Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years

by Michael Kurland

  I stood, alone in the room, with the bronze giant Doc Savage.

  “Please come with me, Watson,” he said at last. I felt that I had no choice but to obey. Savage strode powerfully to a doorway, adjusted some device that I took to be an automatic guard of a type infinitely more advanced than those I had set in my Limehouse flat, and stood aside as I walked into the next room.

  Here I found myself in a chamber that would have done proud the finest men’s club of London, Chicago, or the European bund of exotic Shanghai.

  Wood-paneled walls rose to a magnificently carved high ceiling from which hung old wrought-iron chandeliers. Candles guttered atmospherically while skillfully concealed lights of an artificial nature provided supplementary illumination. The walls were lined with row upon row of books in matched sets of the finest buckram and morocco binding; hand-stamped titles in finest gilt gave back the light of the room.

  Across a deep-piled Oriental carpet of infinite richness and exquisite workmanship, a small portion of the luxuriant flagstone flooring was exposed before the great ornate fireplace, where there roared a jolly bonfire of the greatest beauty and the most subtle yet pleasing fragrance.

  Overstuffed chairs of rich leather and masterfully carven dark woods stood about the room, and each, save for two conspicuously left vacant, was occupied by a man of imposing mien if slightly eccentric dress.

  In one chair sat a muscular figure all in gray. Gray hair, gray complexion, gray tunic and trousers. As I stood, aghast, in the entranceway of the room, he turned dead, cold eyes toward me, taking me in from my sturdy British boots to my own faded crop of hair. He nodded curtly, but did not speak.

  In the chair beside him sat a man all in black, black clothing swathing him from head to foot save here and there where the scarlet flashing of his clothes was exposed. His collar was turned up about his face, and the brim of a black slouch hat was pulled down. Only his brilliant eyes and hawklike nose protruded between brim and collar. With one hand he played with a strange girasol ring that he wore upon a finger of the other.

  Next to him was a man with a contrastingly open, boyish expression about his face, blond wavy hair, and sparkling blue eyes. He wore a tight-fitting jersey, tight trousers with a broad stripe running down their sides, and high, polished boots. He somehow impressed me as an American—as, strangely, did most of these men. But this one carried a further, distinctive feeling of being a great college athlete—a product of Yale or Harvard, I guessed.

  Beyond him lazed another young, open-faced individual, this one wearing a red zip-suit that matched his curly red hair. And beyond him two more persons of muscular and athletic build—one nearly naked, clad only in jingling harness and jouncing weapons, the other wearing ordinary clothing that looked by far the worse for wear, while he himself seemed strong and competent.

  There remained only two others. One was another figure in dark cloak and slouch hat, a figure strangely resembling the hawk-nosed man, save that in this latter case there was no red flashing to relieve the gloomy hues of the clothing he wore, but instead a network of silvery threads that covered his clothing, giving one the uncanny feeling of a gigantic spider’s web.

  The other was a young man of pleasant mien albeit with a touch of the indolent attitude of the very wealthy. He looked at me with an open, friendly expression, and I was therefore all the more startled to make note of his reversed collar and the monotonous coloration of his rather ordinary-looking suit—of mild jade green.

  III

  “Gentlemen,” I heard Doc Savage say from behind me, “may I present our final member—Dr. John H. Watson, late of 221B Baker Street, London, England.

  “Dr. Watson,” the bronze giant continued, “won’t you walk in and make yourself at home. This is our library. The thousands of volumes that you see lining the walls of this room represent the biographies, published and secret, of the men gathered in our presence. Even a few of your own works concerning your former associate have found their way into our archives—as has your associate himself on more occasion than one.”

  “Holmes—here?” I gasped. “Why, he never told me—he never so much as hinted—”

  “No, Watson?” the bronze giant responded. “Well, perhaps someday when he knows you better.”

  “Perhaps,” I agreed, my eyes downcast. “Perhaps—”

  “Don’t be harsh on yourself, Watson. Now that the time has come for you to be of service, here you are at the Fortress of Solitude, and this is your chance to do a favor for the world—and for certain individuals within this world. But first, let me introduce our other members.”

  He took me by the elbow and I made my way around the circle of easy chairs, shaking hands in turn with each of the men I had previously observed. As I approached each he introduced himself to me:

  “Richard Benson—the Avenger,” said the man in gray.

  “Kent Allard—the Shadow,” the hawk-nosed man chuckled grimly.

  “Gordon, Yale ’34—my friends call me Flash.”

  “Curtis Newton, sir, sometimes known as Captain Future.”

  “John Carter, former captain, Confederate cavalry.”

  “David Innes of Connecticut and the Empire of Pellucidar.”

  “Richard Wentworth,” said the second of the black-clad men, “known to some as the Spider.” Even as he shook my hand I detected a look of suspicion and jealousy pass between him and the man who had identified himself as the Shadow.

  And finally, the man in the green clergy suit. “Om,” he intoned, making the Oriental sign of greeting with pressed hands before extending one to me in Western fashion. “Jethro Dumont of Park Avenue, New York. Also known as Dr. Charles Pali and—the Green Lama.”

  “I am honored,” I managed to stammer, “I had never dreamed that any of you were real persons. I always thought you the figments of fevered imaginations.”

  “As indeed that same charge has been hurled against your good friend and associate of Baker Street, wouldn’t you say, Watson?” It was the bronze giant, Clark Savage.

  I acknowledged that such was indeed the case. “I am assailed from both sides,” I said. “On the one side there are those who maintain that my good friend and associate whose cases I have chronicled to the best of my mean ability for many years, is merely a creature of my own fevered imaginings and has no being in the real world at all.”

  I gazed around the brilliant assemblage, then continued. “While on the other hand the gentleman who serves as my own literary agent, Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle, has himself been accused of writing the very narratives that I furnish to him and which he in turn peddles to the magazines on my behalf.”

  A chuckle of sympathetic agreement made its way around the circle of men in the room. I thought again of the volumes that covered the walls of this library—not one of my companions but whose exploits had merited the efforts of some chronicler like mine own self, however humble his talents.

  “And this band, this assemblage of adventurers—do I see before me the entirety of their sort?” I asked the personages at large as I assumed the rich and comfortable chair offered me by Doc Savage.

  Again there was a buzz of low-pitched discussion as the colorfully garbed figures exchanged comments upon my question. Then one of them—I believe it was the Yale man, Gordon—replied in the role of tacitly designated spokesman for them all.

  “We hardy few are just the present representatives of a movement whose number is legion. From the days of our founder, whose portrait hangs above the fireplace, to this moment, there have been hundreds of us. Their names are inscribed upon the scroll of honor, which stands beside the window over there.”

  He gestured, first toward the painting to which he had referred, then to a tall, narrow window through the thermally opaqued panes of which the long arctic night was beginning to descend. I strode first to stand before the roaring fire and gazed upward at the gracefully executed and richly framed depiction above it. The painter had done his work in rich colors of deep brown, rust, a
nd maroon. The face that gazed back at mine showed strength, intelligence, and a fine tincture of insouciant wit. The costume was that of a French chevalier of a previous century. The small engraved plaque beneath the canvas bore but a single word in simple script: D’Artagnan.

  Paying momentary silent homage to the subject of the portrait, I strode across the rich carpet to the scroll previously indicated by the American, Gordon. Its heading was a simple phrase the initial characters of which cleverly formed a word of but a single syllable, the relevance of which, I fear I must admit, quite escaped me. The head of the scroll read PERSONAGES UNITED IN LEAGUE AS PROTECTORS. The names subtended therefore were indeed numerous, including not only all of those in the room (myself excepted, of course) but also many others of which a random selection included such familiar and unfamiliar appellations as Jules de Grandon, Anthony Rogers, Sir Dennis Nayland Smith, Jimmy Dale, Arsene Lupin, Kimball Kinnison, Nicholas Carter, Stephen Costigan, and entire columns more.

  “A splendid company,” I could not help exclaiming when I had completed my perusal of the gilded scroll. “But if I may make so bold as to ask, how is this establishment maintained? By whose efforts are these facilities operated? Who builds the fire, prepares comestibles, serves libations?”

  “Oh, we have flunkies aplenty, Dr. Watson,” the young man in the red zip-suit supplied. I identified him at once as Curtis Newton. “Each of us contributes his own staff of assistants to the general service of the League. My own aides include Otho the android, Grag the robot, and Simon Wright the living brain.”

  “And mine,” the Shadow stated with a sinister chuckle, “are the playboy Lamont Cranston, my chauffeur Moe Shrevnitz, the communications wizard Burbank, and the near suicide Harry Vincent.”

  In turn each of them named a group of bizarre assistants, each as peculiar and eccentric as his employer.

  “Every one of these,” Doc Savage concluded, “serves his time in the kitchen, the armory, or elsewhere in the Fortress and the other far-flung outposts of our League between assignments in personal service to his respective employer.”

  “I comprehend,” I stated, sipping idly at the beverage that had appeared, all unnoticed, beside my easy chair. I stopped and sniffed, surprised, at the contents of my glass. Sarsaparilla.

  “And yet I am puzzled by one matter,” I said, addressing myself once more to my hosts at large. In response they looked at me to a man, with expressions of inquisitive anticipation. “Why,” I brought myself at last to ask, “have you summoned me to this redoubt? You are clearly a band of the most capable and dashing of heroes. I know not what puzzle confronts you, other than the matter of the purloined God of the Naked Unicorn. Surely you do not require my own humble talents in the solution of this, which must pale before your eyes to the pettiest of puzzles.”

  Once more the chairmanship of the assemblage was assumed by Clark Savage, Jr. He strode to and fro, stationing himself at last before the crackling fire so that the flames, as they writhed and danced behind his heroic figure, cast monstrous shadows across the ornate library of the League. With his feet spread wide, his hands clasped behind his back, his magnificent chest thrown out, and his proud head held high, his entire form backlighted and semisilhouetted against the dancing flames, he made as glorious a picture of masculine power and grace as ever I had beheld.

  “John Watson,” he intoned impressively, “what I am about to tell you is a piece of information of the most sensitive and yet earthshaking nature. I place you upon your honor as a junior associate of the Personages United as Protectors to reveal it to no one until such time as the case has been brought to a triumphant conclusion. Have I your solemn word, John Watson?”

  “You have it, sir,” I whispered. There was a lump in my throat, and my eyes were oddly watery at that moment.

  “Very well.” Doc Savage continued, “I must inform you that there is at large an archvillain whose malefic machinations utterly overshadow those of the most infamous evildoers in the entire annals of the League.”

  “Blacker than Cardinal Richelieu,” a voice cried out.

  “More sinister than the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu,” added another.

  “More brilliant than the revolutionist Ay-Artz of the planet Lemnis.”

  “More treacherous than Hooja the Sly One.”

  “More dangerous than Blacky Duquesne.”

  “More ruthless than the master mind Ras Thavas.”

  “More threatening than the very Napoleon of Crime himself,” exclaimed Doc Savage, bringing the list to a crashing conclusion.

  “The Napoleon of Crime?” I repeated incredulously. “You mean—you mean the warped genius Professor James Moriarty? But he has been unheard of since he plunged with my great associate into the Reichenbach Falls. Are you telling me that he survived?”

  “Perhaps he was killed, John Watson—then again, perhaps he escaped, as did his rival and opponent in the epic struggle that had its culmination there in Switzerland. Many a man has seen fit to disappear, and what better hiding place than the grave, eh, Watson?”

  Savage was now striding back and forth before the great fireplace, his titanic shadow swaying across the wooden beams and metal chandeliers above our heads. The other men in the room sat silently, expectantly, observing the exchange between their leader and myself. I vowed silently not to fail my absent associate in the upholding of his honor.

  “In raising the name of the Napoleon of Crime,” I said with some heat, “in making that reference, Doc Savage, you bring by implication the charge that my own associate has somehow failed to rid the earth of this menace.”

  “Quite so,” Doc Savage stated. “Your associate—Sherlock Holmes—is in the hands of a fiend before whom Professor Moriarty and these other petty peculators pale to a paltry puniness.”

  He strode forward and stood over me, towering fully six feet and more into the air. “I am here only because a timely bit of aid by my cousin Patricia caused me to escape the clutches of this archfiend. I slipped through his net, but two companions with whom I was pursuing the missing God of the Naked Unicorn were less fortunate than I, and are at this time held in durance vile by the mad genius whose efforts may yet bring the entire fragile structure of civilization crashing to destruction.”

  “Two companions?” I echoed dumbly. “Two? But who can they be?”

  He crouched low, bringing his metallic-flecked eyes glimmeringly close to my own and pointed his finger at me significantly. “At this very moment there rest in the clutches of this brilliant maniac both Sherlock Holmes and Sir John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, the man known to the world at large as—Tarzan of the Apes.”

  “Holmes and Greystoke? At one time? And very nearly yourself as well, Doc Savage?” I exclaimed. “Who can this devil be, and how can I assist in retrieving your associates from his clutches?”

  “Wentworth, you are our supreme intellectual,” snapped Doc Savage to the personage in the spiderwebbed cloak. “Enlighten Dr. Watson as to our strategy, will you please, while I retire briefly to extract a few square and cube roots?”

  Doc Savage retreated to his own seat, and the Spider began to speak in a low, insinuating voice that seemed almost to hypnotize the listener.

  “This archfiend is unquestionably the most brilliant and most resourceful opponent any of us has ever faced,” he averred. “Yet, Watson, as all who fight crime and anarchy know in the innermost recesses of their being, there has never lived an evildoer whose warped brain has not caused him to commit one fatal mistake that in time led to his being brought before the bar of justice and punished. Sooner or later, Watson evildoers pay the price of their misdeeds.”

  “The abduction of Tarzan, Holmes, and Doc Savage was to have taken place at the brilliant Exposition of European Progress where The God of the Naked Unicorn was on display.”

  This was Richard Henry Benson, the Avenger, speaking. He fingered an odd dagger and an even odder-looking pistol as he spoke. “A brilliant replica of The God of the Naked Unicorn was s
ubstituted, a substitution that would escape the practiced eye of the most discerning lapidarist, and yet was discovered by a mere woman.”

  “Yes, a mere woman.” Captain John Carter took up the narration. “A woman of protean nature whose admirers have identified her variously as the Princess Dejah Thoris of Helium—as Joan Randall, daughter of the commissioner of the interplanetary police authority—as Margo Lane, faithful friend and companion of the Shadow—as Jane Porter Clayton, Lady Greystoke—and as Miss Evangl Stewart of New York City’s bohemian quarter, Greenwich Village, among others.”

  “This woman,” Jethro Dumont intervened suavely, “The Woman, if you will, detected the clever substitution and sought to notify Sherlock Holmes, Lord Greystoke, and Doc Savage. She had alerted both Greystoke and Holmes and was speaking with Doc Savage when the first two members of the League, unaware of the presence of Doc, moved to uncover the fraud and fell into the trap of the archfiend.”

  “I moved to their rescue,” Savage concluded the tale, “but the evildoer was prepared. He used The God of the Naked Unicorn to trap Holmes and Tarzan, and using them as bait nearly netted me as well. I escaped with my life and nothing more, and Holmes and Tarzan were spirited away, along with The God of the Naked Unicorn.”

  “Then the threat of which Her High—The Woman spoke,” I stammered, “the threat to display The God of the Naked Unicorn in St. Wrycyxlwv’s Square—was merely a device? A hoax?”

  “No, Dr. Watson,” the Shadow interposed, “that threat is real, it is all too real. But a far greater threat to the order and security of the world is posed by the madman who holds Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan of the Apes in his clutches at this moment.”

  “I see, I see,” I mumbled in stunned semicoherency. “But then—then what role have you chosen for me to play in this drama? What can a humble physician and sometimes biographer of the great do in this exigency?”