Mandala of Sherlock Holmes (8 page)

‘In the monograph I also provide incontestable evidence of the superiority of the fingerprinting system over Monsieur Bertillon’s
²
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 that 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 one. 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 inter
¹
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…

Before I could sort my thoughts out properly someone tapped me on the back of my shoulder, startling me.

‘Oh! It’s you, Mr Strickland,’ I exclaimed, much relieved.

‘Now listen to me, Hurree. I’ve managed to get a first class
coupe
for two from the government quota, so you can travel with Mr Holmes without any problems from other European passengers.’

‘Oh, there will be no problems, Sir.’

‘I don’t know, Huree. I’m not easy in my mind about letting you and Mr Holmes make this journey.’

‘But why, Mr Strickland? We agreed that …’

‘I know Mr Holmes is safer out of Bombay, but a moving train does seem like an ideal place for another attempt …’

‘Not to worry, Sir. I will maintain a constant vigil.’

The Frontier Mail roared into the station, only a few minutes behind its scheduled arrival time of 1.45 a.m. The sleeping figures on the platform sprang to life. The normal hubbub of the station now rose to a terrific crescendo as yelling passengers gathered up their boxes, bedding-rolls, children and relatives, and made a mad dash for the carriage doors and windows. A collective insanity seemed to overtake the vendors, coolies and beggars as they shrieked and howled to attract custom or charity.

We collected Sherlock Holmes from the first-class waiting room. Assisted by a porter wearing the red regulation shirt and brass arm band, who carried our few items of luggage on his head, we jostled our way through the teeming crowd and finally got to our carriage. As a precaution against dacoits Indian trains do not have corridors, and each carriage is entered independentiy from the platform. A rowdy group of tough-looking British soldiers —‘tommies’ from the Royal Warwickshire Regiment — occupied the carriage immediately behind ours.

‘Are you armed Mr Holmes?’ enquired Strickland.

‘I have a hair-trigger. I thought it as well to carry it.’

‘It would be a considerable relief to me if you would keep it near you night and day, and never relax your precautions. Huree is an old hand at this kind of thing and you can rely on him implicitly.’

‘Most certainly. Well,
Au revoir
then, Strickland. I cannot thank you enough for your help.’

‘Goodbye Mr Holmes,’ said Strickland as the train began to move down the platform and the child beggars made last frantic efforts to elicit alms from the passengers on the train. ‘Goodbye Hurree. Mind you don’t get careless.’

Shooing away the littie beggars hanging onto the carriage windows, I leaned back in my seat and fanned myself with the newspaper as the train pulled out of the station on its long journey to Peshawar, at the foot of the Khyber Pass. The train would be proceeding via Deolali, Burhanpur, Khandwa, Bhopal, Jhansi, Gwalior, Agra, Delhi, Umballa, Amritsar and Lahore, but we would have to get off at Umballa and take a pony trap to Simla.

Mr Holmes had his head out of the window and was looking down at something outside. After a littie while he pulled his head in and, settiing back in his seat, lit his pipe. I put my luggage away neatly on the overhead rack, and popped a paan into my mouth. Chewing it slowly I cast my mind over the events of the day. All of a sudden I remembered Ferret-Face.

‘Something the matter, Hurree?’ Holmes’s calm voice broke into my reverie. ‘You look like you’ve just swallowed a thrupenny bit.’

I told him about seeing Ferret-Face at the station.

‘But I really could not be sure, Sir,’ I said. ‘It all happened so dashed quickly.’

‘Hmm. Still, it would be imprudent not to regard it as a fortuitous warning. Moran now probably knows of our flight from Bombay.’

It was not a very comforting thought. To be subjected once again to murderous fauna and expanding bullets, especially within the narrow confines of a moving railway carriage, was a trifle rich for my blood. But Sherlock Holmes thankfully diverted my mind from such distressing cogitations by diverting the conversation to more comforting and scholastic directions.

‘Ethnology being your metier, Huree,’ said Holmes, ‘could you kindly tell me whether the representation of an open hand has any symbolic meaning in this country?’

‘An open hand? Well, it is a commonly known symbol of the goddess Kali.’

‘Pray, enlighten me as to the details.’

‘Well, Mr Holmes, Kali is certainly not your usual benign divinity. No indeed. She is the very fierce and terrifying aspect of Devi, the Supreme Goddess; probably the most virulent deity in the Hindu pantheon. She is depicted as a hideous hag smeared in blood, with bared teeth and a protruding tongue. Her four hands hold, variously, a sword, a shield, the severed hand of a giant, and a strangling noose. Her rites involve sacrificial killings — at one time, of humans. Kali is supposed to have … aah … developed her taste for human blood when she was called upon to kill the demon Raklavija.

‘But it is all gross superstition and savagery, Mr Holmes, quite unsuitable for the scientific mentality. I, myself, am a Brahmo Somajist,
²
eschewing such barbarity and esteeming instead the noble principles of reason and humanism, as expressed in the
Upanishads,
which represents the true philosophic teachings of uncorrupted Hinduism.’

Taking his pipe out of his mouth, Sherlock Holmes leaned forward.

‘Interesting,’ said he, ‘but does this fiend or the open hand symbol have any connection with something other than mythology — with crime, maybe?’

‘Why, yes, Sir. She was worshipped by the Thugs.’

‘Ahh … I remember reading about them a few years ago. Some kind of professional murderers — were they not?’

‘Yes, Mr Holmes. They were members of a well-organised confederacy of assassins who travelled in gangs throughout India for more than three hundred years.’

‘Pray, continue,’ said Holmes, as he leaned back on his seat, placed his fingertips together and closed his eyes.

‘The
modus operandi
of these dastardly murderers was to worm their way into the confidences of wayfarers and, when all was hail-fellow-well-met, strangle them from behind with a handkerchief that had knotted into one of its corners (to give it a better grip) a silver coin consecrated to Kali. All this was done according to certain ancient and rigidly prescribed forms and after the performance of special religious rites, in which the consecration of the pickaxe and the sacrifice of sugar formed a prominent part. Although their essential religious creed was worshipping Kali, there were traces of Islamic practices present in their rituals. The fraternity possessed a jargon of its own called Ramasi. They also had signs by which its members could recognise each other.’

‘When did the authorities learn of the existence of this organisation?’

‘Definite evidence of Thuggery was only secured when Lord William Bentinck was the Governor-General of India; that would be around the 1830s, at the time of the Company Bahadur — The Honourable East India Company. His Lordship appointed Captain Sleeman to do the needful regarding this outrageous defiance of British Law. Infiveyears no fewer than three thousand Thugs were caught and convicted; one of them admitting to no less than seven hundred and nineteen murders, with many others not too far behind this shocking tally. Over four hundred Thugs were eventually hanged and the rest transported, probably to the Andaman Islands.’

‘So the whole brood was wiped out?’

‘Well … that would be the position of things … ah …
ex officio,
but it is not exactly
e concensu gentium!

‘Some of them survived?’

‘Not many, but enough to maintain the organisation. When young Captain Sleeman went after them, the Thugs were operating in Central India, mostly in rural areas and the jungles. Those who stuck to the outbacks were caught, sooner or later. Only the few who changed their habits and departed to the big cities like Calcutta or Bombay survived. That is why I wanted you to leave Bombay, Mr Holmes. They are there still, murderous as ever, ready to sell their services to the likes of Colonel Moran.’

Outside Bombay the train slowed down and stopped at a small station. Probably the tracks were not clear ahead and the points had to be changed. A harassed looking Eurasian ticket-collector entered our carriage, his sour face, under an uncomfortably large pith helmet, glistening with perspiration. He eyed me in a very unpleasant way. ‘Hey you, Babu! What are you doing here? Nikal jao Jaldi!’

‘This gentleman is travelling with me,’ said Holmes quietly but firmly. ‘We have taken the whole
coupe.
Here are our tickets.’

Wiping his face with a none too clean handkerchief, the ticket-collector pored over the damp sheaves of passenger lists on his clipboard, and at last grudgingly punched our tickets. Just as he was leaving Sherlock Holmes spoke. ‘Excuse me, would you by any chance have a piece of chalk with you?’

The ticket-collector seemed rather surprised by Mr Holmes’s request, but extracted a small stick of white chalk from the pocket of his faded blue uniform and proffered it to Holmes. Ticket-collectors and guards generally carried pieces of chalk with them to put temporary markings on the side of carriages for the purpose of identification.

‘Thank you very much,’ said Holmes as the ticket-collector tucked his clip-board under his arm and left. I also got out of the carriage to search for the dining-car. It was, thankfully, not too far away, and I was able to purchase some cold Murree beer for Mr Holmes and tonic water for myself. Clutching these I hurried back and I was just in time, for as soon as I reached our carriage the train started.

Mr Holmes was also outside the train, and he climbed in after me. As he reached for the door I noticed that his hands were covered with chalk dust. He then went into the toilet attached to our carriage. When he came out I noticed that he had washed his hands thoroughly.

As the train picked up speed and roared through the hot Indian night, Mr Holmes and I settled down to pur journey. Drinking the cold beer and tonic water, and eating Cabuli grapes and pistachio nuts I had earlier purchased at the Bhindi Bazaar, we discoursed amicably on matters of life, art and philosophy before finally turning in for the night.

Around three o’clock in the morning I was rudely woken from my slumbers by a tremendous commotion from the neighbouring carriage — even afire-arm being discharged. Probably the tommies had had too much to drink and were, as usual, being obstreperous and a disgrace to their uniforms. Someone also seemed to be yelling something, in Hindustani, but I could not be sure. After a while the uproar subsided and gentle Morpheus once more enfolded me into his embrace. But just before falling asleep I thought I heard Sherlock Holmes chuckling to himself in the darkness of the carriage.

I awoke to find Mr Holmes up in his purple dressing gown, smoking his pipe and reading
The Times of India,
while a railway bearer in white livery was serving breakfast on the raised drop-leaf table.

‘Good morning, Huree,’ said Holmes, turning a page of the newspaper. ‘I trust you are well rested.’

‘Oh yes, Mr Holmes. I slept like a baby. Only the bally hullabaloo in the next carriage disturbed my slumber somewhat. Surely it woke you up too, Sir?’

‘Babuji!’ said the bearer, who had, rather impertinently, been listening in on our conversation.‘Last night two dacoits broke into the next carriage.’

‘How did you know that?’ I asked in the vernacular.

‘Babuji, I entered this rail-ghari with chota-hazris at Jalgaon junction early this morning. There policewallahs took one dacoit from the next carriage. The ticket-babu told me that two dacoits had tried to rob a carriage full of Angrezi soldiers. Hai! Bewakoofi On learning their mistake, one fool jumped out of the window. The other was shot in the leg by a soldier sahib’s bundook. I must go now to serve other hazris.’

‘It is dashed unusual of dacoits to enter a carriage full of armed soldiers,’ I mused, after translating the waiter’s story to Mr Holmes. ‘Generally, criminals of this sort are more careful and prepared in their enterprises.’

But Mr Holmes did not seem to share my doubts. There was a knowing twinkle in his eyes.

‘By Jove, Mr Holmes,’ I exclaimed, ‘I perceive you have a fair idea about the matter. I beg of you not to perpetuate my ignorance.’

‘Well,’ said he, putting away his newspaper, ‘it all begins with the drawing of an open hand. Remember I asked you last night what it might mean.’