The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures (81 page)

“That was part of the joke,” answered Aleister Crowley, placing his hand upon Bierce’s shoulder fondly. “I have always had a taste for bizarre jests. My mother’s husband was entirely devoid of humour, yet Ambrose Bierce’s wit is keenly similar to my own: I should like to believe that I have inherited this from him. Several years ago, Father Ambrose – as I choose to call him – sent me a cabinet photo of himself in his James Phillimore disguise, with a letter recounting the hoax in all its delicious details. When I agreed to call upon Mr Bierce at the
Cosmopolitan
offices, I decided to amuse myself by visiting him in the guise of James Phillimore. I had the costume made up in London before my departure.”

“Clearly my own sense of humour and Aleister Crowley’s run on similar lines,” said Ambrose Bierce. “For we both hatched the same notion independently, and I too decided to resurrect James Phillimore for our meeting. I still had the suit handy in camphor-balls, so I let it out a bit and bought some stage-whiskers to match the ones I wore thirty years ago. Say, all the boys in Hearst’s office busted out laughing fit to kill when I walked in there dressed like Prince Albert. Then, when young Aleister here came traipsing into the room
in the same get-up
…”

“I can imagine the hilarity,” said Sherlock Holmes, without smiling. He rose again from the bench, beckoning me to join him whilst he strode towards the cab-rank at the southern edge of Madison Square. “Watson, come! We still have time to see Maude Adams give her evening performance at the Empire.” Turning back, my friend doffed his hat to the pair of erstwhile Phillimores. “
Adieu
, gentlemen,” said Sherlock Holmes. “I suggest that James Phillimore’s latest vanishing-act should be his farewell performance. Since Doctor Watson and I are on our way to San Francisco – where the list of recent deaths is a prodigious one – I can easily arrange for James Phillimore’s name to be inserted among the rolls of the dead. Let us keep him that way. Farewell!”

The Case of the Last Battle

L. B. Greenwood

After the last case and that of “The Lion’s Mane” Holmes kept himself to himself for several years until the ominous rumblings of war brought him into government service in the episode recorded by Watson in “His Last Bow”. That was the last published case of Sherlock Holmes, set in 1914. There have been many who have written apocryphal cases of Holmes’s wartime adventures and continuing cases into the 1920s, but I believe almost all of these are apocryphal. But there was one last case, the details of which remained hidden in the archives of the War Office until Canadian author and Sherlockian, Beth Greenwood, unearthed them. Here, at last, is the very final case of Sherlock Holmes.

“He’s dead, sir.”

“I know that, Jackson,” I snapped.

Quite unpardonably, but I was still wet with the boy’s blood, and his death was only the last of so many. For this was early November of 1918, I was the sole doctor in the field dressing station, and if any few acres in all history had been as tortured as those around Ypres, I have never heard of it.

A mug of something hot and brewed – front-line coffee could seldom be told from tea – was poked into my hand. “Thanks, Jackson. Sorry about the temper.”

“ ‘S all right, sir. Wot ‘bout them in the corner? They’re quiet enough now, but …”

Stiff-legged with exhaustion, I staggered over to the five mounds of blankets. No cots could be spared for the merely sick, no matter how desperate their condition, nor could we hope that any ambulance would have room for several days. Not after such an attack as had all too recently once again blasted this segment.

Of course we had dealt with illness from the earliest days of the war. (In fact, my first medical task for the army had been to inform a furious major that he had contracted measles.) The present sickness, however, was one that I hadn’t seen until a month or so ago, since when an increasing number of cases from both sides had been brought to my station.

The cause seemed to be some kind of respiratory infection, with a high fever, furiously aching limbs, and all too often an agitated delirium. For a small dressing station over-run by wounded, attended by one elderly doctor whose only assistant had until a year ago been a butcher’s apprentice at Smithfield, the sufferers made very disruptive patients, poor fellows.

So, sometime during the previous night, I had injected the present five victims with morphine. One I now found had died, two were still deeply unconscious, three were beginning to stir, with amazingly cool skin and regular breathing. This was far better than I had expected: mortality of fifty per cent or more had been common. I told Jackson to soften some hardtack in boiled water – we had nothing better to offer – and to start sponging them off, with now at least some hope of their remaining clean.

I was leaning wearily against a tent pole, sipping the cooling concoction in my mug, when from behind me seemed to come that never forgotten voice, in words as few and peremptory as always. “Watson, I need you.”

I’m hallucinating, I thought, not much surprised: I couldn’t remember when I had either slept or eaten. I knew that since the early days of the war Holmes had been immersed in something most secret, and I had heard whispers of his having been occasionally glimpsed in the very private drawing rooms of the mighty of several countries. Wherever he was this night, he would not be in a bloody dressing station on the Western front.

Yet the steel grip that had descended on my shoulders was real enough, and so was the asperity with which I was being shaken. “Pull yourself together, doctor. You’re wanted.”

An embossed silver flask had been raised to my lips.

I pushed it away. “Right now, Holmes, that would finish me. And as for being wanted, I believe I am. Far more so than a man with my white hair should be – ”

I stopped because I had been unceremoniously turned so that I could see a spotless whitecoated figure, with a stethoscope in his pocket and a large glistening black bag in his hand, already moving among my sick and wounded. He glanced over at me with grave young eyes and nodded.

“Dr Ostenborough, Watson,” Holmes waved a perfunctory introduction. “I know you too well to think that you would leave without a replacement, and he begged for the opportunity. Now
come
.”

“Ostenborough,” I repeated stupidly as Holmes pulled me firmly out of the tent. “Wasn’t he with the palace?”

“One of the King’s personal medics, yes. Which should give you some idea of the seriousness of what we’re facing.”

Waiting for us was a British sergeant at the wheel of an old French taxi!

“She’s a right proper bitch,” the sergeant told me cheerfully, “dunno when I’ve driv worse, but she’ll go, sir, she’ll go.”

“I have been getting around by rather unconventional means,” Holmes explained with some of his old light air, “and took what was available. In with you, Watson, and take a pull at this.” He again handed me the silver flask. “There’s nothing we can do until we reach the chancellory. No, no explanations now.”

The brandy was like a liquid memory of luxuries that had never been common in my life. “Did both flask and contents come from the palace too?”

“The monks of France made the brandy, the late Czar sent some bottles from the White Palace to his royal cousin of England, the flask is Bavarian and was given me by Prince Max.”

“So even the Chancellor of Germany is behind you, Holmes.”

“
He
is, yes. I cannot say the same for all his countrymen. Drink up, Watson, and catch up on some sleep. I fear you will need it before our present mission is over.”

My last sight was of Holmes’s familiar lean figure (Had he lost weight? Probably. Who had not?) settled deep in the corner beside me, his head on his chest, his hands locked on his knees. We could have been just pulling out of Paddington.

Was that world still there, somewhere, the world for which we were fighting?

I remember only fragments of Holmes’s and my journey. I know that we lurched along for some time, more than once getting stuck and being freed by soldiers who were already as mud-coated as the road, and then transferred to first one train, then to another. Somewhere I foggily became aware that my old medical bag was resting between my feet – trust Holmes to remember to bring it – and was comforted by its familiarity.

I came to myself as we climbed on board yet another train, to discover that we were in a decidedly elegant car. Holmes flung open a corner door to reveal the nearly forgotten wonders of a spacious bathroom, with a spruce attendant carefully arranging a complete set of gentleman’s attire.

I emerged a new man, and sat down with Holmes to the kind of breakfast that haunts the dreams of every hungry Englishman.

“These clothes,” I questioned while rapidly spooning up melon balls in orange juice. “They’re a perfect fit.”

“So they should be,” Holmes replied austerely, “I was most specific. All right, Watson, eat and listen. You know the military situation. The last German attempt has failed, our counterstroke has stalled – ”

“Once more American forces arrive,” I began, only to be interrupted in my turn.

“Exactly, and the Germans know that as well as the Allies. The only realistic question now is the terms of peace. Prince Max agreed to become chancellor for precisely that purpose, and there seemed some hope that he could succeed.”

“If ever a man could be trusted by all sides,” I agreed, “it is Prince Max.”

“With the secret approval of both London and Paris, he has been in covert communication with the President of the United States.”

“At last!” I cried, over a mouthful of fresh roll.

“Contain your jubilation, doctor, for Prince Max sent his inquiry about what would be necessary to end the war without the knowledge of the Kaiser, and his Most Foolish Majesty is now adamantly refusing to accept the necessity. Even more worrying, General Ludendorf has regained his nerve and is urging another attack, in which scheme he has the support of the more fanatical officers.”

“Suicidal!” I exclaimed. “Murderous!”

“All of that, and yet unfortunately still possible. The Kaiser has once more taken to his private train and is busily rattling about well behind the lines, well away from anyone who would press unwelcome truths upon him. And Prince Max has fallen ill: he is now quite incapable of trying to trace and corner Germany’s official leader.”

I groaned. “Is the illness serious?”

“I fear so. Even yesterday, when I last saw him, the prince was … not himself. The trouble is that we have so little time. By now the prince will have received the American president’s reply, a message that must be answered very soon, or the hounds of war will bay once more.”

He was looking at me with a grave significance that I couldn’t pretend not to understand. “The prince will certainly have doctors, Holmes. Surely the best that Germany has to offer, and that is saying much.”

“Medically, no doubt. Politically and militarily, however, they belong to the Kaiser and to General Ludendorf, all determined to chase the chimera of victory yet once more.”

“Even so, Holmes, I doubt that the prince would accept my poor services. Why should he?”

“Because you’re English, doctor, and my friend,” Holmes replied with unanswerable finality.

We arrived in Berlin in the early hours of the morning, and were met by a chauffeured limousine with curtained windows, Several times I peered out, always to see clusters of people, men and women, drifting restlessly around; some soldiers were also on the streets, even a few officers, but they were doing nothing except to mingle with the strangely moving crowds. I glanced often at Holmes, but he neither looked out nor spoke.

At the Chancellory we were escorted directly to Prince Max’s quarters. As we climbed those marble steps and passed through those ornate halls, however, more than one officer turned pointedly away: obviously Holmes had spoken truth and we were not welcome to all here.

As we waited in the anteroom of the prince’s suite, the door to the inner chambers was thrown open by a plain black-clothed figure, with short grey hair and honest peasant face now taut with worry, scowling ferociously at a departing visitor. This was a gentleman of aquiline features, in evening dress, who bowed to Holmes with a deference that was openly mocking.

“Good morning, Mr Holmes,” he said in perfect English. “I fear you will find that the prince is no longer capable of attending to business matters. Good day, Hans, be sure to take good care of your master.” He smiled unctuously as Hans stiffened with fury, and swaggered away.

“Who was that, Holmes?” I asked, puzzled. “I’m sure I’ve never seen him before, yet he seems familiar.”

“No doubt because Count Hoffenstein resembles his cousin, Von Bork, whom you … met, shall we say, some years ago.”

I had indeed, having been with Holmes when he trapped that master spy in his own house on the Dover hills.

“
Bad
,” Hans’s angry interjection showed both his deep concern and bitter frustration. “I keep all others away, but he, this Count, he come anyway. Bother my master. He … lost, Herr Doktor, lost like child. You help, please, please, Herr Doktor.”

I was already hastening into the inner room, with Holmes close behind me. That poor Hans had cause for worry was obvious from the first glance.

Prince Max stood by his desk in a shifting sea of paper – letters, envelopes, memos, notepads. His hands were full, the desk top was covered, every drawer was open, the carpet littered.

The prince looked up at us with a flushed and despairing face. “I cannot find it!” he cried, his chest heaving. “I had it, I had it in my hands only moments ago, but it has gone! Where is it? Where?” He flung his arms wide, and paper flew like confetti.

“Your Highness, this is Doctor Watson. He – ”

“I had it moments ago, Mr Holmes! Moments! Yet now it has gone!”

“Have you had the paper since Count Hoffenstein left, Your Highness?”

Awareness flickered briefly in the prince’s strained face. “I had just taken it out of my pocket when Hans announced him, and I …” He turned his wild eyes on me. “I have always kept it in my inside pocket, always from the first, and when the new message came … I must … I must …
Where is it?
“