The Adventure of the Peerless Peer

by Philip José Farmer

  "Really?" Holmes said.

  "It does not matter whether or not you believe that," the duke said.

  "But the Yank had your uncle inheriting the title after his brother died and your parents were declared dead. Then your uncle, the sixth duke, died, and your cousin, the lad Watson and I knew as Lord Saltire, became the seventh duke. So far, the Yank's account was in agreement with the reality. It is the next event which, in his romance, departed completely from reality."

  "And that was?" Greystoke said softly. "Consider first what the Yank said happened. In his novel the jungle man found out that he was the rightful heir to the title. But he kept silent about it because he loved the heroine and she had promised to marry his cousin and considered herself bound by her promise. If he revealed the truth, he would strip her of her title of duchess and, worse, of the fortune which the cousin possessed. She would be penniless again. So he nobly said nothing.

  "But according to Watson, a great reader of fiction, the Yank wrote a sequel to the first romance. In this the cousin gets sick and before dying confesses that he saw the telegram about the fingerprints, destroyed it, and ignobly kept silent. Fortunately, the girl had put off the marriage, so there is no question of her being a virgin, which is an important issue to the housemaids and some doctors who read this type of literature. Our hero becomes Lord Greystoke and everybody lives happily forever after — until the next adventure.

  "I believe that in reality you did marry the girl on whom the novelist based his character. But that is pure nonsense about the jungle man's assumption of the title. If that had happened in reality, do you think for a moment that the resultant publicity would not have been world-wide? What a story — the heir to an English title appearing out of the African forest, an heir not even known to exist, an heir who has been raised by a band of missing links. Can you imagine the commotion, the curiosity, inflaming the world? Can you imagine what a hell the heir's life would be, no privacy, reporters trailing him at every step, an utter lack of privacy for not only him but his wife and his family?

  "But we know that no such thing happened.

  We do know that an English peer who had led an uneventful life, except for being kidnapped when ten, at maturity goes to Africa and settles down upon a ranch. And after a while strange tales seep back to London, tales of this peer reverting to a jungle life, wandering through central Africa clad only in a loincloth, eating raw meat, killing lions with only a knife, breaking the necks of gorillas with full-nelsons, and consorting with apes and elephants. The man has suddenly become a combination of Hercules, Ulysses, and Mowgli. And Croesus, I might add, since he seems to have a source of great wealth hidden some place in deepest Africa. It is distributed through illegal channels, but word of it reaches Threadneedle Street and New Scotland Yard, of course.

  "I wonder," he added after a pause, "if this valley could be where the gold comes from?"

  "No," Greystoke said. "That is a long way off. This valley is mostly lake, rich only with fish life. Once it was a wealthy, even grand, land with a civilisation to rival Egypt's. But it was flooded when a natural dam caved in after an earthquake, and all its works and most of its people were drowned. When the water is clear you can see at noon the roof-tops and toppled pillars here and there. Today, the degenerate descendants of the survivors huddle in this miserable village and talk of the great days, of the glory of Zu-Vendis."

  "Zu-Vendis !" I exclaimed. "But . . . "

  The duke made an impatient sound and said, "Carry on, Holmes."

  "First, allow me to ask you a question. Did that Yank somehow hear an account of your life that was not available to the public? A distorted account, perhaps, but still largely valid?"

  Greystoke nodded and said, "A friend of mine with a drinking problem, while on a binge, told a fellow some things which seem to have been relayed to the Yank. The Yank included parts of this account in his novel."

  "I surmised such. He thought he had the true story of your life, but he didn't dare present it as anything but fiction. For one thing, he could be sued. For another, your passion for vengeance is rather well known.

  "In any event, his story of how you came into your title, though fictional, still contains the clue needed to determine the true story.

  "Here, as I reconstruct it, is what happened.

  You knew that you were the true heir. You wanted the title and the girl and everything, though I suspect that without the girl you would not have cared for the other."

  Greystoke nodded.

  "Very well. Your cousin's yacht had been temporarily put out of commission, not wrecked and sunk, as was depicted in the novel. You had met the party from the yacht; they were stranded on the shore near your natal cabin. All that nonsense in the second novel about your girl being abducted by little hairy men from the hidden city of treasure deep in the heart of Africa was just that, nonsense."

  "If it had been true," Greystoke said, "the abductors would have been forced to travel a thousand miles through the worst part of Africa, abduct my wife, and travel back to their ruins. And then, when I rescued her, she and I would have had to travel another thousand miles back to the yacht. Under the circumstances this would have taken several years, and the time for that allowed in the novel just did not suffice. Besides, it was all imagination. Except for the city itself and the degenerates who inhabit it."

  "That high priestess who fell in love with you . . . ?" I said.

  "Carry on, Holmes," he said.

  "After your cousin died, your girl and your friends told you what a lack of privacy you and your family would have from then on. So you all decided to carry out a fraud. Yet, it was not really a fraud, since you were the legitimate heir. You looked much like your cousin, and so you decided to pass yourself off as him. When the yacht returned to England, for all anyone knew, it had made a routine voyage from England and around Africa and back again. Your friends coached you in all you needed to know about the friends and acquaintances you would meet. The servants at your ancestral estate may have detected something a little strange about you, but you probably had an excuse trumped up. A temporary fit of amnesia, perhaps."

  "Correct," Greystoke said. "I used that excuse often. I was always running into somebody about whom I'd not been instructed. And occasionally I'd do something very un-British."*

  [*This disclosure definitely invalidates some of my speculations and reconstructions in my biography of Greystoke. These will be corrected in a future issue. Lord Greystoke himself had admitted that Holmes' theory is correct. See "Extracts from the Memoirs of Lord Greystoke," Mother Was A Lovely Beast, Philip Jose Farmer, editor, Chilton, October 1974.]

  "Lord, the mystery of the century!" cried Holmes. "And I can't say a word about it!"

  "How do I know I can trust you?" Greystoke said.

  At these words my mounting anxiety reached its peak. I had wondered why Greystoke was so frank, and then the sickening certainty came that he did not care what we had learned because dead men cannot talk. The only hope I had was that Greystoke had not murdered his cousin after all. Perhaps he was a decent fellow under all that savagery. This hope collapsed when I considered the possibility that he might not have been altogether frank. What if he had murdered his cousin?

  Though I felt that it was dangerous to pursue this subject, I could not restrain my curiosity. "Your Grace," I said, "I hope that you won't think I'm too inquisitive. But . . . just what did happen to your cousin? Did he die as described in the second novel, die of a jungle fever after making a deathbed confession that he had cheated you out of your birthright and your lover? Or . . . ?"

  "Or did I slit his throat?" Greystoke said.

  "No, Dr. Watson, I did not kill him, though I must admit that the thought of doing so did cross my mind. And I was glad that he died, but, unlike so many of you civilised creatures, I felt no guilt about being glad. Nor would I feel any regret, shame, or guilt in putting anyone out of the way who was a grave threat to me or mine. Does that answer your question?
"

  "More than sufficiently, Your Grace," I said, gulping. He may have been lying, but my hopes rose again when I reflected that he did not have to lie if he intended to kill us.

  "You have implied that you have read Watson's narratives," Holmes said. "Admittedly, they are somewhat exaggerated and romanticised. But his portrayal of our moral character is quite accurate. Our word is our bond."

  Greystoke said, "Hmmm!" and he frowned.

  He fondled the hilt of the huge knife in his scabbard, and I felt as cold as the moon looked. As dead, too.

  Holmes seemed to be more meditative than frightened. He said, slowly, "We are professional men, Your Grace. If we were to take you as our client, we could not disclose a word of the case. Not even the police could force it from us."

  "Ah!" Greystoke said, smiling grimly. "I am always forgetting the immense value civilised people put upon money. Of course! I pay you a fee and your lips are shut forever."

  "Or until such time as Your Grace releases us from the sacred bonds of confidentiality."

  "What would you consider a reasonable fee?" "The highest I ever earned was in the case of the Priory School," said Holmes. "It was your uncle who paid it. Twelve thousand pounds."

  He repeated, savouring the words, "Twelve thousand pounds."

  Quickly, he added, "Of course, that sum was my fee. Watson, as my partner, received the same amount."

  "Really, Holmes," I murmured. "Twenty-four thousand pounds," the duke said, still frowning.

  "That was in 1901," Holmes said. "Inflation has sent prices sky-high since then, and the income tax rate is ascending as if it were a rocket."

  "For Heaven's sake, Holmes!" I cried. "I do not see the necessity for this fishmarket bargaining! Surely . . . "

  Holmes coldly interrupted. "You will please leave the financial arrangements to me, the senior partner and the true professional in this matter."

  "You'll antagonise His Grace, and . . . "

  "Would sixty thousand pounds be adequate?" Greystoke said.

  "Well," Holmes said, hesitating, "God knows how wartime conditions will continue to cheapen the price of money in the next few years."

  Suddenly, the knife was in the duke's hands.

  He made no threatening moves with it. He merely looked at it as if he were considering cleaning it.

  "Your Grace is most generous," Holmes said quickly.

  Greystoke put the knife back into the scabbard.

  "I don't happen to have a cheque on me," he said. "You will trust me until we get to Nairobi?"

  "Certainly, Your Grace," Holmes murmured.

  "Your family was always the most openhanded in my experience. Now, the king of Holland . . . "

  "What is this you said about Zu-Vendis?" I broke in, knowing that Holmes would take a long time to describe a case some of whose aspects still rankled him.

  "Who cares?" Holmes said, but I ignored him. "As I remember it, an Englishman, a great hunter and explorer, wrote a book describing his adventures in that country. His name was Allan Quatermain."

  Greystoke nodded and said, "I've read some of his biographical accounts."

  "I thought they were novels," Holmes said.

  "Must we discuss cheap fiction . . . " His voice trailed as he realized that Greystoke had said that Zu-Vendis was a reality.

  Greystoke said, "Either Quatermain or his agent and editor, H. R. Haggard, exaggerated the size of Zu-Vendis. It was supposed to be about the size of France but actually covered an area equal to that of Liechtenstein. In the main, however, except for the size and location of Zu-Vendis, Quatermain's account is true. He was accompanied on his expedition by two Englishmen, a baronet, Sir Henry Curtis, and a naval captain, John Good. And that great Zulu warrior, Umslopogaas, a man whom I would have liked to have known. After the Zulu and Quatermain died, Curtis sent Quatermain's manuscript of the adventure to Haggard. Haggard apparently added some things of his own to give more verisimilitude to the chronicle. For one thing, he said that several British commissions were investigating Zu-Vendis with the intent of finding a more accessible means of travel to it. This was not so. Zu-Vendis was never found, and that is why most people concluded that the account was pure fiction. Shortly after the manuscript was sent out by one of the natives who had accompanied the Quatermain party, the entire valley except for this high end was flooded."

  "Then poor Curtis and Good and their lovely Zu-Vendis wives were drowned?" I said.

  "No," Greystoke said. "They were among the dozen or so who reached safety. Apparently, they either could not get out of the valley then or decided to stay here. After all, Nylepthah, Curtis' wife, was the queen, and she would not want to abandon her people, few though they were. The two Englishmen settled down, taught the people the use of the bow, among other things, and died here. They were buried up in the hills."

  "What a sad story!" I said.

  "All people must die," Greystoke replied, as if that told the whole story of the world. And perhaps it did.

  Greystoke looked out at the temple, saying,

  "That woman at whom you two have been staring with a not-quite-scientific detachment . . . " "Yes?" I said.

  "Her name is also Nylepthah, She is the granddaughter of both Good and Curtis."

  11

  "Great Scott!" I said. "A British woman parading around naked before those savages!" Greystoke shrugged and said, "It's their custom."

  "We must rescue her and get her back to the home of her ancestors!" I cried.

  "Be quiet, Watson, or you'll have the whole pack howling for our blood," Holmes growled. "She seems quite contented with her lot. Or could it be," he added, looking hard at me, "that you have once again fallen into love?"

  He made it sound as if the grand passion were an open privy. Blushing, I said, "I must admit that there is a certain feeling . . . "

  "Well, the fair sex is your department," he said. "But really, Watson, at your age!"

  ("The Americans have a proverb," I said. "The older the buck, the stiffer the horn.")*

  [*The parentheses are the editor's, indicating another passage crossed out by Watson.]

  "Be quiet, both of you," the duke said. "I permitted the Zu-Vendis to capture you because I knew you'd be safe for a while. I had to get on up-country to check out a rumour that a white woman was being held captive by a tribe of blacks. Though I am positive that my wife is dead, still there is always hope. Mr. Holmes suggested that the Germans might have played a trick on me by substituting the charred body of a native girl. That had occurred to me previously. That I wear only a loincloth doesn't mean that I am naked of intelligence.*

  [*Apparently, Watson forgot to describe Holmes' comment. Undoubtedly, he would have inserted it at the proper place in the final draft.]

  "I found the white girl, an Englishwoman, but she was not my wife . . . "

  "Good heavens!" I said. "Where is she? Have you hidden her out there?"

  "She's still with the sultan of the tribe," he said sourly. "I went to much trouble to rescue her, had to kill a dozen or so tribesmen getting to her and a dozen on the way out. And then the woman told me she was perfectly happy with the sultan and would I please return her. I told her to find her own way back. I detest violence which can be avoided. If only she had told me beforehand . . . . Well, that's all over."

  I did not comment. I thought it indiscreet to point out that the woman could not have told him how she felt until after he had fought his way in. And I doubted that she had an opportunity to voice her opposition on the way out.

  "I drove the Germans this way because I expected that they would, like you, be picked up by the Zu-Vendis. Tomorrow night, all four of you prisoners are scheduled to be sacrificed on the temple altar. I got back an hour ago to get you two out."

  "That was cutting it close, wasn't it?" Holmes said.

  "You mean to leave Von Bork and Reich here?" I said. "To be slaughtered like sheep? And what about the woman, Nylepthah? What kind of life is that, being confined from birth t
o death in that house, being denied the love and companionship of a husband, forced to murder poor devils of captives?"

  "Yes," said Holmes. "Reich is a very decent fellow and should be treated like a prisoner of war. I wouldn't mind at all if Von Bork were to die, but only he knows the location of the SB papers. The fate of Britain, of her allies, hangs on those papers. As for the woman, well, she is of good British stock and it seems a shame to leave her here in this squalidness."

  "So she can go to London and perhaps live in squalour there?" Greystoke said.

  "I'll see to it that that does not happen," I said. "Your Grace, you can have back my fee if you take that woman along."

  Greystoke laughed softly and said, "I couldn't refuse a man who loves love more than he loves money. And you can keep the fee."

  12

  At some time before dawn, Greystoke entered our hut. The Germans were also waiting for him, since we had told them what to expect if they did not leave with us. The duke gestured for silence, unnecessarily, I thought, and we followed him outside. The two guards, gagged and trussed-up, lay by the door. Near them stood Nylepthah, also gagged, her hands bound before her and a rope hobbling her. Her glorious body was concealed in a cloak. The duke removed the hobble, gestured at us, took the woman by the arm, and we walked silently through the village. Our immediate goal was the beach, where we intended to steal two boats. We would paddle to the foot of the cliff on top of which was the bamboo boom and ascend the ropes. Then we would cut the ropes so that we could not be followed. Greystoke had come down on the rope after disposing of the guards at the boom. He would climb back up the rope and then pull us up.