Part 7 (2/2)
In a short time, the sun came out from behind the clouds and the sky cleared Holh whose identity he had becoe only when he had crossed the border into India
On the evening before he was about to leave, however, he found a note addressed to hi froh the offices of the Maharajah Deb Shauru of Nepal of your presence here in the Valley I understand that you are perforical tasks for Grierson I would like very e of the country and its history Ithe ancient inscriptions of the Valley, and if you have corateful for your inforuest of the Maharajah and auest house at Thapathali If I do not hear otherwise, I shall call on you touished sentiments, (Prof) Sylvain Levi Holmes received the note too late to infor at seven he found myself unavoidably at tea with the learned French savant Levi was, according to Hol fellow, very ifts In his late thirties only, he had already published learned articles on Indian history and religion He proudly presented him with copies of two of his works, La Notion du Sacrifice dans les Brahmanas, and Le Theatre Indien, neither of which particularly took Holood professor In turn, Hol and translations of the Sanskrit inscriptions he had found in the Valley, including the one at Changu He no longer had any use for the the latter, he remarked, ”I have no need of this one I already have it-andback and forth, his hands together behind his back, a slight smile on his lips as he recalled the tale that he continued to narrate to entdisdain for the local population that made his presence at that overnment and its officials, and the priests of the country, especially those at the teations
”These ignorant priests have tried to thwart reatest desire has been to read the pillar inscription of King Manadeva that stands in front of the tereat kings of antiquity, but little is known of him As you may know, there is a portion of the inscription that lies below the surface, buried and unread for centuries I tried in a friendly way to convince the priests that I be able to excavate and read the inscription in its entirety They refused They would not even allow n barbarian I would desecrate and pollute it Sacre bleu! Can you believe in such ignorant superstition? I finally convinced the Maharajah of the importance ofit up The priests were furious, but there was nothing they could do In a few hours, I had a co the buried portion It is loith a sense of victory, and Holmes remarked that he was very fortunate to have arrived at the time that there was such a maharajah as this one But Levi scoffed and said that anyone would have helped hi that he was the best of European Sanscritists
”'And I have still not been allowed into the temple compound to study its treasures The family jewels of Manadeva are reportedly there, hidden somewhere But I shall find a way Ah, ces pretres”
Holentleman He stood up, extended his hand, and bade him adieu Levi took his leave, and Holmes went about his affairs, his departure now delayed by a day He spent the rest of the afternoon with his friend Gorashar, who had promised that he would accompany him to Bhimphedi, the last post in the hills before one descends to the Tarai and the plains of India
”It was early the following , as I prepared to depart, that I received an unexpected visitor Lakshhts of stairs to er fro a note hier to alia of His Majesty's Royal Guard”
The soldier handed Holmes an envelope that bore the official seal of the Maharajah, Deb Sha Bahadur Rana The note was short and ritten in what he took to be the Maharajah's own hand: M Sylvain Levi, the French scholar, has disappeared without a trace He left his quarters late yesterday afternoon and has not been seen since Please come at once since I believe that youhier told Holmes that he was ordered to accompany hiain, he found myself on another, most unexpected adventure
The trip froe to Thapathali, the Maharajah's residence, was normally of very short duration, but this tiain that , and the roads of Kat ates of the palace and rode through the front gardens to the veranda
The Maharajah Deb Sha, surrounded by servants and umbrellas to protect hie stopped he ju Holmes inside
It was Holmes's first taste of this kind of Oriental splendor, and he found ithall filled with the luxuries of every country of Europe, then through a room that marked the love of the hunt, the shi+kar of the Ranas The rereat beasts of the southern jungles, were everywhere They passed from there into a small room, which Holmes assumed to be the Maharajah's own study
”'I knoho you are, Mr Holmes, and that is why I summoned you Your secret is safe with us, however”
Holmes was taken aback at first by his statement, but he realised that it would have been foolish of him to think that he could ents had probably overheard his name at the Residence
”I believe that it is indeed time for me to leave Nepal,” he said
Holmes watched him closely to see the effect of my answer He was a small dark man, but with an enormous head upon which played a roundish face that had ence in it than the cruelty usually associated with his kinsmen His eyes narrowed as he spoke
”You are, as usual, correct It is indeed time for your departure,” said he, ”and I will see that you are aided on your journey It is probable by now that some of your worst enemies know of your survival, and so I deem it best that you leave But you will always be welcome here We are indebted to you for your service to us in the recent ave to us in ridding our country of a number of unwanted pests There is noever, the rather delicate proble Frenchents have failed to locate him, and therefore Iyour departure once again His disappearance is an embarrassment in itself, but even more so because the French ambassador to India, Monsieur Bertrand, is due to arrive in Katmandu tomorroith Prince Henri of Orleans, on an inition of our independence by France is one of oals, Mr Holmes, and I can hardly tell the Prince and his areatest Sanscrit scholar of France is unaccounted for”
Holents had been able to unearth
”What ents have uncovered, Mr Holmes,” replied the Maharajah, ”is that after his return from his visit to you yesterday, Monsieur Levi lunched with his wife here at uest house Madame Levi then retired for an afternoon nap When she awoke, she found that her husband was not there She questioned the servants, who said that he had left alone at about three This was in no way unusual, for she was used to his habits of work, which left her to her own devices for the better part of the day 'Mon pauvre mari travaille toujours,' she had said to htfall, when he had not returned That is when she notified ents learned that he travelled by rickshaw to the great Buddhist shrine at Bodhnath, where he was observed transcribing Tibetan inscriptions He wore, as he has regularly since his arrival, local attire, including the Nepalese black cap, or topi He was last seen before dusk leaving Bodhnath on foot through the great southern gate”
”'What chances are there that he was abducted to ehness?” asked Holmes
”'This is always possible, of course, but we should have been made aware of this by now by his abductors I doubt this, therefore My men have entered every house at Bodhnath As you know, the inhabitants there are almost all poor peaceful Tibetans and would have little reason to har unexpected has happened that has put him beyond my spies Mr Holmes, we must find him I can assure you that in this you will have my every assistance You may have as many of my men as you need”
”I shall do my best,” he said, ”but I shall work alone I should like, however, to visit Madauest house, where he found Levi's wife staring mournfully out theAs he entered with the Maharajah, she began to weep She was not a pretty woman, but one of rather coarse features and of a kind of stoutness that one associates with French peasant stock It was clear as soon as one saw her eyes, red and swollen fro to do with her husband's disappearance Because her English was poor, they spoke in French She said that she knew no more than what she had told the Maharajah, that her husband returned from his visit with Pandit Kaul, mentioned to her that he had much work left before their departure, and after lunch retired to his desk to work, where he hen she retired to take her afternoon rest
Holmes then asked her per before he left There were no notes to his wife of any kind, no one But he had indicated to Holmes in their conversation that he was still preoccupied with Changu, its treasury, and its pillar inscription As Holmes looked at his work, however, he noticed that he had placed a large exclamation point next to a line in the inscription, a line that he remembered, and a question mark next to one that he had not seen before, one which must have been found in the excavated portion of the pillar It seemed that he had most emphatically understood the first, but not the second
Hol you, Watson, for the words here are important to the solution The line with Levi's exclamatory mark read in Sanscrit in part:raja udyanaatah
These wordswent to the other world as if he had gone to the pleasure garden”
”How odd,” I said, not a little confused, but aue mellifluously
”But the line questioned by Levi,” he continued, ”read: ahsevinahsenagartihb ahsevarpunhsivrihab ”Its ? Well, my dear Watson, I was for the moment baffled It less series of syllables So supple and flexible is Sanscrit, however, that, with enough tiht be possible In any case, I surmised that Levi had seen a connection between the two lines and that he had gone to Changu to investigate I also reeneral truth that had beco there was si from the complexity as well as the speed of Holmes's account That part of it was in Sanscrit did not reassure
”I a was apparently o, and a French scholar has disappeared before your eyes Yet somehow their fates are intertwined And somehow the fate of both men is buried in some difficult lines of an inscription in Sanscrit”
”Excellent, Watson, excellent You have seen through to the crux In the first line, Levi had seen so that no previous co merely died of natural causes, and it means only that he died as if he had been at play, at perhaps some wanton sport,” I ventured
”And that is the way it was often construed in Nepal But Dharon of virtue, probably incapable of the kind of vice that would do hie about the words, I thought, as if through their very strangeness the poet were pointing to so unusual Perhaps there was a clue to his death in this phrase, perhaps a pun, a dualAll of this, however, I retraced in my mind when I saw the wordsthat I had not? As to the other line, he had not deciphered it, nor could I!”
And yet, the inscription and his notes to it were the only clues Holmes had He took the paper with his notes from his desk, folded it and put it in his pocket for further study
”I should say here, Watson, that I had in that piece of paper all that I needed to locate Levi, but I had not seen through to the end Without knohere it would lead, I decided to go to Changu, follohat in ht have been Levi's footsteps Reassuring the frightened Madauest house and walked directly north, taking a path that led ar”
By now the heavy rains had subsided, and the sky began to clear In his mind's eye, Hol He also reviewed his words, recalling particularly those concerned with the jewels of the ancient Nepalese kings Perhaps greed, coupled with his outspoken contempt for the teerous, position Had he found the great treasure house that he hadseveral streams, Holmes arrived at the Buddhist site of Bodhnath, his first place of inquiry Here he questioned soner They said that indeed they had, that he was dressed in Nepalese clothes, and that he alking east along the main road when they last saw him This corroborated the Maharajah's information and extended it a bit Holmes was overjoyed, for he knew that his decision to proceed to Changu was the correct one
By now, it was close to sunset, and he quickened his pace The road entered the Gokarna Forest, which was strangely eht flickered from the hearth of several sed into darkness before reached his destination He pushed on, confident now that if he were to find Levi, he would find hiu
Just after a sharp turn in the main road, where it continues north to the sht This path, if memory served, led directly to the Manohara River and eventually to the Changu temple He clie All was dark, and the village appeared as if suddenly deserted
When he reached the river, Holmes could see across it to the hill atop which the tereatly swollen by the rains, and it was only with a great deal of effort that he hly unpleasant, for it was filled with all sorts of debris brought down fros of all sizes and shapes, of all consistencies, touched and flowed into hiered across and, without stopping even for a breath, began the steep ascent to the teht, Hole nuries he had passed through were dark and deserted for a reason: their inhabitants were on their way to Changu with everyone who lived nearby So of importance was about to transpire
In the darkness, Holmes fortunately passed unnoticed Once at the top of the hill, he worked hied around the temple The priests, in white robes, their heads newly shaven, were leading a chant that he recognised at once as an ancient funeral hymn Indeed, a cremation pyre had been prepared in the front of the temple The priests, three in nu to view the golden iu Narayan hiy of aat first look in its likeness to a huure, but one that was clearly a ht to the priests, who chanted over it in Sanscrit for a number of minutes Then it was placed in a supine position on the pyre, its hands crossed as if in prayer It was only when the figure was lying down that Holmes noticed that it wore on its face a pair of European spectacles, very much like those that the French savant had worn to theirIt was the first clue he had upon his arrival, one which rew silent at thisto miss even the san a slow, steady rhythm, and the priests continued their chant Then, one of the ure to the pyre stepped forwards and, walking over to the head, s the spectacles, with a rock Then, taking a torch froure went up in fla at all was left
Having watched the fire devour its victiht Holmes remained behind, crouched in the dark behind a wooden door fro the idol of Changu back in its sacred location, closed the inner sanctu a few rupees to the y, they each left by a different gate The es, also quickly dispersed, and Holrounds
Very ht have lost the track to Levi The ritual he had just watched was disquieting, for it was an unusual one, obviouslya death, and, if his suspicions were correct, the death so ht, almost overhead now, and he could see clearly There was almost no sound, except for the bats that flew everywhere, hovering constantly near his head
As he debated his next move, he suddenly heard soft footsteps and the sound of voices from behind the temple He moved slowly in the dark to where he could see to the other side There in the dark hetowards the pyre The wo in her arered slowly forwards He was assisted by a half-naked boy, the one who the pillar He could see fro with thefro come to the front of the temple, the man sat on one of the te a child Handing it to her coh the still burning eed between them, and occasionally a soft cry canised them all now,” said Holmes ”These were, I had come to know from my previous visits, a fae to live Forced to subsist at the ins of Hindoo civilisation, they were also known by the Sanscrit terht,” those who appeared in the evening and disappeared at dawn, perforned tasks all but unseen and unheard in the half light of ood fortune, he thought, for these people wellwhat had happened to Levi If his calculations were correct, Levi had arrived in the vicinity of the temple just at sunset the day before A bit of luck and they would have seen him
”When she had finished her task, the woman took the few pice (rupees) that she had found a the child oncethe teate I followed them quietly When they had proceeded about fifty yards down the slope, I overtook thehly as to harround So surprised were they that they both let out a cry, which I was able to cut short by a quick reassurance that I rabbed him by the arm, and he stopped”
”They spoke in an archaic forue,” said Holmes, ”filled with those pathetic forreat fear that the illiterate outcasts have for their literate superiors In a short time, however, they were sufficiently reassured by my repeated words that I meant them no harm that they were able to devote some of their attention to my inquiries I also had placed several silver coins in their hands, , and this too had the needed cal effect