Part 2 (1/2)
”So,” said Holain If I am not mistaken, I sit before Karol Lissonevitch Rastrakoff, one-ti, now secret agent for the Tsar in central Asia, an infaled in Tibet, Rastrakoff, and I would judge the contest a draw Your e of blood was clear to me almost immediately, for your initials and part of your last name conveniently spelled ka and li, and rastra, the word for 'nation' in the native tongue I shall not waste time or mince words: I want the return of the file, for which I ae out of India”
”Mr Holmes, Mr Holmes, please, dear sir, you move too quickly”
As he talked, he lowered the shawl froain the cruel countenance that recorded so many evil deeds
”A most impressive jump into my rickshaw, Rastrakoff My co,” he said, ”with our training But we have more important matters before us First, let ain for the file It is already on its way to its intended destination It was of the ut to obtain it The deaths of Maxwell and Hamilton were unavoidable, for they entered the office unexpectedly in the evening after hours They interrupted me in my search I was able to hide when they entered, but then they began a long interminable conversation, punctuated by Maxwell's loud accusations I had little tiu at first to make the crime into one of murder and suicide I then found the file It hile I was seeking it that I thought of the grand opportunity that had been thrown my way The file, once I had it, was my triumph But if I could cause the Viceroy to think of this ainst Britain, then I would have caused even greater havoc a our enemies I decided then to ee”
”A foolish move,” said Holee victiled alive, Rastrakoff”
”Only one such as you would be aware of such niceties Your countrynorant of the people they rule It was only after I severed their heads that I decided the third part of nised you immediately upon your first visit to Maxwell I reversed the heads, added the word rastra to ed my initials so that they could be read in two different ways I knew that you would read the ather now that I have been completely successful The Viceroy has put all troops on the alert, arrested al-and all on the eve of the visit of Edward the Seventh, the so-called King-Emperor”
He stopped then and looked atevilly ”And finally, I shall rid the world of Sherlock Holh falsetto, and the quick action that followed aled forwards, a dagger in hand Holround, the point of the knife now grazing his chest He was unable to free himself Suddenly, he was covered by a shower of warm liquid that he at first took for his own blood He looked up, however, to see Rastrakoff's severed head hurtling through the air, and he knew that the blood that covered hiular One of the Gurkhas, aware of the situation and Hol speed had rid the world of one of its archfiends
Holmes's eyes were now ablaze as he recalled the perilous situation into which he had fallen I listened in ah he was before me he had related the last events with such realisht have been slain before me
”The rest, unfortunately, is history I reported immediately to the Viceroy that Rastrakoff was dead, that he could call off the eency, that the file was already on its way to its destination, and that we had failed to recover it When hostilities broke out between Russia and japan thereafter, we knew that the documents had been used for their evil purposes That short war, Watson, the first lost by a European power to an Asian one, will have untold repercussions for the white race as we move further into this century”
”What an incredible story, Holmes And to think that Maxwell and his brother were killed needlessly”
”Yes, Watson Though there was more to that part of the story, a part which had to wait untilwith you, Watson You will recall that I was disguised as an old book dealer e first met after my return?”
”Yes,” said I
”A few days before, I had journeyed to Yorkshi+re in the sauise, to find Rose Hamilton, the mother of James”
”Why on earth did you want to do that?” said I in great puzzleinald and James were not brothers I had exae of skeletal and craniological types had made me suspect that it was unlikely that they were related at all And in fact there was so in Hamilton's face that struck me There was a clear reseh there was a surface similarity that had struck his wife early on As soon as I returned to England, I went to Wyck Rissington in disguise, located the old Hume estate, the natal home of Lady Maxwell, and then found the house where Jarown up It was now an abandoned shack His mother had died several years before in an alcoholic fever Her place had been boarded up by a e so that it would not be easily vandalised I entered the hut one night, prying off the boards on a backI spent several hours looking through the woman's possessions There was a small metal box in one of the drawers of an old cabinet that had been hidden amidst her clothes Inside it was a s for An entry, dated 5 June 1865, read: ”My little son, to whoo His father is Jerenise him”
”Good lord,” I cried, ”Hamilton, then, was Lady Maxwell's half-brother!”
”Precisely, my dear Watson I had noticed the resemblance Hence her father's violent reaction when he found that an amorous relationshi+p had developed between the of her story that I initially became suspicious Hume, a man of position, could not admit either to his family or publicly that his liaison with the wench Rose Haeny Hence his violent outbursts and the actions that followed”
”And what of Maxwell's father, and the information conveyed to his son? Surely, Maxwell believed that Haht that this part of the case would be forever lost to us, since the last conversation between Maxwell and Hamilton was heard only by Rastrakoff Its contents had died with all of theain, however, my dear Watson, luck ith us, for another entry in Rose Hamilton's diary made it clear that after the death of his wife, Huin to visit her as well and to take solace in her arnise his son, or to support her, Rose Ha he was the boy's father Maxwell believed her, and secretly supported her and the child”
”Extraordinary,” said I
”Yes,” said Holmes, ”as I look back the story is perhaps unique in your annals One day you ht And what of Lady Maxwell?”
Holmes now looked out the istfully He was silent for a moment Then he said, ”I wonder, Watson I have often wondered”
THE CASE OF
HODGSON'S GHOST
IT WAS LATE IN MAY, 1894, THAT THE DEATH OF BRIAN Houghton Hodgson was announced in the London newspapers One of the great Oriental scholars of the century, Hodgson passed away quietly in his sleep at his hoe of ninety-four His life had spanned, therefore, all but the last few years of the nineteenth century
It was on seeing his obituary that I decided to put together these few notes fro Sherlock Holson had played a ular events that I have set down here, but it was only after Holland that he was to reat scholar of Buddhis influence on the intellectual life of Europe
Brian Hodgson was born in 1801 in Cheshi+re When he enty-one, he joined the Indian Civil Service and was first sent to Calcutta, where he held a junior post Within the first few months of his arrival, however, it became clear to his superiors that the clial were serious iht, and there was talk of sending him home He was sent instead first to Al appeared in Nepal, he was then transferred there with an appointment as assistant to the British Resident, Edward Gardner
In April, 1823, Hodgson left Almora for Katmandu The journey was a difficult one To reach the Nepalese capital, Hodgson had to brave the notorious jungles of the Tarai, where, in addition to the afflictions acquired in Bengal, he contracted one of the worst fevers of the globe, the aul, as it is known in those parts After his arrival, he spent the first three weeks ill with a high fever that kept hiely to the ministrations of Mrs Gardner and the salubrious clison rapidly becahly did his superiors regard him that Gardner, upon his retirement, recommended that he be appointed his successor The recoson, not yet thirty, attained the coveted position of British Resident to the Court of Nepal
Hodgson was to re that time he pursued a double career He was officially the Resident, representative of the East India Company to the Court of Nepal In this capacity, he became an intimate of the court and its rulers, in particular of General Bhimsen Thapa, hom he wielded considerable influence At the sa himself tirelessly in every aspect of the life of the Hies, custoan with a series of papers on the little-known religion of the Buddhists, which formed the basis of European research for many decades
It was in 1844, however, that his policies and conduct cah, then Governor-General of the Coson was recalled, and rather than take the ned froland, where he devoted his time to scientific research on Asiatic subjects
A short tiht late in June of 1894, to behis years of absence after the death of Moriarty I re fro the previous weeks, and those few evenings when he narrated his experiences granted him a brief respite from the black moods of depression that overwhelmed him
”You have mentioned on several occasions, Holmes, that you journeyed at one point to Katdom of Nepal, but it has never been clear to ed to enter the country at all”
Holmes smiled for the first time in many days
”There are few places, Watson, that affect one as much as Nepal One of our countrymen has written that it would take the pen of a Ruskin or the brush of a Monet to do it justice, and in those judgements I must concur The climate is salubrious, the people friendly and as handsome as the landscape They, however, suffer under the heel of a harsh and backward regih it is in the interest of the Empire to support the present Maharaja, there is no question that the people would throw off his tyrannical yoke were it not for the support and friendliness that Government finds it necessary to display in order to preserve our interests”
As he spoke, Holmes became more expansive, and I realised only then the affection in which he held his mountain friends
”As you may recall, Watson, frouise of a Scandinavian naturalist I changed my identity, however, when I was ready to leave, and journeyed frouised as a Tibetan lauage and had studied sufficiently the native Buddhist religion that, should I choose to, I could be convincing in my expositions of doctrine to the lay folk of the country and to the lamas as well, some of whom I had bested in debate on any number of philosophical subjects One day the Scandinavian explorer bade good-bye to his friends, and left Coincident with his departure a lama from Ladakh arrived in Lhasa”
Holmes then recalled that he had been befriended by a Nepalese trader long resident in Lhasa, and it ith his caravan that he made the difficult journey south The trader, a Newar of the Tuladhar caste, had lived in Tibet for many years His name was Gorashar and he dealt in cloth and a variety ofon occasion Russian weaponry Holmes met him purely by accident shortly after his arrival, and they soon became friends Gorashar returned home to Nepal every four years, and it was fortunate that one of his trips coincided with Holmes's Tibetan sojourn Gorashar warned him that he travelled at his own risk and that discovery in Katmandu would result in severe punish to bear the risk and that in any case his stay would be brief
The journey was difficult, more difficult than the one by which he had entered Tibet Fro the Tsangpo or Brahe boats of yak skin that the Tibetans have an the ascent to an altitude of fifteen thousand feet, a clis of all
”Many of the anio further,” he said, ”and we had to search for fresh replacements This caused endless delays We finally crossed the pass above Nyalae of Khasa where we spent the night On the followingThe following day we began our descent toward the kingdom of Dolakha, a few days walk fro froh filled with astounding sights, Tibet is by and large a barren land of great iht of the snowy heights of the Hih theins to appear as soon as one begins the descent
”To e, I was the first European to visit Dolakha, a forgotten kingdom of remarkable beauty, one even whose naan to recover fro that I had not known before in my life”
I smiled inwardly, for my friend rarely allowed hi of Nepal there was an exultant tone in his voice that I had not heard in a long tihts, for he said, rather sternly, ”Although I have often been a machine without emotion, I have chaffed a bit at it as well, for it is of course untrue in one sense I have emotions In that I am like all other men But they are completely in check and at the service of my brain In that I am perhaps like no other”