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

by Ted Riccardi

  “We shall spend the day speculating,” he said in jest.

  Uru too said that he was busy, and that he would not work that day or the next. He left, and I was happy to see him go.

  I had said nothing to Van Ruisdael about the events of the night before, and I continued my silence, for I had not wished to disturb him or his work. He moved to his tent, with his notes, and I remained at the site with the four workmen.

  I had not tried in any way before to communicate with them, except in matters pertaining to the excavation. One of them, a young man by the name of Bulang, spoke some English, though he never spoke it in front of Uru. I motioned to him, and asked that he accompany me for a moment. We walked away from the site and the others, and I tried to question him about the festival.

  He seemed concerned at first that I was merely trying to get him and the others to work on the festival day, for he repeated many times that it was a most important day for them. I reassured him, and told him that I was interested in his people and their history. That was all. He then began to talk, and though I understood only part of what he said, the main outline seemed clear: his tribe was a branch of the Batak of Sumatra, an ancient hill tribe that had tried to maintain its independence from the Dutch. They called themselves Norom-Batak, for they came from an area on Sumatra near Toba, called in their language Norom. His people were “sea gypsies,” nomads who had had many homes and had lived in many places. This was one of the main domiciles. They had been here for many generations, and had learned how to live both in the sea and in the jungle. At first, their life here on land was hard, for the wild animals were ferocious, particularly the giant rat, which attacked them. But their god, Kallo, entered the rat and he became their friend. Kallo was worshipped then as the giant black rat, who protected them, and whom they protected. One day, Kallo left and spoke to them from the sky, saying that they must return to Norom. And so, as they had done so many times in the past, the entire tribe left and returned to their ancestral home in Sumatra. At first, their meeting with their kinsmen was peaceful. Kallo reappeared and they were happy. But soon there was fighting, for Maharjo Dhirjo, the king of the main Batak clan, did not like Kallo. Kallo brought a curse on Maharjo, and Marjan came, a white man. The white man was Kallo’s friend, but Maharjo killed him in a dispute, and Kallo became angry. He said that they should take his two youngest children and return to Java. After Marjan’s death, he told them that he would no longer be black but white. And so the tribe took to the sea, with the two children of Kallo, one female, one male, and came once again to this place. Here they raised Kallo’s children, and succeeding generations. They worshipped Kallo daily, and tomorrow was the great festival for him.

  I asked him where the festival was to take place. He pointed to a hill to the north. There, he said, was Kallo’s great house and where they kept the descendants of Kallo’s children. These were the last two, and they were old. Kallo had told them that there would be no more and that they would have to move again. So the tribe was assembling for the great festival, where Kallo would speak to them and tell them what they should do.

  I then asked him whether I could visit Kallo’s house. He said that he would show it to me, but that I must not tell anyone. I could also come to the festival, he said, as long as I was hidden from view. Kallo would not want me to come to harm.

  I then sent word through one of the workmen to Van Ruisdael that I would be gone for a few hours. Absorbed in his cataloguing, he paid no attention, and in a few moments we were lost from sight, on the thick jungle trail up the slope of the northern mountain. Bulang moved quickly and silently and I followed as rapidly as I could. It would have been impossible to find the place without him, for at a certain point, the path diverged in several directions, and there was no way to know which one to take. Bulang took the one to the right and we began a steep climb for several hundred feet. Then suddenly above our heads there appeared the first step of an ancient stone stairway. Bulang jumped up to it and, pulling me up to it, we made our way up the stairs to a clearing at the top.

  What I saw, Watson, at the top, thoroughly amazed me. This was an enormous stone temple complex, the likes of which had never been suspected in this part of the world. It was deserted at the moment that we entered. The main temple rose like some dark pyramid into the sky several hundred yards away. Directly in front of us were large sculptures of fantastic animals, large sea turtles, fish, and behind them jungle animals, elephants, tigers, snakes, and finally, at the foot of the temple, a column at the top of which stood a giant rat, its fangs bared, its claws ready to do battle. Its white color stood in bold contrast to the blackened stone of everything else. Bulang told me that this was Kallo.

  Bulang motioned me past the column and I ascended the temple with him. The top was flat and contained nothing except what appeared to be an altar. He motioned to me to be silent and we descended to what appeared to be a jungle area behind the temple. Once in it, I realised that it was merely a narrow ring of foliage hiding what appeared to be an enormous stone amphitheatre. In the centre was a large pit some fifty feet deep. Upon looking down into it, I saw, Watson, what no one had ever seen before: a giant rat of Sumatra, alive but apparently moribund. It was attached by a heavy iron chain to the wall and appeared to be almost asleep. Bulang saw my look of horror, and said that there was nothing to fear. The animal appeared to be at least ten feet long, Watson, and while I realised there was no immediate danger, its size and look produced a feeling of revulsion that I have rarely felt in my life. A frisson passed through my entire body.

  Sensing something new, my presence perhaps, the rat began to move, and I saw that it moved very slowly. Its eyes were cloudy and dull, and it was exceedingly fat. It was old, not only in years but in its form, for what I saw in front of me was surely a relic of the evolutionary past, a path of ferocity that Nature in her mercy had all but abandoned and confined to a remote corner of the globe.

  The rat began to gnaw mindlessly on a large pile of vegetables and fruit left for it. This was, said Bulang, Kallo’s last offspring. There would be no more issue, and he would be killed at the festival. When he died, his flesh would be shared, and the bones placed in the sacred bone place. Without him, the tribe could no longer remain, and they would have to journey again, perhaps back to Sumatra, to find the new children of Kallo. He picked a flower from a nearby tree. This is maja, he said. All of them would eat these flowers after the sacrifice, and they would walk to the sea, where they would sleep. In their dreams, Kallo would come and tell them what to do, and when they awoke they would follow his instructions.

  It was almost dark when I returned to our camp. Bulang had accompanied me. As soon as we approached, I realised that something was very wrong. The camp had been virtually destroyed. Our two guides were lying dead near the cooking fire, both stabbed to death. Everything had been taken, including the specimens, and Van Ruisdael himself was nowhere to be found. The marauders had disappeared, leaving no trace. I, the lone survivor of our party, had no choice but to take refuge with Bulang, who bade me follow him.

  We retraced our steps back to the temple. Bulang took me to a dark wooded place above the amphitheatre, where he said I would be safe. After dark, he said, no one of the tribe was allowed to travel above the highest part of the amphitheatre. Kallo did not like his people coming near his home—the sky—at night. But Kallo would allow me to stay as a guest, he said. He then disappeared into the night. I never saw him again.

  The god Kallo’s permission was small consolation for the situation I found myself in, Watson, for I was unarmed, and therefore helpless should I be found out. But there I was, alone, and I could only watch and hope that what transpired would procede without incident, and that I could try in the morning to find out what had happened to Van Ruisdael and who the villains were who had sacked our camp. I could only hope that Van Ruisdael had escaped, or if he had been taken captive was still alive somewhere.

  From where I was I looked down on the entire amph
itheatre, which was dark, empty, and silent except for the occasional movements of the great rat that lay at the bottom of its pit. There was no movement for several hours. Then, as if by signal, the amphitheatre began to fill with members of the Norom. They came in single file; passing first the column of Kallo, then climbing the great temple, they descended towards the great theatre. They did not speak as they entered. A single light near the center was the only illumination. By it I could watch them entering, men, women, and children, all in a silent stream. They stood in place until a priest entered, followed by a group of priests who carried the statue of the great white rat. They placed it in front of the first priest, who began a slow tap of his hands. Then his feet began to move rapidly in place in a furious dance. The crowd followed him in his movements.

  Suddenly, two of the priests produced long wooden spears and, jumping into the pit, rapidly despatched the great inert rat. What followed, Watson, was a rapid dismemberment of the great beast and the quick sharing of much of the flesh with the congregation. There was then the rapid sharing of the maja flowers, and the people began to leave as they came, in single file, led by the priests, who carried the rat at the head of the procession.

  When the ceremony was complete, the great temple and its amphitheatre were deserted. I waited until the crowd had gone sufficiently far for me to follow unnoticed. I watched the procession by its own dim torchlight as it wound its way, first to the sacred bone place near our camp. Here the bones of the last rat of Sumatra were cast in the dark, and the crowd proceeded silently to the nearby cove.

  I followed silently, and watched as they reached the beach. Each one kneeled silently, and then lay down, as if in a deep sleep. The priests placed the statue of the rat in the shallow water, where it faced out to sea, awaiting Kallo’s instructions. Then they too lay down and waited, in their dreams, for his word.

  It was only then that I realised the terrible fate of the Norom, for whatever Kallo told them in their sleep, other forces were at work that would change their history forever. After the last of them had fallen into a deep sleep, shadows appeared out of the dark. I saw Uru, and the great bulk of the Swedish captain of the Mathilde Briggs, and many others that I had not seen before, perhaps its entire crew. They threw nets over the sleeping Norom and tied the hands of each of them. I realised only then to my horror that the ship in which I had travelled now would carry the most unholy of cargos, for two hundred human beings, asleep in the opiate of their belief, would awaken soon to find that their god had abandoned them.

  If I have been frustrated in my work before, Watson, I can assure you that you have not seen me as close to the total despair that I felt at that moment. I could do nothing. Indeed, if I interfered I could conceivably cause the death of many of those who, now bound, could not escape. I decided to leave, to return as fast as I could to Jogyakarta, and at least report the capture to Maupertuis.

  I turned, and in the dark made my way back to our campsite, then started out along the dark trail up the side of the mountain. An hour into the march I decided to wait until dawn, for I could no longer see at all, and at the slightest wrong step I would have plummeted to the depths. I sat on the trail, made totally awake from the horror that I had seen, until dawn, when the light sufficed for me to walk again. It was raining now, and the trail had turned to mud. I continued, however, until I reached the ridge, from where I could see the village of Bulayo. From there, my return to Jogyakarta was uneventful.

  There is no reason to bore you with the rest, Watson. As soon as I related the events, Maupertuis, quite sceptical of some of my statements, sent a search party to look for Van Ruisdael. But he was never found, and his fate remains unknown.

  As to the fate of the Mathilde Briggs, I can only tell you that shortly before its arrival in Pelambang off the western coast of Sumatra, the ship was found drifting aimlessly near shore. A rebellion had occurred in which the crew and the captain were killed, the only survivor being a fat Javanese who died of his wounds shortly after he described the rebellion to the authorities.

  So much, then, my dear doctor, for the incidents through which I have just lived. I write to record and to inform only you, for they form a tale that still is to unfold, and for which I believe the world is not yet prepared.

  Your sincere and devoted friend,

  Sherlock Holmes

  (Written at Singapore, 10 July 1893)

  MURDER IN THE THIEVES’ BAZAAR

  SHERLOCK HOLMES’S EXPERIENCE OF A WIDE ASSORTMENT of crime, often in some of the most remote corners of the globe, had led him to speculate from time to time on the relation between the native world and the world of the criminal. Like all true scientists, he believed firmly that the laws governing the science of detection—primarily those of observation and deduction—pertained universally—and equally, therefore—in the winding alleys of the Hindoo and Mahometan worlds and the broad avenues of Paris and London. What differences there might appear to be lay at the surface and could be ascribed to accidental differences in local circumstance.

  “Take, as an example,” he said one evening at dinner, “a murder in Delhi. There are red stains everywhere, what appears to be blood. The stains continue several yards from the scene of the crime. In London, one can be almost completely sure that they are blood and blood alone. In Delhi, or elsewhere in India, however, they may be blood and betel, a leaf commonly filled with spices and the like and chewed in India, the juice of which when expectorated often resembles the splotches of blood that one associates with a bleeding animal, human or otherwise. Here we have a simple case of the necessity to understand the place in which one finds oneself.”

  I could not help but agree in this instance. “But what of the criminal himself, my dear Holmes? Surely the Indian or the Chinese criminal must perforce be different from our English criminal. Could one not talk of criminal types?”

  “I do not believe so, Watson. Cruelty and the commission of serious transgressions may be innate in many human beings, but I do not believe myself that criminals can be described in such ways. There are no criminal types, nor are there tribes that are criminal. Gunthorpe’s work on the criminal castes and tribes of India, for instance, is utter nonsense.”

  I was surprised to hear him speak in such fashion, for I thought that the work of Gunthorpe and Sleeman had greatly aided in the apprehension of criminals and criminal groups throughout the Subcontinent.

  “Then what about the work of Lombroso,” I retorted. “Surely his reasoning that physical type and crime are intimately connected hardly needs justification. His theories have already established him as the leading criminologist of Europe.”

  Sherlock Holmes sniffed sardonically. “Lombroso is a miserable bungler. His works on delinquent males and females have made me positively ill. He reasons from the poor specimens who inhabit the jails of Italy, innocent devils, fathers many of them, who have committed no crime except the theft of a loaf of bread to feed a starving child, and mothers, forced to sell their bodies and their souls for the same purpose. No, Watson, were I to follow Lombroso’s techniques I surely would pursue the innocent, and perhaps the innocent alone.”

  I was annoyed at Holmes’s cavalier dismissal of writers whom I judged to have a high place in the forensic world, but I knew that mine was no match for his intimate knowledge of the criminological literature. Still, I decided to continue the debate and perhaps to provoke him into another tale.

  “But surely the jails in our Empire are not filled with the innocent. My own experience in Afghanistan led me to the conclusion that were we to win control of those areas we would be faced with an enormous civilising mission, considering the moral turpitude of most of the local population. Even educated Hindoos have remarked on the enormous number of social pests found among the lower castes who, in a variety of disguises, commit the overwhelming majority of crimes.”

  Holmes laughed warmly. “Brilliant, Watson,” he exclaimed, “not even Gunthorpe himself could have put it any better. But I know
you well enough to know that you do not believe such twaddle. If you want me to relate another tale, you should say so straightforwardly.”

  I smiled broadly at his remark. “I should have known better than to try to provoke you. But perhaps you could give me a longer example of the universality of your science and the nature of the special circumstances to which you have just alluded.”

  “If you mean by circumstances what is usually referred to as circumstantial evidence, Watson, then we have much to talk about. A crime in England, one in Italy, one in Turkey, one in Japan, will all differ in local circumstances and the way they happen. What makes them similar is the view that the detective takes of the circumstances. Universality lies in the eye of the observer. You no doubt remember the case to which you gave the name of the Boscombe Valley mystery.”

  “I remember, indeed. Surely no one ever appeared to be as guilty of murder as young McCarthy. Were it not for your intervention, Lestrade would have had him led to the gallows without the slightest qualm.”

  “Precisely. In many serious crimes—murder, in particular,—there are often no witnesses, nor other direct evidence of any kind. Hence it is the reading of the indirect evidence that leads to a conclusion. Shift one’s viewpoint just ever so much and starkly differing conclusions may be reached. The guilty become innocent and the innocent guilty.”

  Holmes stopped for a moment. “There is, Watson,” he said with a sudden look of recall on his face, “a case that speaks to our discussion, one with which you are not familiar since it is occurred during my time in the Orient. Perhaps you would like to hear it?”

  We moved from the table to our favourite chairs, and he related the following tale of murder in the thieves’ bazaar of Bombay.