The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Peerless Peer

by Philip José Farmer

He took the eye back and pocketed it. “Well, Watson, let us rouse him from whatever dreams he is indulging in and get him into the proper hands. This time he shall pay the penalty for espionage.”

  Two months later we were back in England. We travelled by water, despite the danger of U-boats, since Holmes had sworn never again to get into an aircraft of any type. He was in a bad humour throughout the voyage. He was certain that Greystoke, even if he recovered his memory, would not send the promised cheques.

  He turned the glass eye over to Mycroft, who sent it on to his superiors. That was the last we ever heard of it, and since the SB was never used, I surmise that the War Office decided that it would be too horrible a weapon. I was happy about this, since it just did not seem British to wage germ warfare. I have often wondered, though, what would have happened if Von Bork’s mission had been successful. Would the Kaiser have countenanced SB as a weapon against his English cousins?

  There were still three years of war to get through. I found lodgings for my wife and myself, and, despite the terrible conditions, the air raids, the food and material shortages, the dismaying reports from the front, we managed to be happy. In 1917 Nylepthah did what none of my previous wives had ever done. She presented me with a son. I was delirious with joy, even though I had to endure much joshing from my colleagues about fatherhood at my age. I did not inform Holmes of the baby. I dreaded his sarcastic remarks.

  On November 11, 1919, however, a year after the news that turned the entire Allied world into a carnival of’ happiness, though a brief one, I received a wire.

  “Bringing a bottle and cigars to celebrate the good tidings. Holmes.”

  I naturally assumed that he referred to the anniversary of the Armistice. My surprise was indeed great when he showed up not only with the bottle of Scotch and a box of Havanas but a bundle of new clothes and toys for the baby and a box of chocolates for Nylepthah. The latter was a rarity at this time and must have cost Holmes some time and money to obtain.

  “Tut, tut, my dear fellow,” he said when I tried to express my thanks. “I’ve known for some time that you were the proud father. I have always intended to show up and tender my respects to the aged, but still energetic, father and to the beautiful Mrs. Watson. Never mind waking the infant up to show him to me, Watson. All babies look alike, and I will take your word for it that he is beautiful.”

  “You are certainly jovial,” I said. “I do not ever remember seeing you more so.”

  “With good reason, Watson, with good reason!”

  He dipped his hand into his pocket and brought out a cheque.

  I looked at it and almost staggered. It was made out to me for the sum of thirty thousand pounds.

  “I had given up on Greystoke,” he said. “I heard that he was missing, lost somewhere in deepest Africa, probably dead. It seems, however, that he had found his wife was alive after all, and he was tracking her into the jungles of the Belgian Congo. He found her but was taken prisoner by some rather peculiar tribe. Eventually, his adopted son, you know, the Lt. Drummond who was to fly us to Marseilles, went after him and rescued his parents. And so, my dear fellow, one of the first things the duke did was to send the cheques! Both in my care, of course!”

  “I can certainly use it,” I said. “This will enable me to retire instead of working until I am eighty.”

  I poured two drinks for us and we toasted our good fortune. Holmes sat back in the chair, puffing upon the excellent Havana and watching Mrs. Watson bustle about her housework.

  “She won’t allow me to hire a maid,” I said. “She insists on doing all the work, including the cooking, herself. Except for the baby and myself, she does not like to touch anyone or be touched by anyone. Sometimes I think...”

  “Then she has shut herself off from all but you and the baby,” he said.

  “You might say that,” I replied. “She is happy, though, and that is what matters.”

  Holmes took out a small notebook and began making notes in it. He would look up at Nylepthah, watch her for a minute, and record something.

  “What are you doing, Holmes?” I said.

  His answer showed me that he, too, could indulge in a pawky humour when his spirits were high.

  “I am making some observations uopn the segregation of the queen.”

  THE END

  _______________

  1 This is the line in which Watson inadvertently wrote “Holdernesse” but corrected it. Editor.

  2 Under normal circumstances your editor would delete this old joke. Doubtless the reader has heard it in one form or another. But it is Watson’s narrative, and it is of historical importance. Now we know when and where the story originated.

  3 The good doctor probably intended to delete the references to sanitation in the final version of this adventure. At least, he always had been reticent to a Victorian degree in such references in all his previous chronicles. However, this was written in 1932, and Watson may have thought that the spirit of the times gave him more latitude in expression. Editor.

  4 This mad, but usually functioning, American must surely be the great aviator and espionage agent who, after transferring to the U.S. forces in 1917, was known under the code name of G–8. While in the British service, he apparently went under the name of Wentworth, his half-brother’s surname. For the true names of G–8, the Spider, and the Shadow, see my Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, Bantam, 1975. Editor.

  5 The description of this man certainly fits that of a notable crime fighter operating out of Manhattan in the ’30’s through the ’40’s. If he is who I think he is, then one of his many aliases was Lamont Cranston. Editor.

  6 For the first time we learn that Holmes anticipated the discovery of the Austrian scientist, von Frisch, by many decades. Editor.

  7 According to German official records the L9 was burned on September 16, 1916, in the Fuhlsbüttel shed because of a fire in the L6. Either Watson was in error or the Germans deliberately falsified the records in order to conceal the secret attempt to rescue Von Bork. At the time this adventure occurred, the L9 was supposed to be in action in Europe and its commander was Kapitän-leutnant d. R. Prölss. Editor.

  8 There was actually no danger of fire since phosphorus-coated bullets were not being used. Apparently, the grenades, which might have set off the hydrogen, were not used. Editor.

  9 The records of the Imperial German Navy have been combed without success in a search for identification of the L9 and the crew members mentioned by Watson. Could it be that the ship and crew were secret agents also, that the L9 was a “phantom” ship, that it carried out certain missions which the German concealed from all but the highest? Or were there records, but these are still in closed files or were destroyed for one reason or another? Editor.

  10 The true name of the ducal mansion Watson called Holdernesse Hall in “The Adventure of the Priory School.” A description of the estate is found in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Editor.

  11 For a fuller description of this involvement, see my definitive biography of Lord Greystroke. Editor.

  12 It is the English custom to address the sons of noblemen with an honorary title, though legally the sons are commoners. The duke had several secondary titles, the highest of which was Marquess of Saltire. Thus, the duke’s son was known as Lord Saltire. Editor.

  13 The parentheses are the editor’s. Watson had crossed out this phrase, though not enough to make it illegible. Editor.

  14 This disclosure definitely invalidates some of my speculations and reconstructions in my biography of Greystoke. These will be corrected in a future issue. Lord Greystoke himself had admitted that Holmes’ theory is correct. See “Extracts from the Memoirs of Lord Greystoke,” Mother Was A Lovely Beast, Philip José Farmer, editor, Chilton, October 1974.

  15 The parentheses are the editor’s, indicating another passage crossed out by Watson.

  16 Apparently, Watson forgot to describe Holmes’ comment. Undoubtedly, he would have inserted it at the proper pla
ce in the final draft.

  Editor’s Comments:

  The reference on page 31 to the speed of the Handley Page was really in knots, not miles per hour. The editor has converted this to make it more intelligible to the reader.

  The use of the word “queer” by Mycroft on page 26 has been criticised as not being realistic. Some Sherlockians have maintained that an Englishman in 1916 would not have known the word in its referent of “homosexual.” However, that is the word Watson uses when he quotes Mycroft. So we must believe that some Englishmen, at least, were aware of this American term. Or, possibly, Watson’s memory of the conversation was faulty. Since Watson had spent some time in the States, and had, like Holmes, picked up some Americanisms, he may have used this word because it was part of his everyday vocabulary.

  The vulgarism, “a*****e,” on page 41, needs one more asterisk. That is, it does if Watson was quoting the English term, which Holmes probably did utter. If Holmes was using the American word because he was speaking about an American, then the number of asterisks is accurate. We’ll never know.

  Afterword

  BY WIN SCOTT ECKERT

  Sherlock Holmes lives!

  Or at least he still might live, as Philip José Farmer points out in his Foreword to The Peerless Peer, noting that there is no record of the Great Detective’s death. Farmer observes that the idea that Holmes lived, and still lives, thrives with an almost “religious belief” among his followers. Farmer slyly omits that he’s one of the true believers, but it’s clear he is.

  It is fortunate indeed that Watson’s manuscript survived. As Farmer relates, the good doctor’s battered tin dispatch-box had been removed from the vaults of the bank of Cox and Co. at Charing Cross before the bank was bombed in World War II. It was stored for a time in Holmes’ cottage near the village of Fulworth on the Sussex Downs, and thereafter, in the 1950s, came into the possession of the seventeenth Duke of Denver.

  As everyone knows, the seventeenth Duke was better known as Lord Peter Wimsey, also an amateur detective of no little note, and a distant relative of Holmes. Lord Peter’s cases were chronicled in a series of novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers.

  In 1973, the Duke of Denver authorized Farmer to edit Watson’s manuscript for publication, and The Adventure of the Peerless Peer saw print the following year in a limited edition from Aspen Press. The Dell mass market paperback was issued in 1976, at which point we may suppose that Farmer was contacted by the Jungle Lord. As I’ve noted elsewhere,1 Farmer had been under some pressure from the Ape-Man since the publication of his biography Tarzan Alive (Doubleday, 1972).

  Farmer already knew of the Jungle Lord’s deception (described in The Peerless Peer), or deduced it, based on his “An Exclusive Interview with Lord Greystoke” which took place on September 1, 1970. Or else he knew it from the extensive research which formed the basis of his Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke. Or both. At that time, the Ape-Man persuaded Mr. Farmer to suppress certain details, such as his impersonation of his late cousin.

  In 1974, when Watson’s lost Peerless Peer manuscript was released and revealed that Sherlock Holmes had discovered the impersonation back in 1916, the Ape Lord was apparently not overly concerned. Perhaps an expensive and limited edition hardcover novel was not perceived as harmful. In addition, in late 1974, the Lord of the Jungle authorized Farmer to edit and publish memoirs in which he freely admitted to the deception (“Extracts from the Memoirs of ‘Lord Greystoke,’” Mother Was a Lovely Beast, Philip José Farmer, ed., Chilton, 1974; Tarzan Alive, Bison Books, 2006).

  However, the 1976 Dell paperback, inexpensive and widely available, was another matter altogether. The Lord of the Jungle, acting through a series of trusted middlemen, used his influence to have the book suppressed. Farmer received a friendly warning letter from the Jungle Lord, now residing in parts unknown under an assumed name. (Farmer was not surprised at this, since the Ape-Man had indicated in their 1970 interview that he would soon fake his death and disappear.) The Jungle Lord had had enough of Farmer exposing his secrets to the public at large. Presumably he also wasn’t terribly pleased with his fellow Duke, Lord Peter, for making Watson’s manuscript available in the first place.

  It can hardly matter, some thirty-five years later, if the truth about the Jungle Lord’s impersonation is noted here, especially in light of the fact that the Ape-Man was not entirely successful in suppressing The Peerless Peer back in 1976; that he himself admitted it in his “Memoirs”; and that he approved of its recent republication in the collection Venus on the Half-Shell and Others (Christopher Paul Carey, ed., Subterranean Press, 2008).

  Nonetheless, Farmer must have remained somewhat abashed by the Jungle Lord’s rebuke. Perhaps he was also a bit sensitive to the Jungle Lord’s constantly shifting positions on the matter. For his collection The Grand Adventure (Berkley Books, 1984), Farmer rewrote The Peerless Peer as the novella “The Adventure of the Three Madmen,” replacing the Ape Lord with Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli. In his introduction to the rewrite, Farmer claimed that he had abandoned the pretense that Watson had written the original manuscript and that he (Farmer) was merely the editor. Now Farmer “admitted” that he was the “true author” of “Madmen.” In fact, the reverse was true; he was using misdirection to cover for his former indiscretions.2

  By 2008, the Lord of the Jungle and his family had long-since faked their deaths, and the secrets revealed in The Peerless Peer were ancient enough history to cause no harm to the nobleman and his relations.3The novel was reprinted — once again in a limited edition.4 Now, for the first time in thirty-five years, Watson’s account is widely available in this new trade edition from Titan Books.

  Sherlock Holmes, in the course of his lengthy career, encountered Count Dracula (numerous times), Doctor Who, Allan Quatermain, Arsène Lupin, Professor Challenger, the Phantom of the Opera, Raffles, Doctor Fu Manchu, Fantômas, the Time Traveller, Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, the Invisible Man, Father Brown, Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Hercule Poirot, Sexton Blake, Harry Dickson, the Domino Lady, the Men from U.N.C.L.E., various Lovecraftian menaces, and The Batman (to name but a few noteworthy crossovers). He even battled the Martian Invaders.

  And of course, in the case recorded as The Peerless Peer, he met that feral nobleman raised by “great apes.”

  But when Farmer edited Watson’s account, it became clear that this exploit was not a mere crossover between two great men of their time. Holmes and Watson also ran into many other important personages during the events chronicled in The Peerless Peer.

  One of Holmes and Watson’s fliers in Peer is “Colonel Kentov.” Kentov would later be known as the pulp vigilante The Shadow. In the pulp novel The Shadow Unmasks, it was revealed that The Shadow’s real identity was that of aviator Kent Allard. Allard had also flown, and worked as a secret agent, for the Tsar during the Great War. During that time he had also been known as the Black Eagle and the Dark Eagle. As Farmer points out, one of The Shadow’s many aliases during the 1930s and ’40s was Lamont Cranston.

  It’s also worth noting that Holmes and Watson are conducted to Colonel Kentov’s plane by a young Russian officer, Lieutenant Obrenov. In 1946, Farmer had chronicled a rather amusing World War II incident in Germany between a Colonel Obrenov and a U.S. officer, Colonel O’Brien.5 Lieutenant Obrenov is killed in The Peerless Peer, but the Colonel is undoubtedly a relative.

  When Holmes and Watson meet with Mycroft, the latter introduces young Henry Merrivale, who works at Military Intelligence and is quite accomplished in the art of detection. Sir Henry Merrivale went on to solve many mysteries from the 1930s through the 1950s. These cases were recounted by “Carter Dickson” (a pseudonym for John Dickson Carr).

  Just before Mycroft summons him, Doctor Watson is sharing a brandy with a young friend, Doctor Fell. Doctor Fell is Gideon Fell, who would also go on to a lengthy career as an amateur detective from the 1930s through the 1960s. His cases were also recorded by John Dickson Carr.
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  Those familiar with American pulp magazines might think that the hallucinating pilot Wentworth is Richard Wentworth, who would later fight supercriminals in Manhattan as The Spider. However, Farmer notes that this mentally disturbed flyer, while in British service, used his half-brother’s surname. Following Farmer’s genealogical researches in Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (revised edition, Bantam Books, 1975), this makes the crazed pilot G-8, the Great War hero whose exploits were related by Robert J. Hogan in the purple prose pulp pages of G-8 and His Battle Aces. In fact, Farmer’s researches revealed that G-8 and The Shadow were full brothers, and their half-brother was The Spider.

  Leftenant John Drummond is mentioned as the adopted son of the Jungle Lord. This lines up with Farmer’s discovery, documented in the biography Tarzan Alive, that the Ape-Man had an adopted son as well as a biological son. This discovery explains a severe chronological discrepancy in the original novels about the Jungle Lord, in which his son ages ten or eleven years, seemingly overnight, between the third and fourth novels.

  Watson mentions Lord John Roxton, referring to him as being “wilder than the Amazon Indians with whom he consorted.” Roxton accompanied Professor George Edward Challenger on the latter’s expedition to the Lost World, in an account written by Edward Malone and edited for publication by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

  The Jungle Lord, Holmes, and Watson locate the lost land of Zu-Vendis, last visited by Allan Quatermain, Sir Henry Curtis, Captain John Good, and the Zulu warrior Umslopogaas. Quatermain’s Zu-Vendis adventure was recounted in Allan Quatermain, edited and published in 1887 by Sir Henry Rider Haggard, Quatermain’s editor and biographer.

  Farmer also realized that Watson’s manuscript substantiated some of the genealogical researches he had conducted when writing the biographies Tarzan Alive and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (Doubleday, 1973; revised edition Bantam Books, 1975). Farmer had discovered that the subjects of these biographies were related to each other, and that both were related to many other heroes and villains whose exploits had been fictionalized in novels and short stories by various authors over the years. The almost superhuman nature of these personages’ abilities was traced back to their ancestors’ exposure to the ionized radiation of a meteorite which landed in the village of Wold Newton on December 13, 1795. Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet (whose story Jane Austen recounted in Pride and Prejudice) and Sir Percy Blakeney (also known as the Scarlet Pimpernel, whose tales were told by Baroness Emmuska Orczy) were among those present at the Wold Newton meteor strike.