Sherlock Holmes and the Zombie Problem

Sherlock Holmes and the Zombie Problem

(c) 2010 Nick S. Thomas

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First published in Great Britain by Swordworks Books
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
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FOREWORD

It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these the last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes was distinguished. In an incoherent and, as I deeply feel, an entirely inadequate fashion, I have endeavoured to give some

account of my strange experiences in his company from the chance which first brought us together at the period of the “Study in Scarlet,” up to the time of his interference in the matter of the “Naval Treaty”—an interference which had the unquestionable effect of preventing a serious international complication. It was my intention to have stopped there, and to have said nothing of that event which has created a void in my life which the lapse of two years has done little to fill. My hand has been forced, however, by the recent letters in which Colonel James Moriarty defends the memory of his brother, and I have no choice but to lay the facts before the public exactly as they occurred. I alone know the absolute truth of the matter, and I am satisfied that the time has come when no good purpose is to be served by its suppression.

Numerous accounts of that fateful time littered the newspapers, with the police and army rightly being honoured. However, as far as I know, there have been only three accounts in the public press: that in the Journal de Geneve on May 6th, 1891, the Reuter’s despatch in the English papers on May 7th, and finally the recent letter to which I have alluded, which at all mention my dear friend Holmes. Of these the first and second were extremely condensed, while the last is, as I shall now show, an absolute perversion of the facts. It lies with me to tell for the first time what really took place between Professor Moriarty and Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

Before I begin this tragic and yet triumphant tale of events, I first feel obliged to explain the attributes of what have come to be known as Zombis, or Zombies, how they came about, what they are and what lead to their demise. It is commonly accepted that the driving force in making ordinary people in to flesh-eating monsters was purely viral, and of no more explanation in terms of origin that most viruses or diseases of our day. However, events and information gathered over time have firmly proven to me otherwise, in a fashion as a doctor, I would never have believed, had I not experienced this adventure first hand.

It was first in a cafe in Geneva that I ever heard the word ‘Zombi’ used, by an old friend of mine, Dick Burton, who from all known knowledge, should not have been alive to be conversing with me at all. Upon meeting said creatures and with and subsequent exchanges with such beings that he explained the myth and rumour surrounding them that he had learnt from his travels; and finally admitted to their existence. In summary, Dick Burton told us (being me and Mr Holmes) this information:

In the depths of Africa lies a mystic tradition named Vo dou, and within this culture a dead person can be brought back to life by some form of magician or sorcerer, known to them as a Bokor, and that these humans brought back from the dead are called Zombis. Zombis remain under the control of the bokor since they have no will of their own. The creatures are neither living nor dead, but some form of monster, given life by spirits or magic.

These Zombis feature the same shape and size of a human but with soulless expressions and appear to completely lack feeling or emotion, including fear and pain, only interesting in their task of destruction. They seem to attack those at their masters will, and whilst being no stronger than a human, fight with a frenzy and determination which would make you think otherwise. Whilst many of the ‘Zombis’ appeared to attack at specific targets, others carved a path of destruction in what appeared to be a random manner, but in all other ways, resembled the earlier creatures.

As for the spelling of their name, Dick Burton was very sure of the spelling Zombi, it is only unfortunate that the English newspapers were unwilling to accept that the spelling of the word could end so abruptly, and am therefore forced to use the misspelling on the cover of my work in order to be understood by my audience.

No Englishman, short of those with much liquor in them, would give such a story any credence, with Dick Burton never being short of harsh words for stories of such twaddle, and yet, before our very own terrified eyes, did we experience such a nightmare, and at least part of my story was witnessed by many Englishmen firsthand. I will tell this tale from when I first became involved in it, the evening Holmes reappeared in my life.

Dr. J Watson
December 1893

It may be remembered that after my marriage, and my subsequent start in private practice, the very intimate relations which had existed between Holmes and myself became to some extent modified. He still came to me from time to time when he desired a companion in his investigation, but these occasions grew more and more seldom, until I find that in the year 1890 there were only three cases of which I retain any record. During the winter of that year and the early spring of 1891, I saw in the papers that he had been engaged by the French government upon a matter of supreme importance, and I received two notes from Holmes, dated from Narbonne and from Nimes, from which I gathered that his stay in France was likely to be a long one. It was with some surprise, therefore, that I saw him walk into my consulting-room upon the evening of April 24th. It struck me that he was looking even paler and thinner than usual. Holmes was in his early forties, and yet looked like a man who could have been ten years more senior.

“Yes, I have been using myself up rather too freely,” he remarked, in answer to my look rather than to my words; “I have been a little pressed of late. Have you any objection to my closing your shutters?”

The only light in the room came from the lamp upon the table at which I had been reading. Holmes edged his way round the wall and flinging the shutters together, he bolted them securely.

“You are afraid of something?” I asked.
“Well, I am.”
“Of what?”
“Of hideous henchmen.”
“My dear Holmes, what do you mean?”
“I think that you know me well enough, Watson, to

understand that I am by no means a nervous man. At the same time, it is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognise danger when it is close upon you. Might I trouble you for a match?”

He drew back his jacket to pull his cigarette tin from his waistcoat pocket, revealing a leather holster with his typical firearm of preference, clearly indicating he considered the situation a dangerous one. Knowing I was also still wearing my handgun from earlier that day was a comforting thought, as Holmes did not fret unduly. I handed him a match and he drew in the smoke of his cigarette as if the soothing influence was grateful to him.

“I must apologize for calling so late,” said he, “and I must further beg you to be so unconventional as to allow me to leave your house presently by scrambling over your back garden wall.”

“But what does it all mean?” I asked.

He held out his hand, and I saw in the light of the lamp that two of his knuckles were burst and bleeding.
“It is not an airy nothing, you see,” said he, smiling. “On the contrary, it is solid enough for a man to break his hand over. Is Mrs. Watson in?”
“She is away upon a visit.”
“Indeed! You are alone?”
“Quite.”
“Then it makes it the easier for me to propose that you should come away with me for a week to the Continent.”
“Where?”
“Switzerland.”
There was something very strange in all this. It was not Holmes’ nature to take an aimless holiday, nor to run away from impending danger, and something about his pale, worn face told me that his nerves were at their highest tension. He saw the question in my eyes, and, putting his finger-tips together and his elbows upon his knees, he explained the situation.
“You have probably never heard of Professor Moriarty?” said he.
“Never.”
“Aye, there’s the genius and the wonder of the thing!” he cried.
“The man pervades London, and no one has heard of him. That’s what puts him on a pinnacle in the records of crime. I tell you, Watson, in all seriousness, that if I could beat that man, if I could free society of him, I should feel that my own career had reached its summit, and I should be prepared to turn to some more placid line in life. Between ourselves, the recent cases in which I have been of assistance to the royal family of Scandinavia, and to the French Republic, have left me in such a position that I could continue to live in the quiet fashion which is most congenial to me, and to concentrate my attention upon my chemical researches. But I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty were walking the streets of London unchallenged.”
“What has he done, then?”
“His career has been an extraordinary one. He is a man of good birth and excellent education, endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty. At the age of twenty-one he wrote a treatise upon the Binomial Theorem, which has had a European vogue. On the strength of it he won the Mathematical Chair at one of our smaller universities, and had, to all appearances, a most brilliant career before him. But the man had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal strain ran in his blood, which, instead of being modified, was increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers. Dark rumours gathered round him in the university town, and eventually he was compelled to resign his chair and to come down to London, where he set up as an army coach. So much is known to the world, but what I am telling you now is what I have myself discovered.
As you are aware, Watson, there is no one who knows the higher criminal world of London so well as I do. For years past I have continually been conscious of some power behind the malefactor, some deep organising power which forever stands in the way of the law, and throws its shield over the wrong-doer. Again and again in cases of the most varying sorts forgery cases, robberies and murders I have felt the presence of this force, and I have deduced its action in many of those undiscovered crimes in which I have not been personally consulted. For years I have endeavoured to break through the veil which shrouded it, and at last the time came when I seized my thread and followed it, until it led me, after a thousand cunning windings, to ex-Professor Moriarty of mathematical celebrity.
He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the man behind half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organised. Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, we will say, a house to be rifled, a man to be removed? The word is passed to the Professor, the matter is planned and carried out. The agent may be caught. In that case money is found for his bail or his defence. But the central power which uses the agent is never caught, never so much as suspected. This was the organisation which I deduced, Watson, and which I devoted my whole energy to exposing and breaking up.”
I showed my astonishment.
“But the Professor was fenced round with safeguards so cunningly devised that, do what I would, it seemed impossible to get evidence which would convict in a court of law. You know my powers, my dear Watson, and yet at the end of three months I was forced to confess that I had at last met an antagonist who was my intellectual equal. My horror at his crimes was lost in my admiration at his skill. But at last he made a trip, only a little trip, but it was more than he could afford when I was so close upon him. I had my chance and, starting from that point, I have woven my net round him until now it is all ready to close. In three days, that is to say, on Monday next, matters will be ripe and the Professor, with all the principal members of his gang, will be in the hands of the police. Then will come the greatest criminal trial of the century, the clearing up of over forty mysteries, and the rope for all of them; but if we move at all prematurely, you understand, they may slip out of our hands even at the last moment.”
He continued at length and I listened with concentration.
“Now, if I could have done this without the knowledge of Professor Moriarty, all would have been well. But he was too wily for that. He saw every step which I took to draw my toils round him. Again and again he strove to break away, but I as often headed him off. I tell you, my friend, that if a detailed account of that silent contest could be written, it would take its place as the most brilliant bit of thrust-and-parry work in the history of detection. Never have I risen to such a height, and never have I been so hard pressed by an opponent. He cut deep, and yet I just undercut him. This morning the last steps were taken, and three days only were wanted to complete the business. I was sitting in my room thinking the matter over, when the door opened and Professor Moriarty stood before me.
My nerves are fairly proof, Watson, but I must confess to a start when I saw the very man who had been so much in my thoughts standing there on my threshold. His appearance was quite familiar to me. He is extremely tall and thin, his forehead domes out in a white curve, and his two eyes are deeply sunken in his head. He is cleanshaven, pale, and ascetic-looking, retaining something of the professor in his features. His shoulders are rounded from much study, and his face protrudes forward, and is forever slowly oscillating from side to side in a curiously reptilian fashion. He peered at me with great curiosity in his puckered eyes.”
“You have less frontal development than I should have expected,” said he, at last.
“It is a dangerous habit to have finger loaded firearms in the pocket of one’s dressing-gown.”
“The fact is that upon his entrance I had instantly recognised the extreme personal danger in which I lay. The only conceivable escape for him lay in silencing my tongue, and I could hear the faint sound of who were clearly his associates the other side of the door. In an instant I had slipped the revolver from the drawer into my pocket, and was covering him through the cloth. At his remark I drew the weapon out and laid it cocked upon the table. He still smiled and blinked, but there was something about his eyes which made me feel very glad that I had it there.
“You evidently don’t know me,” said he.
“On the contrary,” I answered, “I think it is fairly evident that I do. Pray take a chair. I can spare you five minutes if you have anything to say.”
“All that I have to say has already crossed your mind,” said he.
“Then possibly my answer has crossed yours,” I replied. “You stand fast?”
“Absolutely.”
He clapped his hand into his pocket, and I raised the pistol from the table. But he merely drew out a memorandum book in which he had scribbled some dates.
“You crossed my path on the 4th of January,” said he.
“On the 23rd you incommoded me; by the middle of February I was seriously inconvenienced by you; at the end of March I was absolutely hampered in my plans; and now, at the close of April, I find myself placed in such a position through your continual persecution that I am in positive danger of losing my liberty. The situation is becoming an impossible one.”
“Have you any suggestion to make?” I asked.
“You must drop it, Mr. Holmes,” said he, swaying his face about.
“You really must, you know.”
“After Monday,” said I.
“Tut, tut,” said he.
“I am quite sure that a man of your intelligence will see that there can be but one outcome to this affair. It is necessary that you should withdraw. You have worked things in such a fashion that we have only one resource left. It has been an intellectual treat to me to see the way in which you have grappled with this affair, and I say, unaffectedly, that it would be a grief to me to be forced to take any extreme measure. You smile, sir, but I assure you that it really would.”
“Danger is part of my trade,” I remarked.
“That is not danger,” said he.
“It is inevitable destruction. You stand in the way not merely of an individual, but of a mighty organisation, the full extent of which you, with all your cleverness, have been unable to realise. You must stand clear, Mr. Holmes, or be trodden under foot.”
“I am afraid,” said I, rising, “that in the pleasure of this conversation I am neglecting business of importance which awaits me elsewhere.”
He rose also and looked at me in silence, shaking his head sadly.
“Well, well,” said he, at last.
“It seems a pity, but I have done what I could. I know every move of your game. You can do nothing before Monday. It has been a duel between you and me, Mr. Holmes. You hope to place me in the dock. I tell you that I will never stand in that dock. You hope to beat me. I tell you that you will never beat me. If you are clever enough to bring destruction upon me, rest assured that I shall do as much to you.”
“You have paid me several compliments, Mr. Moriarty,” said I.
“Let me pay you one in return when I say that if I were assured of the former eventuality I would, in the interests of the public, cheerfully accept the latter.”
“I can promise you the one, but not the other,” he snarled, and so turned his rounded back upon me, and went peering and blinking out of the room.
“At this moment I fully expected the villain’s henchmen to burst through the door and finish me, and yet, at that moment, Sergeant Withers of the police arrived to see me, almost certainly saving my life. That was my singular interview with Professor Moriarty. I confess that it left an unpleasant effect upon my mind. His soft, precise fashion of speech leaves a conviction of sincerity which a mere bully could not produce. Of course, you will say: ‘Why not take police precautions against him?’ the reason is that I am well convinced that it is from his agents the blow will fall. I have the best proofs that it would be so.”
“You have already been assaulted?”
“My dear Watson, Professor Moriarty is not a man who lets the grass grow under his feet. I went out about midday to transact some business in Oxford Street. As I passed the corner which leads from Bentinck Street on to the Welbeck Street crossing, a two-horse van furiously driven whizzed round and was on me like a flash. I sprang for the footpath and saved myself by the fraction of a second. The van dashed round by Marylebone Lane and was gone in an instant. I kept to the pavement after that, Watson, but as I walked down Vere Street a brick came down from the roof of one of the houses, and was shattered to fragments at my feet. I called the police and had the place examined. There were slates and bricks piled up on the roof preparatory to some repairs, and they would have me believe that the wind had toppled over one of these. Of course I knew better, but I could prove nothing. I took a cab after that and reached my brother’s rooms in Pall Mall, where I spent the day. Now I have come round to you, and on my way I was attacked, bringing us to the latest problem at hand.”
“Are you injured?” I asked of him.
“A man came at me with the intent to do serious harm, to which I struck a blow to his ribs, a second to his jaw, neither had the desired or pre-determined result. This animal kept coming at me, trying to grab at me with his grubby hands. This assailant foamed at the mouth, with a wide eyed and crazy expression about his face, nothing appeared normal about this attacker. With every essence of my strength and precision I stuck at this mad ruffian. We came to grips, and quickly to the floor, whereby the villain tried to reel me in closely, opening his unclean jaw in an attempt to bite, a thick but not echoing sound of a bludgeoning blow sounded above me and my assailant slumped over me.”
This story was already a shock to me, not just in the fact that Holmes had been assaulted in the street, but by the nature of the attack and his inability to fight off the thug. Holmes was one of the best boxers I had the pleasure of knowing, and had many times seen him use his skills in an expert fashion. Holmes was a slight man, but he delivered blows with precision and power, it was rather then surprising that a perfectly placed blow to both the man’s ribs and jaw had no noticeable effect. I could only imagine that the ruffian was intoxicated or of very stout nature.
“A policeman who had been nearby and seen the foul ruffian attack had given him a stout blow with his cosh. I threw him aside and the police have him in custody; but I can tell you with the most absolute confidence that no possible connection will ever be traced between the ruffian upon whose jaw I have barked my knuckles and the retiring mathematical coach, who is, I dare say, working out problems upon a blackboard ten miles away. You will not wonder, Watson, that my first act on entering your rooms was to close your shutters, and that I have been compelled to ask your permission to leave the house by some less conspicuous exit than the front door.”
I had often admired my friend’s courage, but never more than now, as he sat quietly checking off a series of incidents which must have combined to make up a day of horror.
“You will spend the night here?” I said.
“No, my friend, you might find me a dangerous guest. I have my plans laid, and all will be well. Matters have gone so far now that they can move without my help as far as the arrest goes, though my presence is necessary for a conviction. It is obvious, therefore, that I cannot do better than get away for the few days which remain before the police are at liberty to act. It would be a great pleasure to me, therefore, if you could come on to the Continent with me.”