He was close enough now to smell the smoke—though perhaps that was an olfactory hallucination. No … no, it had to be real. And there was another smell now … God in heaven, it was coffee! He refocused his entire being on that coffee, imaging the taste, the sublime bitterness, the heat in his stomach. He imagined pouring a cup of it on his legs, if that was what it took to restore the feeling.
Closer, he saw that the smoke was coming out of what looked like a cave. Sherpa? he wondered. He did not know much about the tribal people who inhabited the mountainous regions of Nepal and Tibet, but he had always heard that they were village dwellers, not cave dwellers. When he was close enough to the opening, Mackay called, “Hellooooo!” and waited. Still trotting, he was about to call again, when he saw a figure emerge from the cave.
“Hello,” the figure called back. A British voice; a countryman. Mackay began to run outright now, run toward the smoke, the coffee, the figure of the tall, lean, bearded man dressed in some kind of skin-and-fur parka. And when the man and the cave opening were close enough to touch, he fell, and all went dark.
Colin Mackay’s next sensation was one of warmth—warmth and a million needles in his legs, stinging him, as though he had immersed the lower half of his body in a beehive. Opening his eyes, he realized he was lying inside somewhere, out of the cold and wind, next to a fire, under a pile of blankets and furs. Leaping up, he began doing a strange sort of dance, alternately appreciating and disdaining the pinpricks in his legs.
“You were very nearly frostbitten,” a voice said, and Colin turned to see the bearded man. He was inside the cave, he realized. Shadows from the fire pit danced over the jagged walls around him.
“And I’m paying for it now,” Mackay said, continuing his dance. “Crikey, that stings!”
“The tingling will go away soon, Mr. Mackay.”
“How do you know my name?”
“That was quite an obvious deduction. When we brought you in here I removed your coat and saw the tag inside, on which your name was stitched. Less obvious, but still discernible, were the facts that you are left-handed and that your father has recently died. Please accept my condolences.”
“My father … how could you possibly know that?”
“Upon removing your coat a watch fell out. It is a good watch, but rather old and worn. More to the point, it is inscribed with the initials ‘P. MACK,’ which differs just enough from the name in your coat—‘c. MACKAY’—as to imply a relative, most likely a father. And the simple fact you possess the watch indicates that it was part of an inheritance, unless you are a thief, a possibility that I immediately discounted since a thief would be far more likely to sell or pawn the object he stole, not carry it up the side of a mountain.”
Mackay’s legs now felt more or less normal, though his mind was reeling. “All right, but how did you know my father died recently?”
“For the same reason as you are not a thief,” the man said. “One does not carry a keepsake such as this on an expedition in the Himalayas unless one’s personal attachment to it as an artifact is stronger than the probability that it will very likely be broken or lost in the snow, particularly when carried loose in a pocket. The kind of sentiment betrayed by that rather illogical act implies that you are still mourning your father and wanted to have something of his with you at all times, which implies that his passing must have happened quite recently, and again, my condolences.”
“Thank you,” Mackay muttered, “it happened three months ago.” Then: “Just a second: a moment ago you said ‘we’—‘we brought you in here’—but I don’t see anyone else in the cave. Who is with you?”
“My guide, Chatang. He is a Sherpa from the village near Rongbuk. I asked him to look outside to see if he could find the journal you have been keeping, which was not on you, but which might have told us more about you and where you came from.”
“It is back at camp … hold on, how could you possibly know I keep a journal?”
A small, satisfied smile broke through the man’s thick beard, which was strangely of a reddish brown hue, in contrast to his black hair. “When I removed your gloves, I noticed a trace of graphite on the tip of the middle finger of your left hand, a sign that you have been writing with a pencil—quite sensible, since ink up here would freeze. The mark is pronounced enough to indicate that you have been writing quite a lot, certainly more than simply a letter, more like daily entries in a journal. Since the smudge was on your left hand, I knew that you must be left-handed.”
“Crikey,” Mackay muttered. “Who are you?”
“I am called Greison,” the man said, extending a hand, which looked thin and delicate, but betrayed surprising strength when Mackay shook it. “Would you care for some coffee?”
“The very thought of it is what got me here.”
As Greison picked up a blackened pan filled with strong, hot liquid off the fire pit, the Sherpa Chatang returned to the cave. Greison spoke to him in what Mackay could only assume was Tibetan, and the native merely nodded and sat down by the fire. Then turning to Mackay, Greison explained, “I asked his forgiveness for sending him out into the cold needlessly, as the journal in question is back at your camp.”
“You apologized to a servant?” Mackay asked, puzzled.
“I said Chatang was my guide, not my servant.” Greison poured the steaming, aromatic black liquid from a battered pot into a tin cup and handed it to Mackay, who wrapped both hands around and sipped with great satisfaction.
“How is the coffee?” Greison asked.
“Absolutely terrible,” Mackay answered, “and indescribably wonderful.”
In the flickering light of the fire, Mackay was able to examine the man who had become his savior against the harsh, unforgiving mountain. Probably no more than forty, Greison was lean to the point of being almost skeletal, and his face showed a deep tan, not much lighter, in fact, than the Sherpa’s, which implied he had been on the mountain for some time, braving the powerful sunlight that bounced off the surface of the white snow. Startlingly clear grey eyes shone out as though lit from behind.
“Are you with a party?” Mackay asked.
Greison reached a stick into the fire and used it to light a long-stemmed clay pipe. “We are on a mission to find someone,” he said, “another Sherpa, who according to his family is helping to guide the expedition of a certain Sir George Lennox.”
“Crikey!” Mackay cried. “Captain Lennox! That’s my expedition!”
Greison eyed the young man. “Indeed? Then we are closer than I thought.” Turning to Chatang, he related something in the native tongue, then turned back to Mackay. “You must know the man we are seeking, then. His name is Nimu.”
“Oh, good Lord,” Mackay said. “I knew Nimu, yes.”
“Knew him?”
“Yes, I’m afraid he’s dead.”
Greison frowned, cast a glance toward his Sherpa companion, and said something softly to him. Chatang stiffened, then bowed his head, and Greison placed a hand on the Sherpa’s shoulder. “What are the details of his death?” he asked Mackay.
The young man coughed and hesitated before answering. “Well, sir, it appears that he was killed by a yeti.”
At the sound of the word, Chatang’s eyes widened, and he turned to Greison with a look of alarm.
“Did you say a yeti?” Greison asked.
“That’s what the captain said. About four days ago, Captain Lennox and Nimu set out on their own for Bei Peak, leaving Foss and me at the camp. Foss is the other member of our party. The captain told us that if they made it to the top, he would come back and lead the rest of us up, but until he knew that the summit could be reached, he considered it too dangerous to take the entire party. They made it to the top of the peak, all right, but on the way back down, the captain said that they heard an ungodly howl, then this creature appeared. The captain described it as close to seven feet tall and completely covered with yellowish hair. Since they had no weapons with them, all they could do was
try to get away from it, but the thing caught Nimu and … well, he dragged the poor bugger away while the captain watched, helpless. All he was able to bring back was one of Nimu’s boots. The captain was badly shaken, I can tell you, and it takes a lot to shake Sir George Lennox. In fact, that was the reason he sent me out last night following that horrible cry. He was afraid it was the yeti coming back. I got lost looking for it.”
“Hearing what happened to Nimu, how fortunate that you did not find it.”
“Right.” Mackay then realized the full implications of what the older mountaineer had said, and added, “Crikey, I never thought about that.”
“I must tell Chatang of this incident.” Turning to the Sherpa, Greison began to speak in the strange language. Mackay could make out the words Lennox, Nimu, Bei and of course yeti. Whatever else the Englishman was saying, it appeared to Mackay to upset the native guide, so much so that he began to talk back, appearing, even, to argue. Mackay had never before seen a Sherpa argue with a white man, but Greison kept talking, more soothingly now, and eventually he managed to calm the native down. Chatang cast a dark glance at Mackay, then got up and moved to a far corner of the cave.
“What was all that about?” Mackay asked.
“He is naturally upset,” Greison answered. “Nimu was his brother.”
“His brother? Oh, I’m sorry. Why were you looking for him in the first place?”
“Family matters in the village.” Then Greison raised his head, closed his eyes and tented his fingers together into a steeple, and showed all signs of going to sleep sitting up.
“Um, good night, then,” Mackay said, then finished his coffee and slipped back over to the makeshift bed Greison had made for him and slid between the blankets and fur skins, exhausted by the events of the day.
When Mackay awoke the next morning, he felt surprisingly refreshed. Greison and Chatang were already up and appeared to be preparing to venture out onto the mountain. Mackay was startled at how little gear they had between them. Crawling out from under the blankets, he walked to the mouth of the cave and saw bright sunshine and no trace of the storm that had gotten him lost.
“In one sense it was an ill wind that blew you to us, Mr. Mackay,” Greison said, tapping out the bowl of his pipe, “but in another sense, it was our great fortune. When you are ready, we will set out to find your party.”
“Right,” Mackay said, venturing out into the cold just enough to get a handful of snow, which he rubbed onto his face, chasing away any lingering sleep that was left on him. Rushing back in to get his coat, he saw that Greison was writing something in chalk on the wall of the cave. S. Greison-Rimpoche Chatang, May 1892, it read. Mackay studied the name, then the truth dawned upon him. “Crikey, I’ve just realized who you are!” he cried.
The older man turned to him. “Have you indeed?”
Stepping up to the cave wall, Mackay took the chalk. “That night’s sleep must have cleared my head,” he said. “Look: if you rearrange the letters of S. Greison, you get this.” He wrote Sigerson on the stone wall. “You’re Sigerson! You’re the one everybody’s been talking about. They say you rescued a party of six men after they’d been trapped by an avalanche.”
“If they had listened to me beforehand and taken a different route, they never would have gotten trapped in the first place,” Greison answered.
“Hey, you’re supposed to be Norwegian. How come you speak without an accent?”
“My dear Mackay,” Greison replied, with a whisper of a smile, “when I speak with Chatang I do so without an accent as well. With the proper attention and study, any language can be mastered without an accent. As for my name, now that you have discovered it, I hope you will keep it to yourself. As you have pointed out, everyone is talking about Sigerson, and that fact infinitely complicates one’s passing through camps inconspicuously.” Using the sleeve of his coat, Greison rubbed the chalk word Sigerson from the cave wall.
“You’re a rare one, if you don’t mind my saying so,” Mackay said. “Every other mountaineer is up here because we want to do something that will make the rest of the world talk about us. You sound like you’re trying to avoid it.”
“My dear Mackay, I am not so much trying to avoid it as ignoring it. Might I suggest that you visit one of the several lamaseries in this region. They are quite open to Western visitors. It is, in fact, my opinion that all men who wish to conquer the Himalayas should do so. It does wonders for the outlook. Now, then, are you coming with us or not?”
“Coming, coming,” Mackay said, buttoning his coat and following the two out into the cold.
The view from the mouth of cave was one of unending white. Greison pulled a collapsible telescope from his pocket and scanned the wide horizon. “How long had you been walking before you came upon the cave?” he asked. “An hour? More than an hour?”
“About an hour,” Mackay answered, shielding his eyes from the blinding sun, “though it was hard to tell.”
“Pity you didn’t use your pocket watch. During the trek, did it seem like you were going uphill or downhill?”
“It was all pretty straight and level, at least until I got close to the cave.”
“Straight and level,” he muttered, surveying the ocean of snow and white. “Ah! That way, if I’m not mistaken.” Chatang took the lead as the three of them headed off for what to Mackay looked like an infinity of white.
Within an hour, however, the tents were sighted. “I’ll be damned,” Mackay said, “that’s the camp, all right!”
When they had gotten within hailing distance, a Sherpa guide from the camp approached, and when he saw Mackay, he ran into the largest of the tents, emerging moments later with a large man with a thick thatch of dark blond hair that tumbled over his weathered brow and an unruly beard beginning to grey. “By God, Mackay,” George Lennox’s voice echoed across the glacier. “We’d given you up for lost! Get over here!”
They made their way to the tent, where Lennox greeted Mackay like a stern father. “What the devil happened to you, boy?” he demanded. “I should have sent Foss, he has a better sense of direction.”
A small, rugged, bulldoggish man emerged from another tent, and when he spotted Mackay, he grinned broadly, and cried, “Well, the prodigal has returned!” He rushed up to welcome him, though not as expansively.
Eyeing Greison, Lennox said, “I imagine you are the one who found him?”
“Actually, Mr. Mackay found us. My name is Greison.”
“Sir George Lennox, Mr. Greison, and this is Patrick Foss,” he said, gesturing to the smaller mountaineer. Then he glanced at Chatang, standing behind. “You’ve brought your own pack mule, I see.”
“I presume you are speaking about my traveling companion?”
“Call them what you like, they’re still the best pack mules you can find. Damn things seem to produce their own oxygen from the inside”
“Speaking of inside, might we avail ourselves of a tent?” Greison asked.
“By all means, come in and have a drink. Foss, have you checked the supplies yet?”
“Not yet, Captain,” Foss said. “I was about to do it.”
“Be about it, then. Greison, your Sherpa can help out my mules.”
“As you wish,” Greison said. Then, turning to Chatang, he uttered a few words in Tibetan and watched as the man went off toward the other guides, who were presently inspecting the climbing ropes. Lennox, meanwhile, opened the heavy canvas tent flap and ushered Greison and Mackay inside. In the center of the tent was a folding table, piled with maps and papers, which were held in place by a severed and preserved red bear’s paw. “Sit down,” Lennox said, gesturing to the three folding stools set around the table. He picked up a small duffel from the corner and pulled from it a bottle of brandy and a ram’s horn filled with cigarettes. Finding three small jars, he poured the drinks and offered the two cigarettes. “I’m eager to hear about Mackay’s adventure getting lost on the mountain.”
Mackay told as much of th
e tale as he could, explaining how he had used Gilbert and Sullivan songs to focus his concentration. When he had finished, Greison supplied the details of how he and Chatang had pulled the unconscious young man into the cave.
“By God,” Lennox said, with a hearty laugh, “that is probably the only time anyone was ever saved by the Pirates of Penzance. I’ll have to remember that and bone up on the scores. I was never much for theater in my youth, certainly not operettas, though I used to play a little bugle. I don’t suppose that counts for much, though.” He refilled Greison’s and Mackay’s jars and poured a third for himself, then raised it in a toast. “Here’s to you, boy, the one who fought off frostbite with Gilbert and bloody Sullivan.”
“Now that we have heard the boy’s story,” Greison said, “there is one I would very much like to hear from you, Sir George. I understand you lost a man on the mountain.”
Lennox gulped his brandy. “Well, not man, exactly, just one of the blasted Sherpas. But yes, I lost him to a yeti. Now, you might say that yetis are nothing but the stuff of legend, but George Lennox will put you right, because I saw it with my own eyes. Christ, I’ll never forget its cry … a sound so terrible that you can’t imagine that a flesh-and-blood creature could make it. It was like it wasn’t an animal at all, but some sort of spawn of Hell. I promise you, Greison, you’ve never heard anything like that cry.”
“Actually, I may have, once. It turned out to be a very large hound.”
“This was no dog. It was a beast. I saw the hate in its yellow eyes. I saw what it did to the Sherpa. I suppose the boy here told you I sent him out when I heard the sound again last night.”
“He did,” Greison said, sipping the brandy. “And it was the same cry?”
“The same cry,” Lennox replied. “I hope you’re not going to try and convince me it was one of my sled dogs, like Foss attempted to do.”
Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years Page 2