The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes

by Barry Grant

  ‘I grew colder. The full moon rose. All the vast earth – the valleys, the mountain ranges, the lakes – made a moonlit scene more beautiful than ever I had witnessed.

  ‘“Holmes!” he cried.

  ‘The shout echoed down the cold tunnel.

  ‘“Holmes!” he cried. “Wo bist du!”

  ‘I peeked around the corner and saw his hulking shape silhouetted at the top of the tunnel; a bear leaning on a crutch.

  ‘He hollered, “Holmes! I vant the case! I vill leave you your life.”

  ‘He could not know if I was armed. I thought he might retreat. He turned and walked towards the restaurant with a tentative and uncertain air, the air of a man who is puzzling over his next move.

  ‘Quickly I got to my feet and walked out on to the snow of the glacier. I headed down.

  ‘I knew from my Baedeker that the Bergli Hut was an hour and a half away. I could see its distant roof. Baedeker sternly recommended a guide for anyone who tried to reach the hut, warning of falling stones and dangerous ice. I had determined to try to reach the hut without a guide. I had no choice. If I made it I would certainly find shelter for the night, and maybe even food. If I was very lucky I might encounter a party of mountaineers descending. I had heard rumours of climbers who had been caught by the snows and were trying to get down. This, of course, was unlikely. Most probably I would need to find my own way down to the valley and to civilization in the morning. I had no idea whether this was even possible.

  ‘For half an hour I picked my way down and down through the snow. All the deceptions of the mountains were doubly deceptive by moonlight. Many times I came to a drop-off that had been hidden until I reached it. Then I was forced to backtrack and try another route. It was on one of these occasions, as I was turning around to backtrack, that I saw Ludwig. His huge dark figure tilted and skittered and hopped across the brow of a snowy crest. He looked like something out of a comic opera. What a fantastic scene it was, Wilson! There was this huge, dark, bearlike figure flailing towards me. Behind him hung a stupendous backdrop of towering white peaks and millions of stars in blackness, and closer by were streams of snow blowing off ridges like white fire. Suddenly Ludwig’s monstrous figure stumbled and with a cry he began to slide. I hoped he might slide into a crevasse so I could climb back up to Eismeer station. No such luck. He halted his slide by dragging his crutch in the snow. He got to his feet, much closer now. He dug into the pocket of his greatcoat. I saw the gleam of a pistol in moonlight. The drop-off was below me, Ludwig above. I fell to my stomach on the snow. I heard a bullet zing, then a crack. He fired the pistol twice more in rapid succession. The sounds echoed away and became a strange roar.

  ‘The mountain behind him had begun to move.

  ‘The roar grew louder. White slabs of mountainside dropped straight down, intact, like massive walls, and then disintegrated into a boiling flood of white, and the flood of white formed a massive wave, and the wave hit Ludwig and flipped him like a doll, and he rose high into the air and then fell back and was buried, sucked away, and I saw his crutch skittering and leaping and hopping by itself atop the surging flood.

  ‘I rolled on to my back. I took a deep breath. I closed my eyes. Make best use of all your time – that is what my father always told me. I decided to practise my Zen meditation in my remaining few seconds. It was all I had time for. A wall of cold wind fluttered my clothes. A terribly cold wind hit me. Then my mother appeared and threw a blanket on to me. But the blanket was cold and pressed down upon me very heavily. I felt the ice seeping into my brain.

  ‘A moment later I opened my eyes and looked for mother. But she was gone. I realized I was in St Bart’s hospital, the new wing. I realized this because I recognized the ceiling moulding. I was in the very room, as it turned out, where I had once beaten corpses with sticks to ascertain how much a body might be bruised after death. I later learnt that this was now the old wing of the hospital. But that was later. At the moment I was merely puzzled as to why I was lying in bed instead of tending to my lab experiments.

  ‘A nurse appeared. She flung her left hand to her lips. “Oh,” she cried, “you’re awake at last!”

  ‘“I’m cold,” I said. But I could barely say those two words. I had trouble speaking.

  ‘She leant close to me, holding out the thermometer stiffly. She seemed to fill the night sky. “You’re sweating,” she said.

  ‘“You’re hurt,” I said.

  ‘She stared at me, and frowned.

  ‘“The horse threw you off?” I said, speaking with the thermometer in my mouth.

  ‘She stepped back a pace and her eyes grew wide. “My heavens!”

  ‘I gazed at her confused brow.

  ‘“How did you know that?” she asked.

  ‘But already I was falling back into Switzerland, trying to find the Bergli Hut in the snowy dark—’

  His tale broke off.

  We had just reached the top of Hay Bluff.

  We paused to catch our breath.

  He stood looking out over the vast scene below, his nose hawked to the breeze, his old plaid hat fluttering at the edges, his new blue nylon jacket pressed by breeze to his thin frame. His eyes were squinting and there was a faint smile on his thin lips, and he gave a snort of laughter as if he did not quite approve of what he was about to tell me next.

  ‘And then came the hard part,’ he said.

  ‘The hard part?’

  ‘Waking up,’ said Holmes.

  ‘So how did you get there – to St Bart’s?’

  ‘I was found by two British hikers at ten thousand feet, frozen in the glacier. One immediately recognized me and cried, ‘That looks like Sherlock Holmes!’ When the ever-efficient Swiss arrived on the scene an hour later, they too saw the resemblance and contacted the Home Office in London. Very quickly Scotland Yard and Dr Ronald Coleman of St Bart’s were brought into the case. I must tell you, Wilson, that Dr Coleman is one of those scientific researchers who, like Victor Frankenstein, leaves one unsure whether he should be praised or put in gaol. For years he has been obsessed with creating life, human life, and he has created a huge edifice of theory as to how this could be done by highly technical methods. No stitching together of old body parts, collected from charnel house, for Dr Coleman. He believes a human being can be designed from the ground up on a computer, every cell and strand of DNA, every part of his body calculated and then created from raw chemicals. People are already calling him mad or immoral for contemplating such a thing. Coleman admits that his theory is a few decades away from being a practical scheme. But of course he leapt at the chance of resuscitating a dead Englishman. Which was me. Apparently the dehydration I suffered as a result of becoming sick from drinking Zimmerman’s concoction, plus the sudden freezing caused by tons of snow encasing me, caused my body to be freeze-dried more or less like the raspberries or peas one buys in modern grocery stores.’

  The idea sounded so fantastic that I could not help but believe it, while pretending not to. ‘Come now, Holmes!’ I laughed.

  ‘That’s how Coleman explained it,’ he said, in a tone so uncharacteristic of the man that I felt a little sorry for him. A puzzled and bewildered tone.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve heard of a boy who fell into the Red River in North Dakota in the winter of 1987, and was underwater for forty-five minutes, and later revived. They said the frigid water had slowed down his bodily processes, and that is what saved him. So I guess it makes a little sense.’

  ‘The sudden freezing was the key,’ said Holmes. ‘Coleman directed the whole operation. They cut out the block of ice in which I was encased, used snow-cats to haul it up to Eismeer Station, then loaded it into a converted train car, and so brought me down the mountain to where a refrigerated lorry was waiting to bring me to London. At St Bart’s I was put into a specially built refrigerator where I was kept until Dr Coleman had prepared his chemical bath.’

  ‘We’d better start back down,’ I said, ‘It gets dark early the
se days.’

  ‘Right,’ said Holmes.

  We descended the steep path from the top of the bluff to the parking lot below. The world seemed huge and bright. Over the valley a tiny paraglider swooped like a drunken fly. We crossed the parking lot, stepped over the edge into green pastures, descended easily through the world of sheep as Holmes resumed his explanation.

  ‘Stem cells derived from my bone marrow were inserted into my inner organs. There they transformed themselves into the appropriate sort of cells for each particular organ, and grew to replace the damaged tissue. The technique Coleman used was, in essence, similar to that used by researchers in the United States who have managed to grow, for instance, a totally new rat’s heart where none existed before. In my case, the scaffolding of all my organs was there, and the trick was to time everything properly, so that the total blood transfusion, the first beating of my heart, the awakening of my brain, and so on, all came together at the right moment. The whole system, or most of it, had to come on line, as they say nowadays, at the same time. And most of it did. There was a pancreas problem for a while, but that has been sorted out.’

  ‘I have done many news stories on cloning,’ I said. ‘But I take it you weren’t exactly cloned.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Holmes. ‘A cloned human might have physical characteristics nearly identical to those of the original, yet the clone would be different because he would have different memories. In my case, Coleman merely used a technique to create new cells for the existing creature. I am the old Holmes, with the old memories. My memories were preserved in chemical form in my brain while I was frozen, and those memories were revived when I was awakened. As I understand it, all human memory is preserved in chemical form.’

  We walked together down and down. Holmes swung his walking stick in lively fashion. The gimpy leg did not seem to bother him except when he had to heft it stiffly over the stiles. At one point we sat down on a steep slope and looked down as dusk began to creep over the valley. He sighed. His mood changed. He said, ‘I don’t know, Watson . . .’

  ‘Wilson.’

  ‘I don’t know if the game has been worth the candle.’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ I said. ‘But it’s an experience.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he agreed. ‘And yet . . .’ he trailed off.

  ‘And yet, you have lost your life,’ I said. ‘Is that it? Your real life.’

  ‘Yes. I think you may have put your finger on it.’

  ‘But you’d have lost your life anyway,’ I said. ‘We all do.’

  ‘But I’d not have remembered it,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, there’s a point,’ I said. ‘You’d not have felt lonely.’

  ‘My fear is less of loneliness than of boredom. If a man lives long enough, he is bound to get bored. Don’t you think so, Watson? An experience that is magical the first time around is routine the tenth, and tedious the twentieth.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I fear that is so. I remember, for instance, my first trip to Paris was wonderful. The fourth was still fun. Later, Paris was fine, but expected. A bit ordinary. And the lovely first bloom is now forever vanished.’

  ‘Men have always,’ said Holmes, ‘dreamt of living forever – thoughtless men. I suspect, Watson, that even if the body of a man stayed as perfect as that of a twenty-year-old, stayed healthy forever, his mind would petrify from sheer boredom after two hundred years. And he would want to kill himself. To die.’

  I wasn’t entirely sure I agreed with him, so I was a little evasive. ‘Like so much we think we want,’ I said, ‘I suppose eternal life might turn out to be a dreary prospect. I feel better when I avoid thinking too deeply on these sublime topics.’

  ‘Poor Zimmerman,’ he mused. ‘Poor Professor Zimmerman. He died not knowing that he had experienced all the youth that a man could ever experience. He died denying the gift of mortality.’

  ‘Movement, motion, saves us as we grow old,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly right! We must be up and doing.’ He sprang to his feet and brushed himself off. ‘We must be up and doing with a will to work and wait.’

  ‘Away, then,’ said I, and again we started down the hill.

  ‘Good old Watson!’ he cried, and he swung his stick at a thistle.

  ‘You might just as well call me Watson and let it go at that,’ I said. ‘It will be easier than me having to correct you all the time.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said he. ‘Anyway, as Juliet observed, What’s in a name?’

  ‘Quoting Shakespeare now?’ I cried. ‘You surprise me, Holmes!’

  ‘I’m afraid that my dear Watson – may he rest in peace – left out a great deal about my personality,’ said Holmes. He laughed loud, and his laugh echoed out of the trees.

  We descended to the village. We walked rather stiffly to our Cambrai Cottage. We cooked a small meal, and ate it. We went weary and happy to bed.

  NINE

  Lestrade Presents a Problem

  The Mystery of the Black Priest, as we had come to call the case of the blood bath at The Old Vicarage, weighed heavily on Holmes. ‘My first case in ninety years, and I can’t crack it,’ he said one morning, and he laughed bitterly. I could see he was becoming desperate and depressed. Several times I had noticed him eyeing the small morocco case containing his hypodermic needle.

  ‘Never fear,’ I said. ‘A tiny piece of information will come your way, and suddenly the whole case will crystallize, and you will solve it as brilliantly as ever you did.’

  ‘I wonder,’ he mused. ‘I wonder.’

  ‘By the way,’ I said. ‘I met Sergeant Bundle when I was buying the newspaper this morning. He mentioned that Jenkins has returned to his cottage from Scotland.’

  ‘Ah!’ cried Holmes, springing to his feet. ‘Perhaps we should go see him. There may yet be hope of fresh facts.’

  We drove to The Old Vicarage in my car. Jenkins was still in his silk pyjamas and dressing gown when we knocked on his door. He graciously invited us in. He was a dapper man in his forties. He had bright green eyes, blond hair worn with studied dishevelment, and he threw his right arm into the air whenever he became excited about one of his own observations.

  ‘I was in Scotland and I have three friends who were with me to prove it,’ said he. ‘I am astonished, Mr Coombes, that you bring the subject up. I have gone over it all with Sergeant Bundle. I can tell you this, if I had a young boy visit me, I might well invite him to bathe with me. But I certainly wouldn’t try to drown him in anything but love.’

  ‘Do you know any actors who speak Pashto?’ asked Holmes.

  ‘I know several actors of Afghan descent, though I’m not quite sure whether they can speak the language. They are perfectly English, so far as I am aware. I doubt that they have ever been to their homeland.’

  ‘Would they know about this house of yours in Wales?’

  ‘They might. I throw parties here for people in the London theatre world, and word gets around . . .’ He shrugged.

  ‘Would you mind writing out the names of the Afghan actors you know?’

  ‘It would be my pleasure, Mr Coombes.’ He produced a paper and pen and, with a flourish, he wrote out a list of names.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Holmes.

  ‘You know,’ said David Jenkins, turning so suddenly that his silk robe swished. ‘You remind me of someone, Mr Coombes.’

  ‘Really?’ said Holmes, in a tone that suggested he was pleased.

  ‘But I can’t think who. Wait, I have it! William Gillette,’ he cried, whirling and pointing his arm at Holmes affectionately, while smiling a 500-watt smile: ‘The actor, William Gillette!’

  Jenkins rushed to a cabinet. He drew out a curve-stemmed meerschaum pipe and thrust it into Holmes’s hand. He touched Holmes delicately, a finger on each shoulder, and turned him like a mannequin. He viewed him in profile. ‘Perfect!’ he cried. ‘You are, without the shadow of a doubt, William Gillette!’

  Holmes looked at me, seeming puzzled.

 
‘Gillette,’ I said, ‘was an American actor and playwright who gained fame and fortune in the early part of the last century by writing and starring in plays about Sherlock Holmes.’

  ‘Have you ever acted, Mr Coombes?’ asked Jenkins. ‘Perhaps it is time for a Holmes revival.’ He moved closer to Holmes and looked at his face intently. ‘Of course, you’re a little long in the tooth. But make-up does wonders.’

  ‘I begin to think,’ said Holmes, ‘that Sherlock Holmes has been revived one time too often.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ cried Jenkins, as he poured himself another cup of coffee. With a silent gesture of eyes and hands, he offered us each a cup. But we refused.

  ‘If you revive a man enough times,’ said Holmes, ‘he is bound to disappoint.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Coombes – what a view of life you take! A Holmes revival is always a success!’

  Jenkins struck poses and launched witticisms as he ushered us to the front door and bade us adieu.

  Holmes later checked out the names on Jenkins’s list. They led to nothing. Two of them weren’t even Afghans, but Indians.

  I spent the next day reading a book that Holmes had recommended, Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade. Holmes, meanwhile, flung himself first into one chair, then another. I could see he was fading fast, and that soon he would be again in the depths of boredom and despair. This was an aspect of his personality that Watson, writing a century ago, had often mentioned. Holmes, I concluded, suffered a version of manic depression – or, as I believe they now style it, bipolar disorder. But beyond this was something new. He now seemed to have self-doubt. I had always thought of him as one who believed entirely in his own abilities, one who knew absolutely that if he were provided with even the slightest chance for success he would succeed. I wasn’t at all sure that this was still true. It might have been true most of the time, but not all the time. Not in certain dark moments.

  He lurched out of a chair and stood at the window. ‘Maybe the facts are before me and I don’t see the obvious. Maybe I need more facts. A single fact, when properly viewed by the intelligent mind, ought to reveal its antecedent, which should reveal the fact before that, and back, and back, till we see the beginnings of the universe! Yes, yes, but that is extreme. Inductive reasoning can only lead so . . .’ He flung himself, with an air of exhaustion and exasperation, into the easy chair by the hearth. ‘You know, Watson, I have almost concluded that I’d rather be lucky than good.’