by Barry Day
“One of these days, Mr. Holmes, I do declare you’ll be drinking one of those chemical things of yours instead of your wine. And then where’ll you be?”
“I shall probably be complaining to St. Peter about the quality of the vintage, Mrs. Hudson. But you may be sure I shall not seek to lay the blame at your door., Even if we don’t show it, Doctor Watson and I are eternally grateful for your tolerance of our funny little ways, aren’t we, Watson?”
This seemed to mollify the good lady and she was smiling as she left with her tray. I thought I heard her murmur something about—“There’s only one person around here has funny ways that I know of …” which brought a smile to my face, too, for I chose to assume she did not mean me.
Hardly had the door closed behind her when it opened again.
“You made me forget this letter that came for you while you were out, Mr. Holmes.” And she laid an envelope on the table next to Holmes’s plate before leaving again.
Holmes manoeuvred it around with his knife, turning it over so that he could see both sides without picking it up—his invariable habit with missives about which he entertained the slightest doubt.
His post bag, as might be imagined, is an unorthodox one, to say the least. His correspondents range from the highest in the land—indeed, the world—to schoolgirls in Penzance or post masters in Walsall, all convinced that he and only he has the answer to their concerns. Each of them in due time he feels duty bound to answer and the schoolgirl is quite likely to be answered before the sir.
However—and I date this to the Moriarty years—he has lately taken to this more careful initial approach. On one occasion a package contained a primitive explosive device, which he detected by its odour. On another there was a scorpion, fortunately deceased by the time it made its entrance.
Now, having decided the letter contained neither of these undesirable offerings, he picked it up by opposite corners. He then proceeded to hold it up to the light from the window, shake it and finally sniff it, before putting it down in front of me.
“Now, Watson. You have seen the envelope, as have I. What do you deduce from it?”
It was a game Holmes liked to play every now and then—usually to divert his mind from whatever was preoccupying him at the moment—and I invariably indulged him. I copied his actions precisely, though, to be honest, I was not at all sure what they told me.
“Heavy paper. Obviously expensive. Therefore, your correspondent is someone of means. Probably a woman. No man would use stationery of a pastel hue. Not an aristocrat, either. I have yet to see someone who had the right to use a title who failed to emblazon their crest on every available surface …”
I examined the handwriting more closely.
“The delicacy of the script also suggests a woman’s hand and something in the shaping of the letters makes me feel she is not from these islands. I would suggest a Continental hand. Other than that, I can deduce nothing.”
And I sat back, perfectly well pleased with myself. Sometimes I feel that Holmes makes too much of these little parlour tricks of his.
“Capital, old fellow. This time you have really scratched the surface …”
I was basking in his all-too-rare praise when he continued—
“Unfortunately, you have missed those clues that tell us the more specific facts.”
“Such as?”
“The configuration of the letters certainly has a European influence. The lady in question has spent time there, without a doubt. Yet the European penmanship is overlaid on something more fundamental. The rounding of certain letters—in fact, the calligraphy as a whole—leaves a distinct impression of certain forms of Indian script.
“As you know, I have made a small study of handwriting and in my judgement this lady was born and raised in the Indian sub-continent, before travelling to—Paris, as a guess, possibly Switzerland—to ‘finish’ her education.
“That deduction is aided by the fact that, in addressing the envelope, she rested her wrist on the corner of it and thus left the impress of the bracelet she was wearing. If you hold it up to the light, you will see the faint pattern of the metal, which appears to be a stylised design of braided ropes—no, I’m wrong—of interwoven serpents …”
“A traditional Hindu motif,” I interjected.
“Indeed.”
“So an Indian lady of means who has lived in Europe is writing to you?”
“Not an Indian lady, my dear fellow. That is the most obvious thing you missed. The Indian lady. She clearly has a marked preference for the colour green. As you see, even the pastel shade of her envelope is green and if you will take the trouble to smell it …”
I did as he suggested. And, indeed, there was a distinct hint of that remarkable perfume I had come to associate with the Emerald Lady.
“Well, Holmes, now that you have dissected her, aren’t you going to see what she has to say?” I asked, I’m afraid rather huffily.
There was the vestige of a smile on Holmes’s face as he extracted a single folded sheet of paper and smoothed it flat. He examined it briefly before passing it to me.
In that same rounded hand I read …
“THAT WHICH IS LOST MUST BE FOUND.
THAT WHICH IS OURS MUST BE RETURNED.”
Not surprisingly, the letter was unsigned but at the bottom—again in green—was a seal. It bore the image of two serpents’ heads facing in opposite directions. There was malevolence in the drawing and I found myself shivering slightly as I looked at it.
Holmes’s voice brought me back to the real world.
“Strange, is it not, the way we react so differently to the Maker’s many creatures. If those had been two lambs, two horses or even two lions, you would have experienced very different emotions. But two snakes … Perhaps the Garden of Eden has something to do with the dread and the ambiguity.
“Be a good fellow and make a long arm in the direction of my reference books. The second volume under ‘S’, I fancy …”
I did as he asked and for the next several minutes he was engrossed in the contents, occasionally reading something aloud—as much for his own edification as for mine.
“SMALL, Jonathan … You hardly need reminding of him, old fellow …?”
And, indeed, I did not. One of the Four in the adventure I had related under the title of The Sign of Four, Small—admittedly under duress—had conspired to steal the Agra Treasure. After years of penal servitude, he had returned to England in pursuit of what he now considered rightfully his. His eventual capture, after a hair-raising boat pursuit along the Thames, had almost shortened my life and Holmes’s. Still, I had that adventure to thank for my introduction to Mary Morstan—my darling Mary who was to be my wife for such a tragically short time …
“THE SMITH-MORTIMER SUCCESSION CASE … Not without its points of interest …” Holmes was referring to a complex case from the previous year. “One of these days, my dear chap, we must unleash your literary powers on that one. But not quite yet, I fancy, not quite yet …
“Ah, here we are … SNAKES AND SERPENTS …
“Hm, most interesting. They appear to have evolved some one hundred and thirty million years ago—which puts homo sapiens firmly in his place … Let’s see—two and a half thousand different species of which three hundred are venomous and more than fifty dangerous to humans … one of which can spit its venom into the eye of its prey ten feet way, paralysing the nervous system. Be careful where you tread, Watson!
“Ah, now we come to it … The Serpent as Religious Symbol … There seems to be scarcely a religion worth the name that doesn’t find a place of honour for our slippery friend. A highly complex symbol, indeed.
“It represents ambivalence—both male and female, light and dark, life and death. Violent destruction on the one hand and yet the periodical shedding of the skin also represents renewal and resurrection. But I see that the dark side tends to dominate overall.
“Let me quote—‘It is knowledge, power, guile, cunn
ing and corruption. It is Fate itself, swift as disaster, deliberate as retribution, incomprehensible as destiny.’ In short old fellow, not an adversary to be taken lightly.
“Now, what have we here? Two serpents … ‘Two serpents together symbolize the opposites of dualism which are ultimately united. Wound round each other they are Time and Fate, the two great binding powers.’
“May I see that envelope again, please, Watson?”
I passed it to him and he compared it closely to something in what he was reading.
“As I thought, the snake depicted here is the King Cobra, the uraeus, the deadliest snake known to man and the supreme symbol in Eastern religions of divine knowledge, wisdom and eternal power. A pair of them entwined are the guardians of the threshold, the keepers of all material and spiritual treasures and the Waters of Life … protectors and servants of the all-powerful Earth Goddess.”
‘The Earth Goddess’—I had a sudden vision of the Emerald Lady and she looked troubled.
Holmes marked his place with a slip of paper and replaced the volume on the shelf.
“Something tells me we shall have need to consult this again,” he said soberly. “The fact that it sounds like so much mumbo-jumbo to our good Church of England ears does not detract from the fact that others think very differently and pursue their beliefs, no matter what the cost.”
He sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers in that familiar fashion that seemed to aid contemplation for him.
“Now just what did seven schoolboyish English sinners do to provoke forces such as these—that is the question we must address, Watson.
“We have much to ponder on, old fellow. A poisoned M.P., a suffocated financier and a sloth disturbed from his hibernation—not to mention an Emerald Lady and her entourage. Where is the common link? These are such stuff as dreams are made on and most certainly a three pipe problem.
“I bid you good night, Watson.”
And with that he gathered together all the cushions he could find and arranged them on the floor. This was my indication that he wished to be alone to ponder the case and I took it gratefully. The Glorious Twelfth had been all very well but the days since had left it a mere memory of something that had happened in the distant past.
I made for my bed and was asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.
Holmes parting remark may have had something to do with it. I suppose, because dreams most certainly did come.
I was walking along a jungle path and treading very gingerly indeed—presumably because of Holmes’s warning—when out of the bushes, towering over me and waving its hooded head menacingly, was an enormous King Cobra. As I recoiled, there was a hiss behind me and I turned to see an identical serpent. But the strangest thing was that each of them had a man’s face. The first I recognised as that of Briggs and somehow I knew that the second must be Pelham.
The hissing rose in volume and just when I was sure they were both ready to strike, a woman’s voice said—“No, he is not the one.” Then, right in front of me, materialised the image of the Emerald Lady, except that she appeared to be floating well above the ground. Now she seemed to be beckoning to me but, as I moved towards her, the image receded until it faded away entirely.
Now I was in a clearing. In the middle of it was a small multi-coloured hill, made up of what I now saw were cushions of different shapes and sizes. On the top of the hill, sitting cross legged and looking for all the world like the Tenniel illustration of the Caterpillar in Alice, complete with hookah, was Holmes.
As I approached the hill and looked up at him, he leaned over and frowned at me.
“We can’t have you dreaming the day away, Watson. Not when we have a clue to pursue …
“… a clue to pursue … a clue to pursue …”
It sounded like a children’s nursery rhyme. Why couldn’t I remember the rest of it? And now my whole body was beginning to shake. Surely not another touch of the old malaria?
And then I was sitting up in bed with Holmes standing over me, smiling like the Cheshire Cat with the cream and I realised it was he who had been shaking me awake.
“Come along, old fellow. I need your help. Leave the embraces of dusky maidens for now …” Could the man now read my dreams? “Lestrade has something to show us.”
The bedroom door closed behind him.
When, a few minutes later, I entered the sitting room it was to find Holmes and Lestrade leaning over something spread on the table among the debris of breakfast. Even if Holmes had sat up half the night with his ‘three pipe problem’, it had clearly not affected his appetite. I could see the remains of kidneys and bacon and was about to summon Mrs. Hudson, to see if she could provide more of the same, when Holmes reached out and pulled me over to join them.
“Tell me, old fellow, what do you make of this?” And he gestured towards what I now saw to be a large photograph. A moment’s examination showed it to be an enlargement of the picture of The Seven Sinners we had been studying the previous day. This time the picture had been cropped, so that only the central portion remained.
Three of the young men could be seen clearly and they were the ones seated in the centre of the group.
On the left was Victor Pelham, thin faced and smugly aristocratic. His expression said that he was naturally above all such nonsense but was prepared to indulge the others in it for the time being.
On the extreme right was a chubby young man who already bore all the signs of being an extremely chubby older man. The face was essentially bland but there was a twinkle in the eyes that spoke of humour and good comradeship.
“Pierre Pascal,” Holmes volunteered, ‘le jeune gastronome.’”
But it was the figure in the centre that held my eye. I had only seen that face before when a frenzied knife cut had almost obliterated it in a photograph and when it stared up at me in death from the floor of his inner sanctum.
The young Simon Briggs looked out at the world as if he owned it—and it seemed to be his clear ambition that he would acquire as much of it as he could. If avarice was ever written on a face in embryo, it was written there.
Holmes once again anticipated my own thoughts.
“If I were a superstitious man, gentlemen, I would be inclined to believe that either these men were uniquely qualified by nature to form their society and assume their particular roles—or that the fact of belonging to it impressed their roles upon their very souls. But then, fortunately, I am not a superstitious man.”
Then I noticed that there was something different about Briggs. He was holding something in his lap. It had been too small in the original photo but now I could see that it was a book of some sort.
“Try this, Doctor.” And Lestrade held out a magnifying glass.
Now I could see that the book was bound in some fine leather and on the front cover there was a complex design. At first I thought it must be purely decorative but on a closer examination …
“Good heavens, Holmes—the twin cobras!”
“Precisely, Watson. And …?”
I gave the glass a rub and looked again. What I had assumed to be a series of elaborate curlicues and swirls now took on more specific meaning.
“Sanskrit,” I said decisively. I’ve never been one to bother much about dead languages, except for the Latin I’d needed for my medical training, but I’d seen plenty of this one during my time in India.
“That’s just what Mr. ’Olmes said before you came in, Doctor. But what’s this sand script when it’s at ’ome?”
Holmes picked up the photograph and ran his long fingers lightly over the inscription.
“The name given to the language written and spoken in the northern part of the sub-continent around 1,000 B.C. Many of the sacred Hindu texts are written in it. It died out over the centuries during the ebb and flow of successive invading cultures but recently scholars have reconstructed it, so that it may be studied once more.
“I think we may safely assume that this book—whatever i
t is—is what the Emerald Lady—as Watson so gallantly calls her—and her retinue are looking for. We must now find out why.”
“But what’s all this got to do with them—those—Sinner fellers?”
“She clearly believes—from the evidence of this photograph—that one of them has it in his possession and is determined to retrieve it any cost. The fact that Briggs is holding it in the picture presumably gave her reason to assume that he would be a likely place to look first. Since that obviously proved not to be the case, the others must be presumed to be equally at risk and in random order. Pelham proved to be the most visible—with the result we have seen. And yet …”
“And yet what, Holmes?”
“There is more to it, Watson. Just as the twin serpents are inseparably entwined, there is another thread to this plot.”
“Shouldn’t we be out looking for this Emerald Lady?” Lestrade asked.
“I think not, Lestrade—at least, not for the present,” Holmes replied thoughtfully. “Our priority must be to keep a close watch on the surviving Sinners. Until and unless our Indian friends find what they are looking for, we need hardly look for them. We have only to bait our hook and they will come to us.
“Briggs and Pelham have, so to speak, paid the price of their respective ‘sins’; Challenger, Summerlee, Pascal—and presumably, Staunton—are safely out of the country … which leaves only my brother and the mysterious Mr. McKay to worry about. Incidentally, Lestrade, have your men had any luck in tracking McKay down yet?”
“Not yet, Mr. ’Olmes. You’d be surprised ’ow many McKays, McKees and McCoys there are in the greater London area but, if he’s here, we’ll find him soon enough, don’t you worry.”
“I’m sure you will, Lestrade. Watson will tell you that I have never doubted your tenacity of purpose, have I, Watson?”
I murmured my assent. It didn’t seem necessary to add that there had been occasions when it had been the only commendation of the Inspector’s performance my friend felt able to summon up.