The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes

by Jamyang Norbu

  As we gathered around him Sherlock Holmes picked up the sheet of paper and gently blew some of the fine graphite powder onto the surface of the elephant, on its left flank. He then tapped the elephant lightiy with the penknife, till all the excess graphite powder fell off on the table. As if by magic a number of finger and thumb prints appeared on the part of the elephant which had received the powder. The black lines and whorls of the impression stood out clearly against the light yellow of the brass lamp.

  'Now,' said Holmes,'most of these belong to the sweaty fingers of our Portuguese friend, but if you will observe here closely ...'

  Using the tip of the penknife as a pointer he indicated a large clear impression — a rough ridged thumb print with a diagonal line running across it.

  'It is not conclusive evidence; said Sherlock Holmes, folding the penknife and putting it back in his pocket, 'but it may serve to demonstrate that Colonel Sebastian Moran did, at sometime, handle this object.'

  'This is most wonderful verification, Sir; quod erat demonstrandum, if I may be pardoned the expression,' I exclaimed in admiration.

  'I owe you an apology, Mr Holmes,' said Strickland ruefully. 'I should have had more faith in your marvellous faculty.'

  'You give me too much credit, Strickland. I must admit to some luck in this instance. On the balance of probability, I could not have hoped for such a perfect sample of the Colonel's thumb print, especially as the clerk had managed to obliterate nearly all previous fingerprints left on it by his injudicious handling of the object. But I took my chance for "a vaincre sans peril, on triomphe sans gloire". Corneille has such a very neat way of putting these things. But for incontrovertible proof you would need a sample of Colonel Moran's thumb print to compare with this one on the elephant. As you may know, no two human fingerprints are ever alike.'

  'Yes, Mr Holmes,' answered Strickland, 'I have heard something of the kind; though till this day I was not aware that it could be used to practical advantage, especially in the solution of a crime.'

  'A wide range of exact knowledge is essential to the higher development of the art of detection,' Sherlock Holmes explained in a didactic manner. 'The Babylonians pressed fingerprints into clay to identify the author of cuneiform writings, and to protect against forgeries. Fingerprints were also used by the Chinese at an early date for purposes of identification. You may not be aware that I am the author of a trifling monograph upon the subject. In my work entitled Upon the Distinction and Classification of Human Finger and Thumb Prints I enumerate five main groups of characteristic details and other sub-classification by which fingerprints maybe systematically classified and recorded. I devote two whole chapters to the methods by which fingerprints may be detected upon objects such as glass, metal, wood, and even paper. I myself have developed a method, which you have seen crudely demonstrated, by which near invisible fingerprints can be enhanced or developed by the delicate application of fine powders whose colours contrast favourably with the background surface. The powders adhere to the lines of the prints because of the body oils and sweat always present on the surface of the human hand and which is invariably left on any surface we touch. Such developed fingerprints could be photographed to provide, let us say, evidence in court.

  'In the monograph I also provide incontestable evidence of the superiority of the fingerprinting system over Monsieur Bertillon's2 system of "anthropometry" for the identification of criminals. But I weary you with my obsession for minutiae.'

  'Not at all,' Strickland said earnestly. 'It is of the greatest interest to me. Surely such a system as you have described would revolutionise police work.'

  'Undoubtedly, but it is not in the province of a lone consulting detective to apply such a system to its fullest productivity. It would require the resources of a large official organisation, like that of Scotland Yard, to record the prints of every criminal or suspect they may come across, and register them in such a way that any one of them is always ready to be had for comparison with fingerprints found at the scene of the crime. But the Scotland Yarders are not men who would entertain any sympathy for revolutionary systems.'

  'Well, Mr Holmes, I would consider it a signal of honour if you were to permit me to apply your system of fingerprinting in this country.3 The Imperial Indian Police, in spite of many shortcomings, is still young enough to be occasionally pioneering.'

  'The honour would be mine, Strickland. There are no patents on my methods. I only ask you to keep my name out of it, especially if the results of your endeavour should be fruitful enough to warrant the attention of the press. At present it suits my purpose to let the world think I am dead. I am sorry I do not have a copy of my monograph here with me, but you can get it from Huber in London, if you wish. They also have some other small works of mine that may interest you. The one entitled Upon the Distinction Between the Ashes of Various Tobaccos may prove useful to you. If you can recognise the black ash of a Trichinopoly at the scene of a murder, why, you could then count Colonel Sebastian Moran as one of your suspects — for I know he smokes them.'

  'Well, Mr Holmes,' said Strickland with a little laugh, 'Trichinopoly or Lunkah, you can rely on us to have the Colonel behind bars before long. Once that desk-clerk has had time to reflect in the solitude of his cell, he will consider a full confession and transportation to the Andaman Islands preferable to stretching on the gallows.'

  Just then there was an urgent knock on the door. Strickland went over and opened it. Outside in the corridor was a nervous-looking native policeman.

  'Havildar, kya hai?' demanded Strickland.

  The policeman mumbled something inaudible. Strickland turned a very worried face to us.

  'The clerk's just been shot in front of the police station.'

  1. Could this have any connection with 'the repulsive story of the red leech' that Dr Watson mentions in his introduction to the adventure of The Golden Pince-nez7.

  2. Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914), the great French detective, was the father of the revolutionary system of classifying and trapping criminals by measuring and recording certain unchangeable parts of the human body. He called his invention 'anthropometry’ or body measurement.

  3. In 1896, in the district of Hooghly in Bengal, the Inspector General of Police introduced, for the first time anywhere in the world, the system of fingerprinting for identifying criminals. Only in 1901 did Scotland Yard adopt the Henry system of classifying prints by patterns and shapes.

  6

  A Shot in the Dark

  Without a word Sherlock Holmes rushed out of the room. Strickland and I followed him out of the hotel to the rank of carriages that stood outside the hotel gates. As our carriage rattled down Frere Street towards Horniman Circle, Mr Holmes lit a cigarette and puffed at it in an abrupt and vexed manner.

  'It was criminally careless of me not to have anticipated Moran's move,' said he. 'Now I fear that the one frail thread we had to tie up this case has just snapped.'

  'But we still have the evidence of the thumbprint, Mr Holmes,' I suggested. 'Would it not suffice, in the ad interim, to secure the detention of Colonel Moran, till a more formidable case has been formulated?'

  'My dear Huree, the evidence of the thumbprint would be too outre for any magistrate to think of issuing a warrant against a person of Moran's standing. We must not also forget that our old shikari is a man of diverse resources; he would flick away any such obstacles as we could, at the moment, put in his way.'

  'I fear you are right, Mr Holmes,' said Strickland dejectedly. 'We needed that blasted desk-clerk's confession, and now he's dead. I should have warned MacLeod....'

  'The fault is entirely mine, Strickland,' said Sherlock Holmes gravely. 'You could not have foreseen such an eventuality. But hulloa! I see we have arrived at our destination. Nothing less than a murder would draw such a mob — if the morbid curiosity of the London crowd is anything to judge the rest of humanity by.'

  Indeed, the crowd before the Horniman Circle police station was so large th
at the progress of our carriage was severely impeded. In spite of my remonstrances, barefooted little street urchins clambered like monkeys all over our carriage to secure a loftier view point. Finally Strickland and the police sergeant had to dismount and force their way through the press of bodies. After paying off the ghariwallah, Mr Holmes and I followed.

  'Chale jao, you chaps,' Strickland shouted above the hubbub, 'move along there.' Swinging his swagger-stick vigorously before him, he managed to clear a path through the throng. Some constables spotted us and, brandishing their lathis, came to our assistance. Once we got through the crowd I saw a large pool of blood on the ground. The body had been removed to the police station. Inside, a visibly distraught Inspector MacLeod met us, his grey scraggly moustache looking more dishevelled than ever.

  'I'm very sorry about this, Sir,' he stammered. 'For the life of me I just can't imagine ...'

  'My dear MacLeod,' Strickland interrupted,'just tell us exactly what happened ...'

  'Well Sir,' the inspector began, 'I escorted the prisoner from the hotel in the police victoria. I had two constables with me. When the victoria got to the thana and I was alighting, something struck the prisoner on the chest, mutilating it horribly. The effect was that of a gun-shot wound, but it could nae have been one. since neither I nor the constables heard the sound of a fire-arm being discharged. We managed to get the wounded man inside and Dr Patterson immediately attended to him, but it was nae use. He died a few minutes later.'

  A stout middle-aged Englishman in a white surgical gown came out from another room. I presumed this was Dr Patterson.

  'Good evening, Mr Strickland ... gentlemen,' he greeted us quickly and turned to Inspector MacLeod. 'Your man was definitely shot, MacLeod, and here's the bullet that did it. I just got it out of his chest.'

  He held out a white enamel dish in which a single bloodstained bullet rolled to and fro. Sherlock Holmes bent over to examine it.

  'A soft revolver bullet,' he declared. 'As you will perceive, it expanded considerably after discharge, thus inflicting the horrible mutilation on the body that Inspector MacLeod described.'

  'But it could nae have been a revolver,' cried the bewildered inspector, tugging his scraggly whiskers in irritation. 'As I said before there was no sound of a gun being fired. And at this time of the night there is nae so much ado in the streets, that a pistol shot could nae have been heard.'

  'See for yourself then,' Sherlock Holmes replied, pointing to the small bullet in the dish.

  'I am nae denying it is a bullet, Sir,' protested the nettled inspector, 'but Captain Strickland, Sir, you know that the whole courtyard in front of the station is well lit with gas lamps. I am willing to stake my pension that there was nobody around the prisoner and me, at least within pistol range.'

  'But further away,' suggested Strickland, 'on the other side of the street maybe.'

  'That's a good eighty feet or more away,' replied the inspector, 'and I can nae be sure.'

  'Was there any traffic on the street then, any carriage passed you by at that moment?'

  'Nae, I am sure of it. Well there was this van — one of those covered delivery things — parked in front of one of the shops on the other side of the street. But nae even a crack shot could have hit a man at that range with just a pistol — especially at night.'

  'Wouldn't it be rather late to make deliveries?' remarked Holmes, walking to the open window and peering out into the night. 'It is not there now, at any rate.' He turned away from the window to face us. 'Dear me. Dear me. What a singular problem.'

  Something in his tone caught my ear. It seemed to me that the tone of his voice, far from sounding puzzled, hinted at privileged information. Strickland may have detected it too, for he immediately attempted to end the discussion and get Sherlock Holmes out of the police station.

  'Well, there's nothing more we can do tonight,' said Strickland briskly, moving to the door. 'MacLeod, firstthing tomorrow I want you to question all the shopkeepers and residents around here for any unusual activity or suspicious persons they may have seen at the time of the shooting.'

  The crowd outside the police station had by now dispersed. The glow of the gas lamps fell on the prone figures of a few beggars sleeping on the hard pavement. The twanging of a sitar drifted faintly through the still night air. For a moment I thought of the plump Portuguese clerk now lying lifeless on a concrete slab in the police mortuary, while his soul was beginning its journey to 'that undiscovered countryfrom whose bourn no traveller returns.' A constable flagged down a carriage for us and we rode back to the hotel, savouring the coolness of the late night air.

  Sherlock Holmes seemed visibly distraught, his sharp face under his deerstalker cap was bent morosely low. He was so wrapped up in his own musings that he did not seem to hear Strickland's query. 'How was it done, Mr Holmes?'

  'What?'

  'The shooting, Mr Holmes. How was the Portuguese fellow done in?'

  'Oh, that,' replied Holmes rather indifferently, raising his head slowly, 'just an air-gun.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'An air-gun, my dear Strickland. Or rather an air-rifle. Believe me such a thing does exist.1 A unique weapon, noiseless and of tremendous power. I knew Von Herder, the blind German mechanic who constructed it to the order of the late Professor Moriarty. It fires a soft revolver bullet. There's genius in that, for who would expect such a thing from an air-rifle? Moran has, on more than one occasion, attempted to bag me with that thing, but fate has been kinder to me than to the Colonel's tigers.'

  'But he will surely try again,' I expostulated, 'if we do not manage to arrest or incapacitate him. It is a most dangerous situation for your life and limb, Mr Holmes.'

  'I am by no means a nervous man, Huree, but I see your point of view. What course of action would you recommend?'

  'Discretion being the better part of valour, I would advise a speedy retreat from this most insalubrious metropolis,' I suggested.

  'Huree is right, Mr Holmes,' said Strickland, 'Colonel Moran has tremendous advantages here. Apart from the size and turmoil of the city, which hinders effective police work, there are numerous criminal organisations in Bombay that Moran could easily recruit for his foul purpose.'

  'I would recommend a sojourn to Simla, Mr Holmes,' said I. 'The climate there is delightful at this time of the year and is admirably adapted to the European constitution. Ah... "the verdant hills, the crystal streams, the cool mountain winds perfumed by the breath of eternal pine trees..." or so we are informed in Towell's Handbook to Simla!

  'You mustn't let Hurree's poetry discourage you, Mr Holmes,' said Strickland. 'Yes, Simla is the best place for you to retire at the moment. Though it's the summer capital of the government, it is small enough for us to keep an eye on all unusual visitors, and the natives are simple, honest hill-folk. Moreover, Hurree here is in his element up in the hills, and could watch your back effectively.'

  I was glad to learn that I would be accompanying Sherlock Holmes to Simla. Just the two days I had known him assured me that furthering the acquaintance of this remarkable person would not only prove instructive, but exciting as well.

  'The Frontier Mail to Peshawar leaves tonight at one o'clock, Mr Strickland,' said I, consulting my Indian Bradshaw and the large silver turnip watch I had inherited from my father. 'If it would not be rushing things for Mr Holmes, we have about two hours in which to catch it.'

  'Well, I am an old campaigner,' replied Sherlock Holmes, 'and two hours would be more than sufficient for me to collect my gladstone from the hotel.'

  'Then it's settled,' said Strickland, as the carriage stopped in front of the hotel door. 'The sooner you leave Bombay the less chance of Moran being able to have another go at you. Hurree ...'he turned to me,'... collect your kit from your lodgings and meet us at the Victoria Terminus — at the book stall by the first class waiting room.'

  1. In spite of its seeming novelty, the air-rifle had been in use earlier in history. Louis XIV hunted deer with o
ne. It even saw military service when the French used it quite successfully against the Austrians in the Napoleonic Wars. An air-rifle was also used by Lewis and Clark on their celebrated expedition.

  7

  The Frontier Mail

  Surely the Victoria Terminus is the most magnificent railway station in the world. It was openedfive years ago on the happy occasion of our August Sovereign the Queen Empress's Golden Jubilee, and its splendour and opulence was acclaimed throughout the land — only Lady Dufferin, the Vicereine, not approving, considering it'... much too magnificent for a bustiing crowd of railway passengers.' This vast edifice is architecturally a harmonious blend of Venetian, Gothic, Neo-classical, Hindu and Islamic styles. The columns supporting the roofs are made from dark granite especially imported from Aberdeen, providing the whole majestic composition with a touch of Imperial sternness.

  With my back to one of these stern granite columns and my suitcase and bedding-roll at my feet, I observed the milling multitudes arriving and departing, picking their way through supine, sheeted figures — third class passengers, who had taken their tickets overnight and were sleeping on the platforms. Sweetmeat sellers, water carriers, tea vendors and paan-bidi wallahs pitched their sales-cries above the everpresent roar of this teeming humanity.

  I purchased a copy of the Times of India from the A.H. Wheeler book stall, which also had on display Mr Kipling's works in their distinctive green covers (Indian Railway Library, Rs 1) for the amusement of passengers with long journeys ahead. As I paid the stall-keeper and tucked the newspaper under my arm, I got a glimpse of a small thin man in dirty white tropical 'ducks' and an oversize topee. He darted out of an inter1 waiting room door and suddenly vanished in a crowd of Sikh cavalrymen. FerretFace! Was it really him? A lot of people in this country wore oversize topees and dirty 'ducks', but again...