The Travels of Sherlock Holmes, page 1
The Travels of Sherlock Holmes
John Hall
Copyright © John Hall 1997
The right of John Hall to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
First published in 1997 by Baker Street Studios.
This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
For Joy, with love
Table of Contents
Chapter One - Encounters in an East Wind
Chapter Two - Mr Sherlock Holmes Explains
Chapter Three - A Reichenbach Retrospective
Chapter Four – From the Journal of Lieutenant (later Major) Harold Dyce, of the Indian Army Cartographic Service, Darjeeling
Chapter Five - A Norwegian named Sigerson
Chapter Six - ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single step’
Chapter Seven - Into Tibet
Chapter Eight - Professor Moriarty
Chapter Nine - Again Professor Moriarty
Chapter Ten - ‘A most interesting man’
Chapter Eleven - Westward Ho!
Chapter Twelve - Igorov
Chapter Thirteen - ‘Call me Selim’
Chapter Fourteen – Mecca
Chapter Fifteen - Jeddah to Suakin
Chapter Sixteen – Khartoum
Chapter Seventeen - The journals of Dr John H Watson. A postscript
Author’s Note
Chapter One - Encounters in an East Wind
It is only to be expected that there have been many requests that I should give some account of the valuable, indeed invaluable, work which Mr Sherlock Holmes rendered his country in the recent dreadful war. It is true that there are a good many tales of those terrible years which I might share with my readers. But many of the episodes in which we were involved are so fantastic, and so very many of the memories are still so acutely painful to me, that it may well be some considerable time before I can accede fully to these requests.
By way of some slight compensation, I shall instead now lay before the public, ever eager for tidings of Holmes, however out-of-date those tidings may be, a story as fantastic as any of those which I must temporarily suppress, a story which has remained untold for some three decades. I myself was in ignorance of the true facts for two of those decades, and thereafter Holmes’s own prohibition prevented me from furnishing the public with any sort of account. Only now have circumstances which I shall not dwell upon made it possible for me to tell this story.
I am conscious that I cannot tell my tale as it should be told. I personally did not take any part in it, but heard it only gradually, at second or third hand, as you will see as we proceed. For that reason, I have adopted the same narrative style as in the very first story in which I had the privilege of introducing Mr Sherlock Holmes to his many admirers. That is to say, I have included those sections in which I myself had no part – and that is necessarily the greater portion of this tale – in almost the exact form in which I heard them or read them, with only such editing as is necessary for the sake of clarity.
However, this time I have not dignified my own small contributions by referring to them as part of my ‘reminiscences.’ That phrase was a literary conceit foisted upon me by editors, publishers and an over-enthusiastic literary agent. I have often regretted allowing myself to be persuaded as to the advisability of its use, for it has returned to haunt me, causing me many an embarrassing moment when complete strangers have accosted me on railway platforms, demanding to know where they could buy a copy of the Reminiscences, and expressing rank disbelief when I informed them that there is as yet no such work extant.
So far as I am concerned, then, the story began in those dark days in the midst of the Great War, the ‘War to end wars.’ That east wind of which Holmes had spoken in that fateful August of 1914 had blown, and blown with a ven-geance. And many of us had, as he had foretold, withered before its blast.
At the very start of the war, it had been my intention to volunteer for active service. One might be forgiven for thinking that so modest and laudable an ambition would be achieved without difficulty. However, I was soon to be made aware that it would not.
For over two weeks, I was shuffled from one impossibly young man to the next, asked to divulge every personal detail as to myself, my career, and my life in general, and given countless smudged forms to fill in, each identical to its predecessor, and each requiring me to answer an inord-inate number of irrelevant and impertinent questions.
I am usually a tolerant man – indeed, I take a slight pride in my Bohemianism of disposition. Still, there is a proverb about worms and turnings, and one afternoon, in an obscure office somewhere in Whitehall, as I was asked politely enough to sit down yet again and answer a few more questions, my patience came to an end.
I recall that I had taken a bottle of Beaune with my lunch – it was, even in those early days of the conflict, becoming somewhat difficult to find – and perhaps that had some effect, I cannot say.
I can say that, so far from sitting down quietly, I thumped the desk angrily. ‘No, sir,’ said I, ‘I will not sit down! Will you kindly tell me just one thing? How may I be of some small service to my country, Dr – Dr –’ and here I bethought me to glance at the name plate on the desk before me – ‘Dr Stamford?’
The young man cleared his throat in a nervous way, but before he could speak, a thought struck me, and I went on, in more measured tones, ‘I knew a Dr Stamford, many years ago. He was a dresser under me, at old Bart’s.’
The young man shot me a keen glance. ‘Why,’ said he, ‘that would have been my father!’ He riffled through the papers in front of him, consulted one of them, then said, ‘Dr John Watson? The writer? The Strand Dr Watson? The friend and colleague of Mr Sherlock Holmes? Sir, my father has spoken of you more times than I could say. Indeed, he’s dined out upon his acquaintance with you this past twenty years.’
It was then that I did sit down, shaken to my core, not by thus being recognized – something which I have perforce grown used to since I met Holmes – but by the full import of what he had just told me.
‘Young Stamford – I mean, your father, of course – he is well?’ was all that I could manage to stammer out.
‘He is, thank you, Dr Watson.’
‘I beg your pardon, Dr Stamford,’ I said in a more civil tone than I had been using up until then. ‘I fear I have been wasting a good deal of time. Both my own, which is not worth very much, and yours, which is. I see that, although wars are started by foolish old men, they must be fought by clever young ones. Would to God that it were the other way round!’
‘You see, sir,’ said he earnestly, with an evident desire to be helpful, ‘the trouble lies in your insistence on this phrase “active service”. If I may speak plainly?’
‘Please do.’
‘For the moment, at any rate, we are looking for men much younger than yourself for what we might term the rough and tumble work. Naturally enough, we rather hesitate to say as much outright to so distinguished a colleague as yourself, particularly when you have been one of the first to volunteer.’
‘I quite understand. I shall not embarrass you further. My compliments to your father, when next you see him.’ I rose to go, a good deal more shaken than I would have cared to admit.
Stamford waved me back to my chair. ‘If I might venture on a suggestion which may appeal to your patriotic desire to be of use?’
‘By all means.’
‘The general mobilization does mean that there are a good many recruits who must undergo a preliminary medical examination before they are assigned to their regiments. And as most of the young – ah, that is, less experienced – medical men are required, or will be required, elsewhere, it would be most helpful if an extremely experienced doctor such as yourself might be called upon –’
‘Please do not say any more,’ I told him. ‘Just tell me when and where I am needed.’
Young Stamford – young, indeed! – rose, and held out his hand, the relief patent in his face. ‘It is extremely good of you, Dr Watson,’ said he.
A couple of days later, I received my instructions, and soon after there commenced one of the most painful episodes of my career.
I have seen dreadful wounds at the battle of Maiwand in Afghanistan. I have viewed some of the victims of that maniac of the East End who styled himself the ‘Ripper’, in the company of Holmes, whose advice on the case might have cleared up the matter at once, had it been heeded by the arrogant Sir Charles Warren. So it will be understood that I am not exactly squeamish.
I may perhaps be believed, then, when I assert that the only comparison that comes to mind, when thinking of the pitiful selection of humanity which paraded before me and the other members of the various medical boards at that time, is the sorry array on the marble slabs in the dissecting room.
Concave of chest and flat of foot, deformed with rickets, and worse, the men whom we expected to fight for us – and die for us – would scarcely have been fitted to do anything more taxing than run a whelk stall at some very unfrequented seaside resort. Summoned from slums little different from the rookeries of Dickens in order to fight for a country that had at last remembered their existence, they blinked at the daylight with watery, myopic eyes, like something discovered on turning over a flat stone.
It was a disgrace to a land which has been called ‘Mother of the Free’, and the sole consolation is that the warmon
But I fear I digress. A week of this work fairly broke my spirit, and I contacted young Stamford once more. I suspect that he was by now thoroughly sick of the sight of me, but he hid it well enough, and once I had explained to him how matters stood, he promised to move me to more congenial work.
He was as good as his word. A fortnight after my interview with him, I was moved to a convalescent hospital in Surrey. It had originally been a manor house, but the owner had died, or gone off to the front, or turned it over to the War Office in public-spirited fashion, I never knew exactly. It was set in a large and well-maintained park, and at no great distance from a pretty little village.
The surroundings were delightful, then, and the other members of the medical staff, men of around my own age, were for the most part excellent companions. The nurses, too, mainly attractive young women from good families, lent a good deal of charm to the place, although naturally enough they mostly had eyes for the patients rather than the superannuated doctors such as myself.
These patients were mostly surgical cases sent to us not for any immediate or urgent treatment, which they had already received, but for rest and quiet before being returned to action, or – with dreadful frequency – being discharged, useless for further duty, into civilian life, of whatever sort it might chance to be for the unfortunate fellows. We saw one or two cases of ‘neurasthenia’ or ‘shell shock’, as the current argot had it, poor devils whose minds had been pushed beyond human endurance, though most of these cases went for special treatment elsewhere.
Sometimes we had more acute cases on our hands. Although the majority of our patients had undergone surgery before ever they reached the place, and been passed as ready for the convalescence for which they came to us, yet there were nevertheless relatively minor infections, which should not and would not have bothered a healthy constitution, but which met with little resistance from weakened men. And there were occasional cases of a wound, too hastily treated in the heat of battle, turning septic, so that we had our occasional losses, though, thank God, these were few and far between.
One such sad case was a Major Harold Dyce, who had sustained some dreadful injuries in some unsung act of bravery. By rights, he should hardly have come to us in his weakened state, but we did our best, and were reasonably optimistic that he might make a full recovery, when, as ill-luck would have it, one of those secondary infections which I have mentioned set in, and thereafter his decline was a rapid one.
The custom of the place was for one of the doctors to be on call at night, in case of emergency, and on one of my own duty nights, the sister in charge called me to Dyce’s room – he was ill enough to have been put on his own – saying she thought he had not long to live.
I saw at once that she was right, and since there were no other patients who seemed likely to need my attention that night, I told the sister that I would stay and give Dyce what comfort I might, and she accordingly returned to her own station.
There was, indeed, little that needed to be done. Dyce was sleeping, a sleep that would, I was certain, merge imperceptibly into that greater sleep that awaits us all, and I decided to doze while I might, for I could be reached there as well as anywhere, if anything more pressing intervened.
Towards three in the morning, when the line between life and death is at its thinnest, I woke to find Dyce also awake, and trying to speak.
Thinking that he might have some last words for his family, I bent over him trying to hear what he said.
‘Who’s that?’ said he, seeing me bend over him.
‘It’s Dr Watson. Try to rest.’
‘Watson?’ He smiled, with an obvious effort. ‘Good old Watson!’
‘That’s right,’ said I. ‘Good old Watson. Try –’
‘He used to say that.’
‘Who?’ I asked, humouring him in the best medical tradition, but suspecting it was nothing more than the final stages of delirium.
‘Why, Mr Sherlock Holmes, of course.’
I was astounded, for I had never heard him speak of Holmes before. ‘Holmes?’ said I, forgetting for the moment that he was my patient. ‘Do you know Holmes, then?’
‘I did, in Tibet, and Persia,’ said Dyce.
‘Why, in that case, I am indeed “Good old Watson,” ’ said I, ‘for I have been Holmes’s friend for many years, and in fact I wrote accounts of many of his cases.’
‘For the Strand?’ said Dyce, his breath coming in great gulps now.
‘Yes,’ said I, fearful now that even this slight exertion had overtaxed his feeble strength. ‘Now, you must try to rest, and we’ll talk about it all later.’
By way of an answer, he waved to the little table by his side, where his few meagre possessions were stacked. ‘Case,’ said he, speaking with great difficulty.
I picked up an old leather attaché case from the table. ‘This?’
‘Open – open it.’
I did so, and took out a squat octavo notebook bound in faded green leather.
‘Want – you – to have it.’
‘But your family –’ I began.
‘No – family. Want – you –’ and he never said more in this world.
I did what was necessary – God knows, there were funerals enough in those days for us all to have become proficient in their arrangement – and then I made some enquiries into Dyce’s background before I thought of embarking on an examination of the book he had summarily bequeathed to me. I found that, as he had said, there was no record of any next of kin, and further investigation showed that the bulk of the friends he had made in his regiment had perished in the early days of the fighting.
By the time I had established all this, I had half forgotten about the book, which I had placed at the back of a drawer. And, for some time, my own work, which had increased somewhat as the war progressed, prevented me from looking at the book. So it was not until some considerable time after Dyce’s death that I actually found time to sit down and begin to take a preliminary glance through it.
That preliminary glance, which was all I had originally intended to give the book, was sufficient to rivet my attention. I sat far longer than I had planned, into the small hours of the morning, reading almost half the book without a pause. The first few pages were disjointed notes, the journal of a man on active service as it seemed, but then followed a second, much longer section, which was evidently an attempt to make a cohesive narrative from the earlier notes. I read on and on, unable to break off from my task, until dawn found me with a thick head, and a sense partly of anger, and wholly of astonishment.
At that time I was, as one might imagine, seeing very little of Holmes. My own work kept me at the hospital, while Holmes was away, Heaven alone knew where, on one or more of those mysterious errands which I had grown to know so well in the course of my friendship with him. The times being as they were, it was scarcely to be expected that he would write with news of his whereabouts or his doings. I did attempt to contact his brother, by this time Sir Mycroft Holmes, GCB, GCMG, KCSI, etc., but was unable to reach that great and exceedingly busy man, who was, I felt sure, overseeing the waging of the war pretty much on his own.
A year or so went by, during the course of which I was obliged to put the matter of Dyce’s journal, with its queer tale, to the back of my mind. And, once there, it faded gradually from my thoughts, as matters which are not of immediate moment have a habit of doing. Still, I frequently recalled it to mind, when thoughts of the old days returned unbidden, or someone said something to remind me of my time in Baker Street, and more than once I retrieved the journal, and read through it with the same amazement as I had felt on that first occasion.
Time rolled inexorably on. I was due some leave, and as things were fairly quiet at the hospital just then, the war having settled down into a kind of stalemate in the mud of Flanders, I had no compunction about taking it.
I went up to London, putting up at a private hotel in the Strand, just as I had done thirty years or more before, though now I was somewhat less concerned about the weekly charges than I had been in those early days.
