right on Marylebone Road rather than left. Thence they drove across Hyde Park, so that Gong-Fen’s Belgravia townhouse seemed their likeliest destination. This too proved not to be the case, for the carriage continued southward, bypassing that district and crossing the river. Holmes settled back in the seat. It seemed he was in for a long journey.
All the while, Gong-Fen talked about himself. He described his upbringing in Qinghai, a remote highland province of north-west China close to the border with Tibet. His family were farmers, scratching a living from the harsh, arid soil, all but penniless. Young Shou always had ambition, a dream of bettering himself, and in due course, when he was old enough, he left home and worked his way south to Peking.
There he found employment in various lowly occupations, from emptying chamberpots at a house of ill repute to vending dumplings and rice balls from a street cart. He rid himself of his rustic accent and dialect, which made him sound like a country bumpkin and often elicited mockery. He learned to emulate the more elaborate and refined speech patterns of the Pekingese until he could pass for one of them. He discovered a chameleon-like talent for fitting in.
In the capital he saw at first hand the extent to which the opium trade was ravaging his country. There were addicts everywhere, men and women forced into ragged penury, selling everything they had, even their children, in order to feed their dependency on the narcotic. There were only two classes of people who benefited from opium: representatives of the British East India Company, which grew the poppies in India and shipped the drug to China, and the local middlemen who sold it on. By this means the East India Company was managing to claw back much of the money that had flowed into China from Britain since the mid-1600s, when the country had opened up the market for its goods – predominantly silk, porcelain and tea – to the wider world. The opium trade was imperialism by underhand means, a way of subjugating a nation without a shot being fired, so it ought to have come as no surprise when China decided enough was enough and the Emperor took action, confiscating and destroying large quantities of the drug. Britain retaliated with gunboats, and so the fuse was lit for the First and Second Opium Wars.
Gong-Fen had by then risen to become one of those middlemen himself, doing business with the East India Company, meeting their ships off the coast in a double-masted sampan, paying for their cargo with silver and transporting it back to the mainland for distribution. He hated what opium was doing to China, but his survival instincts told him this was where the money was and so he was able to swallow his moral indignation in the name of turning a profit. By the time he was twenty-five, he was fairly wealthy. By thirty, he was unquestionably rich. He achieved this through being more ruthless than his rivals and at the same time undercutting them. He expanded his sphere of influence from Peking down to Shanghai, and then on to Hong Kong and Macao, shouldering aside anyone who stood in his way. He became fluent in English, the better to make his deals with the British, and they in turn favoured him because he was courteous and articulate. One of the East India Company’s sea captains referred to him, to his face, as “the whitest yellow man I have ever met”, meaning it as a great compliment.
After the Second Opium War ended, the Convention of Peking was signed, its provisions including the legalisation of the opium trade. China, in the view of most of its inhabitants, had been thoroughly humiliated. Emperor Xianfeng exiled himself to the north and died there not long after. The country was forced to cough up crippling indemnity payments, and now stood exposed to all manner of foreign influences, some civilising, some rapacious. As far as Gong-Fen was concerned, his homeland was dead. The outside world beckoned.
“So you came to England,” said Holmes. “You decided better the devil you knew.”
“Just so,” said Gong-Fen. “The future did not lie in China. It lay here, in the embrace of those who had defeated China. Here I could apply the lessons I had learned and excel at being ‘the whitest yellow man’. Tolerated by the establishment, feted without being approved of, something of a novelty in polite society, I have risen tirelessly and smoothly to the top – or at least, as far as someone of my race may go.”
“Yet you still harbour a simmering resentment of us. Hence your opium dens. Your little revenge on the British Empire.”
“Can you blame me for that? When I see an Englishman brought low by opium addiction, wracked by cravings, spending all he has until he owns nothing but the shirt on his back, abased by the same drug that brought so much misery to the land of my birth, can you not begrudge me a secret smile of satisfaction?” Gong-Fen no longer feigned innocence about his less savoury practices or his baser impulses. The time for pretence, it seemed, was past.
Onward the clarence rumbled, weaving through the slumbering suburbs of Wandsworth, Wimbledon and Morden, and Holmes now surmised that it was Gong-Fen’s Surrey residence for which they were making. The Chinaman owned a fifty-acre estate on the fringes of Dorking, his Regency manor house nestling amid gardens designed by Capability Brown.
Again my friend was proved wrong, although this time only partially so. The carriage did halt outside the house; it was merely a stopover. Holmes was invited to remain in his seat while Gong-Fen went indoors. Dawn broke, mistily, and the coachman fetched fresh horses. Gong-Fen returned carrying a small, iron-banded chest, and the clarence rolled back up the drive, out into the countryside.
“Not far now,” said the Chinaman, sitting with the chest perched across his knees. “You won’t have to wait much longer.”
* * *
“At that point,” Holmes admitted to me, “I was feeling some trepidation.”
“Only some?” I said. “If it were me, I would have been quite unmanned by my apprehension.”
“I doubt that,” said he. “Stout fellow like you? Never.”
* * *
As they wove their way through the wilds of Surrey, Gong-Fen started to talk about religion and how the conventional faiths misinterpreted the nature of the divine.
“A god,” he said, “is not some benevolent, omnipotent being who created us as an expression of his love. That is an anthropomorphic fallacy, brought about by man’s craven desire for an ineffable father figure to pat him on the head every so often and tell him he is doing
well. It is a modern affectation that has grown to be the orthodoxy in an age when we have tamed the wilderness and circumnavigated the globe and appointed ourselves masters of all we survey. The further one goes back in history, you’ll find, the more hostile and uncaring the gods become. I don’t just mean the Jehovah of the Old Testament, smiting His enemies and sending plagues and demanding that people suffer in His name. Nor do I mean the pagan pantheons with their endless debauchery and chicanery, no better than those who worshipped them and offered them libations and sacrifices. I am referring to a time before that, when mankind was freshly out of the cave and one step up from pure savagery, and civilisation, such as it was, consisted of warring fiefdoms ruled by barbarian kings. A dark antediluvian age, an age of stone and steel and fire, of which almost nothing remains for archaeologists to dig up and ponder.”
That age, Gong-Fen said, was the age of the first gods, and its gods were those it deserved. Gods who were a true reflection of the violence and chaos that lay at the heart of every man then and still does, buried but alive, even today. Gods who desired nothing more than conquest, rapine and slaughter. Gods who revelled in carnage and considered men to be on a par with cattle, or at best pets.
To illustrate, he pointed to the field they were passing, where a shepherd was prodding sheep out from a barn to nibble on the frosty grass. “Those gods possessed as little sympathy for our lives as that man does for the lives of his flock. To him, his sheep are merely a source of food and wool. They furnish him with a livelihood, and he will hobble them, lop off their tails, castrate them where necessary, and kill them for meat when the time comes, all without the least pricking of conscience.”
It was only when he arrived in England that Gong-Fen became aware of the existence of these ancient deities. Before then he had been blissfully oblivious. The folk religion of his childhood, with its dragons and nature spirits and countless propitiatory rituals to bring luck and prosperity, was something he had left behind when he moved from Qinghai to Peking. After that, nothing had taken its place. He had lived in a religious vacuum, and was content with that, if he ever gave it any thought at all – a state of apostate grace.
The Cthulhu Casebooks Page 10