The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes: Nine Adventures from the Lost Years

by Ted Riccardi

  “I had tangled with both these agents earlier, though we never met face-to-face,” said Holmes, relating to me what he knew of them from earlier adventures. “Dorjiloff was a man well into his fifties by now, but his origins were mysterious. He himself claimed to be of Mongolian Buriat origin, born in Siberia east of Lake Baikal at a place called Azochozki. His youth was misspent, and he soon ran afoul of the Tsarist police. He was arrested for murder and petty larceny and sent to a labour camp in the Urals. From there he escaped and came to London, where I first became aware of him. You may recall the unresolved murder of Sir Samuel Soames, Watson.”

  “Indeed, I do. Soames was a wealthy merchant of Liverpool, who was stabbed to death by a street thief . . . in Russell Square, if I remember correctly.”

  “Excellent, Watson. It was no street thief who perpetrated the crime, of course, and I traced the murder to a secret society of Russian agents operating in London, of which Dorjiloff was a prominent member. Unfortunately, he avoided my net and escaped to New York, where he engaged in forgery. He eventually made his way to San Francisco, then Shanghai. From there he returned to Russia and hid in a Buddhist monastery at Urga, where he convinced the ignorant monks of his religious propensities and began the study of the Buddhist religion. Following his ordination, he left Russia and travelled in Mongolia. He took the Tibetan name of Ghomang Lopzang, and arriving at last in Tibet, he entered the Drepung monastery as an authority on metaphysics and philosophy. During his stay he went often to Lhasa, where began to exercise great influence over the Regent and thereby upon the child who was the Grand Lama. Undetected by the Russian authorities, he returned to Moscow, where he became influential as a religious teacher. He came to the attention of the superstitious Tsar himself, who brought him to the Russian palace, where he exerted a strong influence. In both the Russia and Tibet, he soon became known as Dorjieff, or Dorjiloff, a strange Russified Tibetan name that means “Man of the Thunder Bolt.”

  I marvelled at Holmes’ account and the wealth of detail that he commanded about his enemies even after so many years.

  “Of Yamamoto I learned little more than I already knew,” he continued. “I had come across his name in the Tokyo Police Reports, where he was described as a petty thief who had fled Japan and settled in Shanghai. There, because of his knowledge of Chinese, he became a secret agent of the Japanese in China. From thief to secret agent is an ever more common path to success. He was married for a time to a Tibetan woman whom he met in Canton. Becoming one of the only Japanese to know both Chinese and Tibetan he caught the eye of high officials in the Imperial Court, who sent him to Lhasa as the leader of a trade mission. For several years, he and Dorjiloff had worked in concert against our interests, each manoeuvering for a position of advantage, and it was with them that my major confrontations would undoubtedly begin.”

  Holmes interrupted his account briefly as he sifted through the facts that poured forth from his brain. “So much for my two adversaries, Watson. I won’t bore you further. Let it suffice to say that by now Lhasa presented sufficient criminal interest for me to wish to go even without the secret mission that had been given to me. The chief goal was to find Manning, or to learn what had happened to him. I hoped to find him still alive, for I doubted that the Tibetans would risk killing or imprisoning a British envoy, unless, that is, someone such as Dorjiloff forced the issue or killed him himself. Such an act would bring direct intervention of the Viceroy, and whatever Dorjiloff’s desires in this respect, my researches indicated that the Tibetan Government itself appeared to me to be one whose character was, if anything, restrained. The old Regent still wielded considerable power and influence, and it was with him I wished to deal, if I could get near him. He apparently received almost no one these days and remained in the Potala, where he dictated the life of Tibet.”

  Holmes stopped his account of his researches there. Those days in Florence he still remembers as amongst the happiest and most carefree of his existence, for he had no lack of servants, and no task save the one at hand. He emerged from the long days of study fully confident that he knew what he had to know to accomplish the mission. He had become in a short time what he could only call an Orientalist.

  True to the minister’s promise, after those days of relentless study, Holmes was taken to the central station in Florence, where he boarded a train for Naples. There he switched to another that took him overnight to Brindisi, where he boarded the small American freighter, the SS Downes-Porter, in the early morning, bound that very evening for Alexandria and then Bombay.

  The trip was uneventful, and Holmes spent the long idle hours imposed upon him in further study of the notes and documents he had with him. Among them were several photographs of Manning, Yamamoto, and Dorjiloff. He studied them intently, committing to memory every detail. He also had photographs of the Grand Lama and his family. The Regent, as far as Holmes could ascertain, had circumvented all known attempts to photograph him, and Count d’Este had registered none in his collections. One of the family photographs, however, contained a figure who, Holmes was fairly certain, was the regent Getong Tsarong. The photograph showed a tall, rather gaunt man standing next to the child chosen to become the Grand Lama. He wore thick glasses, his hair in a braid tied round his head. The picture was faded and improperly focussed, and Holmes found his features most curious. Another document which he perused constantly was a detailed map of the city of Lhasa, one that he had put together himself from the maps in the Italian collection. So well, however, did he memorise the streets and so vivid had the monuments of the city become, that he felt by the time he had come to the end of his sea voyage that he had already walked through even its back alleys. He also had made detailed diagrams of the Potala, both its outer ramparts and its inner corridors and rooms, which he also committed to memory. It was this kind of knowledge—become almost instinctive, so well had he drilled himself on it—that would give him the ability to move quickly in dangerous circumstances.

  “We docked in Bombay just over three weeks after our departure from Italy,” he continued. “By this time, I was in despair over the ship’s food, the enforced rest, and the small talk of the few uninteresting passengers. I was delighted therefore when we first glimpsed the Bombay harbour in the early morning mists. It was my first taste of the Orient, Watson, but I must say that initial delight soon passed into disappointment. Architecturally, in its grandiose public monuments, Bombay attempted to be another London, but succeeded only in being one drab and run-down, a metropolis totally misplaced in the tropical climate of western India, filled with teeming millions living in the streets trying to survive the vicissitudes of an indifferent fate. The rains had been heavy and the city was soaked through. The air was wet and reeked of humankind and its myriad activities, and I found myself eager to leave on my mission.”

  Holmes’s first task was to meet with officials of Government, but they were at once unhelpful and unconcerned. What appeared as a grave problem in London impressed no one in Bombay as urgent. Indeed, Lhasa seemed farther from Bombay than it was from London. In addition, the Viceroy himself had been called out of India unexpectedly and was on his way to Burma to tend to a crisis in Rangoon and was therefore unreachable. If Holmes was to keep to his schedule, therefore, he would have to pick his own route and travel to Lhasa on his own. Out of several routes that he had studied, he chose one of the shorter ones, and the very one taken by Manning. This was the one through the western Himalayas that leads directly to the Tibetan plateau. From there, he would follow an eastern route to the sacred city of Lhasa. And so boarding a train to Pathankot in the Punjab, and from there with a guide and a group of porters, he began the ascent, sometimes on foot, sometimes on horseback, to the Kulu Valley, thence to Spiti and Zanskar. It was in Zanskar that he was most fortunate to meet a group of Kashmiri traders who were on their way to the holy city. They invited him to join their caravan.

  “It has been said, Watson, that no stranger can enter Tibet without the knowledge of th
e Tibetan Government. And yet, in travelling with this large caravan, I entered unobserved. I was not questioned at the various checkposts, and at almost every point I was allowed to proceed without difficulty. Only on one occasion was I noticed, and that was just outside Shigatse, the last post before Lhasa. I produced the documents of the Norwegian naturalist Hallvard Sigerson, and stated that I was on a scientific mission to collect botanical and zoological specimens from the Tibetan plateau. I passed through without delay and continued on with my Kashmiri friends. The Tibetans appeared to have a high regard for Scandinavians, and regarded them without the suspicion that they reserved for British citizens and those of the major powers. My special status as an emissary of the British Government I was to reveal only to the authorities in the Potala, and I kept it hidden from the police at the border. Having passed through this last post, I was finally in Tibet, and as I gazed around me, I felt a singular elation, no doubt intensified by the great heat of the sun and the high altitude.”

  The Tibetan plateau appeared to Holmes as it has appeared to so many travellers: a vast expanse of empty land, beautiful and severe, and at times forbidding. Fierce winds blew, and the sun scorched him and his companions, blistering the skin, almost blinding them as it shone from the high vault of cloudless sky that seemed unending. The air was thin and deficient at the highest altitudes, and the way therefore exhausting. Holmes survived—miraculously, he thought at times.

  When they reached the valley of the Brahmaputra, Holmes had seen the worst of the trip. Though its elevation is almost twelve thousand feet, this valley in which lies the capital city of Tibet was filled with vegetation, and he travelled with far greater ease. One morning, shortly after they had resumed their journey beyond Gyantse, the city of Lhasa appeared—or rather, the Potala—that immense edifice that houses the Grand Lama—first became visible in the morning sun atop the hill on which it sits north of the city, an unexpected piece of Oriental splendour. It was in stark contrast to the city of Lhasa itself, which soon appeared at the end of a broad avenue lined with large trees, and it was not long before the caravan entered the central bazaar.

  “Lhasa, my dear Watson, is no more than a small town, housing only a few thousand inhabitants in its stone houses and narrow lanes. Its appearance is better from afar, for closer inspection reveals a city covered with soot and dirt, with no orderly plan. The streets are full of dogs, some growling and gnawing bits of hide which lie about in profusion, emitting a strong charnel house odour. Despite this rather gloomy appearance, my first impression was, overall, a good one, for the poverty and primitive way of life notwithstanding, the people were friendly and courteous, varied and colorful, and the city was filled with the activity of an amiable, even innocent, humanity.”

  Holmes was taken first to a small lodge where foreign guests were housed before they met their official hosts. It was from here that he made his initial attempts to make contact with the Tibetan Government. His papers were politely accepted by an official of the Potala, but he was informed that he would have to wait until the Regent himself reviewed his documents before his work could begin. It was soon apparent that Tibetan officialdom, although now aware of his mission, had not yet agreed to receive him. When he asked to meet with Mr. Manning, the official checked a list of foreign visitors and duly informed him that no one by that name had ever visited Lhasa. He was most cordial but firm, and Holmes knew then that his work would take extraordinary patience.

  In the delay, he was afforded the time to explore the city and to begin private inquiries about Manning, who now, it seemed, had disappeared without a trace. In trying to locate him, Holmes spent the early days of his stay combing every inch of the old Lhasa. At its centre lies the most sacred of Tibetan temples, the so-called Jor-khang, a most ornate edifice, heavy with incense, and filled with monks, pilgrims, and the sacred idols of a superstitious people. Around it and in the adjacent alleys are the shops, residences, and offices of much of the Tibetan Government. These are all housed in grey stone buildings, with which Holmes soon became thoroughly familiar.

  Those first days in Tibet also taught Holmes things he had not learned in the countless books that he had perused in Italy. Like all things human, the Tibetan character is complex, with much that is good in it, perhaps more than there is in ours. But there is a dark side as well, of which they are very much aware—of anger, greed, cruelty, lust, and mental as well as physical disease. The religious system is a highly developed one, with spiritual attainments that far surpass our meagre efforts. But the Tibetan life, despite these accomplishments, is for the majority of extreme difficulty and poverty. Tibetans are farmers and herders ruled by a small priestly class and an aristocracy who set the rules by which the majority lives. These rules are extremely harsh and resemble the criminal law of our own mediaeval epoch. The rack, the ordeal, various ancient tortures such as disembowelling, dismemberment, public executions, are all practised for the most heinous of crimes. The harshness of these rules appears to have little effect on the criminal classes, for crime is widespread and gangs of thieves and murderers roam the countryside, giving grief to villagers, merchants, and priests alike. No trade route is truly safe, and the large caravans that travel between the Tibetan plateau and the Indian plains are usually well armed.

  “Despite its isolation and reputation for impenetrability,” said Holmes,” I soon became aware that Lhasa housed a number of people from other parts of the world. There were a variety of merchants, mainly Kashmiri, Nepalese, and Chinese, for the Tibetans in Lhasa are loath to engage in business on their own. There were also a number of Europeans. Some of these were engaged in honest activity and researches concerning Tibetan belief and practice. Among them were Sandor Halevy, the great student of Tibetan literature, and Marie le Carré, an exuberant and eccentric disciple of Buddhism from Provence. But others had bribed their way in with the collusion of corrupt officials. I quickly spotted Sackville-Grimes, the most dangerous of arsonists, Platon Gilbert, one of the cruelest murderers of modern France, the infamous German counterfeiter, Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, and finally, Sviadek, notorious as the Gallician cannibal. These and others were there as long as either money was to be made or they were protected by the Tibetan Government, petty criminals and quacks, most of them, who lacked the means or the energy to leave and so found themselves to be longtime residents of the so-called Forbidden City. None of these, when interrogated, professed any knowledge of William Manning.”

  It was well within his first fortnight that Holmes met Gorashar, the most successful merchant of Lhasa. He was taken to his house by one of the Kashmiri merchants with whom he had travelled from Zanskar. Gorashar was a Newar from Katmandu, a short, dapper, man whose intelligent and impish eyes said at once that he believed in nothing and trusted no one. He welcomed Holmes warmly, offering him a rare Russian cigarette, and Holmes felt at once comfortable in his presence. In the evening Gorashar’s lavish home near the Jor Khang became the site of an elaborate salon which almost all of the peculiar denizens of the city attended. Evenings there included elaborate banquets, punctuated by games of mah-jong and gambling in almost all its varieties, all of which were accompanied by the constant consumption of intoxicants, either in their local manifestation known as chang, or in the more exotic varieties that Gorashar was able to import through his agents in St. Petersburg. The air was always thick with the smoke of tobacco and Indian gunja, and the ears were often assaulted by a band of Indian musicians from Calcutta who attempted peculiar Oriental renditions of the seductive ditties that one associates with the demi-monde establishments of London and Paris.

  “As you might well imagine, Watson, it was not an atmosphere that I found in the least congenial, and were it not for my mission, I would have removed myself at once. It was clear to me, however, that Gorashar’s establishment was more than just a place for an evening’s entertainment. It was, among other things, a feast for the eye of the detective. I found myself constantly drawn to it. The room was filled with the ri
ff-raff of four continents. What a delight, dear Watson. Here, in this large and crowded room in one of the most isolated corners of the globe, there mixed together the most dangerous criminals with the worst mountebanks and pious bewilderers known to the civilised world. Some of them taxed even my powers of observation. Imagine a host of criminals and quacks who had taken on exotic disguises—shaven heads and eyebrows, glass eyes, wigs, long beards, scars, tattoos, fake limbs causing the oddest limps, canes and crutches of exotic manufacture. On several occasions, I sat contemplating the scene before me, wishing that I could have uninterrupted observation. Remote Lhasa, the romantic destination of every middle-class heart in England, had become a cesspool not unlike London, far smaller perhaps, but one with its own poisonous aspects, one in which the profound religious life of the Tibetan people served as the scenic backdrop for the nefarious activities of international roguery. So many who had apparently disappeared from the face of the earth were here, perfecting their disguises in this exotic land before they returned—transformed, they hoped, beyond recognition. And to my delight, neither Scotland Yard, the French Sûreté, nor the New York Department of Criminal Investigation had any inkling of their whereabouts.”

  I could not help but interrupt Holmes at this point in his story.