Sherlock Holmes and The Nine-Dragon Sigil

Chapter XII I Have Some Niggling Questions

An hour later Holmes and I lit up a couple of Trichinopoly cigars in the Temple’s pleasant gardens. A question was nagging at my mind.

I asked, ‘Holmes, can you explain why Li Lien-ying summoned me to examine the eunuch whose eardrum he’d just broken? Such an unremarkable event would otherwise never have come to my attention. If a crime is being committed, as you suppose, never before have the perpetrators notified us ahead of time that one is in train. If the Chief Eunuch hadn’t sent for me you would not now be looking with such suspicion on the damage to the Emperor’s ear.’

‘They needed to do so for one quite simple reason, Watson, to work out precisely the pressure required to shatter an eardrum without causing the victim’s immediate death. They called you in because they knew you had an otoscope with you. You confirmed Li’s cuff had shattered the tympanic membrane.’

Not for the first time my comrade’s explanation left me more bewildered than ever. Why would a band of regicides be so keen not to kill their Royal prey?

After a walk I returned to my quarters as evening fell and settled on a comfortable couch. The tense atmosphere prevalent in the Forbidden City was affecting me. I was keen to escape into the small collection of stories which accompanied me on my travels. I opened Clark Russell’s The Mystery of the Ocean Star with its breath of distant seas and the echo of surf murmuring on sandy beaches, an adventure my deceased wife Mary and I used to read together. In an instant the author would transport us to the sweltering climate of the Caribbean. I was able by now to murmur the opening paragraphs by heart.

‘There was a long swell from the westward, which came along in slopes of liquid violet, so polished that the glory of the sunshine slipped from one deeply-dark blue brow to another, as though indeed it were a substantial gushing of fiery gold sliding over the heads of rolling hills of glass...the whole length of the steamer The Guide had barely steamed out clear from one of the largest of the low clouds when the chief officer sighted a low sail four points on the port bow.’

‘...four points on the port bow,’ I murmured. ‘...four points on the port bow...’

My eyes were closing. ‘...on the port bow’ slipped from my lips for a further time. I fell asleep.

Suddenly I was in darkest Africa, machete in hand, hacking at vegetation in a jungle so dense I could barely make out the ground four feet in front of me. Beneath my feet maidenhair ferns grew out of the drenched black leaf-mould. At every step heavy drops of water fell from grey beards of lichen above my head. Exhaustion and panic were setting in. I knew I was hours from potable water and a degree of safety. A cow-herd of elephants with calves was dangerously near. I heard a terrifying trumpeting. They had picked up my scent. The ground shook like a cavalry charge at Waterloo. The machete disappeared, to be replaced by a Gew 98 bolt action Mauser. I fired blindly, shot after shot, the internal magazine somehow reloading itself, yet still the cow-herd came surging forward. The sturdy trees I hoped would provide protection transformed themselves into soaring bamboo ten yards high, bending like a crashing wave as the screaming pachyderms swept down on me. I threw myself to the earth, waiting for my doom.

Instead of rampaging elephants a most hideous creature burst out of the bamboo, bloated in appearance, purplish in colour. It ran at me simian-like on two legs and the knuckles of one hand. It was Stamford, the dresser from Barts Hospital many years ago. Blood seeped from mouth and nose. Only his left eye was sighted, the other socket empty, its eyeball dangling five inches below, still attached to the optic nerve. He hurled himself at me mouthing words in a strange language. In terror I turned the rifle on him, firing from the hip.

The rat-tat of the Mauser turned into a sharp knocking. A familiar voice said, ‘I hope I’m not inconveniencing you, Watson, but I have a question.’

Holmes was standing at the door dressed in his favourite purple dressing-gown, hands in pockets, smoking his pipe. I blinked over at my comrade. ‘What is it?’ I replied, grateful to be awoken from the nightmare.

‘We know General Yuán was given a tour of the Royal Pavilion. He then attended Hamlet on the Pavilion Pier - what else did he do after that?’

I struggled to a sitting position to think.

‘I imagine the chauffeur drove him to Sherborne School to visit his sons,’ I replied.

With growing exasperation, I went on, ‘But I assume you didn’t wake me...’, I peered at my pocket-watch, ‘...at two in the morning just to ask what Yuán...’

‘Didn’t I, Watson?’ came the amused reply. ‘Then you must still be wrestling with whatever apparition was alarming you in your sleep.’

His hand came forward holding a piece of paper with an encoded message.

‘Can you forsake bed and tales of the high seas and get an urgent request to Mycroft to supply us in detail what Yuán did after leaving the Pier and arriving at his sons’ school in Dorset? A vital clue could await us in that gap.’

Holmes halted at the door.

‘One last thing. You have observed the Great Ancestress in the open more than I. How often does she wear a beizi?’

‘I’ve seen her outdoors on three occasions. Each time she was wearing a yellow beizi.’

Holmes’s interrogation was not over.

‘Were the capes unadorned like the one the Emperor was wearing?’

‘No, not at all. Each was heavily embellished - coloured precious stones and pearls for peonies. Leaves of green jade. I can show you a photograph taken with my Lizars. In particular her official Imperial Yellow Gown is embroidered everywhere with gold dragons.’

‘Really, Watson, you excel yourself! I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt.’

‘Why are you so concerned about such an inconsequential matter as Court fashion?’

‘You know my methods, Watson! We’ve remarked before on the lack of adornment on the beizi she sent to the Emperor. Just that single embroidered patch. You’ve just confirmed she never wears a plain yellow overdress. If the beizi she sent the Emperor had been made for her own use, why wasn’t the larger part of the yellow plastered over with jewels and pearls and covered with embroidery and ribbon? Why just the single roundel on the back?’

Yet again my comrade’s ability for observation was proving as opaque as his reasoning. He continued, ‘She knew there were oilskins aboard if the air proved especially damp. So I ask myself, why did she press him to wear the beizi on the water?’

‘I must seem thick-headed to you, Holmes,’ I responded. ‘Evidently the body of facts we’ve accrued has conveyed a good deal more to you than it has to me yet I can’t say you’re getting anywhere.’

Holmes’s nostrils dilated with an animal lust for the chase.

‘Quite the opposite, Watson, I believe I can now say who sanctioned the attack. The question remains, can we prove it?’

‘Either I shall be proved right,’ he went on, ‘or to quote Hamlet - ‘It is a damned ghost that we have seen, And my imaginations are as foul, As Vulcan’s stithy’.’

I waved the piece of paper with the coded message. I made one last effort.

‘This information you seek about the General...I can see no earthly reason why he would have anything to do with an explosion perforating the Emperor’s ear.’

By now Holmes’s back was turned. As he left the room I called out, ‘I would trust Yuán as I trust myself.’

The door re-opened.

‘Would you indeed, Watson? I’ve said it before, there are some trees which grow to a certain height and suddenly develop an eccentricity. You see it in humans. What do you know of Yuán’s ancestry? Take our old enemy Colonel Moran. Eton College. The University of Oxford. A distinguished military career, an honourable soldier. No hint of the arch-criminal-to-be we confronted. Such a sudden turn to evil must stand for some strong influence which comes into the line of a man’s pedigree. Effectively each of us becomes the epitome of the history of our own family.’

This time the door almost closed before Holmes’s face reappeared for the second time.

‘There is one more point I’d like you to ponder.’

‘Which is?’

‘The patch of embroidery on the beizi was stitched with the elytra of jewel-beetles. It so happens I studied that beetle family before I studied Apis mellifera, the European honey bee. After months of investigation I discovered something unusual about the wing-cases. I wrote a monogram on the subject. The microscopic texture in the cuticle selectively reflects specific frequencies of light.’

The inflection in his voice put a special emphasis on his next words, ‘Especially in the ultra-violet spectrum’.

‘Reflects specific frequencies of light, do they, Holmes!’ I scoffed, reaching for my outdoor clothes. ‘I can’t imagine how I’ve managed to live a long life without knowing that.’

‘Especially in the ultra-violet spectrum,’ he repeated.

I stared at the page of letters and numbers. As I stepped out of the Temple I muttered aloud, ‘Specific frequencies of light, especially in the ultra-violet spectrum’. What on earth had ultra-violet got to do with the price of tea in China?

Holmes looked up expectantly as I entered.

‘Do we have a reply about the General’s movements after Brighton?’ he asked.

I replied, trying not to sound triumphal, ‘We do, but just as I thought, you’ll gain nothing by it. He simply went to his sons’ school. It’s near Sherborne Castle.’

The eyes took on a steely look.

‘The journey itself, Watson?’

‘I’m surprised that something so mundane seems so palpably to have gripped your imagination,’ I ventured defensively.

‘But nevertheless you have an answer?’

I shook my head, embarrassed.

‘Only that it’s about 160 miles from Brighton to Sherborne, but why you should...’

Holmes broke in angrily, ‘I asked for every detail. As yet you’ve failed to supply them. Get back at once to Mycroft. Find out who chauffeured Yuán. I want every detail of the route they took. Did they stop anywhere on the way? If so, where, for how long, and what took place?’

‘Really, Holmes,’ I responded. ‘You’re making a mountain out of a mole-hill.’ Sarcastically I asked, ‘Shall I find out whether it rained?’

‘Every detail, Watson! No matter how mundane.’

The amended reply with more detail was brought to my quarters the same evening. I decoded it and set off to inform Holmes. He was sitting in the subdued light of a lamp, eyes closed.

‘Ah hah!’ my comrade exclaimed, beckoning me in. The pipe pointed towards me like a single-shot Flobert pistol. ‘You have an answer already! Excellent. He left the Pavilion Pier...what then?’

‘Nothing of any special interest. I’m afraid you’ll find it disappointing,’ I replied. I was perversely pleased to be proved right. ‘At one point they diverted a few miles to Buckler’s Hard in the New Forest. Yuán wanted to see where England built the ships which destroyed Napoleon Bonaparte.’

I had myself visited this now-sleepy little village on the western bank of the Beaulieu River. Its sheltered waterfront situation and abundance of oak, beech and elm trees from the surrounding forest offered the perfect location to build large timber vessels. In 1805 three ships built from the New Forest’s vast tree trunks saw action at the Battle of Trafalgar - the Euryalus, the Swiftsure and Admiral Nelson’s favourite ship, the Agamemnon.

My comrade frowned.

‘Did they do anything, go anywhere else, except visit the old shipyards?’

I shook my head.

‘And no, it didn’t rain,’ I joked.

What an extraordinary genius my comrade had for minutiae, I reflected. It was not meant entirely as a compliment. Many were the occasions Holmes obliged me to recount in infinitesimal detail things that had not the faintest significance for any normal human-being.

‘I tell you Holmes,’ I began, ‘I can see it’s time we packed up and left for England. Really, you must abandon this absurd conspiracy theory. The whole thing - the crow blowing up on his shoulder - was an accident, a quirk. A jape at most. If there was malign intent, one thing is clear. The perpetrators could not have killed the Emperor or anyone else with that firework.’

Holmes pointed at an easy chair.

‘Sit down and make yourself comfortable, Watson’ he said in an emollient tone. ‘Let me present the facts as we know them, one by one. We agree someone released a crow with a firework strapped to its leg. As you note but cannot explain, instead of flying straight up into the sky the bird chose to fly across open water and settle on the Emperor’s shoulder. As though calculated to the second, the Exploding Bamboo did its stuff, namely it detonated, shattering the royal eardrum. We know the firecracker was charged with black powder, not gelignite. The explosive had just the right amount of power to shatter the Emperor’s eardrum but not his skull. We also know the Emperor was wearing a mantle sent as a gift that morning by the Empress Dowager with an apologetic note. It took the place of a feng ling.

We are in agreement on those facts. It’s at this point you and I branch away from each other. Take that beizi. You say the loan or gift of the cape was nothing more than a kindly gesture. I say together with ‘The Orchid Lady’s’ unexpected last-minute change of plan it was an essential component of a murderous plot.’

Sensing an opportunity to recover my money I issued the challenge for a further wager.

‘Are you up for another bet, Holmes? Plot you win. Prank you lose?’

‘Accepted,’ came the prompt reply. ‘To repeat, the facts are not in dispute between us. It is only the conclusions which differ. I deduce a consequence: a plot against the Son of Heaven is in train but not yet consummated. If I’m proved wrong I’ll give way and return your 1850 cash.’

‘So where do we go from here?’ I asked.

‘We must trigger more facts. No harm can come from getting the Emperor to take part in a little charade. Both you and he must indulge me a little. What’s your latest diagnosis of the Emperor’s eardrum?’

‘He should be well enough to go outside in a matter of days.’

‘Say by Friday?’

‘I would think by Friday, yes,’ I replied.

Holmes uncapped his fountain-pen and bent over a sheet of sermon paper. He began to sketch lightly like an artist painting silhouettes on ivory.

‘Who’s this for?’ I asked, looking over his shoulder at the page of logograms. ‘And what does it say?’

‘This message is to be delivered to your royal patient. As from the Hour of the Monkey this Friday, you recommend a return to his habit of resting in the orchard, but he must be sure to retain the bandaging exactly as it is.’

I was to send the chit to the Emperor via the eunuch ever at the ready outside our front door.

‘And the Hour of the Monkey is?’ I asked.

‘Between three and five in the afternoon. It’s when monkeys become very lively.’

‘But Holmes,’ I demurred, pointing at the door, ‘you know perfectly well the lad reports our every move direct to the Old Buddha herself. Within minutes she will be...’

‘...apprised of the note’s contents? Just so. Meantime I want you to get the Emperor’s faithful eunuch Kou to hot-foot it here as soon as darkness falls.’

Kou was to make it clear his master must lie in the orchard with the good ear upwards, the bandage covering it still.

‘No matter who approaches, the Son of Heaven is to lie as insensible as a French wax-work. Under no circumstances should your patient risk falling asleep without pressing a cotton wad into the damaged ear and putting that ear to the pillow. That way we shall leave nothing to chance.’

‘Ostensibly, Watson,’ Holmes continued, ‘you are summoning Kou here to pick up some wads of sterile cotton for his master’s ear. In reality you are about to instruct him in the gentle art of Aeroscope photography. Tomorrow please inform the Empress Dowager in person that the Emperor is recovering his strength and inching towards a full recovery. Emphasise the eardrum has still some way to go before it seals but improves by the day, and that you have advised a return to his customary outdoor rest starting this Friday.’

‘You insist a plot’s in train, Holmes,’ I replied. ‘Can you at least give me a clue - what rôle can an orchard play in an assassin’s thinking?’

With an infuriating ‘All in good time, Watson,’ my comrade turned away.

A Palace messenger handed me a package at the door of my quarters. It contained the copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles, returned in the clamshell box. The Emperor must have read it deep into the night. There were signs his already-poor sleep had become even more disturbed. Drops of wax from red candles had seeped into the pages.

Friday night arrived. Holmes and I sat waiting. A tap came on the door. An excited Kou Liancai slipped into the room with the Aeroscope carefully disguised as an ordinary box. The trusty servant had quickly grasped how to use the camera’s simple mechanism and clambered up the pipa tree, sufficiently hidden but with a direct view of his master at rest. Kou handed the camera to me together with the short wad of cotton from the Emperor’s good ear. The wad was saturated with a liquid. I placed it in a sterile glass tube for Holmes to examine.

The photographer-in-residence at the Peking Western Gentleman’s Club offered me his dark room, equipped with a small tank, Tabloid chemicals and running water. The sequences sprang to life - the Shishaquita afloat, British graves in the Russian cemetery, the pagoda designed by the Emperor Yung-lo. A panoramic view of the Summer Palace. And finally the orchard scene.

Whatever I had expected to see - if I had expected anything unusual at all - could not in my wildest imagination have lived up to the scene that met my eyes. I could barely restrain a shout of surprise and horror. My hands shook as over the next several hours I transferred the film frame by frame on to tough, flexible opaque cards for the Mutoscope.

Holmes was pacing up and down in his quarters when I returned in the early hours. I fitted the flicker-book into the Mutoscope and silently invited him to look. He turned the wheel to set the machine in motion. He watched the flickering images to the end and announced with an expression of grim satisfaction, ‘Well done, Watson. We’ve caught them with their trousers down. However, we need to pin down precisely which of them is the mastermind behind it.’

He pointed at the Mutoscope.

‘On this evidence alone, would a jury find the Empress Dowager or the General or Li - or all three - guilty of attempted murder as you and I charge them?’

‘Doesn’t the evidence speak for itself?’ I replied. ‘We have the film of those three creeping up to a sleeping man and one of them - Li - pouring a liquid into the Emperor’s ear. We expect that liquid to be...’

‘...a deadly poison, yes, but how will you prove the alleged culprits knew that?’

‘You know perfectly well, Holmes - we can take the cotton wad and test it.’

‘...and offer that as conclusive evidence?’ came the quick reply. ‘Unfortunately, Watson, it requires a definitive connection between the circumstance and the fact. For example, with fingerprint evidence, a jury must be able to make a connection between evidence that the accused handled some object linked to the crime and the commission of the crime itself. Or in our case, how do we prove the cotton wad is the wad from the Emperor’s ear? We cannot. The eunuch can only say he brought us a cotton wad the Emperor handed to him. When we received it, it was soaked with liquid, yes, but was it a toxin or merely sweat? We shall need an admission before we can link the crime to the criminal. My money is on the General. He is an ingenious and resourceful man - yet not sufficiently far-sighted since he has taken risks that could have been avoided.’

‘What about Kou?’ I asked. ‘Couldn’t he be of value before our mythical jury?’

‘And condemn him to a swift and terrible death? How many hours would you give the trusty servant to live if he admitted he hid with the camera in the pipa tree? Not for a moment must we underestimate the General. He will make every effort to exculpate himself. ‘Il faut être le plus malin.’ We must be the cleverest. We will need to counter Yuán on every point. Not just whether it was a poison but the origin of the toxin and particularly how it was obtained.’

As Holmes moved away from the Mutoscope he said, ‘I’ll collect my cash winnings in the morning, if you don’t mind. First we shall need Wang’s help, though I fear he has already become compromised enough for his own good.’

The voice lowered.

‘One more thing, my old friend. You and the General have developed a professional, even personal camaraderie. Quite shortly we are going to make a bitter enemy of him. If we are to preserve the Emperor’s life we must preserve our own. You as well as I may find our lives in danger. Avoid all solitary and unfrequented places, every by-alley. When we confront him - as soon we must - have your pistol on you. Don’t be afraid to use it.’

Again and again throughout the night the dramatic scene in the orchard ran through my mind. I awoke early and eschewing breakfast went straight to Holmes’s quarters. He was bent over an improvised chemical bench rigged from a recessed-leg table. The top was covered by beakers, reagent bottles, filter flasks and absorption tubes, presumably supplied by Wang who nodded a welcome at me from a seat nearby. Two Bunsen-burners were on the go, using a source of almost pure methane, one flame blue, the other yellow. Near at hand lay a small bunch of leaves, stalks and roots of plants and some fungi.

Holmes greeted me without looking up. His free hand gestured towards at a ceramic mortar and wood-and-porcelain pestle. Lying in the bowl was a shrivelled three-legged toad.

‘There’s a desiccated creature in the mortar, Watson. Can you grind it up as fine as possible?’

‘What’s this, Holmes?’ I exclaimed. ‘Surely you aren’t copying the Wayward Sisters in Shakespeare’s Macbeth? ‘Round about the cauldron go; In the poison’d entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone, Days and nights has thirty-one, Swelter’d venom sleeping got...’?’

‘We’re making a traditional preparation of the infamous bane gu,’ came the reply. ‘Gu or Jincan is a venom-based poison associated with cultures of south China, particularly Nanyue.’

The word Gu, he explained, was the ancient Chinese symbol for extreme pathological yin - the dark side of life, the worst nightmare of any human being. It represented darkness, rottenness, slithering vermin, poisonous snakes, betrayal, black magic, backstabbing murder and in medical terms, progressive organ decay accompanied by torturous pain and insanity.

My comrade looked up.

‘In other words, life in the Forbidden City. Wang here says gu is believed capable of inflicting death from a distance, and with excruciating slowness. The victim of these uncanny machinations appears to die from a chronic disease, soit’s a popular way to kill without exposing the attacker.’

‘But why this toad?’ I asked, picking up the grizzly specimen by one of the three legs. ‘Is it especially poisonous?’

‘It should be,’ came the amused reply. ‘Wang paid good money for it. It’s the survivor of a very nasty battle. Venomous snakes, scorpions, centipedes, spiders and that toad were imprisoned together inside a closed container. In the ensuing struggle each devours another or is devoured until the venom from all is concentrated into a single survivor. That animal is deemed the most venomous. The creature is killed, dried, and this one is now ready for you to grind into a powder for comparing with the assassins’ poison.’