The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (30 page)

He smiled as he uttered the last few words, for I knew that he often thought that I should limit my accounts to the barest essentials necessary to the introduction of the principles of observation and deduction. I smiled back, but said nothing, and began to study the thin volume that had been placed in my hands.

The manuscript was an old Indian notebook, of the kind that I later learned is manufactured in Indore in the Central Provinces of India and readily available in Bombay. The leaves were smooth and of a bright yellow paper, the cover of a bright crimson cloth. Around the whole was tied a piece of white string. I untied it, opened the cover, and began to read, written in a beautiful archaic though shaky hand, the long entry that follows.

THE DIARY OF CLEMENT MOORCROFT

In this my eighty-fifth year, I, Getong Tsarong, Regent of Tibet, set down here, for those who may be interested, a short account of my life. I entrust this document to one person, my friend Hallvard Sigerson, whose property it is and who will be free to publish it after my death in any form he chooses, provided that through its publication he deems that no harm will come to Tibet or its people.

My life has been a long one, and though it did not begin in this ancient land, I have spent most of it here. I find it difficult to write in English after so many years, during which I have not spoken nor heard my own tongue for but a few moments, and so my hand shakes as I write, not only because I am old physically, but because my mind works slowly, trying as best it can to wrest words from the dim storehouse of a wandering remembrance.

I was born in 1810, the only child of William Moorcroft, a seaman of Cornwall, and Jane, his wife. My father and mother were first cousins, but did not resemble each other. I never knew my mother, for she died shortly after my birth. My father, who was only twenty-one years of age at the time of my birth and having no other children, placed me with his cousin, my mother’s older sister, who lived with her husband and family in a modest house in London. I was well cared for and came to love my aunt and uncle as my parents.

It was through my aunt that I learned the little that I know of my mother. She was said to be a tall, dark, English beauty, with olive skin and long black hair which she often wore in a long braid down her back, other times looped tightly around her head. I was said to resemble her in many ways. My aunt remembered that I was born with a full head of black hair, like my mother’s. In explanation of our appearance, my aunt told me that my great-grandfather was a man by the name of Ogachgook Bradford, an American Indian of mixed origin, who had come to England with William Bradford, one of the governors of the Plymouth Colony of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Ogachgook had taken Bradford’s name and remained in England. It was from Ogachgook that my mother’s and my dark appearance was said to derive. I know little else of Ogachgook except that he was the son of an Indian chief called King Philip by the colonists, but known among his own people as Metacomet, son of Massasoit. There was some family speculation that the name “Moorcroft” is derived in some way from “Metacomet.”

I saw little of my father for the first five years of my life for he was almost always at sea. His grief at my mother’s death seemed never to subside, and he later confided to me that it caused in him an almost constant wandering. He came to see me as often as his travels allowed him, and I looked forward to his visits with great joy, for we prowled the city together for long hours, and when I tired he would pick me up and carry me for long distances.

One day, sometime in my eighth year, my father announced that he would like me to accompany him on his next voyage. Assuring my aunt that I would be well cared for, he took me with him to his next ship, a large frigate bound for the Americas. And so, as a very young boy, I began my travels with a voyage to the New World. I remember little of this trip, except that I took ill shortly after we left port. My sickness did not abate for several days, for the sea was rough and we had to pass through a great storm.

As we approached the continent of North America, the scent of pines filled the air, and the sun broke out from behind the clouds that had covered it for so long. We docked in Boston, and went ashore the following day. We were there for three weeks before we were to sail again. We sailed south to New York, and it was here that my father decided to stay in America rather than return to England. After a few months of city life, however, his restlessness set in again, and he decided to seek his fortune elsewhere in America. We started west, journeying through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois, then through the Mexican territories, finally reaching the coast of California. Here my father tried to become a rancher and for a year he tended the cattle of a prosperous gentleman. But my father’s desire for the sea could be postponed only so long, and after almost four years in America, exhausted by the toil necessary to keep us alive, he once again took us to sea, this time across the Pacific, where we sojourned in the Sandwich Islands, Japan, and then the coast of North China. Eventually we wandered from Hong Kong to Macao and to Singapore, where he took employment on a ship bound for England.

By this time I was twelve years of age, and my father thirty-two. We were as close as two brothers and had become inseparable. My father decided, however, that I needed schooling, so he tried to leave me with my aunt again so that I could be placed with a tutor, but I refused to stay without him. And so for one year he remained with me while I improved my knowledge of English, Greek, Latin, and mathematics.

It was during this period that my father met a Persian gentleman engaged in commerce and trade in the Caspian Sea. His name was Mr. Barzami. Impressed with my father’s experience and energy, he offered him a lucrative position as his permanent representative in London. The position necessitated first, however, an extended stay in Persia at the company’s offices in Tabriz. Because of the dangers of travel, my father was reluctant to take me with him, but I refused to stay behind and would have none of it. After a week of argument, he, I think rather happily in the end, agreed that we would continue our adventures together. In a few days, Mr. Barzami arranged our travel to Tabriz. We landed in Istanbul, and from there we journeyed through the Ottoman territories of Anatolia and Armenia, finally arriving at our destination.

Mr. Barzami had arranged much for us. We were given a large bungalow with sunny, comfortable rooms. Outside was a most beautiful garden, and so for the first time in our lives we lacked for nothing. I was placed with a local tutor and in time I came to speak the Persian language with great fluency.

Almost one year after our arrival, Mr. Barzami, instead of posting my father to England, asked if he would accept a position in Bombay. My father reluctantly agreed, considering the many kindnesses and opportunities that Mr. Barzami had visited upon us, and in a few weeks we left our idyllic existence in Persia and headed for India, where we arrived some three weeks later. Here we were again well treated, for Mr. Barzami had his agents meet us and provide for us.

It was here in India, not long after our arrival, that my life was changed forever and embarked upon the strange course that it has now almost completed. One of my father’s first duties was to establish contact with merchants to the north, particularly in Kashmir. And so one day we boarded a crowded train to Pathankot in the Punjab and then began our long trek to Shrinagar, the capital city of Kashmir. It was along this route that we were set upon by a gang of thieves. My father was killed and I, badly wounded, was left for dead. I remember nothing except a blow to the back of the head and then darkness. We were found by a group of Kashmiri merchants returning home. My life was saved by them, and they transported my father’s body to Shrinagar, where he was buried in the English cemetery. Through the ministrations of the family of one of the merchants, I eventually recovered, but I suffered a severe amnesia for at least a month. When I had recovered sufficiently, the merchants told me what had happened. I was filled with grief for my father’s death. The merchants said that they knew that we had been attacked by the gang of Farouk Abdullah, the cruelest of the robbers of Kashmir and the one they feared the most.

I vowed revenge. I knew that I should not be able to rest until I had brought my father’s killers to justice. And so, in the hope of finding the murderous brigands, I stayed in Kashmir. I was fourteen years old, strong and growing stronger. I informed Mr. Barzami of what had transpired. Mr. Barzami tried to convince me to return to Persia, but in the face of my steadfast refusal, he relented and arranged for my father’s funds as well as a generous gift to be transferred to a bank in India so that I could draw on them to help me trace the bandits.

The Farouk gang soon abandoned Kashmir, for so horrible had their depredations become that the Company deputed a military detachment to Kashmir to apprehend them. Farouk and his gang fled into the mountains, and nothing was heard of them. I waited in Kashmir for news of them, but the gang seemed to have disappeared into thin air. The military detachment remained and seemed to have so frightened the gang that their activities ceased almost entirely.

After almost a year of waiting, I decided to accompany my Kashmiri friends on a trip to Lhasa. By now I spoke some Kashmiri in addition to Persian and could travel unobtrusively. The route was the usual one from Shrinagar and we reached Lhasa without difficulty. I became immediately at home with the Tibetans and their country. I left Lhasa often to travel in the distant corners of the country, spending weeks with yak and sheep herders in Amdo and Kham. When it came time for our caravan to return, I decided to remain. Bidding good-bye to my Kashmiri friends, I stayed behind and continued my solitary travels. Eventually, I made my resting place in Amdo, in a small village where I was welcomed most warmly. I lived with a certain Gyerong and his family. Gyerong was only two years older than I, but he had a wife and three small children. Through the years that passed, Gyerong and I became almost inseparable.

It was after five years of living in this way among the Tibetans that I decided to return to India. By now, my life had become so thoroughly Tibetan that I felt little connection with my past life, but the revenge I had promised myself for my father’s death still haunted me. One day, I told Gyerong of my obsession, and he became the only one who knew my dark desire. He cautioned me and urged me to give up the idea, for it was an unworthy goal. To kill, he said, was against Buddhist doctrine. I tried to remove the desire from my heart, but my obsession would not leave me. I decided to return to Lhasa and there to decide my next move. Before I left, Gyerong gave me a knife with a golden handle as a token of our friendship. He said that the knife had been handed down for many years from friend to friend. The knife, as far as he knew, had never been used in anger or violence, and despite its fierce nature as a weapon, it had often had the effect of calming the anger of its possessor. I took it and thanked him profusely, but I felt no calming effect from its presence.

When I reached Lhasa, I learned that the Farouk gang had reappeared. A caravan of merchants on its way to the city had been attacked. The gang had fled Indian territory with a British detachment in hot pursuit, but they had outpaced the soldiers and made it to safety in Tibetan territory. It was reported that they had made their camp near the ancient city of Guge.

I decided to leave Lhasa at once for Guge, for I felt that fate was leading me to my goal. I joined a caravan going west. The leader of this group was a wealthy Ladakhi merchant, who, unwilling to take any risks, had hired for the journey a heavily armed escort, consisting mainly of retired soldiers from eastern Tibet. We encountered no difficulty at the outset, and five days into our trip we camped near Guge, to the south of the town. The attack came swiftly. Thinking us to be another barely armed caravan, the thieves fired a volley of warning shots and did little to hide their positions. They appeared together in front of our group, demanding that we surrender to them. Farouk himself sat proudly on horseback. Our riflemen, ready for any such contingency, wasted no time in opening fire, and the first shots took their toll. The thieves were taken completely by surprise and tried to flee, but most of them were gunned down. Farouk himself fell from his horse during the first few minutes of the battle. He staggered about, trying to rally his men, but to no avail. I raced towards him, my only weapon the gold knife. I grabbed him and there ensued a fierce struggle between us. Despite his wounds, Farouk was still extremely powerful, and it was only the strength of my obsession that enabled me to overwhelm him. I plunged the knife into his heart, and with a terrible groan, he fell and passed from this existence.

I myself must have blacked out after the struggle, for when I became conscious I found that I lay amid the dead, the only person alive. The caravan had scattered, and I was alone. Farouk’s body was next to me, and his eyes stared at me in the evening darkness, his face a mixture of mockery and pain. What had I done? I had killed a man in revenge, but he still looked at me defiantly. At the time of his death he had no idea who I was, and would have laughed had he known. I tried to console myself with the notion that I had rid the world of a great fiend. But as the night fell, I became filled with strange feelings of emptiness and the utter futility of the obsession that had led to pointless hatred that had drained me for so many of the years of my youth.

I fell into a deep sleep, and when I awoke in the morning, my mind was clearer than it had been since my father had died. Farouk was now only a decaying corpse. I left the knife in his chest for someone else to remove. I decided not to return to the world of my youth ever again, not to India, or Persia, or Europe. I would remain in Tibet for the rest of my life. Clement Moorcroft, whose existence had faded so much during the last ten years, was now no more. I placed my identification papers inside the coat of a badly disfigured thief who was about my height, and, turning east, I walked towards Lhasa, to begin anew my Tibetan existence.