The Star of India

by Carole Bugge

  The further adventures of

  SHERLOCK HOLMES

  THE STAR OF INDIA

  CAROLE BUGGÉ

  TITAN BOOKS

  THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES:

  THE STAR OF INDIA

  Print edition ISBN: 9780857681218

  E-book edition ISBN: 9780857685414

  Published by

  Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark St

  London

  SE1 0UP

  First edition: August 2011

  Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

  © 1997, 2011 Carole Buggé

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  THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES SERIES:

  THE ECTOPLASMIC MAN

  Daniel Stashower

  THE WAR OF THE WORLDS

  Manley Wade Wellman & Wade Wellman

  THE SCROLL OF THE DEAD

  David Stuart Davies

  THE STALWART COMPANIONS

  H. Paul Jeffers

  THE VEILED DETECTIVE

  David Stuart Davies

  THE MAN FROM HELL

  Barrie Roberts

  SÉANCE FOR A VAMPIRE

  Fred Saberhagen

  THE SEVENTH BULLET

  Daniel D. Victor

  THE WHITECHAPEL HORRORS

  Edward B. Hanna

  DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HOLMES

  Loren D. Estleman

  THE GIANT RAT OF SUMATRA

  Richard L. Boyer

  THE ANGEL OF THE OPERA

  Sam Siciliano

  THE PEERLESS PEER

  Philip José Farmer

  COMING SOON:

  THE BREATH OF GOD

  Guy Adams

  THE WEB WEAVER

  Sam Siciliano

  THE TITANIC TRAGEDY

  William Seil

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  One

  I have often remarked upon the moody nature of my friend Sherlock Holmes, so it should have come as no surprise that, when I called upon him on a rainy Saturday in October of 1894, I found him in the sitting room of 221B Baker Street, lying on the couch listlessly tossing darts at the initials V.R., which had been spelled into the wall by bullet holes. Since the death of my second wife, I had taken to calling on Holmes on Saturday afternoons, but it had been several weeks since my last visit.

  “Come in!” he barked in response to my knock.

  “Ah, it’s you, Watson,” he said when I entered.

  “I didn’t see Mrs. Hudson anywhere, so I let myself in,” I said, stepping over a pile of newspapers which nearly blocked the door from opening. The thick aroma of Turkish tobacco hung heavily in the air, and a puff of smoke escaped into the hall when I opened the door.

  “Well, come in; that is, if you don’t mind being horribly bored. Nothing,” he said, punctuating the word with a toss of a dart, “nothing of interest is taking place in London—no one of note is trying their wits against the forces of law and order.” He sighed and sat up, unfolding his long frame from the sofa. “It is an irony of my profession that when my fellow creatures are enjoying a period of relative peace and quiet, I find myself in the uncomfortable position of wishing that something interesting would happen to spoil it.”

  “But surely you don’t wish—” I said, hanging up my cloak and hat.

  “Oh, but I do, Watson; that’s the damnable part of it.”

  He threw another dart, which landed at the base of the V and stuck in a bullet hole. Holmes sighed and lit a cigarette. He was wearing his old mouse-colored dressing gown and looked as though he hadn’t shaved—always a bad sign in someone usually so meticulous about his appearance. I was also dismayed to see the stack of newspaper clippings in the corner of the room. When unoccupied with cases, Holmes was in the habit of clipping items from the newspapers, and the size of the pile indicated that it had been some time since he had had a crime to solve. The familiar sitting room, though untidy, was by no means in a shambles the way it often was when Holmes was working. The Persian slipper containing his shag tobacco hung from a nail on the hearth; his test tubes and beakers sat unused upon his makeshift laboratory table.

  “Do you mind if I open a window?” I said, coughing. My lungs felt heavy; the acrid smell of stale tobacco was so strong I could taste it on my tongue.

  Holmes shrugged. “Go ahead. Frankly, Watson, with Moriarty dead and Colonel Moran behind bars, I am afraid I shall die of boredom,” he said, lying back on the couch and blowing a smoke ring into the air. It curled and hung in the lamplight for a moment before dissipating into a thin gray wisp.

  I opened the window and inhaled the smells of a London afternoon: the sweat of horses mingled with the aroma of roasting chestnuts, damp clothes, and boiling cabbage. I walked over to the fire which blazed in the grate and rubbed my hands. I had been at my surgery all morning and was cold and tired. It had been an unusually busy week and only now did I realize how exhausted I was. An early influenza epidemic—the first of the season—had forced me to keep long hours. Right now, what I wanted more than anything was a glass of brandy and a good meal.

  “My dear fellow—” I began, but Holmes interrupted me.

  “Yes, yes, I know!” he said impatiently, springing up from the couch and pacing up and down in front of the hearth. “The sad fact is I often don’t hear about a case until some great harm has already been done... and believe me, I do not relish the suffering of others.”

  “Of course you don’t, Holmes—”

  “But I must have stimulation!” he cried suddenly, tossing his cigarette into the grate and throwing himself down on his favorite chair in front of the fire. I caught Holmes glancing toward the desk where I knew he kept his cocaine. I felt a chill go through me which even the roaring fire could not warm. I could not bear to see Holmes under the influence of this evil habit, see it destroy his nerves and his health, and yet I knew that he did not take kindly to interference on my part. I decided not to bring up the subject, and tried diversion instead.

  “You know, I have some tickets to the concert at the Royal Albert Hall tonight; would you like to come along with me?”

  His face brightened slightly. “Sarasate is playing the Saint-Saëns thi
rd violin concerto tonight,” he said languidly.

  “Shall we go?” I said, trying not to sound anxious.

  “Well...” he said, looking out at the bleak, bleary day. “Oh, why not?” he cried suddenly, springing up from his chair. “After all, there’s no point in moping around here.”

  With that, he disappeared into his bedroom, and I heard the sound of drawers opening and closing, and the clatter of hangers being flung about. Holmes was a study in contrasts: his moods seemed to range from utterly listless to intensely energetic, with very little in between.

  I helped myself to some brandy and sat in my usual chair before the fire while Holmes dressed, listening to the hiss of rain on the street outside. The flames from the fireplace cast a yellow glow about the room, and the brandy was warm on my throat. My eyes fell on the picture of Reichenbach Falls which hung above the mantel, and, once again, a shiver wormed its way up my spine. It was three and a half years since that fateful day in Switzerland when I thought I had lost my friend forever, and yet every detail of that horrid scene remained fresh in my mind: his abandoned walking stick leaning up against the rock, the farewell note so carefully written in Holmes’ firm, clear hand. Indeed, the note did such a good job of deceiving me that I never questioned that my friend had fallen to his death over that awful precipice, along with Professor Moriarty. It was a long three years before I found out that I was mistaken, and the months since had an unreal quality about them. I sometimes felt I was dreaming, and that I would awaken to find Holmes was dead after all.

  “Do you need to eat first?” he called out from the bedroom.

  I was touched by my friend’s concern, knowing that for him food was often nothing more than a necessary evil. Though he was known to enjoy a feast at Simpson’s, his lean figure attested to his general impatience with the demands of the body. I sometimes thought that one of my functions in our friendship was to keep him from collapsing outright from the extreme demands he often placed upon his constitution.

  “Maybe Mrs. Hudson can put a sandwich together for me before we leave,” I said.

  “Oh, she’s visiting her sister in the West Country,” he said, appearing from the other room in a starched white shirt and tails.

  “That’s better, don’t you think?” he said with a wink. I knew that Holmes was aware of my concerns, and that he did his best not to alarm me unduly.

  Trying not to show how pleased I was, I got my coat and hat.

  “What about food for you?” said Holmes as we left, pulling the door of the sitting room closed behind us.

  “I’m all right,” I answered. “I had a glass of brandy. We can have something afterwards.”

  And so, within minutes, we were seated in a hansom cab rattling off toward the Royal Albert Hall. The rain had settled into a steady drizzle, and I sat watching the droplets bounce off the cobblestones, looking out at the parade of humanity which trudged through the streets of London.

  “Look at that, Watson. All the world’s a stage, but London... you know, each and every one of those people out there has a story, and most of them will go untold. It’s only the ones who commit acts of greatness—of goodness or villainy—that we will ever hear of, or that posterity will remember. For instance, take that man there,” he said, indicating a thin, stringy-limbed fish vendor hawking his wares at the open-air market. “He had a career in the military, met with some success, was disappointed in love, and now he is a fish vendor.”

  I was about to ask Holmes to explain, but not wanting to interrupt his train of thought, I said nothing. Holmes continued. “Does it haunt him, I wonder, that no one is really very curious about his life, and that a hundred years from now no one will even remember that he lived at all? He will be just one of the millions of untold human stories which walk these streets every day.”

  “Perhaps his family will remember him,” I said.

  “Perhaps, but after a while even their curiosity will wane, and traces of his existence will gradually vanish from the face of the earth. No, Watson,” he said, leaning back in the cab so that his long, lean face was in the shadows, “immortality does not come to those who live commonplace lives; it is the sole province of the doer of extraordinary deeds.”

  “People live on in their children,” I said.

  “Ah, yes, progeny,” he replied gloomily. “Well, I suppose there must be some reward for having children, otherwise people wouldn’t do it at all.”

  I smiled; the remark was so typical of Holmes. Though we never spoke of it, I had often wondered if Holmes regretted not having children. My own regrets on the subject sometimes hit me with a sharpness which surprised me.

  “I mean, family is all well and fine, if that’s what you want,” Holmes continued. “But for the majority of mankind, greatness alone results in true immortality. Therefore you have your Caesars, your Napoleons, your Alexanders... do you know they say that Alexander wept when he realized that there were no more worlds to conquer?”

  “Yes, I think I heard that,” I said drily, not sure I wanted to encourage this train of thought. Holmes closed his eyes, but the muscles on his face were taut as ever, and I imagined him as a young conqueror, astride his horse, weeping because there were no more worlds left to conquer.

  The cab arrived at the Royal Albert Hall; we alighted and paid the driver. The rain was falling more heavily now, and a sea of black umbrellas greeted us as we made our way up the front steps. (Holmes hated umbrellas, and in spite of the inclement London weather, rarely carried one.) We ducked and wound our way through the crowd of people, arriving at our seats just as the first strains of Bach drifted up to the balcony.

  Holmes sat throughout the entire concert with his eyes closed, fingertips pressed together, in an attitude of complete concentration. I tried to listen to the music, each phrase twisting and turning around itself like the spinning of a web, but I was somewhat distracted. The attractive young woman in front of us was wearing a musky perfume which, for some reason, made my throat constrict, and I spent much of the first half of the concert stifling coughs. Holmes didn’t seem to notice, and sat serenely until intermission. Fortunately for me, the young woman did not return to her seat after intermission, and I was able to enjoy the second half of the concert.

  On the ride home, Holmes was silent for a long time, and then he said, “It was a true test of friendship, your suffering through that concert, Watson.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you were evidently having an allergic reaction—to the perfume, I should think; it was rather overwhelming. I myself found it somewhat difficult to breathe until I began practicing a breathing technique which I learned from the Dalai Lama during my sojourn with him.”

  I laughed. I should have known better than to suppose that anything went unnoticed by Holmes.

  “And our little jaunt has had the effect you intended, though not for the reason you might suppose.”

  “What do you mean?” I said, confused.

  “Oh, Watson, do you suppose that I didn’t notice your concern over my state of mind? Your suggestion that we take in this concert was such a transparent attempt to divert me! I agreed to go because I was so touched at your concern.”

  “Well, I’m glad you found it so flattering,” I said, feeling a little put out by his superior tone. “But what did you mean when you said that it had the effect I wanted, but not—”

  “Ah,” he replied. “Well, let me ask you this: did you notice that the young lady with the perfume was not in her seat during the second half of the concert?”

  “Of course,” I said sulkily. “I was able to breathe during the second half.”

  “Yes, yes, so you were,” he said. “But do you know why she was not present?”

  “I suppose because she was bored by the music,” I said. “Does it matter?”

  “Oh, it matters a great deal,” said Holmes. “She did not return during the second half because she was unable to do what she had come there to do.”

 
“Oh?” I said, still feeling annoyed at Holmes. “And what was that?”

  “To deliver a message.”

  “A message? What kind of message?”

  “One that evidently had some urgency, but that had to be delivered secretly.”

  I was silent; I tried to remember what I had seen at intermission, and had a vague memory of noticing the young lady in question among the crowd in the lobby at one point, but nothing stuck in my mind. I stared moodily out the window of our cab at the wet, huddled throngs of fellow Londoners slogging through the cobblestone streets. Finally, Holmes broke the silence.

  “Didn’t it strike you as odd that such an attractive young lady would attend a concert alone?”

  “Well, perhaps—”

  “And furthermore, that, even though the concert featured a very popular performer, the seat next to her was unoccupied?”

  The woman had indeed sat alone, and the aisle seat next to her had remained empty for the duration of the concert.

  “Yes, perhaps, but...”

  “You see, Watson; you look, but you do not observe. If the first observable facts about our young lady had not raised my interest, the perfume certainly would have.”

  “The perfume?”

  “Yes, the perfume that you yourself noticed because it caused an allergic reaction in your respiratory system.”

  “What about it?” I said, but instead of answering, Holmes rapped on the roof of the cab to signal to the driver. The man’s ruddy face appeared upside down in the window, rain dripping from his cap.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Take a right here, please, driver.”

  “Yes, sir,” the man said, and the face disappeared.

  We were in the outskirts of Covent Garden, that part of London where costermongers mingled with street hawkers of all sorts: piemen, eel vendors, Irish apple women, and flower girls with bunches of violets.

  “Do you think you can put off your dinner just a while longer, Watson?” said Holmes suddenly.

  “Certainly. Why?”

  “I’m curious about that exotic perfume.”