Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years

by Michael Kurland

  “Don’t speak nonsense, Holmes,” I growled. “One of the men following us reached the inn just as I sent the lad off with the note. If I didn’t come after you while he watched, he couldn’t possibly be convinced that we both plunged off the cliff.”

  “So!” said Holmes. “It seems we must fight after all, or at least leave behind convincing marks of a scuffle and perhaps a few bits of tattered clothing.”

  “And then we must find some way to leave this ledge without going back the way we came. Two sets of footprints returning on the path would give the game away.” I walked over to the edge and looked down. The way was sheer, and steep, and in some places the rock face appeared to be undercut, so that it would be impossible to climb down without pitons and ropes and a variety of other mountaineering gear that we had neglected to bring. “We can’t go down,” I said.

  “Well then,” Holmes said briskly, “we must go up.”

  I examined the cliff face behind us. “Possible,” I concluded. “Difficult, but possible.”

  “But first we must scuff up the ground by the cliff edge in a convincing manner,” said Holmes.

  “Let us run through the third and fourth Baritsu katas,” I suggested. I took off my inverness and put it and my owl-headed walking stick and hat on a nearby outcropping and assumed the first, or “waiting crab” Baritsu defensive position.

  Holmes responded by taking off his hat and coat. “We must be careful not to kill each other by accident,” he said. “I should hate to kill you by accident.”

  “And I, you,” I assured him.

  We ran through the martial exercises for about a quarter hour, getting ourselves and the ground quite scuffed up in the process. “Enough!” Holmes said finally.

  “I agree,” I said. “One last touch.” I took my stick from the rock and gave the handle a quarter turn, releasing the eight-inch blade concealed within. “I hate to do this,” I said, “but in the interest of verisimilitude …”

  Holmes eyes me warily while I rolled up my right sleeve and carefully stabbed my arm with the sharp point of the blade. I smeared the last few inches of the blade liberally with my own blood, then threw the weapon aside as though it had been lost in combat. The shaft of the stick I left by the rock. “For queen and country,” I said, wrapping my handkerchief around the cut and rolling down my sleeve.

  “Left-handed, are you?” Holmes asked. “I should have guessed.”

  We retrieved the rest of our clothing and began climbing the almost-sheer face of the cliff above us. It was slow, tedious work, made more dangerous by the fact that it was already late afternoon, and the long shadows cast across the chasm made it difficult to see clearly.

  After about twenty minutes, Holmes, who, despite a constant stream of muttered complaints, had been clambering up the cliff side with great energy, and was about two body lengths above me, cried out, “Aha! Here is a shelf big enough to hold us! Perhaps we should rest here.”

  I scrambled up beside him, and the two of us lay on the moss-covered rock shelf with just our heads showing over the edge as we peered down into the gathering dusk below. We were, I estimate, some two hundred feet above the ledge we had left.

  I’m not sure how long we lay there, as it was too dark to read the face of my pocket watch and we dare not strike a light. But after some time we could make out somebody coming onto the ledge we had recently deserted. He was carrying a small lantern, in the light of which he proceeded to make a minute study of the earth, the surrounding rocks, and the cliff face both above and below the ledge, although he didn’t cast the beam high enough to see us where we were peering down at him. After a minute he found the cigarette box that Holmes had left for Watson, and he carefully opened it, read the note inside, then closed it again and replaced it on the rock. Another minute’s searching brought him to the bloodied blade, which he peered at closely, tested with his finger, then secured under his coat. Then he slowly went back the way he had come, closely examining the footprints on the path as he went.

  About ten minutes later we heard voices below, and four men approached the cliff edge: two Swiss men from the inn in their green lederhosen, carrying large bright lanterns; Dr. Watson, and the man who had recently left. “No,” the man was saying as they came into view, “I saw no one on the trail. I do not know what happened to your friend.”

  Watson wandered about the cliff, looking here and there without really knowing what he was looking at, or for. “Holmes!” he cried. “My God, Holmes, where are you?”

  Holmes stirred next to me and seemed about to say something, but he refrained.

  One of the Swiss men spotted the silver cigarette box. “Is that a belonging of your friend?” he asked, pointing to it.

  Watson rushed over to it. “Yes!” he said. “That is Holmes’s.” He turned it over in his hand. “But why—” Opening the box, he pulled out the letter, tearing it halfway down the middle in the process. “Moriarty!” he said, reading the letter by the light of one of the lanterns. “Then it has happened. It is as I feared.” He folded the letter, put it in his pocket, and went over to the edge of the cliff to peer down into the inky blackness below. “Good-bye, my friend,” he said, his voice choked with emotion. “The best and finest man I have ever known.” Then he turned to the others. “Come,” he said, “we can do no good here.”

  As we were unable to safely climb down in the dark, Holmes and I spent the night on that rock shelf, our greatcoats offering what protection they could from the chill wind. Shortly before dawn a cold rain fell, and we were drenched and chilled before first light, when we were finally able to make our way back down to the ledge below. For the next two days we traveled overland on foot, with an occasional ride on the oxcart of a friendly farmer, until we reached Wurstheim, where we settled into the Wurstheimer Hof, bathed, slept for twelve hours, bought suitable clothing, and altered our appearances. The next morning I went down to a stationer’s and procured some drafting supplies, then spent some hours in my room creating a few useful documents. Leaving Wurstheim late that afternoon were a French officer of artillery in mufti—Holmes speaks fluent French, having spent several years in Montpellier during his youth, and makes quite a dashing officer of artillery—and a German Senior Inspector of Canals and Waterworks. I have no idea whether there actually is such a position, but the papers I drew up looked quite authentic. I also crafted one more document that I thought might be useful.

  “The world lost a master forger when you decided to become a, ah, professor of mathematics, Moriarty,” Holmes told me, looking over the papers I had produced with a critical eye. “The watermarks would give the game away, if anyone is astute enough to examine them, but you’ve done a very creditable job.”

  “Praise from the master is praise indeed,” I told him.

  He looked at me suspiciously, but then folded up the laisser-passer I had created for him and thrust it into an inner pocket.

  In the early afternoon of the fourteenth of May we arrived in Kreuzingen, a small town on the east shore of Lake Constance, or as the Germans call it, Bodensee—a great swelling in the river Rhine some forty miles long and, in places, ten miles wide. It is where Switzerland, Germany, and Austria meet, or would meet if there weren’t a lake in the way. We boarded the paddle steamer Koenig Friedrich for the four-hour trip across to Lindau, a quiet resort town on the German side of the lake. Holmes, as Le Commandant Martin Vernet of the Corps d’Artillerie, had his hair parted in the middle and severely brushed down on both sides and sported a quite creditable brush mustache. He wore a severely tailored grey suit with the miniature ribbon of a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur in his buttonhole, and cultivated a slight limp. He would effect a complete lack of knowledge of either German or English, and thus stood a good chance of overhearing things he was not meant to overhear.

  I became Herr Inspektor Otto Stuhl of the Büro des Direktors der Kanäle und des Wasserversorgung, and thus could be expected to take an interest in water and all things wet, which gave m
e a plausible reason to poke around in places where I had no business poking around.

  We amused ourselves on the trip across by discerning the professions of our fellow passengers. The Swiss, like the Germans, make the task simpler by dressing strictly according to their class, status, and occupation. We disagreed over a pair of gentlemen with ruffled shirts and double rows of brass buttons going down their overly decorated lederhosen. I guessed them to be buskers of some sort, while Holmes thought them hotel tour guides. On overhearing their conversation, we determined them to be journeymen plumbers. Holmes glared at me as though it were somehow my fault.

  We took rooms at the Hotel Athenes, carefully not knowing each other as we checked in. There would have been some advantage in taking rooms in separate hotels, but the difficulty in sharing information without being noticed would have been too great. Holmes, or rather Vernet, was to go around to the inns and spas in the area and discover which ones had public rooms where a group might gather, or more probably large private rooms for rent, and listen to the conversation of the guests. Stuhl would speak to various town officials about the very important subject of water, and partake of such gossip as they might offer. Town officials love to pass on titbits of important-sounding gossip to passing government bureaucrats; it reaffirms their authority.

  “Three white clothespins,” Holmes mused, staring out the window at one of the great snowcapped mountains that glowered down at the town. It was the morning of the fifteenth, and we had just come up from our separate breakfasts and were meeting in my room on the third floor of the hotel. Holmes’s room was down the hall and across the way, and had a view across the town square to the police station and the lake beyond. My window overlooked only mountains.

  “The last line of that letter,” I remembered. “‘Proceed to Lindau on the sixteenth. The company is assembling. The first place. Three white clothespins. Burn this.’ Very terse.”

  “The first place implies there was a second place,” Holmes mused. “So it would seem they have met here before.”

  “More than that,” I offered, “one of their leaders probably lives around here.”

  “Perhaps,” Holmes agreed. “Consider: if the company is ‘assembling,’ then they are gathering in order to do whatever it is they are preparing to do. If they were merely coming together to discuss matters, or to receive instructions, then they would be meeting, not assembling. The study of language and its connotations holds great value for the serious investigator.”

  “Even so,” I agreed.

  Holmes—Vernet—went out that day and passed from inn to café to public house, and drank cassis and coffee and ate pastries. The man has an amazing ability to eat and eat without gaining weight and, conversely, to go without food for days at a time when on the track of a miscreant. I spent the morning studying a map of the town, to get a sense of where things were. After lunch I went to the town hall to see Herr Bürgermeister Pindl, a large man in many directions with a massive mustache and a smile that spread broadly across his face and radiated good cheer. We sat in his office, he poured us each a small glass of schnapps, and we discussed matters of water supply and public health. He seemed quite pleased that the great bureaucracy in far-off Berlin would even know of the existence of little Lindau.

  If you would impress a man with your insight, tell him that you sense that he is worried about a relationship, about his finances, or about his health. Better, tell him that he fears—justly—that he is often misunderstood and that his work is not appreciated. If you would impress a civic official, tell him that you share his concern about the town’s water supply, its sewage, or its garbage. Within the first ten minutes of our conversation, Herr Pindl and I had been friends for years. But the smiling giant was not as simple as he appeared. “Tell me,” he said, holding his schnapps daintily in two chubby fingers, “what does the ministry really want to know? You’re not just here to see if the water is coming out of the faucets.”

  I beamed at him as a professor beams at his best pupil. “You’re very astute,” I said, leaning toward him. “And you look like a man who can keep a secret …”

  “Oh, I am,” he assured me, his nose twitching like that of a stout bird dog on the scent of a blutwurst sausage.

  Extracting my very special document from an inner pocket, I unfolded it before him. Crowded with official-looking seals and imperial eagles, the paper identified Otto Stuhl as an officer in the Nachrichtendienst, the Kaiser’s Military Intelligence Service, holding the rank of Oberst, and further declared:

  His Imperial Most-High Excellency Kaiser Wilhelm II requests and demands all loyal German subjects to give the bearer of this document whatever assistance he requires at all times.

  “Ah!” said Bürgermeister Pindl, nodding ponderously. “I have heard of such things.”

  Thank God, I thought, that you’ve never seen one before, since I have no idea what a real one looks like.

  “Well, Herr Oberst Stuhl,” Pindl asked, “what can the Burgermeister of Lindau do for you?”

  I took a sip of schnapps. It had a strong, peppery taste. “Word has come,” I said, “of certain unusual activities in this area. I have been sent to investigate.”

  “Unusual?”

  I nodded. “Out of the ordinary.”

  A look of panic came into his eyes. “I assure you, Herr Oberst, that we have done nothing—”

  “No, no,” I assured him, wondering what illicit activity he and his Kameraden had been indulging in. Another time it might have been interesting to find out. “We of the Nachrichtendienst, care not what petty offenses local officials may be indulging in—short of treason.” I chuckled. “You don’t indulge in treason, do you?”

  We shared a good laugh together about that, although the worried look did not completely vanish from his eyes.

  “No, it’s strangers I’m concerned with,” I told him. “Outsiders.”

  “Outsiders.”

  “Just so. We have received reports from our agents that suspicious activities have been taking place in this area.”

  “What sort of suspicious activities?”

  “Ah!” I waggled my finger at him. “That’s what I was hoping you would tell me.”

  He got up and went over to the window. “It must be those verdammter Engländers,” he said, slapping his large hand against his even larger thigh.

  “English?” I asked. “You are, perhaps, infested with Englishmen?”

  “We have people coming from all the world,” he told me. “We are a resort. We are on the Bodensee. But recently a group of Engländers has attracted our attention.”

  “How?”

  “By trying not to attract our attention, if you see what I mean. First, they come separately and pretend not to know each other. But they are seen talking—whispering—together by the twos and threes.”

  “Ah!” I said. “Whispering. That is most interesting.”

  “And then they all go boating,” the Burgermeister said.

  “Boating?”

  “Yes. Separately, by ones and twos, they rent or borrow boats and row, paddle, or sail out onto the Bodensee. Sometimes they come home in the evening, sometimes they don’t.”

  “Where do they go?”

  “I don’t know,” Pindl said. “We haven’t followed them.”

  “How long has this been going on?” I asked.

  “Off and on, for about a year,” he said. “They go away for a while, then they come back. Which is another reason we noticed them. The same collection of Engländers who don’t know each other appearing at the same time every few months. Really!”

  “How many of them would you say there were?” I asked.

  “Perhaps two dozen,” he said. “Perhaps more.”

  I thought this over for a minute. “Is there anything else you can tell me about them?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “All ages, all sizes,” he said. “All men, as far as I know. Some of them speak perfect German. Some, I’ve been told, speak fluent French.
They all speak English.”

  I stood up. “Thank you,” I said. “The Nachrichtertdienst will not forget the help you have been.”

  I had dinner at a small waterfront restaurant, and watched the shadows grow across the lake as the sun sank behind the mountains. After dinner I returned to my room, where Holmes joined me about an hour later.

  I related my experiences of the day, and he nodded thoughtfully and went “hmmm” twice. “Engländers,” he said. “Interesting. I think the game’s afoot.”

  “What game are we stalking, Holmes?” I asked.

  “I have seen some of your ‘Engländers,’” he told me. “In the Ludwig Hof shortly after lunch. I was enjoying a cassis and being expansively French when three men walked in and sat near me. They tried to engage me in conversation in English and German and, when I effected not to understand, bad French. We exchanged a few pleasantries, and they tipped their hats and began speaking among themselves in English, which, incidentally, is not as good as their German.”

  “Ah!” I said.

  “They insulted me several times in English, commenting with little imagination on my appearance and my probable parentage, and when I didn’t respond they became convinced that I couldn’t understand and thereafter spoke freely.”

  “Saying?”

  “Well, one thing that will interest you, is that Holmes and Moriarty are dead.”

  “Really? And how did they die?”

  “There was this great fight at Reichenbach Falls, and they both plunged in. Their correspondent saw it happen himself. There could be no mistake.”

  I stared out the window at the snow covering a distant mountain peak. “Oscar Wilde says that people who are said to be dead often turn up later in San Francisco,” I said. “I’ve never been to San Francisco.”

  Holmes stared intently down his long nose at me. “I don’t know what to make of you,” he said. “I never have.”

  “So, now that we’re officially dead,” I said, “what do we do next?”