Between the Thames and the Tiber (26 page)

“My dear Cesare, you choose to walk into fields of knowledge which are fraught with danger. I admire your courage but I am situated within a different set of problems, problems in which the fundamental boundaries have already been set. Some day, dear Cesare, someone will evaluate my work and your work, and find where our results agree and differ. That person,” said Holmes with a very broad smile, “might have to be a new kind of medium, a Lombroso medium.”

I raised my glass and toasted both of my companions. By the time we departed, the food and drink of La Sonnambula had done their work. I recall only a sound sleep and Holmes knocking on my door, reminding me that we were scheduled to leave for London at once.

“Come along, old boy,” he said. “I have a note from our dear friend Lestrade who once again finds himself beyond his depth. Let us have our coffee. If we leave now, we will be in time to assist the poor chap.” Holmes handed me a large cup of
caffè latte
and the morning paper.

I wonder what Lestrade is up to now
, I thought to myself. In the paper, I saw that a Mr. Peter Tomkins of Sloan Square had been murdered the day before and that Inspector Lestrade had requested that Mr. Sherlock Holmes join the investigation.

“Only the name is the same, old boy, only the name.”

I packed my few things and we were off to what my friend often referred to as the “great cesspool” of the British Empire.

I
T WAS ONE OF THOSE QUIET DAYS ON WHICH
S
HERLOCK
Holmes proclaimed in a loud, determined voice that it was time for him to put his papers in order. By the time he had finished his morning tea, however, he had been diverted to his violin, which he plucked noisily, declaring that it needed new strings. His papers lay silent on his desk, forgotten and unattended, as he took up his bow and began a piece by Paganini.

He played beautifully, but, as was his habit, he played nothing all the way through to its close. The great composers for the romantic violin—Bruch, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Brahms—became somehow sewn together into one large musical quilt of excerpts, which had its own peculiar unity. I said nothing, listening to my friend’s remarkable playing, when there was a firm knock at the door, one which we both recognized as that of Mrs. Hudson.

“Mr. Holmes, there is someone here to see ya’, very persistent, I would say. Why, he’s followed me right up. Go on, up ya go.”

A middle-aged man, oddly dressed in a green woollen cap and a long black cloak entered our quarters. He removed his hat, and I saw a man who was disheveled, his hair matted and stuck in clumps on his head, his face pasty, dark complected, almost dirty, certainly someone who had not slept in his own bed for several nights. His trousers were muddy and held up by a piece of rope which had been threaded through some crude holes made at the waist. He wore black chupples and thin stockings, also soaked with mud. His eyes were red-rimmed and almost cloudy, a condition that I had often seen in my medical practise as a strong indication of the use of opium. In all, an unhealthy eccentric, I thought to myself, bordering on the deliberately offensive.

“Mr. Holmes, I need you help and wise words. I am afraid that I shall go mad.”

“No need of that, Mr. . . . ?”

“McMillan, sir, John McMillan.”

Holmes stared at the man as one would stare at a puzzle of oddments, one in which the main elements were missing.

“I see that you have spent a good deal of the last day in Hyde Park . . . and that you were attacked by . . . something that soiled and tore your cloak.”

McMillan looked surprised at Holmes’s words. “You are most observant, Mr. Holmes. You are quite right,” said our guest.

“Let me see,” he continued. “You were born in India, lived there until you were perhaps eighteen or nineteen, when you left and settled in England. At some point you lived in Italy, where you served, in your penultimate posting, as assistant to a lady of aristocratic origin, then domiciled in the Abruzzi. The lady had also managed through her personal connections to have you positioned as a low functionary in the office of the consul general for Her Majesty’s Government in Naples. Before that, you had no permanent position, but supported yourself by tutoring and by occasional employment as a teacher in a boys’ school in Florence. You are now employed as a part-time janitor in Sussex.”

“Amazing, sir, you are correct on all points. How did you know?”

“Hardly a mystery, Mr. McMillan. I need not explain the arcane reasoning by which I arrived at all of my conclusions. You may note the following in brief: You are wearing a large rather common school ring which I have seen before worn by students of the Goodstock School in Madras. The graduates are a close-knit group of alumni, and it is not uncommon to see it and rings like it in the pawnshops in London these days. It is given to each student at the time of final matriculation. You have worn the ring for many years without removing it. It has become overly tight on your finger. In addition, your English, though native, bears the characteristic lilt of South Indian languages, the Dravidian so-called; finally, your cap was made in a small village in the Abruzzi, and is rarely worn outside of Italy. It has on its rim the seal that was once commonly given to honorary consuls. But, sir, please tell me and my friend Dr. Watson of your plight. And do sit. I see that you are exhausted by what has happened to you in the last day or so.”

“My story, if one can call it that, begins in India, Mr. Holmes, a country which I left thirty years ago, but in a frightening way has come back to haunt me. In any case, let me commence by telling you the needful. I was born in Madras fifty-one years ago, the son of John and Mary McMillan. My father was the editor of the
Madras Observer
, a highly respected newspaper. I was an excellent student, and I won many prizes for my schoolwork. As a reward, my father announced to me one day that, because of his love for India and my successful studies, he proposed that I should take a walking tour of the subcontinent before we settled in England. He offered to pay all my expenses along the way and encouraged me to travel not only with the rich and prosperous people I had been raised with, but with the poor as well, the latter being a means of knowing India which he said was avoided by most of our countrymen, who considered their lives there as a dreary bore.

“I of course jumped at the offer. Imagine, Mr. Holmes, having such an opportunity. I planned my route carefully. I decided to walk along the coast down to Cape Comorin and then up the Western Ghats, making full circles to the great religious sites of the interior. Early on in my trip, something happened which almost stopped me from going on. But I persisted and arrived back in Madras fifteen months after my trip began.”

“And what happened early on?”

“It happened in a place scarcely on any map, a small colony called Tranquebar.”

“Ah, yes,” said Holmes, “there is a Danish fort there and a convent of German nuns—Lutherans, I believe. We captured the fort and the land around it about a century ago.”

“You are again quite right, Mr. Holmes. I had been to the village many times in the past because there were also two temples on the beach, both filled with beautiful images carved in the stone but woefully neglected by both the Danes and by us, the English. Sometimes I would sit for hours in the ruins feeling the surf envelope me. Then I would help the fishermen with their nets.

“It was near sunset when I left the fishermen on that fateful night at the start of my long journey. The sea was calm, but there was a strong ominous wind which I thought might quickly turn into a tufan. I decided therefore to stay in the guest room of the nunnery. I took a path which I well knew through the small patch of thick forest that grew around the convent.

“And then, Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson, it happened: I was grAbbéd from the rear by assailants who forced me to the ground and tied me up with my feet stretched back and tied tightly to my wrists. They gagged me, making it impossible for me to cry out. It was dark and my captors said nothing. All that I could see was that they were naked except for the usual loincloths worn by the local fishermen. I shall never forget the strangest thing about them: their faces glowed a bright yellow in the dark as if they had rubbed some glistening ointment on their faces, something resembling the phosphorescent light of countless June bugs. They spoke not a word, but carried me silently to an obscure place in the wood, dropped me there on my stomach, and disappeared. Their faces seemed to float disembodied in the darkness as they passed into the night.

“I spent the hours before dawn in mortal terror, not only because of the painful position they had put me in but because I was terrified by the thought that I should die there without anyone ever knowing what had happened to me.”

Mr. McMillan seemed to shrink as he spoke to us. His breathing became laboured and he almost fell out of his chair. I caught him just as he was about to drop onto the floor.

“Hold him, Holmes; let me listen to his heart.”

His heart was beating rapidly but steadily enough and I revived him with some salts.

He sat up and apologized profusely. “I am so sorry, Mr. Holmes, but I am most upset,” said our guest.

“Please continue,” said Holmes, “I suspect that we are a bit far from the end of our story.”

“I writhed all night, trying to extricate myself from the ropes, but I could not. I heard wild beasts moving about and was afraid. Morning finally came. By this time, my wrists were bloodied and my back nearly broken, or so it felt. It must have been just before dawn when I sensed the presence of someone near. It was a nun from the school, dressed in grey and white, her face hidden, who cut my ropes and quickly disappeared into the forest. So great was my relief that I fell into a sleep and only awakened around noon.

“Instead of going to the convent, I went down to the sea and threw myself into its icy depths. The salt water stung my bloodied wrists and feet, but I felt renewed and determined to continue on rather than look back on the incident that now began to seem more like a nightmare than reality.

“I moved on, following the plan that I had laid out for myself, and continued through India. Towards the end of the trip, when I had arrived in Bengal, my father came to meet me and we visited together Puri, the home of the Juggernaut temple and other religious sites. It was in Gauhati in Assam that my father said that he had arranged for me to attend the university in England. I was overjoyed at the prospect. I returned with him to Madras. Shortly thereafter I left for London and a new life.

“I needn’t tell you much more of my career, Mr. Holmes. After my studies at the university, I became a teacher at the Overbrook School in Sussex, where I taught for seven years. I was then sent to Italy by the school to tutor English children living in Rome. Returning to London after years as deputy consul, I served for a time as principal of the Grindly School in Horsham.’

“I am still in the dark as to why you are here, Mr. McMillan,” said Holmes with a bit of impatience.

Our guest grew pale and visibly sagged in the chair as he fought to continue his story.

“I implore you, gentlemen, to listen to the end,” he said with a sob. “I came to London from Horsham three days ago to visit friends. Yesterday, towards evening, just at dusk, I entered Hyde Park on my way to my friends’ house, the way I had taken several times during my stay, when I suddenly saw the masked faces of that bitter night in Tranquebar. Fearing that I was hallucinating and about to expire, I sat down on a bench. But there was no doubt now: the creatures came towards me, the same expressions on their strange faces. I became terrified but I could not cry out. Then I must have fainted for I have no memory of what came next. I awoke tied as before and lying in a thick set of trees and brush. I was in an unfamiliar place. I tried to break my bonds but to no avail. At daybreak, I heard someone come. It was a nun, dressed in the grey habit of before, who cut my bonds and disappeared into the bright sunlit dawn. I sat up in what turned out to still be Hyde Park I have been half dazed since I was released.”

Holmes looked directly at our guest and said, “Mr. McMillan, your story, highly improbable as it is, is one that has obviously caused you considerable distress, but one that I find of some interest to me, largely because of the rare circumstances in which you have found yourself. I shall take on your case, provided that you leave London and return home immediately and remain there until I visit you. Please leave your address. And do not tell anyone that you have spoken to me about the matter.”

“Mr. Holmes, I agree to your stipulations. I shall return to my residence at once and await your visit.”

Our guest appeared so weak that he barely could lift himself out of his chair, and I guided him to the door. When he had left, I turned to Holmes, who was peering through the window curtain, watching as our client walked down Baker Street and faded into the crowd.

“What do you think, Watson?

“Almost too bizarre, Holmes, the man may be a congenital liar or someone who suffers from terrible delusions.”

“He walked at a fair clip as I watched him and seems to have recovered from his ordeal fairly quickly.”

Holmes began his usual pacing. “Interesting, Watson, most interesting. Masked figures. Strange, absurd, and inconsequential, if what you say is true, but there may be more to it. One must first eliminate all impossibilities—and whatever remains must be the solution. In this case, we have a very high degree of improbability, to say the least. Let us think for a moment.”

“Surely, Holmes, the man is quite mad, or is telling tall stories. Frankly, I wouldn’t waste my time. The only question is why he is taking the bother to engage the world’s greatest detective.”

“A good question, Watson, to which I have as yet no satisfactory answer, but all in good time. And, by the by, did you notice how quickly he accepted as true my random statements about his life, relying on me to explain his grim circumstances rather than reveal the truth. His story is certainly most incomplete. If it is made up, why did he, for instance, not tell us that the same thing happened to him in Italy? Surely, the masked dancers would have found him there as well if they are located in his brain, and not outside it? Come, Watson, a walk in Hyde Park will do us some good. There are only a few places where McMillan’s encounter could have taken place. Let us see what we might find there. My ragged irregulars must have seen the man. Let us speak with them and have a look ourselves.”