The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes

by Jamyang Norbu

  While I held the lantern above him and directed its beam wherever required, Mr Holmes crouched to subject this strange structure to an examination with his magnifying lens. Five minutes sufficed to satisfy him, for he rose to his feet and put away his lens. Then, placing his hands firmly against the side of the thick stone disc, he proceeded to exert his full strength, in a somewhat oblique direction, against the weighty object. I did not notice anything, but some slight change must have occurred for Mr Holmes stopped and grunted in satisfaction.

  'It moves,' he said, a note of triumph in his voice.

  'What does it mean?' I asked.

  'It means our little mystery, the riddle of the cryptic verse, is nearly solved.'

  'I do not understand, Mr Holmes.'

  'You will remember we agreed that the verse was a set of instructions, probably for the disinterment of something concealed — something precious. Since the symbolism of the mandala structure is used in the verse, what is more logical than to conclude that the instructions refer to an actual mandala — but one that is palpably whole and upright.'

  'So that we can move around it in particular circles, like the instructions say?' said I puzzled. 'But ...'

  'No no, my dear Hurree. Not to move around it but to move it. My cursory examination has revealed that this structure has not been hewn from the a single piece of stone but has rather been assembled — each layer of it — from separately sculpted pieces, each capable of being moved, or rather rotated, around a central axis.'

  'Like the tumblers of a lock?'

  'Exactly. Your choice of an analogy is a happy one, for this mandala is — if my reasoning is correct — a lock, albeit an unusual and considerable one.'

  'But what about a key then, Mr Holmes. We do not have it.'

  'Oh, tut, man. We need not be so literal. The verse is our key.'

  'I have been very obtuse ...' said I, abashed, but Mr Holmes had no time for my self-reproaches, and was in a fever to begin testing his theory.

  'Now, Hurree, if you could lend a hand here, and ... excuse me, Reverend Sir,' he turned to the Lama Yonten, 'if you could kindly read the verse to us.'

  The Grand Lama had now recovered and insisted on holding the lantern, while the Lama Yonten unrolled the mandala scroll and read the lines on the back. 'Ora Svasti. Reverence to thee ...'

  'We can skip the benedictory lines,' interrupted Holmes 'and proceed with the actual instructions.'

  'As you wish, Mr Holmes,' replied the Lama, quickly perusing the verses, underlining the word with this bony forefinger. 'Let me see. Hmm ... ah yes ... the instructions start here. "Facing the sacred direction ..."'

  'What would that be?'

  'North, Mr Holmes. Shambala is properly referred to as "Shambala of the North."'

  'So that would necessitate us having our backs to the entrance and facing the mandala from that direction. Let us see now ...'

  'I have it, Mr Holmes,' I cried exultantly, scraping away the snow at the base of the mandala exactly across the entrance.'There is a crossed vajra1 inscribed on the floor here. This probably marks the direction from which we start.'

  'That is the very place where the Grand Lama must sit when meditating on the mandala! said the Lama Yonten.

  'So we can take it as our starting point,' said Holmes briskly. 'Now let us have the next line in the verse.'

  '"... turning always in the path of the Dharma wheel ..." '

  'Bear in mind, Hurree, that all our operations will have to be conducted clockwise. Pray continue, Sir.'

  ' "... Circle Thrice the Mountain of Fire."'

  'That would be the base of the mandala. See the design of flames carved into the stone. Now, Hurree, let us attend to it with a will.'

  It was not an easy task. Both Mr Holmes and I were grunting with the effort, but finally the giant disc moved slowly. As per the instructions we rotated that bally deadweight three times around its axis, finishing exactly where we started, by the crossed vajra mark on the floor. I collapsed with exhaustion.

  '"... Twice the Adamantine Walls ..." ' the Lama droned on.

  'Come on Hurree,' Mr Holmes exhorted me. 'This one will be easier. It's much smaller.'

  Mr Holmes was right. The 'Adamantine wall' disc wasn't as heavy as the 'Mountain of Fire' disc, and we only had to rotate it twice. The 'Eight Cemeteries' disc was even easier, while the one after that, 'The Sacred Lotus Fence' disc, I managed by myself.

  On the fifth tier the mandala changed shape; from the circular discs of the earlier mountains, walls and fences, to a square plinth with protuberances on each side — the four walls of the Sacred City and its four gates.

  ' " . . . Then from the Southern Gate turn to the East ..."'

  Following the instructions we turned the square plinth a three quarter turn. Now came the last item in the verse. 'The Innermost Palace', which was the pagoda with the canopied roof, on the very top of the mandala. It was a tremendously exciting moment. While Mr Holmes gave the little pagoda half a turn from the South to the North — as the instructions specified, we waited with bated breath for the result.

  Nothing happened.

  A cold chill of disappointment coursed through my body. It seemed to me that somehow Mr Holmes must have made a radical mistake in his chain of reasoning.

  'We are undone, Hurree,' said he, a pained look on his face. He turned away, and biting hard on the stem of his pipe paced restlessly about the chamber, kicking up a small storm of powder snow in his wake. He kept up his choleric perambulations for about ten minutes, when all of a sudden a happy thought seemed to strike him. He brightened at once, and snapped his fingers.

  'The Vajra throne,' he cried. 'We have omitted "... and sit victorious on the Vajra throne ..."'

  'But that only seems to be a concluding symbolism of some kind, Mr Holmes,' said the Lama Yonten.

  'We have moved everything movable in the mandala! said I despondently. 'There is nothing more left to manipulate.'

  'Let us see,' said Holmes, going over to the mandala. He careftilly studied the pagoda on the top with his lens, and then with the thin blade of his pocketknife, gently prised open the miniature doors of the littie temple. Within the pagoda was a tiny crystal throne carved in the shape of a crossed vajra. It was a beautiful thing. As the Grand Lama directed the beam of the lantern on it, Mr Holmes carefully studied this miniature objet d'art closely with his lens.

  'But what shall we do now, Mr Holmes?' said I. 'We have no instructions about what to do with it.'

  'Ah, but we do, Hurree,' said he cheerfully. He paused. 'We sit on it.'

  With that he put the tip of his forefinger on the crystal throne and gently pressed it down. There was an audible click — as if some kind of lever had been activated. Then the crystal throne began to glow with an eerie green light. It slowly became brighter till its radiance suffused the North wall of the chamber with a light as brilliant as that of a full moon in mid-summer. The mandala itself began to vibrate spasmodically, the tremors increasing in intensity till the entire temple shook in an alarming manner.

  To our consternation some of the icicles broke off the roof of the chamber and crashed onto the floor, throwing up sprays of snow. Mr Holmes quickly grabbed the Grand Lama and, doing his best to cover the lad's body with his own, retreated to a corner of the chamber. The Lama Yonten and I also hurriedly backed away from the mandala, which seemed to be the source of all this tremendous energy.

  As I retreated to the rear wall, I tripped on a piece of fallen icicle and staggered backwards. I expected to fall against the wall and put my hands behind me to take my weight, but to my surprise I encountered nothing and fell clean backwards. Even more alarming was the fact that my descent backwards did not stop at the floor but continued in a precipitate and confusing manner for quite some time, till finally I landed with a painful bump, somewhere in utter darkness.

  'Hulloa, Hurree! Can you hear me?' Mr Holmes's distant voice slowly filtered into my scrambled mind. I shook my head to clear it.r />
  'I am here, Mr Holmes!' I yelled back.

  'Are you all right?'

  I took stock of my condition and situation. 'I think so, Sir. There are no bones broken, anyway.'

  'Excellent. Where exactly are you?'

  'I seem to be at the bottom of an awful abyss, Sir. I am of the opinion that the entrance should be somewhere in the middle of the wall opposite the temple door.'

  'Good man. Hang on for a minute. I'll get a light down there soon.'

  A few moments later a welcome glow of light appeared in the darkness above me. Gradually, as the light descended and became brighter, I was able to discern the comfortably familiar outline of Sherlock Holmes' tall figure, holding the dark lantern and walking down a long stone staircase — which must have been the one I had tumbled down. Behind him the two Lamas followed.

  'You are to be congratulated, Hurree,' said Holmes cheerfully, coming up to me. 'The honour of discovering the secret of the mandala is yours.'

  'Is this all, Mr Holmes?' said I, disappointed. 'All that mystery and noise and fuss, just to conceal a passage way?'

  'Patience. We shall know when we get to the end of it.' He pointed the lantern in the direction opposite to the staircase. 'See, it does not stop here but continues much further.'

  The Lama Yonten and the Grand Lama made solicitous enquiries as to my state of health subsequent to my sudden descent, and gave loud thanks to the 'Three Jewels', the Buddhist Trinity, for my deliverance.

  We proceeded down the passage cautiously, with Mr Holmes in the lead holding the lantern, and the rest of us following closely behind him. Though the passage was very long it was surprisingly straight and true, without even the slightest bend, dip or rise during its entire length. The walls were constructed to an exactness that would certainly tax a modern engineer. As we proceeded, the light from the lantern shimmered off the surface of the walls. I reached out to touch it and was surprised to discover how smooth it was — smoother than marble, even glass. There were no seams or joints, no interruptions of any kind in the unnatural evenness of the surface. It had clearly been made by a people with very advanced technical knowledge. I mentally began to review all the bits of information I had now acquired about my Tethyian civilisation, and tried to classify them in some systematic order.

  Suddenly Mr Holmes paused and signalled us to halt. He then directed the beam of the lantern straight to the floor, which like the temple, was covered with a thin carpet of powdery snow. We were probably arriving at a place where drifts of snow could somehow enter this subterranean corridor.

  'What do you think of that?' he asked, indicating a number of footprints clearly impressed on the soft snow.

  'Obviously someone has anticipated us,' said I, worried.

  'More than one, I'm afraid. There are three distinct sets of impressions. I first observed them just a littie way ago. One of them is obviously a cripple. Notice how the impression of the right foot is quite askew, and also blurred because he dragged that foot.'

  'Moriarty!' I exclaimed in horror.

  'Yes. As I expected, the Dark One has got here before us. One of his companions led the way, he came next, and the third followed as rearguard. There can be no question as to the superimposition of the footmarks.'

  'Do you think the Amban is with him?' asked the Lama Yonten.

  'Probably not. The two other impressions are from the same kind of footwear — cheap, cloth-soled Chinese boots, I would think; the kind that can be worn on either foot. I noticed the Chinese soldiers wearing them.'

  I was not at all happy about our proceeding with this particularly dangerous venture, especially when highly unscrupulous bounders, fully prepared to commit violences against our persons, awaited us at the end of it.

  'Hadn't we better . . . ' I began to make a suggestion.

  'We are doing so,' Holmes interrupted me rather brusquely. He extracted a revolver from within the folds of his robe and cocked it. 'It would be well if we were to proceed with all due caution. Hurree? You are armed?'

  'Yes, Sir,' I said resignedly, pulling out the ludicrous weapon from my belt, and began to go through the motions of preparing it for the coming fray.

  'You Hurree, will bring up the rear. If anything should happen to me, you will at once escort His Holiness and the Lama Yonten out of this place. Now close the shield of the lantern. We will have to manage in the dark.'

  We moved very carefully along the passage, which now gradually, almost imperceptibly, became wider, and strangely less dark, or so I imagined. As we went forward the phenomena became more apparent. Unwilling to trust my own visual senses I tentatively imparted to Mr Holmes my assessment of the luminary intensification. He had noticed it too.

  'You are right, Hurree, and it is getting progressively lighter further up the passageway. We must double our precautions. The light will make us more visible, and more vulnerable.'

  For another half an hour we advanced stealthily. By this time the passage had so enlarged that it was now the dimensions of a large cathedral. It was also now quite simple to locate the source of our illumination. Hundreds of feet above us hung a massive roof of clear glacial ice, via which a remote daylight filtered through to provide a pale unearthly luminescence in the cavern below.

  As we sidled by the left wall of the gigantic passage way, glancing nervously up at this tremendous anomaly of nature, the thought of those millions of tons of unstable ice poised menacingly above our heads did nothing to reassure me about the wisdom of our enterprise. A little way ahead there was a narrow opening in the wall — probably a cleft in the rock, but with the regular lines of an entrance of some kind. Maybe it was the beginning of a branch passage, or the door to a chamber.

  Sherlock Holmes stopped a little way before the opening and, getting down on one knee, carefully inspected the white floor. CI don't like it. The alignments of the footmarks change here. They do not all point forward as before, but instead point toward each other in a rough circle. Obviously they gathered around here to confer.'

  Meanwhile I had proceeded to the side entrance to have a look inside. I was just stepping into the opening when Mr Holmes shouted a warning. 'Stop, Hurree It is a trap!'

  Instinctively I drew back, which was most fortunate, for two shots rang out, the bullets whizzing perilously close past me. I pressed my back hard against the wall and tried to control my breathing and the rhythm of my heart, which were now totally at sixes and sevens. Pressing himself against the wall, Mr Holmes sidled up besides me. 'Moriarty and his men conferred here to prepare a trap for us,' he whispered. 'But in baiting a mouse-trap with cheese, it is well to remember to leave room for the mouse. The entrance was rather too obvious. The footmarks also provided a useful confirmation.'

  'But what can we do now, Mr Holmes? I asked. We can only proceed at unequivocal peril to life and limb.'

  'Let us not succumb to such morbid anticipations before having exhausted our own resources.' Holmes said sternly. 'First of all we must establish the exact circumstances of our adversaries. Hurree, if crouching very low, you could quickly peep around the corner and fire a few shots in their general direction, it may afford me the opportunity to make a quick reconnaissance. Are you ready? Now!'

  I fired three rapid shots around the corner and whipped back to safety, just before a volley of rifle-fire crashed past me and echoed through the many miles of empty caverns. Mr Holmes had managed to duck back safely also, and he now stood with his back pressed to the wall and his eyes filled with frustration.

  'The Devil take it!' he cried bitterly. 'They are unassailable.'

  'How, exactly, Sir? I did not have time to see anything.'

  'The two soldiers are entrenched behind large blocks of ice which provide them absolute protection against our bullets. There is no way they can be flanked, and they have a clear field of fire of the whole entrance. We are trapped here.'

  'But we can always retreat, Sir.' I cried out at this folly, flinging my arms out in protest. It was very careless of
me, I will grant you, to make impassioned gestures while under fire, for my left hand must have stuck out a bit beyond the corner. There was a sharp crack and I felt a sudden hot sear, as if a red hot poker had been pressed against the back of my hand. I had been shot. Good Heavens! I withdrew my injured limb with alacrity and tried to nurse it with my other hand, which held the revolver. Unfortunately, in the heat and confusion of things I must have dropped my fire-arm on the floor. More unfortunately still, the bally thing was cocked and ready to fire, and so it accidentally discharged a round.

  'What the Devil ...?' Mr Holmes leapt back in alarm as the bullet zipped past his nose and flew up into the air.

  Somewhat embarrassed by this unfortunate accident I lowered my head and affected to examine my wound with great interest. But to my dismay, Mr Holmes's reaction to this minor and absolutely unintended blunder of mine was rather violent and unexpected. He grabbed me by the collar and threw me brutally to one side. Recovering from this uncalled for assault on my person and dignity, I sought to remonstrate with him. 'Really Sir. Such behaviour is unbecoming of an English gentle...'

  Just then a great mass of murderously jagged ice crashed down on the very spot where I had just stood. The accidental discharge had struck the ice on the roof and dislodged a large section of it. Mr Holmes must have seen this and taken effective steps to save my life. I censured myself for my want of faith. How could I have, for even a single moment, doubted the integrity of my noble and valiant friend.