Sherlock Holmes and The Nine-Dragon Sigil

Chapter XI We Search for Clues by the Lake

Dawn broke. My sleep had been fretful. Holmes said cocks in the Philippines crow just four times between sunset and sunrise. It seemed to me the cocks of Peking crowed all night. The Empress Dowager and the sages-in-ordinary were laboriously consulting their books for an auspicious day for our departure. They seemed in no hurry. General Yuán was no longer making himself as available to me as before, though he had thanked me profusely. He was, he told me, working carefully through my report with its multiplicity of recommendations and I would be well rewarded. Despite Holmes’s evident suspicions I saw no signs of a malevolent plot against the Son of Heaven nor, as General Yuán seemed to be implying, by the Emperor against his aunt.

I pulled a pipe from my pocket and stared reflectively into the empty bowl. For Holmes to compare incompetent assassins who couldn’t distinguish between blasting jelly or black powder with Professor Moriarty, the most cunning and destructive foe we had ever faced, was, well...at the least hyperbole of a high order, even risible. Before my comrade sent Moriarty plunging to his death at the Reichenbach Falls, the latter was dubbed by Holmes himself ‘the Napoleon of crime...organizer of half that is evil and nearly all that is undetected in this great city of London...A genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker... the controlling brain of the criminal underworld’.

Who here in the Purple City, I asked myself, could even remotely approximate a brain which might have made or marred the destiny of nations had not Holmes hurled him into the foaming waters of those waterfalls in distant Switzerland 16 years ago, a shattering event I recorded in The Final Problem?

The sun had hardly cleared the oxblood-red walls of the Forbidden City when Holmes arrived at my door equipped with a green, white and mauve umbrella. We exchanged good-mornings and set off to where the Shishaquita was moored. At the small dock there were no guards and no sign of anyone aboard. Holmes left the umbrella with me while he hurried up the gangplank. He returned a minute later holding up an oilskin cape which he swirled from back to front and front to back like a bullfighter’s cape.

‘This,’ he said, ‘is a feng ling. Compare this to the beizi the Emperor was wearing. What strikes you most?’

‘The material is very different,’ I replied. ‘This feng ling is a lot sturdier, but you’d expect that. It’s designed for heavy weather.’

‘Can you spot a further difference?’

I studied the garment.

‘I’m sorry, Holmes. I can’t. It’s also yellow like the other. What are you referring to?’

‘The hood. This has a hood. The Emperor’s beizi didn’t.’

‘And that’s important?’

‘I believe so, yes,’ came the cryptic reply.

He threw the oilskin back into the hold.

‘Let’s take a walk along the bank. I have an idea I’d like to explore. In the rustic days of your youth no doubt you dabbled in the fine art of poaching - committing offences against the Salmon Fisheries Acts?’

Poaching! Decades fell away at the word. During the long summer school holidays my mother placed me on small farms for an agreed weekly payment. Those halcyon summers were spent exploring hedgerows and streams, spotting Scottish Crossbills, breathing the air of a freedom experienced only in one’s youth, returning to the farmstead in time for a filling evening meal of soup and chunks of home-made bread followed by the sleep of the innocents. There, in the Cairngorm Mountains, on the banks of Shee Water, my angling started with a net, a willow wand, a bit of string, and a crooked pin, my catch lamprey, perch and the occasional sparling.

By the time I was twelve I graduated to larger game as an apprentice to a professional poacher. The two of us worked the river with a couple of dogs, as silent as Basenjis ourselves, slipping unseen through a copse at dusk or slithering along the river bank to a trout-filled pool.

My childhood adventures were now a set of snapshots in my memory - a cock-pheasant winging down from the branch of a beech to sun himself, the crex crex of corncrakes from the meadows, their presence betrayed only by their voice -waiting impatiently with Barry the Poacher to climb the high stone walls into the 6th Duke of G_____’s estate. Then up and over and away into the night, dogs, wires, gill nets, snares and the trusty old flintlock with the barrel filed down, soon crouched in reeds, knee-deep in water. Or lying full length in the grass next to a waterfall, slabbering dogs at our side.

‘See under that overhang?’ I could hear old Barry’s voice whispering. ‘There, in that hollow. Two salmon. Resting before their final effort to reach the spawning beds. The smaller one, he probably weighs just four or five pounds, but that other one, in the shadow. I reckon it’s twice as big.’

However intent we were on our quarry, it was imperative to keep eye and ear open for rustling in the undergrowth for the Estate gamekeeper, a careful and successful preserver of game and a fine shot.

Holmes’s voice cut into my reverie. He was peering intently around us.

‘Let’s say you were a poacher somewhere along here. There’s fish a-plenty in the waters. Where would you hide?’

I studied the river-bank. The drooping branches and interlacing roots of willow trees form the perfect hide on the edges of rivers and lakes.

I pointed.

‘Those willows,’ I replied.

At the very moment my finger fell back there was the faint flicker of a fishing line.

‘Holmes,’ I breathed. ‘There is someone there. May I recommend the method used for catching us poachers in my youth? Pounce fast from behind while shrieking like banshees!’

The old trick worked wonders. Within seconds our present quarry was wriggling in my hands like a trout, a barefoot lad in worn-out trousers. While Holmes questioned the boy, two fish gawped glassily back at me from the lad’s bucket. Finally my comrade said, ‘Watson, you can free our young poacher. The young man admits he comes here almost every day. He was here yesterday morning. He says he heard a dull thud, presumably the Mandarin cracker. He was too terrified to step out from the hide to investigate. The penalty for poaching the Emperor’s fish is immediate strangulation by the eunuchs, or at the very least the bastinado.’

‘Have you asked him if he knows why there were no guards at the dock yesterday to meet the Emperor?’ I enquired.

‘I’m about to,’ Holmes replied, settling himself companionably next to the shaking boy and speaking to him in Mandarin.

Few Chinese expect a foreigner to cope with their language. Our captive stared back at Holmes in amazement. His expressive face indicated ‘It’s almost as if this man is speaking Chinese, though of course it’s impossible...it must be a mirage’.

My comrade spoke in a ‘lingua franca’ Chinese, a Peking-inflected Mandarin. Not for the first time envy was tinged with overwhelming admiration for Holmes’s exceptional ability with tongues. In preparation for my trip I had obtained a copy of Jane Rowbotham Edkin’s Mandarin Phrase-Book & Vocabulary. The slightest alteration of tone or inflection completely changes the meaning of what appears to be precisely the same word, Mrs. Edkins explained. If you say tāng with a high tone it means soup. However, táng with a rising tone means sugar.

Among the clump of willows, the boy’s responses came in anxious rushes. He arrived before sun-up, as usual. He settled into this favourite place where his fishing tackle was normally impossible to spot. Today he had been careless or we would, he told us, never have spotted him. He knew the Emperor was due to go to the Temple the previous day because he saw the Palace guards waiting at the Paifang. To his surprise they formed a line and marched away. Yes, this was before the Emperor came. No, he didn’t know why they left. There was nobody else around. He had risked staying longer to fish because the barges which usually accompanied the Emperor across the water hadn’t turned up.

Holmes stood up. Our captive looked palpably relieved we weren’t going to tear off a limb for breakfast.

‘When I say there was nobody else around,’ the boy said suddenly, ‘I mean there were no Chinese, only a ‘Fan-qui’.’

I had already learnt the word Fan-qui. It was a not-especially complimentary term for a westerner. It originally meant a devil who’d assumed human shape.

The small captive gestured towards the Imperial quay. The Fan-qui had arrived on a steam-launch. He spoke a few words to the head of the guards.

‘That’s when the bannermen lined up and left,’ the boy told us.

‘And the Fan-qui?’ Holmes asked. ‘What happened to him?’

‘His steam-launch took him away.’

‘What did he look like, this foreigner?’

‘I couldn’t see his face,’ our captive replied. ‘He must have had a bad cold. He held a handkerchief over his nose and mouth all the time.’

Holmes asked, ‘How did you know he was a Fan-qui then? He was much too far away for you to hear him speaking.’

‘His clothes,’ came the reply. ‘He wasn’t wearing Chinese clothes. He wore a flat straw hat on his head like some foreigners wear. And his jacket.’

The boy’s finger drew invisible lines up and down.

‘He wore a jacket with blue and green and red stripes.’

At Holmes’s translation I blurted out, ‘How amazing! That’s identical to the outfit I suggested General Yuán should order from Lock’s.’

That night I reflected on the young Han’s words. My conversation on poaching with Holmes left me with a deep sense of nostalgia. I stared up at the ornate ceiling, reflecting on the mid summers of my youth, weeks mellow and immemorial, the hayfields awaiting the scythe, the grazing meadows alive with white bonneted girls and sunburnt boys with flowers in our caps, milk-pails waiting, silver white among the nettles.

Early on the morrow a sedan came to take me to the Emperor for his medical check-up. It took place in his claustrophobic secret room. Again my patient looked pleased to see me. The young eunuch brought us tea. To maintain the charade I changed the perfectly clean bandages on the good ear while inspecting the damaged one. I was keen to obtain an answer to Holmes’s peculiar question, ‘Does the Emperor have a private orchard?’

I began, ‘Your Highness, sunlight has a therapeutic value. Now the weather is favourable I recommend you take an occasional afternoon rest en plein air.’

‘Certainly. It was ever my practice.’

‘Do you have a favourite spot?’ I pursued. ‘Where you can be entirely private? For example an orchard?’

‘My favourite place is indeed in an orchard,’ came the reply.

He described how when he was a boy, exhausted from his studies of philology and philosophy, he fell asleep in a meadow approached through a dense grove of arbor-vitae. In a dream he fell in love with a beautiful woman. The red ribbon attached to her glittering headdress indicated she had met a violent death. When he awoke he was obsessed by her.

‘She was beautiful beyond belief. Whenever the burdens of the day overwhelm me, I return to the exact spot under a pipa tree to refresh myself in sleep.’

The Emperor loved the tree, now 30 feet tall, he told me, because of its sweet-scented flowers and red mulberry trees, and delicious fruit. Over the years the meadow had grown into his private orchard. With his own hands he planted cherry trees and maples and red mulberry trees, grouping them in colourful masses. At determined points he grew Chinese dates (Jujubes) from the seed of 1000-year-old wild trees in Shandong and Shaanxi, winter peaches, plums and pears from seed brought from the Yellow River valley.

‘Is anyone allowed to approach you among these trees?’ I asked.

‘Without my permission, no-one. Not even this eunuch, though...’

The Emperor’s glance went to the door.

‘...when I fall asleep my mouth drops open. Sometimes Her Imperial Majesty delights in approaching me quietly and popping a bonbon in my mouth for when I wake up.’

With a slight smile he added, ‘Perhaps her intention is for the sweet to stick to my mouth and prevent me from talking too much to the Reformers.’

In the evening I went in search of Holmes. He was sitting on the flight of steps leading from our Temple quarters. He greeted me perfunctorily, with the frown of someone deep in thought. After several minutes’ silence, I ventured,

‘It’s a pity the young poacher couldn’t be more helpful. He saw nothing of the attack on the Emperor.’

‘My dear chap,’ Holmes replied, ‘his description of the Fan-qui was helpful enough. Even if he’d observed who-ever set the crow loose on the Emperor, you know how unreliable such testimony can be. An eyewitness will swear under oath there were seven dacoits firing pistols when it was one man with a life-preserver. Many times around the dinner table you yourself tell how your batman Murray reported the bullet fired from a Jezail rifle at the Battle of Maiwand hit you in the right shoulder when everyone can deduce from your stiff left arm it struck you on the opposite side.’

After a moment staring at me thoughtfully, Holmes asked, ‘Can you go back over your encounter with Yuán at the Emperor’s Palace after the General and the Empress Dowager rushed in? You spoke with him,’ he prompted. ‘Remind me. What was the gist of the conversation?’

‘Nothing of any value to your case, Holmes, I can assure you,’ I replied. ‘At the end I told him neither you nor I regarded it as any sort of attempt on the Emperor’s life. Then the Empress Dowager beckoned Yuán to join her at the Emperor’s side and that was that.’

‘Good, Watson. Well recalled,’ Holmes responded. ‘But just before that - remind me again - Yuán said what to you...?’

‘He asked if I thought a plot of exceptional cunning could be developing. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘This is China’.’

The frown which had not left Holmes’s forehead deepened. I heard him repeat the words, ‘This is China...’

He jabbed the stem of his pipe towards me.

‘Is that all he said? Have you left anything out in the retelling?’

‘That’s all, Holmes,’ I replied, ‘except a joke he made.’

‘The General joked?’

‘After saying ‘This is China’, Yuán added, ‘If this is a plot there may be method in their madness’.’

‘‘Method’ and ‘madness’. Did the General himself use those words or are they yours?’ Holmes asked.

There was a sharp tone to his voice.

‘Those were his exact words.’

‘If this is a plot there may be method in their madness’, Holmes repeated, followed at once by ‘How deucedly, deucedly cunning’ and a further question: ‘Watson, when you were introduced to the General in London - together with Grey and Haldane - jog my memory, what did he plan to do after leaving the meeting?’

‘Busy himself around London for the afternoon, order telegraph equipment from Marconi. Poach a few professors from our universities. Buy an Englishman’s outfit from Lock’s - which we now know he must have done.’

‘After that?’

‘A trip to Brighton.’

‘To do what, do you recall?’ my comrade pursued.

‘Pay a visit to the Royal Pavilion.’

‘And?’

‘Go to see a Shakespeare play on the Palace Pier.’

‘Did he say which play?’

With my stomach rumbling for lack of food I responded with growing impatience.

‘Look, Holmes, no, he didn’t say. I doubt if he even cared. I doubt if he’d seen a Shakespeare play of any sort before. But for heaven’s sake why should it matter which play he...?’

Holmes broke in sharply, ‘The particular play may be worthless information or of extreme consequence. If the former, we can discard it. Before we meet for dinner, please get a message to Mycroft asking him to find out which Shakespeare performance was on offer on the Brighton Pavilion Pier that day.’

I stood up, impatient but long resigned to my companion’s persnickety methods.

Holmes called after me, ‘And Watson, the watchword is secrecy. Don’t use the Imperial Chinese Telegraphs. Telegraph the message via a British cruiser at Hongkong. The Imperial Chinese Telegraphs are the perquisite of a certain viceroy, General Yuán Shì-kai. Every communication between you and the British Legation in Peking for transmission to London is brought to him immediately. Make use of the Mexican Army wheel coder. You’ll find it in my rooms.’

In the morning the eunuch assigned to sleep outside our doors at night brought me a note. It was from Holmes: ‘If you could come to my quarters soonest I would appreciate it greatly.’

I knocked once and entered his room to find him pacing about in a fever of suppressed energy, biting his nails, tapping the furniture. He thrust a copy of the English-language North China Daily News into my hand. Despite the regional title, the banner headline showed it was published in Shanghai, a major East China Treaty Port.

The headline blared-

The dramatic words were followed by a remarkably close, albeit highly coloured description of the crow-attack on the Emperor, though the injury to the eardrum was not mentioned.

The piece ended ominously:

The address of the Sea Palace followed. Incongruously, the text was accompanied by an archive photograph of the Emperor smiling broadly.

‘Holmes,’ I exclaimed, ‘newspapers are under the strictest orders never to report any such attack, whether on the Empress Dowager or the Son of Heaven?’

‘It’s certainly mystifying,’ Holmes agreed. ‘No autocrat wants it known an assassination attempt has been made, pour éviter un effet indésirable.’

‘More to the point,’ I continued, ‘how did the news get to a newspaper in the first place - and in such detail - especially one which circulates mostly among the Modernists? Who in the Forbidden City would dare to contact the Editor of a Treaty Port newspaper? The Daily News offices are in Shanghai, Hankou, Tianjin and Harbin. Does this back up Yuán’s proposition that behind the plot lies the Emperor and his clique, the ti-tang?’

The sun was high in the sky when I returned to Holmes’s quarters. He pointed at the telegram in my hand.

‘You have news then?’

‘I have, Holmes,’ I replied. Pleased with myself, I added, ‘I have already decoded it using your machine. The Shakespeare play performed on the day of the General’s visit to Brighton was...’

Before I could reveal the title Holmes interrupted me with, ‘My friend, I believe you know something of waging bets?’

Over the years, to Holmes’s mild contempt, a penchant for betting on ‘the ponies’ had eaten up much of my Army discharge pension of 11 shillings and 6 pence a month.

‘If you mean we should have a bet on whether you can guess the name of the play Yuán saw on Brighton Pier,’ I answered, ‘I can offer you top hole odds. It’s a racing certainty you’ll lose. Shall we bet the sum you extracted from me in your masquerade as a fortune-teller - 50 cash?’

The grin on Holmes’s face should have made me wary.

‘And your odds?’ he asked.

‘How many plays did Shakespeare write?’ I asked.

‘Thirty-seven, I’m told,’ came the reply.

I plunged in.

‘As it’s like taking pocket-money from a child, Holmes, how about if I offer you 37 to 1.’

‘Done!’

‘And the title of the play?’

‘‘The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark’,’ came Holmes’s response.

Twin feelings of dismay and admiration surged through me. Pushing the telegram at him, I exclaimed, ‘You’re right! How did...’

‘As so often, Watson,’ Holmes responded, ‘it was you who gave me the clue. You reported verbatim the conversation you had with the General while the Old Buddha calculated the damage done to the Emperor’s ear. You remember his words, ‘If this is a plot there may be method in their madness’?’

‘I do, yes. What of it?’

‘Have you heard almost the same words anywhere before?’

‘There’s a familiarity about them but it slips my mind where I...’

‘Lord Polonius in Hamlet, Watson. ‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t’. Your General could only have picked up that phrase from attending a performance of Hamlet - nowhere else. And that had to be abroad. Under the Ch’ing any play involving regicide is forbidden under pain of an unpleasant death. The artful Yuán used the words to point the finger at the Emperor, yet in doing so he over-reached. He fingered himself instead.’

A hand stretched out towards me.

‘Now you must cross my palm with silver, Watson. Let’s see, 37 times 50 is 2,100 cash.’

I reached for my wallet.

‘1,850 cash, Holmes,’ I said. ‘Good try.’