“Why, you evil madman,” Watson hissed, “this just isn’t cricket. Do you really mean to say—”
“Quieten yourself, Watson,” Holmes said. “This is no time for amateur dramatics.”
“I never said it was, but—”
Holmes said, “And what about your beloved Russia?”
“Just because I have been on Russia’s payroll, you should not make the mistake of thinking I have any feelings for that nation.”
“Are you saying Russia will be for it, too?”
“You are learning, Holmes.”
“So what’s in it for you?”
“With the major nations all either under water or at best plunged into utter chaos, I shall then set about ruling what’s left of the world from my base here in the Congo.”
“Have you quite taken leave of your senses, man?” Watson wanted to know.
Instead of answering the doctor, Moriarty merely said, “And now, please excuse me while I leave you in the very capable hands of these friendly tribesmen.”
With that, Moriarty turned his jeep around and set off in it, and the tribesmen dragged the reluctant trio over to a huge cauldron, which was suspended over a lighted fire. Holmes realised that he had better think of a plan, and do so fast, if he and his two companions were to have any chance of surviving their current ordeal. He searched his mind for an idea, but nothing occurred to him.
And then, just as they were about to find themselves being lifted up and dropped into the cauldron, where they were to be unceremoniously cooked, he turned his head to look at Leroy and said, “I hear you are a superb footballer?”
“I’m not b-b-bad,” Leroy replied modestly, trying his best not to show his fear, even though his teeth were chattering.
“I believe I saw you put a tennis ball in your pocket earlier at the hospital?”
“Yes, but what of it?”
“Tell the tribesmen that you’re going to show them a trick,” Holmes said. “Then take out the ball and do what you’re good at.”
“But what’s the p-p-point?”
“You never know what effect a few tricks of the sort I’ve heard you’re capable of might have on these fellows.”
“That’s a point,” Watson concurred. “These fellows haven’t had the benefit of being educated at a top prep school and then public school, followed by Oxford or Cambridge, after all. Dash it, some of them look like they wouldn’t even have been accepted by Charterhouse in their day.”
“You’d better hurry up about it,” Holmes said, feeling the heat from the fire on his face. “Time is of the essence, old chap.”
With that, Leroy shouted at the tribesmen, and his mastery of their rather guttural tongue was such that, as had been the case earlier, Holmes once again found himself admiring the young lad’s wonderful command of the language, despite the ever-closer proximity of the most horrendous of destinies. Then, having told the tribesmen that he was about to show them a trick of such immense skill that they would be amazed, young Leroy took the tennis ball from his trouser pocket and dropped it onto his right toe, before he proceeded to execute a number of what he called “keepy-uppies.”
“I say,” Watson said, as he saw the way the tribesmen then prostrated themselves on the ground before the prodigy.
“He’s not the new Messiah,” Holmes said, “but the new Messi.”
“So it would appear.”
Having prompted his audience of tribesmen to bow down to him and then begin to chant in the form of a prayer, Leroy realised that he had saved the day: instead of ending up as the tribesmen’s dinner, he was now their master, having clearly assumed a godlike status in their eyes. Such was his proficiency with the tennis ball at his feet, that the tribesmen, simple fellows that they were, had become convinced that he was possessed of supernatural powers.
“Tell them that you are their god and they must listen to you and obey your every word,” Holmes told the lad.
Leroy relayed this message to the tribesmen, speaking in their native tongue once more.
“Good, now order them to find Moriarty straightaway and destroy his laser launchers before he uses them.”
Leroy did as Holmes had instructed, and with that the tribesmen all got to their feet and went running off, holding their spears aloft as they did so. They ran so quickly that Holmes and his two companions had their work cut out to catch up with them.
Minutes later, they found Moriarty in a moonlit clearing, where he was about to activate his launchers and thereby set in train a series of events that would devastate the greater part of the civilised world. The tribesmen were confused and clearly unsure as to what Leroy expected of them; but the great detective was able to call on his detailed knowledge of rocket science, gleaned from his investigations with the aid of the internet, to deactivate the launchers.
No sooner had Holmes breathed a sigh of relief after saving the planet, than he wondered as to his archenemy’s whereabouts. He stopped tribesmen at random to ask them where Moriarty was, but they ignored him, clearly being minded only to listen to their newfound god; and by the time Holmes finally managed to find Leroy in the darkness of the African night, he learned that the lad had seen no sign of the evil professor, either. “Tell the tribesmen to find and detain him.”
Leroy gave the tribesmen orders to this end; but, sad to say, despite searching for hours, it finally became clear that Holmes’s archenemy had somehow managed to flee into the night.
Holmes could congratulate himself on having got Leroy back safe and sound, as well as on having saved the world—for the time being at least; but he knew only too well that it would not be long before the evil professor perpetrated his next outrage.
The Adventure of the Talking Board
By John Grant
“I think this is the silliest idea I’ve ever come across,” said Heather as she lit the cluster of red candles at the centre of the table. “What are we, Jim? Still fourteen years old?”
“Just think of it as the equivalent of a ghost story for Christmas,” I told her. “Just a bit of innocent fun.”
She raised an eyebrow. “ ‘Innocent fun’? My father wouldn’t have agreed with you there.” Her father, God rest his soul, had been a moderator of the Church of Scotland.
I stood back to look at our handiwork. Heather had insisted on coming over to the house early to help me set up, but really there hadn’t been very much setting up to do. I’d opened a couple of bottles of red wine to let them breathe, and there were more where those came from, although I didn’t think we’d need them. There was Pinot Grigio in the fridge in case of emergency, plus some Perrier in case anyone had an attack of abstemiousness. I’d put two cheeseboards on the table to either side of the candles, plus a big wooden bowl of crackers and a little stack of plates and knives.
Also on the table was the ouija board, still in its fancy box. I’d eschewed the gaudily packaged cheapies on sale in the local toy shops and ordered up a rather grand model from an online vendor. The board’s letters were inlaid in mother-of-pearl. The movement of the pointer—the planchette, to use the professional term—promised to be as near frictionless as dammit, the roller ball underneath it being made of some synthetic rubber that had been developed for use in the Space Shuttle. The box itself was like an extra-large wooden cigar box, with the word “OUIJA” seemingly burned into the lid using a red-hot poker.
“Well, I still think it’s silly,” Heather fussed. “You might find yourself playing with forces you can’t control. Evil forces.” She shuddered theatrically, then glanced at her watch. “The others will be here soon.”
I smiled affectionately at her. Of all my friends—and I don’t make friends easily—she was the one I was fondest of. We went back a long way—far further than she knew, in fact—and if the courses of our lives had run differently, we might have been preparing for an evening with kids and grand
kids rather than just a bunch of friends.
I poured her a glass of the Cabernet, and one for myself. “I think we’ll be safe enough.”
Just then the doorbell rang.
Bill Davisson had brought his wife, Greta, but the other two arrivals, Johnny Cuthberts and David Cloke, were both multiple divorcees who’d vowed the single life was in future the life for them. All four, after they’d taken off their coats and scarves and gloves, stood on the hearth in front of the log fire, rubbing their hands and talking about how cold and icy and foggy the streets were. Greta was the designated driver—I’d been right to lay in the Perrier—but the other three went after the wine with a will.
“So it’s going to be a ouija party?” said David after a while, nodding toward the box on the table. “A séance? Where’s the medium?” he added. “I was expecting a daft old lady with gin on her breath and a glassy stare.”
Greta snorted. “Ooo, spooky. When’s the table going to start tilting?”
I puffed my chest out pompously. “It depends on whether or not the spirits of the departed will wish to communicate with us.”
“Yeah, right,” said her husband. “And there are fairies at the bottom of every garden.”
We all laughed.
I made a great show of drawing the board and planchette out of their box and skimming through the sheet of instructions that came with them. Of course, this was all just make-work. I could remember from childhood how to operate a ouija board—it’s not exactly rocket science, after all—and, besides, I’d done a little advance swotting last night in case there were any wrinkles I’d forgotten.
Heather, despite her skepticism, was clearly becoming quite interested. “Who’s going to be it?” she asked me.
“ ‘It’?”
“The person whose hand’s on the planchette. The person who asks the questions.”
“We all do,” I said. “We each put a finger on it. That way we can be sure no one’s cheating—that it’s the spirits moving the planchette around, not one of us.”
“And who decides when the spirits are likely to be ready?” Greta said.
“I’m probably the one best qualified for that. After all, I had a Welsh grandmother. I think. On my mother’s side. Mom always told me her mother was Welsh.”
“What’s your hypothetical Welsh grandmother got to do with it, Jim?” said Bill, sitting down with a thump on one of the upright chairs around the table. “Anyway, I thought you were as American as apple pie, ancestors sailed there on the Mayflower, all that sort of thing.”
He’d piled a plate with crackers and slices of cheddar and Stilton. Greta had already seated herself and was picking, birdlike, at her own consignment of food.
“She had the second sight,” I explained, ignoring the issue of my ancestry. “Otherwise she’d have been a traitor to her kind. It’s an essential characteristic of grandmothers up there in the valleys, see, boyo?”
“If she existed,” he said with a jowly grin. Even though he and I have never liked each other, he was making an effort to get into the spirit of things. It was Christmastime, after all, the season when it’s socially obligatory to be jovial or die trying.
“If she existed,” I agreed. “There’s always that.”
Soon all six of us were sitting around the table, glasses and plates full. I got up and switched off the electric lights, leaving the candles and the log fire in the hearth as the room’s only sources of illumination. As I reseated myself, I saw the reflected flicker of the candles gleaming in the bulbs of the wine glasses and the eyes of my companions.
“Shall we get started?” I said.
“If you think the spirits are ripe for questioning,” Johnny said with a nervous chuckle. Of all those here, he seemed the one most susceptible to fears of ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties.
“I sense they’re gathering.” I waved my hands in what I imagined was an evocative manner, and picked up the planchette.
The fire spat, and we all started.
“Good timing,” said Bill. “Do you write your own scripts, Jim?” He took a glug of his Cabernet.
“Maybe it’s a sign from the departed,” I said in a cod-sepulchral voice.
“Ooo-ee-ooo-ee-ooo,” contributed Heather.
I placed the planchette on the board. “Ready?”
Each of us rested the tip of a forefinger on the little heart-shaped device. Johnny was last, still looking uncertain whether he wanted to take part. We all leaned forward, focusing on the board.
“Nothing’s happening,” said Heather after a minute or two.
She was right. A sense of anticlimax went around the circle.
“I guess the souls of those who’ve gone before us have taken off early for Christmas.” There was a hollow note to Bill’s attempted heartiness. We still kept our fingertips on the planchette.
And then we all felt it. A distinct little tug on the planchette as if someone were trying to catch our attention.
Heather gave a quick intake of breath. “Holy crap. Did you feel that?”
It was obvious we all had.
“Who’s there?” I asked the empty air.
There was no answering reaction from the planchette.
“Wrong question, maybe,” said Greta. Now she was sounding as scared as Johnny.
I tried again. “Is there anyone there?”
This time the response was immediate. Moving smoothly on its high-tech roller ball, the planchette slid over to the big “YES” on the left-hand side of the board.
“Holy crap,” said Heather again.
I’d gleaned from the leaflet in the box that the ouija board was in fact an American invention. I’d always thought, based on the name—the combination of the French and German words for “yes”—that it must have originated somewhere in Europe, but no: it was a Maryland inventor called Elijah Bond who patented the device in 1890. There’d been other forms of “talking board” before then, but it was Elijah Bond’s variant that caught on. Even so, it was just a parlour game at first. It wasn’t for another quarter-century that the spiritualists adopted it for communicating with the dead.
I’d been going to tell my guests about this—after all, everyone expects Americans to brag about their national achievements, don’t they?—but something held me back. A bit of sneakiness, I think. I had a fairly thick Boston accent, whereas the others, aside from Heather, had upper-crust English accents you could have used to grate celery. Heather’s accent was upper-crust too, but it still retained enough of the Islay lilt that somehow it didn’t jar as much.
Not that I cared about my guests’ poshness, not any longer. Besides, I had more money than they did. I’d been one of the lucky ones who’d gotten in on the home computer industry early, when monitors had six-inch screens and weighed half a ton and could display any colour you wanted so long as it was green or black.
Heather had played first violin in the London Symphony Orchestra before arthritis put a premature end to her career. Bill had gone into the family export business, following in Daddy’s footsteps and wondering how long it’d be before he got his peerage, but then the company went belly-up and he’d been living on the proceeds of selling bits of inherited property ever since. Johnny did something mysterious in the civil service, and David fiddled figures in the City.
None of them were short of a bob, as they’d have put it themselves, not even Heather, but they weren’t rich rich, like I was. Yet I knew that Bill and Johnny and David looked down their noses at me. I was the commoner, and a “colonial cousin” on top of that; they were bluebloods.
Yet another reason to derive satisfaction from a petty revenge.
Sometimes I wonder if I ever really grew up.
“Ask them who they are,” hissed Johnny, his eyes wide.
“You can do that yourself,” I told him.
“No, you do it.”
But the planchette had already started to move again.
Heather read out the letters as it paused briefly at each of them. “S-H-E-R-L-O-C-K.”
Greta began to giggle. “That’s ridiculous!”
David and Bill joined in with the laughter, as did I.
“There’s only one known Sherlock,” said Bill, his fleshy face covered in a grin. “The sage of Baker Street. Is this a…a visitation from Basil Rathbone, do you think?”
Johnny and Heather looked far less amused.
“What if it’s a surname?” said Heather.
“What do you mean?” Bill asked her, his expression switching from amusement to a surprising belligerence.
“The Sherlock we immediately think of,” she explained, “is for obvious reasons Sherlock Holmes. Who is, of course, fictional. But there’ve been plenty of people with the surname Sherlock. You must have heard of the architect Cornelius Sherlock, surely? And there was a bishop called Sherlock, wasn’t there?”
“And I’ll bet there are other Sherlocks around, too,” said Greta, her face sobering. “You know, ‘Wendy’ wasn’t even a name until J. M. Barrie invented it for Peter Pan, yet fans started calling their kids that, and now it seems there are Wendys everywhere you look. I’m guessing there must have been a few fans who named their kids Sherlock.”
She looked pointedly at the ouija board. “Are you one of them?”
The planchette moved decisively. “NO.”
“Then who are you?”
Again Heather read out the letters. “H-O-L-M-E-S.”
More laughter.
“You gotta be kidding,” sputtered Bill. “Who’s pushing the pointer?”
The Return of Sherlock Holmes Page 9
