Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years

by Michael Kurland

  And so it necessitated a change of tack, and I began to seek you out in those more wretched establishments frequented by denizens of our grand city who look to drown the past, and their own place in it, with drink.

  I tell you, dressed as I was as a hapless old salt of the seven seas, I was able to fit in quite well with those who frequented such establishments and find out many interesting tidbits as I tracked you down. The most disturbing of which is that the common folk believe Good Queen Victoria had been murdered and the crime covered up. The people hate King Eddy, and they are restless and fearful. Many believe he seeks to restore the monarchy to its full power, and that soon now he will disband Parliament and ask for the resignation and abolishment of the office of Prime Minister. That is surely incredible, and I put these rumors to the superstitions of the common folk and less-educated classes. Yet they believe them firmly, I can tell you. A dark pall seems to have descended upon our city—a dark pall, I would wager, by the name of Moriatry.

  But first things first. I had to find you, Watson, and in this most effective disguise it was but a day later that I was to stumble into the Cock & Crow, a shabby East End pub. There I saw a sight I thought I would never see in my life. There I saw a familiar figure seated at a lonely table, slumped down and obviously unconscious from too much drink.

  I approached carefully and nudged you awake.

  You looked up annoyed, your eyes red with drink, and barked, “Move on! Move on! Can’t you see I want to be left alone in my misery!”

  My heart broke to see you like that, old friend, rank and disheveled, bleary-eyed and forlorn. Nothing but a hopeless drunk. You’d have hardly fared worse had you sunk to the opium pipe.

  I sat down opposite you and looked you over. You had changed significantly in my absence and for the worse. You looked terrible, but I hoped it was nothing a bath, shave, and good food would not cure.

  “Barkeep! Barkeep!” I ordered. “Bring us a pot of your strongest coffee!”

  “Aye, mate, coming right up,” the barman replied.

  Then your head rose off the tabletop and you made a valiant effort to focus your eyes across the small table to see who I was.

  Of course I was in disguise, and you did not recognize me.

  “Begone! Leave me alone!” you barked. Then your head dropped back to the tabletop, barely conscious.

  The barman brought over a pot of steaming coffee. I poured a large cup and set it down in front of you.

  “Drink,” I ordered.

  You looked up at me again, let out with a curse, moved to grasp the nearby whisky bottle on the table, which I promptly dashed to the floor in a dozen pieces.

  “Hey! What the …?”

  “Drink the coffee, Watson!” I said firmly. “I need you sober and keen of mind.”

  Well that got your attention. Your head rose off your hands, and you took a second look at the old salt in front of you. Your head swayed with the affliction of too much drink, but you steadied your gaze long enough to see through my disguise.

  “Holmes?” you whispered in a low and fearful gasp. “Can it be?”

  “Yes, good Watson, it is I, but keep my disguise in order, I do not want to be found out yet,” I said.

  “But … but you are dead?” you stammered.

  “Not quite yet,” I tried to reassure you.

  “Then you must be some hallucination?”

  “Watson, really!” I replied sharply.

  Then your eyes grew wide as saucer plates, and a tiny smile broke through your cracked lips. Tears streamed from your eyes.

  “Holmes,” you whispered, “Holmes.”

  “Sssshh!” I warned.

  “Yes, I understand.”

  I had found you, my good Watson, my anchor in the world!

  After half a dozen cups of the barman’s strong but brutal brew, your demeanor and state of mind slowly came back to that which I know and love.

  “Holmes! I cannot believe it!”

  “Keep it low, my friend. It is to both our advantages that certain people continue to believe me dead. Call me … Sigerson.”

  You nodded, tried to clear your mind, and finally asked, “But you are alive. So tell me, what has happened?”

  I smiled, “That is what I hoped you could tell me?”

  You were quiet for a long moment, thoughtful. Then said, “Yes, much has transpired since you left. But how can this be? You are dead! What happened in Switzerland?”

  “Obviously I am quite alive, Watson. Nevertheless, that is an adventure I will relate to you in its entirety some other time. Right now you have to answer me this one question.”

  “Anything.”

  “Watson, I have been gone long by some standards—but surely not long enough that such fantastic events should transpire in the world. In London.”

  “I take it you have been to 221B?” you said sheepishly.

  “Indeed, what is left of it.”

  “So you saw …”

  “I saw the results of a fire. I also know of the murder of Mycroft.”

  “I am sorry.”

  We were silent for a time.

  “Now, Watson,” I asked, “tell me truly. What has been going on here while I have been gone?”

  You steadied your hand as you took another reassuring drink of the hot coffee. “It’s terrible. The queen is dead, the new king, Eddy, is a lascivious libertine. You should hear the rumors about him; if but half are true, he is a monster.”

  I nodded.

  Then you looked around, carefully, whispering to me, “Have a care. The king has agents everywhere. Secret police agents.”

  “Really?” This was news. That certainly smacked of Moriarty.

  Then you whispered fearfully, “England, the world, we seem to be in the grip of some dread dilemma, and I fear where it all may lead.”

  “Moriarty is the source of this particular dilemma,” I said in a low tone. “With my absence and supposed death, no one could stand against him or his plans. With Mycroft murdered, our enemy was left to indulge his boldest and most devious devices. He apparently has done so quite well, and on a worldwide scale.”

  “What do you want me to do … Sigerson?”

  “Do you still have your revolver, Watson?”

  “Of course,” you replied, perking up at the prospect of action.

  “Where are you living now?” I asked.

  “I have a small room at the Whistle and Thump, four blocks away.”

  “Good, go to your room now and rest. I will meet you there tomorrow,” I said. “And Watson, stay sober.”

  “You have no need to worry about me now, seeing you here and alive is the one true medicine for my sick and tortured spirit.”

  “Good old Watson, together we shall work through this conundrum.”

  Seeing you again, old friend, had done much to revive my own sagging spirits, but to see the state to which you had sunk with drink had not only saddened me it had surprised me as well. It also got me to thinking. It really was most unlike you.

  In fact, it seemed to me now there were many events, even given Moriarty’s unrestricted activity, that did not add up. Mycroft dead? Assassinated? Once I got over the shock of that, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed quite impossible. Our rooms at 221B burned and boarded up? Well that was a shock, but it was always a real possibility. What was not a possibility was that I was apparently both alive and dead. Then there was the queen’s death, was it murder? Moriarty’s knighthood, the turmoil in America and elsewhere. My body in Moriarty’s coffin! All most incongruous events as far as the facts I knew in my world.

  It just didn’t add up. These things I have mentioned could never all have happened in the world I knew. Something was amiss, and I fear that you are a factor as well, Watson, one more piece of evidence for the thesis I have reluctantly come to put on the table as a probable explanation for these strange events. Until this moment I had been loath seriously to mention my thesis in this narrative. You see, I know you.
I know there is no way that the man I know would become a hopeless drunk. Not in my world. Therefore, you are not the man I know. You may be Watson, but you are not my Watson. You are … another Watson. And therefore, with the evidence of my body in that grave, and Moriarty alive, I must be another Holmes!

  Following this reasoning, I knew that Moriarty was not my Moriarty either. I also knew I must exercise extreme caution. I had much to think upon. This was certainly becoming quite the three-pipe problem.

  When you and I met next morning at your room, you looked much improved, and I explained most of this to you. I told you my theory. I added, “I now believe that my falling through the mists at Reichenbach had somehow transferred me into a different world. Your world. A world that is almost identical to that which I know, but with jarring differences.”

  Your response, at first, was entirely expected. “It seems preposterous, Holmes, utterly, and incredibly unbelievable. I am sure it was your body I had buried.”

  “Not my body, but another. I tell you, somehow I have entered your world, which is separate from my own. If you do not believe it, Watson, at least believe that such a thing can be possible. For how do you explain that I am here before you?”

  You thought this over, knowing I was serious about it. I could see that even if you did not entirely believe my fantastic tale, you wanted to believe it.

  “Nevertheless, old friend, when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” I said. “I put it to you, your world and my world being the same place, that is impossible. It cannot be. Therefore, these worlds exist separately.”

  “I do not know, Holmes. Truly, I have seen and heard many strange things in my service in the medical field and during my war service in Afghanistan and the Far East. This, however, is simply incredible.”

  “Yes it is, but mere incredibility does not negate the truth of the matter. Something strange happened at Reichenbach. Moriarty and I fought. In your world and mine. In mine, he fell and died. In yours, I fell and died. At the same time, in my world I fell into the mist but did not die, instead I was somehow transferred here, to your world. A parallel world, or an alternate one, Challenger would surely be able to explain it better than 1. That has to be why when I exhumed the body of the Englishman who died at Reichenbach, it was not Moriarty as it should have been—as it must have been if I was in my own world. It was myself! I tell you I was quite shocked at the time, but I knew that it was a very significant fact. It was my body in the coffin! It should by all accounts and logic have been Moriarty’s! That was the key that set me upon this course and raised many strange questions. Events since have only forced me to consider this thesis more seriously,” I concluded.

  “I hardly know what to say.”

  “Then don’t say anything, but think about it,” I continued. “However fantastic, my thesis must be true. As improbable as it sounds, it is the only one that fits all the facts. The icing on the cake was seeing you, old man. Seeing to what depths you had fallen after my ‘death’ alerted me to one simple but incontrovertible fact. While you are surely my good friend, John H. Watson, you can not be the John H. Watson I have known for so many years. Hence the corollary, that this world is not the world I have known for so many years either. Therefore, I am the outsider here, lost, stranded in your world.”

  “Holmes, but if what you say is true, then …”

  “Yes, Sherlock Holmes did indeed die at the Reichenbach. It was his body I saw, it was his body you saw—and let me tell you, there can be no mistake—it was the corpse of Sherlock Holmes. Your Sherlock Holmes.”

  There was a long silence.

  You nodded final acceptance, and I noticed a deep sadness creep into your features once again. Finally, you looked at me with determination and even managed a wan smile.

  “You are a doppelganger of my own Watson, or I of your Holmes, if you prefer. It does not matter much now so long as we understand it and what it means. Buck up, all is not lost. Quite the contrary, in fact. For instance, I believe your descent into drink may have actually worked in our favor, for it certainly saved your life.”

  “How so?” you asked.

  “Simply put, Moriarty held back on his revenge against you, for I am sure he reveled in your self-destruction. Such would fit his warped ego and sense of justice, and it saved you from his henchmen. So now, here we are, both alive, and none the worse for wear.”

  “Well, Holmes, it is good to have you back, wherever you are from,” you said, managing a good-hearted smile.

  “Good man, Watson. It appears the game is afoot once again. And the name of this particular game, is Moriarty. I accept the fact now that this is not my world, and I do not belong here. More than anything else I want to find a way to get back to my own world. But first, I cannot in good conscience leave this world to its own devices with Moriarty unleashed without doing something to restrain or stop him. Are you with me?”

  “You know I am, Holmes.”

  “So now we must determine what Moriarty’s game is. That is what we must ask ourselves, for only then can we thwart those plans and bring him to justice,” I said.

  “More crime?” you suggested.

  “Not merely crime. It’s rather beyond that now, if you keep up with what is being written in the popular press. I study the papers every day. It is rather amazing. The worldwide turmoil, and worse on the horizon, indicates some vast controlling factor. That can only be Moriarty. I really must say that the Moriarty of your world has far eclipsed the Moriarty of my own in his boldness and in his accomplishments.”

  “Well, I certainly never expected you to compliment him, Holmes.”

  “And why not? He has achieved much in a short time. I am afraid we have our work cut out for us.”

  “It certainly sounds that way.” Then you gave me a determined look, and said, “I am ready to help you any way I can.”

  “Bravo!” Then I added, “But we must take care here. Moriarty and I seem linked in some way I cannot yet understand, but it has to do with how I came here. I must be sure that whatever I do to stop him will not interfere with my being able to get back to my own world.”

  “I do not understand, Holmes.”

  “Simple enough,” I replied. “Moriarty and I are linked, simply killing him may stop his plans, but I am afraid it might strand me here forever. That will not do. I fear if I kill him, it must be in a very specific manner. Perhaps I must draw him out somehow, for one final encounter.”

  “Then what shall we do?”

  “First, I have a little errand for you to perform,” I said.

  It was not soon thereafter that you were off to Scotland Yard, while I sat down and wrote a letter to a mysterious Far Eastern visitor who, the papers told me, had lately arrived in London.

  It was with dire alarm that I listened to the news upon your return from Scotland Yard two hours later. You looked bleak and were reticent to speak, and I had to prompt you a bit impatiently.

  “Well, come out with it! What of Lestrade and Gregson?” I said. We were seated in your small East End room. It was a pale replacement for our luxurious lodgings at 22IB, but it would have to do. “Did you see them and ask them to come here?”

  Well, you were evidently quite upset by what you had learned. I had a bad feeling about the entire business from the looks of you.

  “Watson?” I prompted. “Are you all right?”

  “Holmes,” you replied, “I never saw Lestrade, nor Gregson. They were not at the Yard. When I inquired, I was told they had both been sacked.”

  “Sacked!” I blurted, the surprise even affected my normal level demeanor.

  “Yes, the new administration, Holmes …”

  “What new administration?” I began pacing the small room now, longing for my pipe, or even the cocaine needle.

  “You see, I made certain inquires, very discreet, never mentioning your name or mine. It is incomprehensible! His Majesty the King has appointed a new commissioner of Scot
land Yard. At first I found out that the new man was a war hero, a retired Army officer, even a big game hunter, and I thought …”

  “Yes, well, out with it now, Watson!”

  “ … but no, they told me his name was … Colonel Sebastian Moran.”

  I had to sit down. “Moran?” I whispered. “There’s Moriarty’s hand in that for certain.”

  “It gets worse. Moran has shaken up the entire Yard, he has sacked Lestrade, Gregson, and others that you have had good relations with over the years. I heard he is expanding the force of secret police agents and giving them special powers. I fear he has doomed the Yard.”

  “Indeed, now for certain the wolf is guarding the henhouse, and I am fearful for the good people of our fair London.”

  There was not much more to say. For a long moment we were quiet, thoughtful.

  “What do you want me to do, Holmes?”

  “I will seek out Lestrade and Gregson. Now that they are unemployed, they should be at their residences. I’ll try Lestrade first,” I said. Then I handed you the envelope that contained the letter I had written but an hour before. “You shall hand-deliver this message to our distinguished foreign visitor. He is in Room 600 of the Grand Hotel, and I want you to await his response.”

  You nodded and looked dubiously at the envelope and the strange name written upon it, saying, “Thubten Gyatso, Ocean of Wisdom? What does it mean, Holmes?”

  “Deliver it, Watson, then meet me back here this evening.”

  Inspector Giles Lestrade had a small flat off Great Russell Street. I made my way there through the streets of London. I continued wearing my disguise; gray beard, stringy gray lock wig, a bulk suit that made me appear to have fifty pounds of additional weight. For all intents and purposes I was an old retired sailor who had seen better days. I walked with an unsteady gait. No one on the street approached me or paid me even the least attention, just as I wanted it. Carefully I made my way from your tiny East End room to central London and the Great Russell Street environs.