by Ben Stevens
‘In this way he learnt about these deadly sticks of ‘incense’ – which have been used to conduct any number of assassinations in China, although even the ninja have yet to become aware of them in Japan.
‘Moreover, Katamari was able to get a few of them in his possession…’
Indeed, a close search of Katamari’s room, carried out soon after he’d committed suicide, had unearthed ten more of these ‘Sticks of Death’. The Jushoku had quickly relapsed into a terrible fever caused by the shock of all that had taken place, and the severe mental strain it had caused him.
This had resulted – finally! – in my having to attend to him closely for several days and nights. At times, it seemed as though the head priest wouldn’t survive – but then slowly he’d begun to recover.
As for the scrolls we’d discovered in that small, hidden room, what they revealed is by now famous, of course. The Sanskrit was quickly translated; and so we soon learned that numerous, previously unknown teachings of Buddha had been recorded on the paper stored inside the sealed lengths of bamboo.
It was this knowledge which Gyoja had brought back with him from his travels around India and China, and had then hidden in the temple he’d had constructed, leaving cryptic clues concerning the existence of this knowledge for anyone who could determine the real meaning of his words.
It seemed strange behavior, and I said as much to Holmes. But he only smiled.
‘Well, maybe he thought that whoever succeeded him should have to earn this knowledge, as he had,’ mused Holmes. ‘Otherwise he was just giving it away, as it were – the recipient getting it for free.
‘No, Gyoja was determined that whoever found all these scrolls would have to do so by their wits. Plus, as I said before, I believe there was a slightly puckish side to this outwardly holy man. However, he of course failed to predict the deception and murder his little game would result in…’
The scrolls were soon taken away to Kyoto, there to be examined at length by experts. As the reader may already be aware, the information they contained led to major changes in Buddhist thought and theology, both in Japan and abroad, and also resulted in the formation of the now-major ‘Golden Path’ branch of Buddhism.
The story of how the scrolls were found, too, only increased Sherlock Holmes’s fame. As they would have made Katamari famous, had his fiendish plan been successful…
‘I can only presume,’ said Holmes about that man, ‘that after causing our deaths, he would first have blocked access to the Barrel Room on some pretence. He would then have set about hastening the death of the Jushoku – all the while carefully ensuring that this death was made to look entirely ‘natural’.
‘How exactly Katamari would have achieved this, I can’t be certain. But given the Jushoku’s often fragile state of health, it would not have been an overly-difficult task – even without Katamari having to use one of his foul ‘sticks’.
‘In any case,’ continued Holmes, ‘with the Jushoku dead, Katamari would have had to succeed as ‘acting’ head priest. A period in which he would, quite suddenly, ‘discover’ the priceless scrolls hidden by Gyoja several hundred years before.
‘This discovery would instantly have made him famous; and would, undoubtedly, have seen him become a real head priest – if not at the temple where he’d previously been a senior monk, then at another.
‘This, you see, was Katamari’s ultimate ambition – an ambition he knew he could not possibly realize any other way. For so many years he bit back the frustration and bitterness he felt at being an anonymous senior monk at a remote temple – then, finally, he began to see a way he could possibly get everything he’d ever wanted.
‘More, even…’
Now, at this inn in which we were staying, I ventured to say –
‘Well, so much for Katamari. But, Holmes-san… The head temple of the Shining Path has its mystery solved for it. The Jushoku can again seek his successor, secure in the knowledge that no more tragedy will strike. The high-ranking Buddhist clergy in Japan have delivered to them a set of scrolls so valuable as to be priceless.
‘And as for you, who did all the work…?’
‘For me, there remains the promise of another cup of sake, and perhaps a bite to go with it,’ returned Holmes. ‘You’d care to join me, Yoshida-sensei?
‘I am technically on holiday, after all…’
With that this remarkable foreigner stretched out one thin hand, to ring the bell and summon the woman serving us.
Sherlock Holmes and the Bare-knuckle Brawler
The following account of the case concerning the so-called ‘Bare-knuckle Brawler’ is taken from the journal of Charles Bradley, the physician resident on Leaving Island. It was later translated by Sherlock Holmes himself into Japanese for me; I was in any case present for much of the proceedings. (Indeed, Holmes’s fabled powers of deduction saved an innocent man from quite possibly being hanged.)
But in describing the habits and language of the gaijin, the foreigners who inhabit Leaving Island, the English doctor Bradley is obviously at an advantage to me…
Bad feeling had existed between the two men for several months. Ever since James Plummer had arrived upon Leaving Island, in fact, he and Robert Figg (the so-called ‘Bare-knuckle Brawler’) thus clapping eyes upon one another.
Was it merely a case of two men taking an instant dislike to each other, with no other obvious reason or cause? Although we would eventually find out exactly what the reason for this animosity was, at the time it seemed a mystery.
For a good while the two men would stare hard at one another when they passed, but otherwise they made apparent efforts to stay apart. They would sit at opposite ends of the dinner-hall, for example, and had no reason to consort with one another either at work or during their leisure-time.
But ‘Leaving Island’ (a loose translation of the Chinese characters the Japanese use to describe this island, created by digging a canal through a small peninsula and covering an area of barely one hectare) is hardly the largest of places.
Thus the ‘powderkeg’, as it were, of Plummer and Figg’s mysterious but still-obvious resentment was certain to explode, sooner or later…
On the day that it did, we happened to have none other than the famous English detective Sherlock Holmes as a visitor upon Leaving Island. He’d been invited here by the Chief Official, Captain Harold Spillard, as a sort of honored guest, being fed a quintessentially English roast dinner, before being given a guided tour of the island.
This tour could hardly have been of the greatest interest to the detective, given that Leaving Island consists primarily of drab warehouses, above which are the living quarters of the traders, sailors and so on who comprise the island’s inhabitants.
Most of these men (there are no women, save for those yujo, or Japanese ‘pleasure women’, who frequently steal across the bridge and onto the island at night, knowing that they will always find ‘business’ here) are English. There are also a few Portuguese and Dutchmen, although they tend to stay for a shorter period of time.
Holmes was accompanied by his friend, Yoshida-sensei, a sturdy-looking fellow who, I believe, works as a doctor, and also writes up Holmes’s cases within Japan from time-to-time. (A striking coincidence, obviously, given the similarities here to Holmes’s well-known friend John Watson in London…)
To this man, Holmes spoke in fluent Japanese; although he has been in the country only a few months, such is his remarkable intelligence that he can already speak, read and write this bewildering language fluently.
But I digress. I intended to describe the altercation which suddenly erupted one afternoon, between the ‘Bare-knuckle Brawler’ Robert Figg and James Plummer. The two men appeared to have encountered each other, by chance, outside one of the stone-built warehouses; and finally their long-standing animosity bubbled over.
‘… think I’ve forgotten?’ Plummer was heard to say, as the loud altercation quickly attracted attention and thus brought men hurry
ing over.
‘Well – what do you intend to do about it, anyway?’ returned Figg, a sneer upon his hard face.
‘Thrash the hide off you – that’ll do, for a start!’ exclaimed Plummer, with an oath which does not bear repeating.
‘I’d like to see you try,’ returned Figg, still wearing that sneer.
It is here that I should explain the reason for Figg’s rather crude nickname – although many may be familiar with it already. It related, quite simply, to his ‘talent’ (for want of a better word) for bare-knuckle boxing. Throughout the course of his long career as both a sailor and trader, he had fought any number of men of various nationalities bare-knuckle and, it is claimed, had always emerged from such matches the victor. From his defeated foreign opponents, then, had come his hard-earned but well-deserved nickname.
Indeed, it would have been hard to conceive of a more splendid example of masculinity than this ‘Bare-knuckle Brawler’. His black, slightly graying hair was cropped short, and he had a large moustache above thin lips and a perfectly square chin. His eyes were close-set and narrow, and contained a definite challenge to any man who dared ‘try’ him.
His hands were possibly the largest pair I’ve ever seen on a man, with thick veins and huge knuckles like knots in a ship’s ropes. I have some knowledge of the pugilistic arts, and have fought a number of bare-knuckle matches myself. Yet, I fully concede, I would have lasted barely seconds against the Brawler.
And as for the man who seemed certain to become his latest opponent – this James Plummer? It’s a little curious, but only now do I remark upon the fact that Plummer and Figg actually shared a similar accent. That is, one which you might expect to hear around the English county of Devonshire.
Otherwise, while still a tough-looking individual, with a sailor’s skin burnt brown by the sun and a broad, swarthy-looking face, I doubted that Plummer would fare any better against Figg than I would have done myself.
Still, while Figg retained that arrogant sneer, Plummer’s face was suffused with hatred, his hands bunched into fists at his side. Clearly, whatever self-control he’d been exercising these past few months (whatever had previously prevented him from launching himself at Figg, due to this mysterious grievance there undoubtedly was between them) had exhausted itself.
Captain Spillard now appeared, accompanied by Holmes and his doctor friend. Captain Spillard sized up the situation with a glance and then calmly walked over to the two men.
‘If you wish to fight, then you will do so in a gentlemanly fashion,’ he declared. ‘I’ll stand for no foul play.’
I saw that some of the other men watching were surprised by the captain’s words; but not I. The Captain was a remarkably intelligent man, capable of ‘reading’ both an individual and a situation at a glance. He knew that this affair between Plummer and Figg needed to be resolved immediately, and in a manner which many an Englishman finds the simplest, and most effective.
‘There’ll be no scratching, biting, gouging or anything of that kind,’ continued Captain Spillard, whose broken nose spoke of the fact that he’d often boxed as a younger man. ‘No hitting a man when he’s down, and no showing the toe.’
This last utterance caused both Plummer and Figg to look at him in some confusion, and I to give a slight smile. Like Captain Spillard a Lancastrian man, born and bred, I knew that ‘showing the toe’ meant kicking; something strictly anathema in the world of bare-knuckle, of course.
Once they’d realized the meaning of this last phrase, Plummer and Figg nodded, and faced off. They were both wearing the usual attire of white shirts, trousers and black shoes. The white shirts they removed, so that they fought bare-chested, as is the custom. They raised their fists, and the Captain stepped between them. He had no need to announce that he would referee this fight; it was obvious.
‘The fight ends when a man can’t get up off the floor and come up to scratch, having been knocked down, upon the count of ten,’ declared Captain Spillard, while scratching a line into the dusty ground with the toe of his shoe. ‘Or when I judge that a man is too badly injured to continue – and go against my ruling, and you’ll find some real punishment awaiting you.’
Such was the grey-haired Captain’s general air of authority, that even the formidable Figg nodded his understanding of this threat. As it is upon a ship, strict discipline is essential upon this small island. Anyone found stealing from the warehouses full of merchandise from silks to spices is liable to find themselves whipped, heavily fined and possibly just placed on the next ship sailing away from Leaving Island, while it was common knowledge that a set of gallows – which had as yet not been used – was stored in a basement area beneath the Captain’s private residence, which is located near the bridge which connects the island to land.
‘Let’s get this done and finished, then,’ said the Captain; and, at his nod, Plummer and Figg momentarily ‘touched’ knuckles before beginning to circle around each other.
Plummer was the first to throw a punch, which Figg easily evaded by moving his head sharply backwards. His own fist lashed out, a right as heavy as a mallet yet fast as a colt, and there was a sickening sound as it connected with Plummer’s right ear. Plummer staggered backwards, his face registering shock as he put his hand to the struck part. It was already bleeding, and no doubt exceedingly painful.
The sneer was back on the Brawler’s face; and though he could certainly have pressed home his advantage that moment, while Plummer was stunned by the blow to his ear, he instead waited for his opponent to recover himself. It was clear that Figg was enjoying this fight, and had no desire for it to end too quickly.
In any case, Plummer quickly recovered and moved in with a series of hard body shots – often greatly more effective than punches to the head and face, for ribs can cave in with far less force than is required to cause similar damage to a man’s skull (thus sparing a fighter’s hands), and the pain is something to make even a hardened fighter whimper for mercy.
It will not surprise the reader to learn that there was no such whimpering from Figg, however. He took the blows almost entirely on his muscled arms, which he kept close by his sides, and then dealt Plummer a cracking left blow to the jaw, followed by a straight right shot to the heart.
Plummer staggered backwards, shaking his head in a desperate attempt to remain conscious. Again, Figg could easily have finished this fight with just one more good blow; and, again, he instead waited for his opponent to recover himself.
‘Looks like I win – again,’ said the Brawler. I wondered what he meant by this – had the two men fought each other already, at some point in the past? Yet they had never claimed to have known each other, before Plummer’s arrival upon this island...
These words caused Plummer to give a shrill cry of rage, and he moved forwards, his fists lashing out. Figg brought his forearms up to shield his face, thus easily absorbing the wild blows. Then he ducked down, bringing his right fist down even lower… And at once exploding upwards he put all his weight into a brutal uppercut which impacted on the point of Plummer’s jaw, lifting that man off his feet and depositing him upon the dusty ground, where he twitched a couple of times before lying quite still.
As physician of this island, I moved quickly towards the stricken man, fearing that he was badly hurt or even worse. As I knelt down beside him, I was vaguely aware of Captain Spillard saying to the victorious fighter –
‘That’s enough now, Figg – that’s enough…’
But, really, my attentions were fully upon the man lying on the ground. He was tougher than I thought. His eyelids fluttered open, and after a moment he attempted to rise, mumbling something about wanting to resume the fight.
‘You’ve been beaten, man,’ I told him sternly, so that he understood there was no point in trying to continue. ‘Now be still.’
He obeyed me – I think he realized his legs wouldn’t even support him, if he attempted to stand – and I performed a brief examination of him. He was fortunate: he
’d not even a broken jaw, which I was certain he’d sustained from the Brawler’s final blow. Otherwise there was some superficial bruising already beginning to show itself on the face, but nothing of any real importance.
‘Such a shame, seeing two fellow Englishmen brawling like this,’ I told Plummer, as I helped him to sit upright. He was breathing heavily, his eyes narrowed with pain.
‘I’ll see that bastard in hell yet,’ he murmured.
‘Look,’ I said in a fierce whisper, so that only he could hear. ‘What is the matter here? Heaven knows there’s been bad blood between you and Figg ever since you arrived on this island – and for what reason, eh? You two knew each other somewhere before, I’m guessing? In Devonshire, would seem to be the smart guess, since you both have the accent of that region!’
But Plummer only stubbornly shook his head, refusing to say anything more. Before I could persist in my questioning (for I can be quite tenacious, when the mood takes me), I became aware of a commotion coming from behind me.
I turned my head, and there was Figg pointing at Holmes, who’d had no choice but to observe the altercation which had just taken place.
‘So that’s him, is it? The one there’re those stories about? Well, I’ve not read ‘em, but still I’ve heard he’s quite a boxer. So if this here Mister Sherlock Holmes is half the man they say he is, let him meet me now – bare-knuckle!’
‘That’s enough, Figg!’ said the Captain harshly; but the effect upon Holmes was instant. In a couple of moments, he removed his shirt, exposing a lean, sinewy body that was obviously exceptionally strong.
‘Good, good; let’s fight, man!’ called out the Brawler, his blood doubtless still ‘up’ from his previous fight.
I glanced at the Captain, and as he moved to stop these proceedings, his expression suddenly changed. I realized that he – a fighting man when he’d been in his youth, after all – indeed wished to see this fight. And as his guest had just accepted the challenge…
