My Sherlock Holmes

by Michael Kurland

  “We’ve met them in Burma, India, and in all the underworlds of the Orient. Thieves and murderers. They take Fu Manchu’s pay, but they’re more frightened of him than of death itself.”

  I shuddered. “With good reason,” I said.

  We had reached the torture chamber and Powers surveyed the room. His expression told me that every one of his senses was offended. “I wish I could just—”

  He was interrupted by a single shout coming faintly from above. Powers raced to the stairs and I was close behind.

  The house’s front door stood open. We ran out into the street and saw a terrible scene being played out. Lord Mayfield, still clothed in his heavy black coat, was wrestling with a short, lithe Asian in black pajamalike clothes. To be more accurate, Lord Mayfield was bent back against an iron gate while the dacoit clutched at the Commissioner’s throat. Mayfield tried futilely to break the slender man’s grip, striking him weakly on the head with his stick. Slowly, inexorably, the slave of Fu Manchu was choking the life from him.

  Powers took this in more quickly than I. In an instant, he had come to the older man’s aid. He grasped the dacoit’s wrists in his powerful hands and tore them loose from Lord Mayfield’s neck. I heard the Burmese man grunt and mutter something incomprehensible. Powers spun him around and swung a fist brutally into the dacoit’s midsection, and followed that blow with another aimed perfectly at the point of the dacoit’s chin. The Oriental fellow sprawled unmoving upon the pavement.

  Three more of Fu Manchu’s thugs arrived. One grabbed and held me so strongly that I didn’t have the least hope of escaping, another immobilized Powers in the same manner, and the third man held a dagger with a golden hilt to the my throat.

  Lord Mayfield tried to speak, but his abused vocal cords barely functioned. “Must be … Holmes,” he whispered in a croaking voice.

  “Where?” I demanded.

  Lord Mayfield could only point. Farther down the street four of Fu Manchu’s hoodlums had surrounded Holmes. They closed in on him slowly and warily. Powers and I struggled with our captors, but we could only watch in helpless frustration.

  “Why don’t they rush him?” Powers asked. “What are they playing at?”

  “No doubt they’ve learned how well he can take care of himself,” I said. “Yes, perhaps, but four against one? Not even—”

  Just then, one of the dacoits made the mistake of attacking my friend Holmes. He sidestepped easily, then struck the man’s face a sharp and crushing blow. The Oriental howled in shock and pain. Holmes had broken his nose, and blood streamed down his face. The other dacoits glanced at him, then proceeded even more cautiously against Holmes.

  One of the three drew a knife, and I recall that my friend actually smiled in amusement. the dacoit moved forward boldly, brandishing his weapon. Holmes stepped toward him and made a quarter turn to the right, at the same time blocking his opponent’s outstretched arm with his. Then he grasped the wrist of the man’s knife hand and forced it backward, while twisting the wrist completely over. The dacoit cried out and let the knife fall to the ground. Holmes swung around again while applying pressure to the man’s wrist, and I watched in astonishment as the burly attacker fell heavily to the ground. He gave a single harsh grunt and then lay motionless at Holmes’s feet, now also well out of the fight.

  “By all the saints!” I said.

  “Your Mr. Holmes doesn’t make a very good victim,” Powers said with a laugh. “Fu Manchu’s men look like they’ve never seen that Japanese baritsu before.”

  Holmes seemed perfectly composed. Now the third and fourth attackers were ready to try their luck. One circled Holmes cautiously, and my friend turned slowly to face him. When his back was to the fourth man, that scoundrel reached into a pocket and brought out a small glass ball. He covered his nose and mouth with a cloth and threw the glass ball to the pavement, where it shattered. Wisps of lavender-colored mist curled up from the cobblestones. In a moment both Holmes and his third opponent sagged to their knees. Then they dropped roughly to the ground, unconscious or dead.

  “What was that?” I cried, dismayed.

  “Chinese magic,” Lord Mayfield said. “It seems to have trumped Japanese science.”

  Again Powers and I struggled furiously against our captors, but we had no more success than before. The fourth black-clad dacoit dragged Sherlock Holmes’s limp, unresisting form along the street. One man threw open the door of a four-wheeler, and they carried Holmes inside. Our guards released us and ran toward a second carriage. They paused only long enough to collect their fallen comrades, but in a moment strong horses were pulling our enemies and their prisoner farther away with every furious stride. Just before the carriage turned a corner, I heard what I took to be a cry of outrage and defiance from Sherlock Holmes. It would be weeks and many hard miles before I heard his voice again.

  I need not dwell on a description of the mood that prevailed as we completed our search of the house in Great Nordham Street. Let it suffice to say that we found nothing more. The household of Fu Manchu had vanished as if no one had ever occupied that building, leaving not the slightest clue to their destination.

  “This is not the first time I’ve been so thwarted by that devil,” Lord Mayfield said. He bashed the wall angrily with his walking stick. “If I could, I’d damn him and all his depraved minions to the blackest pit of Hell. He is like nothing so much as Lucifer let loose again in the world, wreaking destruction for the sheer amusement of it.”

  “You arrived only a matter of a few hours too late,” I said, trying to console him.

  “Where Fu Manchu is concerned, the matter of an hour is the difference between peace and sanity on one hand, and absolute ruin and madness on the other. We followed him from Pingyüan to Kunming, where there is a regional headquarters of his secret underground society. In Kunming our Chinese guide was murdered, poisoned. From Kunming we went south and east to Canton and then Macao. We boarded a Dutch ship there and sailed through the Indies, the rumor of Fu Manchu leading us west ward. We stopped in Malaya, then in Ceylon, and up the coast of India to Bombay. Everywhere we put in we asked of Fu Manchu, and everywhere his name brought a shudder and a cold look, yet no one had the courage to direct us. One by one our crew and our servants died as if by some super natural hand—some poisoned, some strangled, some fell mysteriously without any mark or sign of injury. We crossed the Arabian Sea and entered the Gulf of Aden. As far as Suez, whenever we mentioned Fu Manchu we got the same treatment: suddenly our informants remembered nothing, suddenly they had somewhere else to go, suddenly we were no longer welcome. We felt more assured when we sailed upon the blue waters of the Mediterranean, but we were wrong. Seamen went missing overboard, and our valets dropped dead of the bites of unknown insects. The curse, if such it was, followed us until we berthed here in London, and it does not seem to have lifted yet. We could well be the next victims!”

  Willard Powers gestured impatiently. “Fearing a curse is futile,” he said. “There’s no curse but the work of Dr. Fu Manchu, a mortal human being. He’s powerful and resourceful, but after all he’s only a man. He can be defeated, but not unless we go after him, and right now.”

  “I quite agree,” I said. “But why was Holmes his target?”

  “I cannot imagine,” Lord Mayfield said.

  “The important thing,” Powers said slowly, “is that Holmes was kidnapped, not murdered as the others were. He was taken alive for some purpose.”

  “So that we’d follow,” I suggested. “He could be the bait in some strange intricate trap.”

  Lord Mayfield squinted at me. “Perhaps you’re right,” he admitted grudgingly. “In that case, how are we to know where to go next, eh?”

  “We should inform Scotland Yard,” I said innocently, “because today’s attack surely falls under their jurisdiction.”

  Powers waved away the suggestion. “The police haven’t been much help till now, Mr. Musgrave. They refuse to believe in the existence of Dr. Fu Manchu. They
tell us that we’re dreaming, that we’ve been reading too many sensational novels. They’re the ones who sleep—the police, I mean—with Fu Manchu plotting right under their very noses. Go down by the river in the evening, through the maze of waterfront streets and back alleys, and you’ll see his servants slinking through the pale fog on their errands of intrigue. The Metropolitan Police prefer to think the Oriental gangs confine their crimes to assaults on their own kind, and that there’s no need to mix in it. If the police had any idea how near London’s placid surface these schemers operate, it would cause a general panic. By ignoring the situation the police hope it will vanish, but it will not go away. You’ve seen for yourself.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I have seen.”

  Powers shook his head. “Lord Mayfield has the support of knowledgeable men in the Foreign Office, but even those men feel it best not to arouse widespread fear. That means that our resources are very limited. The fight against Fu Manchu, who has the vast wealth of the Far East at his disposal, is carried on by a handful of dedicated people. We few are trying to stem the onrushing tide of Fu Manchu’s imperial ambitions, and with our bare hands.”

  “Sooner or later even the great Fu Manchu may make a fatal error,” I said.

  “He toys with us,” Lord Mayfield said. “He plays with us the way a cat plays with a crippled mouse. This may well drive me insane before long, but I swear I’ll get him before …” His voice trailed off. The look of grim determination on his face astonished me.

  I offered another bit of information. “Fu Manchu told us a story about a stolen brass box. Do you know what it might contain?”

  “A brass box?” Lord Mayfield said. “Dear me, the contents of that box are very valuable. There are wonderful medical secrets locked away in it, medicines and chemicals which could benefit all of civilization. Fu Manchu calls them the Celestial Snows. He could eliminate a great part of the anguish in our hospitals merely by sharing the rare alkaloids he possesses. That means nothing to him, for he is hardened to other people’s suffering—indeed, I think he rather enjoys it. Such a small thing, yet that brass box is responsible for torture, abduction, and murder.”

  “Well,” Powers said, “in any event, we must decide on our course of action.”

  “I have the day’s Times,” Mayfield said, taking the newspaper from a pocket in his overcoat. “I’ll see if any vessels bound for China are departing tonight. Yes, by God! There’s a ship leaving the London and Foochow Tea Company docks at Limehouse just after midnight. Can we make our preparations and arrive at the wharf before the ship weighs anchor?”

  I was struck by a chilling thought. “Lord Mayfield,” I said, “with all due respect, aren’t you making the rather large assumption that Fu Manchu is taking Holmes back to China? We have no evidence at all concerning his destination.”

  Mayfield laughed explosively. “My dear sir,” he said, “I fancy I have more experience with that Asian rascal than you. I’ve tracked him from one corner of the map to the other. He eludes me, yes, I grant that, but—damn me, sir!—he has yet to render me helpless. I have anticipated each of his diabolical pitfalls, and I’m still eagerly on his trail. For reasons I don’t yet comprehend, he wants me to pursue him to China. For the moment that’s all I can do. When I’ve caught up with him at last, then he’ll learn with whom he’s been dealing this long while!”

  I don’t believe I have ever seen such a display of ignorance and bravado. I saw Powers shudder at His Lordship’s words. “What is the name of that tea ship?” he asked.

  “The Eldred Tamarind,” Mayfield said.

  “Sir,” Powers said, “I don’t believe Fu Manchu will be aboard her. He will send most of his household back to China aboard ship, but it will be a Chinese-owned ship with a Chinese crew, and it will not be listed in the Times. Fu Manchu himself will travel in some more invisible way, along a route chosen to disguise his identity and discourage his pursuers.”

  “If he wishes to discourage us,” I said, “why is he carefully leading us on?”

  “Ah,” Lord Mayfield said, “as on previous occasions, he wishes us to follow, but he desires that we be entirely exhausted when we reach our goal. Then we will be in his territory and at his mercy, with our strength and our will to resist depleted. He will have the luxury of destroying us at his leisure, in what seems to him the most entertaining manner.” He looked around at us, smiling broadly, looking like a pleased-as-Punch schoolboy who had just stumbled upon the correct answer to a difficult sum. He wore that same expression only moments before he died, and it is how I always remember him in my thoughts.

  “I like this less and less,” I said.

  “Remember, though,” Powers said, “that you’re under no obligation to travel with us. You’ve made this affair your own, and you’re at liberty to lay that burden down at any time.”

  “Then it is to Limehouse,” I said, despite a somber foreboding. And so I joined the mission against the ruthless Dr. Fu Manchu, and changed my life forever.

  We left the house in Great Nordham Street and hailed a growler. We took care of our several obligations and arrived at the Eldred Tamarind’s berth well before midnight. It was a matter of a few minutes’ haggling to secure two cabins aboard her. Lord Mayfield showed some official credentials that succeeded only in driving up the price of our passage, I have no doubt. It was clear that all of the peer’s limited success against Fu Manchu was due not to his resourcefulness, but to the competence of Willard Powers.

  Hours later I awoke to the sudden lurching of the cabin, which I shared Willard Powers. I sat up in my bunk. “We’re under way,” I said. The ship passed down the Thames, and upon the breast of the tide we were borne into the English Channel. I experienced a curious elation where I should have felt fear, as if some magnificent prize awaited me in China.

  I stood with Willard Powers on the deck of the Eldred Tamarind as we sailed past Gibraltar. Lord Mayfield, his florid face grown deathly pale, was indisposed below in his cabin. “In a few days we will be in Port Said,” Powers said. “It’s the season of the khamsin, storms that blot out the sun with dust and sand. Everything in the port comes to a stop when they howl, so we’ll waste one day idle for every day of business.”

  Powers knew Port Said well. A week later he and I strolled through a bazaar near the city’s waterfront, wearing cotton scarves to keep the fine sand out of our mouths and noses. I suppose we were a fine pair of fools, dressed neither for the location nor the climate. I was making some comment to him when a peculiar noise interrupted me. I’d heard that sound before and Powers knew it, too—the uncanny, ululating warning cry of Fu Manchu’s dacoits. Just then the roar of the wind grew stronger and I thought perhaps I’d imagined the cry, but beside me Powers was as full of dread as any man I’ve ever seen. “We must dash for the ship,” he said.

  I nodded. The wharf was not far, and when we arrived we hurried up the gangplank. I turned toward the bow of the Eldred Tamarind, but Powers grabbed at me and shoved me down against the deck, behind a quantity of coiled towing cable. I raised my head enough to see seven black-clad Orientals, all carrying some sort of evil looking edged weapon. One pointed toward the stern of the ship and two of the dacoits hurried that way. The leader said something more and a third man ran back down the gangplank on some errand. A fourth and fifth were ordered to the ship’s bow. Finally the dacoit in charge pointed directly where we huddled in concealment. He and the seventh assassin moved straight toward us.

  I pressed back as far as possible into the shadows. Shutting my eyes, I breathed a brief prayer, and when I looked again the dacoits were gone. “By all the saints,” I murmured, “why aren’t we dead?”

  Powers was still crouched beside me. “There are two possibilities,” he said quietly. “The first is that they didn’t see us and the second is that they didn’t mean to murder us now. Always remember that where Dr. Fu Manchu is concerned, nothing is ever sane or simple. Until we get to our destination, not an event will happen nor a wor
d spoken that won’t be reported to our enemy.”

  Days passed, and we passed through Suez into the Red Sea, then across the Arabian Sea to Bombay. It was eerie to know that seven brutal killers were watching our every move, waiting for some unknown signal, yet we couldn’t even detect their presence. Powers and I decided it best to keep Lord Mayfield ignorant of these circumstances, at least for the present. If the dacoits were merely spying on us, then no good purpose would be served by upsetting him. In retrospect, with the kind of infallible reasoning that derives from knowing what happened next, I think we two young heroes showed damnable arrogance in making that decision. Headstrong and sometimes ill-advised Lord Mayfield might have been, but in 1875 there was no one in the world with his experience in the ways of the Far East in general and Dr. Fu Manchu in particular.

  We should have consulted with him aboard the Eldred Tamarind, sharing our facts with him, and we should have let him participate in the plans then and later in Peking. Because Powers and I felt wise enough to proceed without him, I’ve always felt as if in part we contrived the unlucky man’s demise.

  Of the voyage there is much to say but little that is directly connected to my account of Sherlock Holmes, so I may leave the rest of it to the imagination of my patient audience.

  Nothing further delayed us. Hours later the merchant ship left India behind, rounded Dondra Head, and made for Burma. Many more days passed in ominous silence. Powers and I vowed to remain watchful, knowing full well that Fu Manchu’s dacoits were still aboard. Late summer became autumn, and the Eldred Tamarind went from port to port, from Rangoon to George Town in Malaya, Batavia on Sumatra, and Singapore. Then we headed up through the South China Sea, stopping for several days first at Hong Kong, then at Shanghai. At last, as winter began to threaten our hope of success, in early December we navigated the Yellow Sea and put in at Tientsin, a great crossroads port on the Pei River, about as far inland as London is along the Thames.

  Trouble could begin at any moment, now that we were finally on Chinese soil. Lord Mayfield knew the city of Tientsin well, and over a splendid Chinese meal, he and Powers debated the best way to proceed. As for myself, I felt I had little to contribute and I preferred to listen. As it happened, however, it was my suggestion that ultimately led to the confrontation with the array of forces now gathered in China. It was as if my presence had been needed as a catalyst. In all innocence I unleashed the struggle that would decide who would live and who would die, who would gain power and who would retire in defeat. It was not only Sherlock Holmes who had invited me to accompany him to the house of Fu Manchu—Fate had played a part, too.