“I really was going to tell you all this, Jack, when we got to London and Yuki was at Oxford, but I couldn’t just yet. If my story got out the dear men at the Baptist mission would have a fit and fire me and all my work here, that I love, would be lost. What they don’t know hasn’t hurt them for seventeen years. A few more months won’t matter. Your posting here will be up in the fall, and you have to spend a term working at the office in Whitehall before being sent elsewhere, so it was all working out perfectly. Until, of course, along comes Sherlock Holmes…So, gentlemen, that’s my story. Any questions?”
Mr. Munro said nothing and continued to look directly at his wife.
“I do,” said Holmes, “have a couple of questions. If you wouldn’t mind?”
“Not at all, Mr. Holmes. You are supposed to be a great detective after all, so I guess you like asking questions. And since you started this whole affair you may as well keep going. Oh, but let me have another glass of that sake. Oh my, how I’ve missed this.” She smiled at the bottle and poured herself a second full glass.
“To be fair, madam, this affair began with questions being asked in Whitehall about you.”
“Oh, you must mean by your big brother. The one Jack calls the fat twit. Was he behind sending you here?”
“He had a role in it, as did the Second Minister, Mister Humphrey.”
“The one Jack calls Dumpty Humpty? What is he saying?”
“He expressed concern over your close connection with a Russian.”
“Well he would say that, wouldn’t he?”
“Pardon me, madam.”
“Humpty is after Jack’s job. Everyone in the office knows that. Just watch what he’ll try to do now that it’s a full Ambassador. And what Russian is he talking about?”
“The mathematics teacher.”
She laughed spontaneously. “Nutty Nick? Oh, please Mr. Holmes. Look, I’m a gal from Jersey. The last thing I want is to get messed up with some crazy Cossak.”
Holmes paused, unable to respond to the irrefutable logic. “Very well, Madam, but why did you keep calling your daughter a child of the moon who woold break the heart of the Emperor?”
“It was her favorite bedtime story. The fable of the bamboo cutter. You don’t know it? It is as famous in Japan as Jack and the Beanstalk is in America or England. You really must read it. It’s a lovely tale.”
Holmes sighed and reached for his glass of sake.
“I have no more questions. I pass over to you, your Excellency.”
Mr. Munro had sat stone-faced since we sat down together.
“Yes Jack, your turn. I’ve deceived you and lied to you and you married a fallen woman. If you want to divorce me, go ahead. I won’t try to stop you. But I really do love you, darling.”
“Effie,” he began in a somber tone, “I am a far from perfect man, but perhaps I am more than you give me credit for. I would like to forgive you and move on with our life, but there is one condition.”
Her face fell, and she looked apprehensive. “Yes, Jack. What is that?”
I watched the Ambassador and detected the ends of his lips twitching into a sly smile and a tiny twinkle flash into his eye.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a son hidden away somewhere as well would you? If I am to be a father, I rather fancy having one of each.” His face broke into a wide, loving smile.
She laughed and then smiled sweetly back at him. “No Jack, I’m sorry, but I do not have one of those to give you…” Here she stopped, lowered her head and looked up at him with eyes that were more than a little flirtatious. She slowly stroked her top lip her tongue.
“Or, Jack, I should say, I don’t have one … yet. But I’m still only thirty-eight. And judging by last weekend, there is nothing wrong with you, darling. So if you want a son, well, you better get busy.”
The two of them were now looking goats and monkeys at each other, both of them glowing, and I felt myself beginning to blush.
Mr. Munro rose from his seat and reached his hand across the table to his wife.
“Effie, why not give our daughter a shout and we’ll start back down the mountain.”
He then turned to Holmes. “Mr. Holmes, a few days back I told you that I was a very fortunate man. Having eliminated all other possibilities, I now conclude that I am the luckiest man in the world. Surprised by joy, you could say. Would you agree, Holmes? Oh, and just send your expense claim for the sake to the fat twit in Whitehall.”
He was joined outside of the tent by Mrs. Munro, who slipped her arm through his on one side, and his exceptional and beautiful daughter, who did likewise on the other. They began to descend from the mountain.
Holmes sat at the table looking out into the vast expanse of sky, forest, lake, and ocean that we could see on this clear day from the summit of the sacred mountain. He reached his hand into an inside pocket and pulled out his neglected pipe. Slowly he filled it, lit it, and took several slow puffs.
“Watson,” said he, “if it should ever strike you that I am seeing only evil where I should see good, that I am getting over-confident in my powers, or that I am blind to what a case deserves, kindly whisper FUJI in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you.”
Historical and Other Notes
The central historical event in which this story is set, the Russo-Japanese War, took place in 1904 to 1905. The resounding victories of the Japanese on both land and sea led to Japan’s becoming recognized as a major world power. Prior to that time the official offices of both Great Britain and the United States were Legations, headed by Legates or Envoys. Shortly after the end of the war, both countries upgraded their offices to Embassies and the representatives to full Ambassadors.
The references to the events of the war are generally accurate, as are the references to building, locations, and related historical events and cultural practices.
References to places visited on route from London to Tokyo are drawn from my privileged past thirty years of world travel and most are tied to events and places I experienced.
The three races described in the story are all along routes I have travelled … walking. Dr. Watson’s experience of climbing Mount Fuji is not far removed from mine, except that he got sunshine and I got a typhoon.
The first Imperial Hotel existed at the time of the events in the story. It was replaced by the stunning creation designed by Frank Lloyd Wright that opened in 1923 and survived the Great Kanto Earthquake, but was demolished in the 1960s since it occupied too much of the world’s most valuable real estate (So Long … Frank Lloyd Wright).
The Suez Canal was built by the French and Egyptians in the 1850s and purchased by Great Britain after the French management company went broke. The British ran it for the next one hundred years.
The Galle Face and the Raffles Hotels are both still in operation, both still fabulously elegant and both places I have been lucky enough to stay at. The Peak Hotel at the top of Victoria Peak is long gone. The Peninsula in Kowloon did not open until well after the dates of this story – pity.
Sherlock Holmes is exceptionally popular in Japan and has many devoted fans and followers. Projecting that popularity back to 1905 was a bit of a stretch.
Gary Punjabi is a real fellow and runs a superb tailoring business, Maclarry Fashions, in Hong Kong. He has been my beloved tailor for thirty years.
The Three Rhodes Not Taken
A New Sherlock Holmes Mystery
Chapter One
Where Ignorant Armies Clash by Night
Balliol College
THE GREAT UNIVERSITY TOWN OF OXFORD, England has been, for the better part of the past thousand years, a place where men came together to pursue knowledge and impart it to others. Any man today, walking through its hallowed streets, lanes, and courtyards cannot help but feel the presence of all of the great minds who have labored behind the walls in the selfless seeking of truth and enlightenment. A man need not be himself highly educated to enjoy such a sensation. It can be felt by a rude, ru
ral farmer, or by a semi-literate heathen from the colonies, or even by an American. What is not expected is that this ‘sweet city with her dreaming spires’ would also be the locus of treachery, murder, and fraud. Yet these are the acts that brought this case into the hands of Sherlock Holmes.
Holmes and I had already been in Oxford for several days. His list of clients having been unusually diminished, he agreed to take on a request to identify the sender of death threats and other vile messages to a middle-aged professor of classics. The unique difficulty that case presented to Holmes was the absence of any apparent motive. The victim of the threats was of modest means, a bachelor with no romantic interests, and a fledgling reputation as a scholar based on his treatise: Scatological Humour in the Plays of Lucius Pomponius. It eventually dawned on Holmes that the nasty and vindictive threats were related to the re-assignment of offices and the victim’s having been given a larger window. One of his colleagues was convinced that he should have been awarded that more prestigious space.
“Watson,” he asked me when it was all over, “do you know why disputes amongst scholars are so bitter?”
I confessed that I did not.
“Because the stakes are so small.”
I sighed, agreed, and looked forward to a decent meal and a good night’s sleep at the Randolph Hotel before returning to London the next day.
And so we found ourselves, on Friday, the twenty-ninth day of June 1906, in the late afternoon, being taken by cab along Cornmarket Street from the Carfax intersection north to our lodgings. Holmes was reading the local newspaper and in disgust, tossed it aside. The sun, having so recently passed the solstice, was still high in the sky, and Holmes had been trying to read as we bounced our way up the street.
“The world would be better off without the Press,” he said. “A dreadful tragedy happened yesterday at the Salisbury Railroad Station. Twenty-eight people were killed in the train crash, many more injured. Lives and families will suffer for years to come, and all the reporter can go on about is how sad it made him feel, how brave he was to clamber over wrecked railway carriages, how heroic he will be in asking questions of those responsible. Who on this earth cares a whit about him? The Press exists to make money for their owners and sell goods for their advertisers. Why anyone bothers to read these rags, I do not know.”
“Oh come, come, Holmes,” I protested. “You are always using the newspapers yourself to search out data on past events, or to send messages through the agony column. You read every major newspaper every day, and I daresay you remember almost everything you read.”
“I did not say that they were not useful, my good doctor, only that they are no longer deserving of respect. Their decline is further evidence of the melancholy, long, withdrawing roar that I hear whilst standing as on a darkling plain.”
I was about to argue with him or whatever poet he was quoting, but I was cut short by our arrival at the hotel. As I descended from the cab my eye caught the figure of a man approaching us. He was leaning heavily on a cane with his right hand and limping awkwardly. I focused my glance and could see that he appeared to be about my height and weight but dressed neither like a gentleman nor a student. He was sporting a bob hat and a sack coat. His trousers badly needed pressing, and his shoes polishing. His head was down and what few glimpses I caught of his weathered face and gnarled hands indicated an ungentle past life.
He hobbled quickly up to us.
“Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson?”
“We are,” I answered. “How may we help you, sir?”
He stretched out his hand and instinctively I took it. The fellow may have been unsteady on his feet, but his hand was strong and firm.
“Please, gentlemen. Forgive my accosting you so rudely, but I am in desperate need of your help. I have read about you, Mr. Holmes. I heard that you were here in Oxford and staying at this hotel, and I have been waiting for you all day. What I have to tell you does not just affect me, sir. The future of the University could be damaged for years to come.”
“Could it indeed?” said Holmes. “Very well then, sir, please enter with us. The hotel is still serving tea. I will hear your case and let you know if I can be of assistance.”
We entered the select hotel and sat in the small front room. The attentive staff immediately appeared with tea, biscuits, and jam. While consuming it, I had a chance to look at this fellow a bit more closely. His face was thin and lined. Deep set, dark brown eyes were offset by a bulbous nose on which several gin blossoms had begun to appear. His left ear was somewhat deformed, a bit of a ‘cauliflower’ brought on, I guessed, by boxing and fighting when he was much younger. He had lived a hard life, but his hand as it raised the full teacup to his mouth did show any trace of a tremble. He was stooped over when he walked but during the short period when he stood straight I could see that he was as tall as Holmes and quite broad in the shoulders.
“Mr. Holmes,” began the fellow immediately we were seated. “Something terrible has taken place. Please, sir … “
“No, no, no, no, no, no,” said Holmes. “You … you … you must not get the cart before the horse.”
Good heavens, I thought. Holmes had only been in Oxford for a few days and already he was affecting the self-absorbed Oxonfordian stutter. As a Scotsman raised to say only what was needed and no more, I was annoyed. I gave him a roll of my eyeballs, and he caught my rebuke. That was the end of that nonsense.
He continued in the manner in which I had listened to him for going on thirty years.
“Please, sir. Let us get first things first. Who are you? Identify yourself and say what your connection is to whatever dreadful event it is you wish to impart to us.”
“Oh, yes, sir. Sorry, sir. My name is Rodney Bannister, Mr. Holmes. Originally I am from Devon, but since the war, well, for the past twenty, I have worked here in Oxford.”
“Which war?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Sorry, sir. The Afghan Campaign, sir. Not the recent war in the Cape.”
I interjected. “Ah, what regiment? I was there too?”
“Were you, doctor? Well then, you know a bit of what we all went through. Royal Leicestershire, doctor. Just a foot soldier, sir. But after the war ended I was not in good health and despaired of ever finding a decent situation. I lived a bit rough for a few years, but my captain was an Oxford man, and when he came back, he took a place as a lecturer. He had, bless him, kept in contact with me and hired me as his secretary. That’s what I am still doing today, sir.”
“And who,” continued Holmes, “was your captain?”
“Hilton Soames, sir. And he is one of the finest gentlemen and scholars ever to walk God’s good green earth. He has risen steadily, and he is now the Dean of Balliol College, just across the street from here, and I am still honored to serve as his secretary.”
“And you get along well? Always have?”
“Very well, sir. When he had far fewer responsibilities, he would occasionally ask my opinion on matters, usually pertaining to unimportant things like food, or drink, or furnishings, or a man’s attire and we could have a hearty disagreement. But it was always in good sport. After we had argued he would quote from The Merry Wives and say, ‘I desire you in friendship, and I will one way or other make you amends’ and I would reply with ‘Friendship is constant in all other things, save in the office and affairs of love’ from Much Ado. But that was long ago, and as he rose in reputation as a scholar our banter has gone away, but we still have no animosity at all between us, sir.”
“And I assume,” said Holmes, “that whatever untoward event has taken place is connected directly with Dean Soames. Is that correct?”
“Right sir. I don’t know how you knew that but not surprised, you being such a famous detective and all. But yes, sir. It does concern Dean Soames, or My Professor, as I have called him for all these years.”
“Fine, Mr. Bannister. Now, please tell us what happened concerning your professor.”
“Right, sir. It was a week ag
o, and the remembering of it still makes me gasp and shake. You see, every Friday evening my professor and I would share a pint up the road at the Lamb and Flag. We had one almost every week for near twenty years, and it was my favorite time in the week, sir. We would sit and chat and then would go home for supper with our wives. But on that occasion, I had to go alone to the pub as he had been called to give an evening lecture over at Exeter College. So I just had a drink all by myself, sir. When it came time to pay my tab I reached for my purse and realized that I had left it behind in the office. My memory does things like that from time to time, if you know what I mean, sir.”
I knew exactly what he meant and assured him that my memory did not only act the same way from time to time but at least once a day. He forced a bit of a smile and went on.
“The publican, Patrick, was a good friend after so many years, so I just told him what had happened. He gave me a laugh, and I hurried back to the office to get my purse so I could pay him. It was only a shilling or two but as you know, ‘neither borrower nor lender be’ and I have never been in another man’s debt. I wanted to get him paid straight away. So back I ran to the office.
“As soon as I arrived, I could see something was amiss. The door of the office was open, and I knew that I had locked it, like I did every night when I leave. I haven’t forgotten to do that ever, sir. So I went in and, it being a bit dark seeing as the sun was down, I went to light a lamp and then I saw someone. He had been hiding behind one of the curtains, and he made a dash for the door. I thought it was a burglar so I went right after him, I did. I caught him at the top of the stairs. But, by George, he was a big fellow, and strong. He just grabbed me by my jacket and threw me down the stairs. And it’s a long staircase, sir. And down I tumbled. I wrenched my back six ways from Sunday and put a dreadful sprain in my knee. The back’s not hurting anymore, but the knee is giving me terrible pain making it hard to walk. I found a cane and now I can hobble around like a cripple and I’m hoping whatever I have done is not permanent, if you know what I mean.”
Sherlock Holmes Never Dies- Collection Four Page 36
