Associates of Sherlock Holmes

by George Mann

  Because Holmes never troubled himself to enquire further into the matter, I can only assume that the mystery of the missing lucre was too petty for him. Maybe he felt it was beneath his dignity to follow up on a case he had so triumphantly cracked. The money was a minor loose end. Why not leave it to the police to tie up? He, the mighty Sherlock Holmes, had bigger fish to fry. It is highly likely that the subject slipped his mind altogether, for soon after the Amberley case another problem engaged his attention, the vexing affair of Lady Eva Blackwell and “the worst man in London”, the blackmailer Charles Augustus Milverton.

  I do wonder, though, whether he actually knew all along that I had taken the money. By all accounts he lives in Sussex now, near Eastbourne. He is in his dotage, keeping bees. Does he ever think of me, down there in his retirement cottage by the sea? Does he smile fondly, perchance, as he recalls his former Irregular and one-time collaborator Clarence Barker?

  Does he ruminate on how he let me get away with an audacious act of thievery?

  If so, why did he not pursue me at the time? Why did he not apprehend me, as he did so many other wrongdoers?

  I like to think that he felt I had earned the money. I deserved it. It was due to me not because I joined forces with him and went unpaid for my efforts, but rather because he was ashamed by the way he spurned me when I approached him with my offer of a partnership. He felt guilty that he did not take me on as a protégé and help me make the most of my talents. Deliberately allowing me to slip through the net was his penance.

  Perhaps. Perhaps.

  At least he never knew that I had urged Dr Ernest on in his romantic pursuit of Mrs Amberley and his bid to steal from her husband. He never learned about that.

  In that one regard, I am unequivocally Sherlock Holmes’s better. I got away with something that virtually no one else has: pulling the wool over the great detective’s eyes. I outwitted him. He failed to see through me, as he did so many others, Josiah Amberley among them.

  There is this sentence in one of the final paragraphs of “The Adventure of the Retired Colourman”:

  “Pure swank!” Holmes answered. “He felt so clever and sure of himself that he imagined no one could touch him.”

  The subject is Amberley, of course, and it is as apt a description of that fiend as any.

  But it could just as easily be me.

  Signed,

  Clarence Barker

  January 1926

  HEAVY GAME OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST

  Tim Pratt

  When I was approached to write a story for this project, I immediately wanted to write about Sebastian Moran, but was sure some other writer would have snatched him up. Imagine my delight to find he was still available. Moran first appeared in “The Adventure of the Empty House” (1903), and was arrested in the same story, but Doyle implied a lot of backstory, with Moran named as Moriarty’s lieutenant, “the second most dangerous man in London.”

  I confess, though, that Moran made a bigger impression on me with his roles in the works of other authors. He appeared as vile blackmailer “Tiger Jack” Moran in George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman series; as hired killer and adrenaline junkie “Basher” Moran – the narrator of Kim Newman’s marvellous Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles, where Moran plays a dark Watson to Moriarty’s “consulting criminal”; in a minor but memorable role in Anthony Horowitz’s novel Moriarty; and even as the profoundly damaged narrator of Neil Gaiman’s Lovecraftian Holmes story A Study in Emerald. In all those stories, Moran is a formidable man of great courage, who happens to possess no moral compass at all – a fascinating figure, psychologically. The fact that he is canonically the author of at least two autobiographical volumes about his time as a hunter made it obvious that my story should be a memoir of a hunting trip, too.

  —Tim Pratt

  Memoirs are a poor substitute for sport, but with little else to occupy my time in this dreary cell, I may as well take up my pen again. My earlier literary efforts, Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas and Three Months in the Jungle, were well received by their intended audience, but I daresay the recent notoriety inflicted upon me will lead to a wider interest in whatever I write now. I’m sure many would be eager to read about my career with the late professor, but that work never interested me much beyond the technical challenges and the generous remunerations. I’m minded instead to begin these reminiscences with the last time I took up rifle against heavy game in the forest… and the extraordinary, and, to some degree, inexplicable manner of my survival in those circumstances.

  It was June 1892 when my old comrade-in-arms Major Fraser sent a missive asking me to join him for a big game hunt in the forests of Washington State, in America’s remote Pacific Northwest. He planned an expedition to pursue what he described as a deadly and unique creature, the killing of which would prove us hunters mightier than Nimrod or Orion, and enshrine our names among sportsmen for a thousand years. Fame has never interested me, and indeed I have sought to avoid it, but the challenge appealed to me, and Fraser’s choice to withhold details was clever: he knew how to tempt my curiosity. The thought of taking up my long gun again was alluring. Playing cards is a pleasing pastime, but it does little to stir the blood.

  I hesitated for two reasons. First, the journey would be expensive, with only glory at the end, rather than riches. My late employer had paid me on the order of six thousand pounds per year, excluding bonuses, but I lost a fair bit at cards and other wagers immediately following the professor’s death, having little else to occupy my time following his tumble from the falls. (I could have pursued his killer across Europe and Asia, but saw little dividend in such outsized expressions of loyalty, contenting myself with a promise to kill the great detective if he ever returned to London; you all know how that vow ended.) Soon enough I altered my manner of play to improve the odds in my favour, and my purse refilled, so my accounts were healthy enough. After some calculation I supposed I could stand the cost of the journey.

  My second hesitation regarded the location. The prospect of visiting America was appalling. I have journeyed with delight to the wildest and most barbarous places in Asia and Africa, so some find my great distaste for America confusing. To those I say: no one pretends the natives of the western Himalayas or the dark continent are anything other than savages and subhumans, but the rebellious Colonials fancy themselves sophisticates of a sort and equals of their former masters. I find their pretensions as vulgar and laughable as the sight of a pig in a crinoline.

  Still, Fraser was a reliable man for a Scot, and if he said there was something special to hunt in those woods, I believed him. (You may be acquainted with one of my past exploits: when I pursued a wounded tiger into a drain in order to dispatch the beast. You likely don’t know that it was Fraser who prompted that act, by betting me a sovereign I didn’t have the wherewithal to do it.) I resolved to join his party.

  I won’t go into the tedium of the journey to America. There were fools with cards on the ship, so that was all right, and the passages west on the Transcontinental Railroad and then north on the Northern Pacific were only made horrible by the number of Americans on board the trains. My “accent”, as they called it, excited so much comment from my fellow passengers I scarcely spoke a word after the first day.

  We reached the last station of my journey late in the morning, remarkably on schedule, and I was astonished by the flood of people who disembarked, since from what I could see this was a crude pioneer village with little to recommend it beyond mud and trees. I gathered my personal effects and committed myself to the wilderness.

  “Colonel Moran!” a voice shouted. I looked around and saw Fraser standing beside a horse-drawn wagon, waving his hat at me. I trudged towards him through the muck, followed by the boy I’d paid to carry my trunk.

  “Major. You’re looking well.” I would have lied, but it wasn’t necessary. Fraser was a few years older than myself, in his late fifties, but still hale and fit, with a bit of brown yet
peppering his hair. He wore a black patch to cover the scar from the knife wound that took his left eye in Sherpur, which gave him a roguish, piratical air.

  “You look fit yourself, Moran.” He directed the boy to load my things into his wagon, then tossed the child a coin and invited me to join him up front. Fraser flicked the horse’s reins, and it set off plodding along the thoroughfare.

  I’d travelled in worse circumstances, but not since the war. Water drizzled down on a canvas canopy rigged over our heads, and everything around us was hazy and grey. After a time we left all signs of habitation behind, following a rude dirt track between towering evergreens. I shivered, even in my coat. The damp penetrated.

  We chatted about this and that, with Fraser not yet broaching the subject of the hunt. I was growing weary of the suspense, but chose not to press the issue yet. “Beastly weather,” I commented at one point.

  Fraser chuckled. “I saw a flash of sun through the clouds this morning, so this counts as a beautiful day by local standards. The whole place squelches most abominably as a rule.”

  After longer than I care to recall, we reached a good-sized wooden lodge, the walls furry with moss, a mountain of split wood heaped against one side of the house. “Here is my stately home,” Fraser said.

  I looked at the rude cabin, and the encroaching woods, and finally at Fraser. I shook my head. “How ever did you end up in this place, Major?”

  “All will be revealed. Come in out of the wet.” He led me onto the porch, pausing to scrape the mud off his boots before going inside. The interior was as rustic as I’d expected, but it was warm and dry. I settled into a cushioned armchair while he saw to the fire, and once the flames were dancing, he presented me with a very serviceable brandy and took his own chair across from mine.

  Those preliminaries settled, he leaned forward in his armchair and fixed me with his one good eye. “Did you ever hear tales of the ape-men of Nepal?”

  I grunted. “My time in the Himalayas was in the west, mainly, but I recall a few stories. Great hairy beasts, bigger and stronger than a man, said to stalk the high passes? A lot of rot, I always thought.”

  “Perhaps not such rot.” Fraser’s tone was amused. “The native peoples of the Himalayas all tell similar stories of man-bears, wild men, and similar fearsome creatures. After I left the First Bengalore Pioneers I spent a bit of time in the region, following the rumours, and even tried to arrange a hunt, but it all fell apart when I had to return home to see to the disposition of my father’s estate. Blasted inconvenience. You asked how I ended up here – my father had sizeable shares in some timber and mining concerns in the region, and I travelled out to oversee their liquidation, as I had debts to repay. In those days this was the Washington Territory of course, though I can’t say the recent promotion to statehood has altered things much for the locals. During that first visit, I heard stories startlingly similar to those I’d encountered in Nepal, and came to believe the ape-man of the Himalayas has an American cousin.”

  I took a sip of brandy to keep from expressing any impolite opinions about that conclusion.

  Fraser went on. “I travelled from here to London and back a few times, before settling here for an extended stay just over a year ago. By then I felt I’d done sufficient research and was ready to pursue my prize. For an expedition like this, I wanted a good man by my side. There’s no better shot than you, Colonel, and no more indomitable tracker. I have every confidence our hunt will succeed.”

  I nodded thoughtfully, and said, in a remarkably level voice, “I can’t say I share your confidence. You invited me to this damp abscess of a place to hunt an imaginary ape-man. Have you lost your wits, Fraser?”

  He shook his head. “I knew you’d be sceptical, which is why I didn’t offer details when I invited you. But is it really so far-fetched, Colonel? The orang-utan of the Malay peninsula was considered a myth when the natives first described them as ‘people of the forest.’ You yourself heard tales in Africa of monster apes that kidnap and kill tribesmen. The creature they describe has not been conclusively identified, but it surely exists. Is it so improbable that in the wilds of the American forests there lurk similar beasts?” Fraser warmed to his subject, or perhaps it was just the brandy. “I have travelled here and in Canada and down to California, hearing stories that use different names for the same beast – skookum, oh-mah, gougou, tsiatko, or just ‘big man’ – but all describe the same thing: a beast that stands up to ten feet tall, covered all over in coarse hair, with feet as much as eighteen inches long. These creatures sometimes kidnap the unwary, perhaps to eat them, and perhaps for more terrible purposes. There are also tales of the creatures acting to help those lost in the woods, but I don’t much credit those. These oh-mah are cunning, elusive, and feared and respected by the locals… but no specimen has ever been recovered, intact or in part. To go into the forest and bring back the body of such a thing… what a triumph!”

  “Indeed.” Clearly Fraser had been seized by a fervour for some imaginary beast, and we might as well be setting out to hunt dragons or manticores. “What makes you think we’ll find one of these ‘big men’ of yours?”

  “I have many recent reports of activity in the forest not far from here.” He tapped a map laid out on the table, but I didn’t bother to look at it closely; it showed a great tract of trackless woods, more or less. “There have been recent sightings of immense, shambling creatures, and verified accounts of two small children being snatched away from a local village, with a third taken while you were en route. The big man of the woods is here, Moran, and we can kill it.”

  My disappointment was vast, but perhaps something could be salvaged. In a forest like this, surely there would be some beast worth shooting. Perhaps we’d encounter a grizzly bear. They were supposed to be formidable quarry, and taking one would salvage something of this trip. “When do you propose we set out?”

  He chuckled. “Tomorrow before first light, unless you need more time to settle in.”

  “I’m settled enough. I just need time to clean my guns. Are we to be the whole of the party?”

  He waved his hand. “I have a man-of-all-work, named Newman, to fetch and carry and perform other tasks as needed. He’s mute from an old throat injury, and illiterate besides, which makes him more discreet than most men.”

  “Where’s he lurking about, then?”

  “Oh, I sent him out to procure some essential supplies. I’d hoped to employ an Indian tracker from one of the local tribes, but my approaches were rebuffed. They don’t believe we should trouble the ‘big men’, it seems. No matter. We’re up to following the signs ourselves, I daresay.”

  “If there’s anything to track, we can track it.” I thought we’d find nothing at all, or else discover some filthy madman of a hermit with a long beard. As long as the brandy didn’t run out, I supposed I could stand the indignity.

  We let the subject of the wild men of the woods lapse, then, reminiscing instead about our campaign days, and hunts we’d both enjoyed over the years. After so long enmeshed in the professor’s plots, it was pleasant to return to thoughts of a simpler time. We ate a dinner of roasted game birds, moved along from brandy to port, played a bit of cards (for negligible stakes, and there aren’t many two-handed games worth playing anyway), and then I retired early to a bed that felt stuffed with equal parts hay and loose pebbles.

  * * *

  In the first glimmerings of dawn, we stepped into the damp air. A thin fellow with stringy grey hair stood waiting placidly outside, an overstuffed pack resting by his feet. Fraser nodded to him. “Newman, this is Colonel Moran. Heed his words as you would my own.” The man nodded solemnly. There were scars all around Newman’s lips, down his chin and on his throat, leading me to speculate on how he’d become mute.

  We clambered onto the cart, Newman perched in the back with the camping gear and supplies, and we set off along a rutted logging road, bouncing abominably.

  Fraser said, “I’ve tracked the sightings,
and particularly the disappearances of children, and have a good sense of the monster’s territory. We’ll get as close as we can by road, then hike in and look for signs.”

  “If these ‘big men’ of yours leave eighteen-inch long footprints, it shouldn’t be hard to find some trace of them in this muddy ground. Indeed, it’s remarkable one has never been tracked before.”

  “I understand your scepticism.” Fraser’s voice was low and calm. “Surely a creature like this couldn’t escape capture for so long. If it were real, there would be a specimen by now. But the forests here are vaster than you realise, and more thinly peopled. Even so, there have been scores of sightings in recent decades and old tales from the indigenous savages going back centuries. The beasts are wily, that’s all. As cunning as any tiger, and hard to capture.”

  I looked at my one-time fellow soldier for a long time. I’d known him as impetuous, but never credulous, or prone to fancies. “You’ve seen one, haven’t you?”

  He bowed his head for a moment, then nodded. “I have. I was walking in the forest, three years ago, when suddenly the birds fell silent, and a great hush descended. I stopped because I know when the prey fall silent, the predator is often near. I had the most peculiar sense that someone was watching me – you know the feeling, when you can feel a sniper has you in his sights?”

  I didn’t reply. I’d fired my rifle at enough unsuspecting targets to know the ability to sense a watcher was unreliable at best.