Sherlock Holmes and The Nine-Dragon Sigil

Chapter XV Holmes Unfolds the Last Piece of the Jigsaw

Our train halted for lunch conveniently by a wayside tavern. The dish of roe deer was accompanied by small root vegetables, bamboo shoots, lily, Chinese yam, and mountain pears. Over a dessert Holmes mused, ‘You may have noted over the years I’m not a whole-souled admirer of womankind but I must at least modify that statement. It’s no longer entirely true.’

‘Might you be referring to the E-D by any chance?’ I asked impishly.

He nodded.

‘She has many of the pleasing traits of the Manchu,’ Holmes continued, ‘yet if you become virtual ruler of the Middle Kingdom at the age of twenty-four how should you learn to put away the hideous barbarities of the Forbidden City’s ways? She was trained early in life in the traditions of a court where human life counts for little.’

For a long while I sat in silence, my spirit troubled. Finally, a sigh burst from me. It caught my comrade’s attention.

‘My dear fellow,’ he exclaimed, ‘you’re not nostalgic already for the open sewers of the Purple City...’

‘Not in the slightest, Holmes,’ I answered brusquely. ‘I’m troubled because we suffered a defeat. We return to England and the Emperor may die at any time. What do we tell Sir Edward Grey? And Haldane? That we abandoned the Emperor to the kindness of the E-D’s heart, the woman whose pitiless and brutal capacities you have just described so well?’

I reiterated emphatically, ‘Failed. Utterly. Sir Edward asked you to ensure the Emperor survives two years at least, until matters between us and a certain lunatic in Berlin become clearer, or the Empress Cixi herself passes away.’

I pointed back towards the Forbidden City.

‘Yet here we are, running away, tails between our legs. By now the Mutoscope cards are smoke, the Aeroscope dashed to pieces. We have abandoned the Emperor to a desperate end, conceivably within days, at most weeks of our departure.’

My companion’s eyebrows lifted an eloquent half-inch. He perused me without the slightest expression of dismay. With what struck me as unseemly playfulness he said, ‘Failed, Watson? Nonsense. Did I forget to tell you about my arrangements with General Yuán?’

Holmes rose to put his head out of the window, pulling it back with ‘Well, I think we’re near enough out of the Old Buddha’s control. Would you like to know what we agreed?’

‘My good friend,’ I answered, between gritted teeth, ‘how very clever of you to divine my curiosity! Are you sure you aren’t a Consulting Detective?’

Holmes replenished the tobacco in his briar.

‘Settle back in your seat. Comfortable, aren’t they! These carriages are made in Birmingham, you know.’

He pointed at the floor.

‘There’s a brass plate saying so...’

‘Holmes!’ I yelped, pencil at the ready. ‘Do get on with it!’

At which the last piece of the jigsaw was unfolded. Even now I consider it the gravest risk Europe’s most famous Consulting Detective took in his long and near-flawless career.

‘Above all,’ he began, ‘I had to obtain the Great Ancestress’s word of honour. You know how much weight she places on propitiating the Great Ancestors. I told the General in no uncertain terms the E-D must give her solemn word on the souls of those very ancestors. Not one hair of the Emperor’s head should be hurt for a period of at least two years.’

‘And you would take her at this word of hers?’ I exclaimed, aghast. ‘Her word alone?’

He chuckled.

‘Her word alone, no. I said I would require her signature on an Imperial Decree. It was to be written in the official manner, on special Imperial yellow paper, the text written in her own hand in Manchu, Chinese and Mongol, and signed in vermilion ink from cinnabar in the same manner as the Emperor.’

He retired the briar to a pocket in his Poshteen Long Coat and took out a cigarette.

‘I mention vermilion ink for a reason. You see, she places a great deal of importance on Imperial Decrees, except Wang told me she has a very cunning trick when she doesn’t want a particular Decree to retain its force. She signs with pencil which can fade within weeks.’

Dismayed by his complacency I demanded, ‘Why would so powerful a ruler bother to obey? She would consider your stipulation utter insolence.’

He leaned back and blew little wavering rings of smoke.

‘You ask what will make an Empress Dowager stick to her promise? In a word, mockery, Watson. An ounce of derision is worth a dozen broadsides from a Dreadnought’s guns. It’s true there’s no way the Empress Dowager and General Yuán can be overthrown while every man in China fears them but they would fall in a trice if four hundred million citizens mock them. Mockery is a weapon of such power not even the most intractable dictator can withstand it. Keeping Face, fear of shame, and dread of ridicule are more deeply ingrained in the Chinese character than in any other nation under the sun. The Old Buddha could visualise the reaction of every governor of every province of China if they watched your film. The soldiery of the New Army. Every weathercock Mandarin. Even the three thousand eunuchs in the Forbidden City. And what of the world’s ambassadors? The Empress Dowager and the General tip-toeing towards a sleeping Emperor to watch Li Lien Ying pour poison into an ear they’ve deliberately shattered a week or so before - only to discover they hadn’t poured it into the shattered ear after all! Yuán took my demands to Her Majesty. An hour later he returned with the response.’

‘Which was?’ I queried.

‘The Empress had agreed with one non-negotiable condition.’

‘Being?’

‘That in turn we must accept her terms.’

Holmes pointed up to the racks above our heads.

‘That she should be allowed to shower upon us every conceivable high honour available to her.’

My comrade paused to observe the incredulity writ large on my face.

‘Why, Watson,’ he continued, ‘do you think the Old Buddha plied us with all the honours and mementos she could heap upon us? When she conferred the Ancestral Rank of the First Class of the First Order for Three Generations on me she whispered in my ear, ‘Sir Sherlock, you and Dr, Watson came like strangers from the farthest star in the firmament. You interrupted the flow of our history. You gave life back to the Emperor. In doing so you have rekindled hope among the Modernists, thereby endangering my throne. You have imprisoned my soul in that Mu.to.scope. Yet I can’t have my people gaining the impression I was involved in a dastardly plot against the Son of Heaven. I must therefore be seen publicly to shower you with these gifts and honours, as your reward for saving the Emperor’s life’.’

Still chortling, Holmes repeated Yuán’s account of the meeting in detail:

‘‘I tell you, Sir Sherlock,’ the General told me, ‘it wasn’t easy. First she looked into the Mutoscope with fear and loathing. Then she stood back in complete silence. Then she shouted, ‘The flicker-book must be destroyed at once!’ I put forward the dangers to Her Imperial Majesty’s Empire - even to her Dynasty - if we did not accede to your demands, the demands, I pretended, of Sir Edward Grey. I said I feared Sir Edward too was ready with his battleships to come and destroy the Forbidden City. She said no-one imposes demands on the ruler of the Celestial Kingdom. ‘Destroy the flicker-book!’ she repeated. I told her we could do that but there were more copies of the film. ‘Destroy them too!’ she blazed. I explained they were at the British Embassy awaiting Sir Sherlock’s orders to distribute them to each of the Great Powers.

After a long silence she asked me your terms. I told her she would have to put in writing that she wouldn’t have the Emperor put to death for at least two years. I tell you, Sir Sherlock,’ Yuán went on, ‘it evoked the most spectacular display of the Divine Wrath I’ve ever seen. The Benevolent Countenance went black as thunder. Her eyes were like shooting daggers. Her lip fell. The veins in her forehead bulged. She showed her teeth as if suffering from lockjaw.’

Holmes continued, ‘Yuán ended with, ‘I may be a General in command of half a million men but the cold concentrated fury nearly scared the soul out of me’.’

‘But did she agree to the Emperor’s safety?’ I asked.

‘Yes, but not for la longue durée.’

I persisted, ‘Has she guaranteed two years, at least?’

‘She has.’

‘In writing?’I asked, openly delighted.

He pointed to a pocket in his Poshteen Long coat.

‘In writing,’ came the reply. ‘He’s safe for the while. However, as our friend Shakespeare said, ‘If you can look into the Seeds of Time, and say which Grain will Grow and which will Not, speak then unto me’.’

I fell into a deep reverie to the soothing motion of the train and awoke to see my companion staring out of the carriage window at the immense landscape. I asked, ‘And what of the Empress Dowager? When she dies, will China have a better future, do you suppose?’

Holmes shrugged.

‘We must give this remarkable woman credit. She may be the ruler of a degenerate Dynasty that has long outlived its usefulness, a law unto herself, but look how she comes out of every Palace intrigue with both feet on the ground. I wager when she leaves the scene she will do so with a steadfast and Imperial dignity.’

‘And General Yuán?’

‘A most remarkable man. By no means has the world heard the last of him. He regards the rest of us as ants and termites completely at his disposal. Duplicity is his stratagem. When it suits him, he will betray and usurp the Manchu dynasty with hardly a second thought.’

It was late afternoon. We wended our way along the corridor to the Dining car. Over the entrée I picked up our earlier topic.

‘And what now of England’s rôle in China?’ I asked Holmes.

His hand swept across the broad landscape.

‘London has control over more than ten million square miles and a fifth of the world’s population. It creaks already. We don’t need to add another four hundred million Chinese. Otherwise I would have let the plot succeed.’

‘And handed the flick-book to England’s tai-pans and Old China Hands?’

‘Yes. They would have forced the Prime Minister to make a choice - let China sink into violent civil war or incorporate the Sacred Earth And Divine Land into the British Empire.’

Back in our private compartment I glanced at the luggage rack above my companion’s head. The Old Buddha had made sure many wonderful things both inexpensive and costly had been showered on us. To the side of the camp-stool sat my travelling tin-box with ‘John H. Watson, M. D. Late Indian Army’ in flaking gold paint on the lid. It was weighted down with the nine thousand taels of silver paid to me by General Yuán ‘for professional services’ rendered to China’s New Army.

Next to it were two other pieces of luggage. In the one suitcase were further souvenirs. In the second case were more gifts. These included a signed photograph of the E-D taken with my plate camera with a marginal note ‘Dr. Watson to deliver in person to His Majesty King-Emperor Edward’.

Only slightly less exotic than the myriad gifts was an item bought from my own pocket at Mycroft’s request - 10lbs of Da Hong Pao oolong tea, handmade from leaves withered, tumbled, curled and baked in small batches over charcoal.

I looked up at the familiar tin-box containing the very generous payment. On my return to England I would order the American luxury Aerocar with the air-cooled 24 horse power engine. I could then visit Cordings to be measured for a new tweed jacket. A sunny weekend would see me driving the monster automobile to the Gatwick Races, a copy of the ‘Pink ‘un’ (the Sporting Times) tucked into the glove-compartment.

I heard Holmes’s voice.

‘You mustn’t, Watson,’ he admonished.

‘Mustn’t what?’ I countered.

‘For as long as we’ve known each other you have waged and lost your Army pension on the ponies. You mustn’t take these earnings to the races,’ he said, a finger pointing upwards at my battered old tin-box. ‘You’ll lose the lot.’

‘Holmes!’ I gasped, ‘this is too much. You would certainly have been burned at the stake had you lived a few centuries ago. How well you read my...’

‘Not your mind, Watson! The expression of divine contentment on your face - it spells out ‘the horses’!’

Again we broke into helpless laughter.

The liner taking us across the ocean was named the Mongolia. I met Holmes on the promenade deck after overseeing the transport of our considerable impedimenta to the cabins. From under our feet came the deep, slow thrumming of the engines. The waters around us were as busy as the Thames at Wapping. Wherries plied between ocean shipping and the shore. Coasting vessels flew the red, white and black flag of the Kaiser’s mercantile marine.

‘Well,’ I said, a residual fear of sudden arrest dropping away, ‘soon we shall be steaming past the White Cliffs of Dover. Then you to your bee-hives!’

‘Indeed,’ Holmes replied. ‘And you to your surgery.’

As we uttered these cheery words a tender drew alongside the ship. A man dressed in Chinese Army uniform at about the level of Lieutenant appeared to recognise us. He waved, signalling he had a message. Once on deck he reached into a pocket and retrieved a document. It was a letter for Sherlock Holmes from General Yuán.

Holmes stretched out a hand. The subaltern stepped back sharply. He was adamant. ‘Sir Sherlock’ could read the letter but not take it in hand. The soldier had sworn an oath not to read its contents, and on pain of death he was to return it to the General.

For a minute Holmes peered at the script. Without a word he stepped back, inviting me to take his place.

Except for the heading ‘chéngwén’ (Memorandum) it was in English:

I nodded at the subaltern. He placed the letter in a pocket, stepped back a pace and saluted. We followed his movements until he stepped off the gangplank into the tender, dropping into the waving handkerchiefs and shrill goodbyes of relatives and friends of departing passengers. He turned, glanced up at us, and saluted once more.

With ‘Well, Colonel Watson, we can do without this on my person now’, Holmes reached into his pocket and pulled out the pipe-pistol he had pointed at General Yuán’s heart. I held out a hand for the formidable weapon. The aluminium stem unscrewed for loading. A knurled screw near the centre served as the trigger. Tucked in the wooden bowl were five extra cartridges.

‘Holmes,’ I said, handing it back. ‘I admit I too was worried when the subaltern turned up. Were we about to be hauled off the ship and arrested? Was General Yuán about to have us returned to the Forbidden City, or worse, transported in coffins to the Ancestral Tombs?’

‘Not the General,’ Holmes replied. ‘The Empress Dowager, perhaps, but never Yuán.’

There was something in his tone, an innuendo I didn’t understand.

‘Why do you say ‘Not the General’? Why not? He has the power until we sail into international waters.’

‘Power, yes, but ambition too,’ came the response. ‘I’m in no doubt Yuán hankers after a Dynasty of his own. The last thing he needs is English blood on his hands - look how he managed to restrain himself over the Aeroscope reel. I’m not sure whether a .25 bullet from this (he pointed at his pocket) would have penetrated all that clothing. He wants England and our Empire on his side. Let’s say the Old Buddha and the Emperor die within a short while of each other, hours even - such things happen in China. Who would be best placed to overthrow the Ch’ing, usurp the Throne, order a large jade seal, and two imperial robes, and set up his own Dynasty?’

He paused, the eyes twinkling.

‘...though for your readers it would have been quite poetic to meet our doom in the Purple City, with an offer of a place of pilgrimage near the Ch’ing Dynastic Tombs. ‘Alas, here lie the mortal remains of Dr. Watson, late of the Indian Army, far far from the Gatwick Races’.’

‘‘And his great Friend, the Consulting Detective Sherlock Holmes, far, far from his bees’,’ I added.

It was high tide. Beneath us the wash from the aptly-named Yellow Sea was a turbid yellow, coloured by a flood of rich soil from far-distant Central Asian mountain ranges, the red loam of the Red Basin of Sze Chuan, the grey and yellow alluvium of China’s central provinces, swept down by the great Yangtze to merge with the cyan blue of the Pacific Ocean.

The Mongolia’s horn gave one long blast. Smoke belched from the 13,000 ton ship’s great stack. I took a last, lingering look at the harbour and beyond it the marshy flats and the vast reach of Cathay. Across the Pacific lay San Francisco, the Paris of the West, a city of fog. Thence overland to Boston and a further sea crossing to Europe. Soon the lofty white hulks for bonded Indian opium, the foreign ‘hongs’, the shipping offices, filatures and cotton mills with their ceaseless clang, big brown-sailed junks with huge rudders, and great white two-storeyed paddle arks from Ningpo and Hankow would shrink away and, like the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace, become a distant memory.

A telegraphic message was delivered to the cabin. General Yuán was ordering full-scale manoeuvres at Hochien comprising nine Divisions, a demonstration of strength designed to subdue insurgent elements at home and grasping hands abroad. My appointment as an Honorary Colonel had been gazetted.

At Dinner Holmes picked his way in a desultory fashion through the Consommé Olga, and the Poached Salmon With Mousseline Sauce. I asked if he was suffering from mal-de-mer still within sight of land. He shook his head. The silence continued until the Waldorf Pudding when he took out a pipe and said, ‘It’s hard to believe we shall ever in our remaining years engage in anything as wondrous as our time here.’

I agreed that while that may be true, I was looking forward to oysters and a brace of grouse at the Tiger Inn, with something a little choice in white wines - and perhaps another of our own familiar meurtres à l’anglaise courtesy of a baffled Scotland Yard.

‘Nevertheless, for the record, Holmes,’ I said, at last laying down the dessert spoon, ‘there’s still something I haven’t grasped.’

The pipe with its freshly-coiling smoke came away from my comrade’s mouth.

‘Which is, old chap?’ came the amiable reply.

‘It wasn’t until I quoted Yuán’s words ‘If this is a plot there may be method in their madness’ late on that the connection to the murder of King Hamlet struck you. By then you had already concluded the puncturing of the Emperor’s eardrum was not some bizarre accident or foolish prank but stage one in a plot of exceptional cunning. How?’

‘Take the crow,’ came the reply. ‘Its behaviour. There are eight species of corvidae breeding in the Downs around my bee-farm - the carrion crow, the raven, the rook, the jackdaw, the jay, the magpie and so on. I know first-hand that no wild crow recently captured and then released would go anywhere near people. This one not only flew straight to the Emperor, it settled on his shoulder. It must have been trained from the nest to do so. If it had learnt to fly to just any shoulder it could have flown in all the points of the compass to discover a human-being to land on. Why the Emperor? He was no friend to the crow. You recall he shuddered at the memory. Clearly it was no pet of his yet it recognised something about him and sought a reward. Even the spot from which the crow was released ensured it came at the Emperor from the right, an unlucky direction. That alone pointed at a malevolent mind behind the attack.’

I followed this with another question.

‘It’s clear to me the Empress Dowager lost patience with the Emperor long ago. We know she and Yuán maintain that his very existence encourages the Japanese to dare the colonisation of China, with him as their puppet. Even training the crow means they must have planned the assassination for months. If so, why invite a world-famous Consulting Detective to Peking in the first place? Moreover, why, having done so, didn’t they speed our exit before the plot commenced? It doesn’t make sense. They even delayed the day of our departure on the grounds it had to be auspicious. It was during that period the war-crow was let loose on the Emperor. They could easily have waited. It was as though they wanted to carry out the assassination while you were there.’

‘That’s exactly what they wanted. The E-D together with Yuán and Li believed they had hatched and honed a plot so clever, so foolproof, that nobody in the world would spot it.’

‘Hubris?’

‘No doubt.’

‘But why take such a risk? Would any benefit accrue from you being there?’

‘My reputation is strong in the world outside China. If I had failed to spot a murder had been committed - even an Emperor’s - the Great Powers would accept it was just one of those things, an unfortunate death from natural causes. As it was, step by step the plotters made serious blunders.’

‘Among them?’

‘For example over the Pekingese dog Shadza.’

‘How was that a serious blunder?’ I asked, flabbergasted.

‘By contrast with the eunuch’s shattered tympanum you were called in late. Didn’t that strike you as odd? Otherwise, you’ll recall telling me, you might have saved its life at the first sign of distress.’

I gazed blankly at my companion.

‘Holmes, are you telling me the dog’s death was connected to the orchard plot?’

‘Of course it was! It was a necessary part of it. What was the final question they needed answering before launching the crow?‘Would a plant entirely unknown in China, plucked by Yuán from the floor of an obscure forest in England, really do the job?’ Was the alkaloid deadly enough? Would it work as they wished, namely irretrievably destroy the internal organs slowly, over a period of some days? They got their answer with Shadza. I know of no poison able to effect such damage on a dog which wouldn’t do the same to a human. If the wretched, betrayed dog lingered for three or four days before dying painfully from the rupture of just about every internal organ, so would the Emperor.

At first I paid no attention - the dog was dead, unfortunate creature - until you told me the E-D not only refused to let you perform an autopsy, she even said no to analyzing the extraneous fluids. Why? I wondered. Testing the fluids would require no butchery of the corpse. Then it struck me. She feared you might identify the toxin from your experience with such plants in England.’

‘Holmes!’ I exclaimed, ‘it’s absurd - preposterous - to believe the Empress Dowager would allow her favourite Pekingese to be poisoned, deliberately so.’ I added coldly, ‘I have met only one human being who deliberately and in cold blood poisoned a dog, and that man was you, a Scottish terrier if you recall.’

I referred to an incident in the case of murder I titled ‘A Study In Scarlet’ which took place in 1881 or early 1882, not long after I had first become acquainted with Holmes. A baffled Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard was at our Baker Street lodgings. Holmes sent me downstairs to our landlady to fetch an elderly Scottish terrier. My comrade was holding a small chip ointment box containing a couple of pills. Before our startled eyes Holmes fed the animal one of the pills, then, when that had no evident effect, he cut the other pill in two, dissolved it in water, added milk to make it palatable, and presented it to the terrier, whereupon the unfortunate creature gave a convulsive shiver in every limb, and lay as rigid and lifeless as if it had been struck by lightning.

‘My dear fellow,’ came the quick reply, ‘if you recall, we had a murder to solve - and besides, the terrier was old and sickly. I call it a mercy killing. This doesn’t seem to have been the case with Shadza. The food fed to Shadza was as closely regulated and tasted by eunuchs as the Empress Dowager’s herself.’

‘Again, Holmes, especially if what you deduce is correct, why did they call me in at all?’

‘To leave us with the impression accidents do happen. If a most favoured Royal pet can inadvertently ingest toxic plants, so can Royal humans.’

We were passing in sight of the Senkaku Islands when a steward came along the row of cabins with a news-sheet containing items of interest from across China. Even as we left the Empire’s territorial waters events from the mainland were still catching up with us. My attention was caught by a piece from the provincial city of Ningpo. It was headed ‘Palace Eunuch Found Dead’.

‘Word has arrived of another unexplained killing in the Forbidden City. The victim has been identified as a eunuch from Ningpo by the name of Kou Liancai in the employ of the Emperor. He was bound hand and foot and dumped in an open, fly-infested pauper’s pit. The eye-brows had been sliced off. Street dogs had commenced devouring him. Although the head has definitely been identified as Kou’s, the torso lying by (having being severed from its head) had the genitalia intact.’

The news-sheet described how a heavy blow from a sword had removed the young man’s head. Deliberately severing the head from the trunk meant Kou could not serve the Emperor in the Hall of Hades as he had in this life. He may well have endured fearful torture before the coup de grace, another reason why the real torso may have been disposed of separately, death by slicing being solely within the Empress Dowager’s power to order. The penal regulations obliged the torturer to cut in a specified order; eye-brows first, then the shoulders, the breasts, the arms, the legs and then, finally, the heart. I reflected on the chilling contrast between the living, undamaged Kou and the wreckage of that same human-being now, a contrast I confronted many a time as an Army surgeon in the face of the scimitars of Ayub Khan’s Afghan warriors.

Li must have realised how Kou had connived in Holmes’s ingenious trickery. The Aeroscope had been operated from high up in the pipa tree, the only hiding-place with a direct line of sight to the resting Emperor and the orchard path. No man of my or Holmes’s age would have had the dexterity to operate the camera while hanging on for dear life so high in the canopy.

I put the newsletter down. Kou’s murder bore the hallmark of the Chief Eunuch’s vindictive handiwork on the orders of his mistress. Only the Empress Dowager could have specified ‘no coffin and no funeral’. All doubt in my mind about the death of the Empress Dowager’s favourite dog dissipated.

Now the Celestial Emperor was entirely alone, an exposed and pitiable figure. My mind returned to a furtive conversation held when I checked the eardrum for the last time. Emboldened by the way my patient seemed driven to unload his cares upon me, a stranger from a distant land, I ventured, ‘You told me Her Imperial Majesty expected you at any moment to die - to become a guest on high. What made you think that?’

The Emperor reached over his shoulder, the index finger pointing downward.

‘The beizi she ordered me to wear on the journey to the Temple. The one she took away to destroy.’

‘What about it?’ I asked.

‘Do you recall the embroidery on the back?’

‘Of course!’ I replied.

I had paid particular attention to the dragons’ snake-like appearance and the unusual four legs and five paws.

‘Dragons stitched with jewel-beetle wing-cases,’ I continued.

‘Do you recall how many dragons?’ the Emperor asked.

‘As a matter of fact, no,’ I conceded. ‘Quite a few.’

‘Nine,’ said the Emperor. ‘There were nine. When I stood on the Shishaquita and donned the cape, I was sure it was to be my last journey on earth. I didn’t expect to reach the other side of the lake. I even sent Kou down into the bowels of the launch to seek out an assassin’s bomb. Finally we set off. And then, sure enough, the war-crow came.’

I said, ‘I don’t understand. Was it some sort of premonition?’

The Emperor grimaced.

‘It was no premonition. It was the nine dragons. To a Chinese acquainted with the custom of the Ch’ing that number on a Dragon robe spells dethroning and death.’

I said, ‘But I thought nine was a symbol of Imperial power and strength? Only an Emperor is permitted to wear...’

‘Only an Emperor wears the ‘nine dragons robe’ but these robes never have nine dragons stitched on them, only eight. The Emperor is himself a dragon. That brings the number up to nine. The message was clear. Nine dragons plus me makes ten, no longer the Imperial nine. The person who sent me the beizi no longer considered me Emperor.’

I stared at my patient utterly mystified. I visualised his rotating finger jutting from between the Empress Dowager and the General.

‘You implicated the General as the mastermind. Now you say you knew from the start Her Imperial Majesty was the driving force.’

‘Only the Divine Mother could have stitched nine dragons on the beizi. No-one else would have risked death by a thousand cuts for such treason. My first thoughts before entering the Temple of Longevity on the other side of the lake were to say nothing. I live in mortal and perpetual fear of her. I felt I could do nothing. I would carry on with my functions as usual despite the terrible pain in my ear.’

Exasperated beyond measure, I forgot the required form of address to an Emperor.

‘My dear fellow,’ I exclaimed, why in heaven’s name didn’t you disclose all this to Holmes! After all, he...’

‘Because,’ the Emperor interrupted, ‘something very strange occurred in the Temple. When I started to pray the spirits of my ancestors began speaking to me, giving me instructions. The voices told me there was a way I could turn the situation around, rid myself of my principal oppressor, my aunt. I was to make no accusation against her. I was even to emphasise how generous her gesture had been in sending me the beizi. I was to point Sir Sherlock towards Yuán, lay the blame solely on him. Only the General’s control over the New Army keeps the Old Buddha on her throne.

The ancestors said that if the General was arrested for treason, not even the Empress Dowager could save him from the most painful execution, including decapitation. With him removed from the scene, the spirits promised me within weeks she herself would be tumbled into her grave.’

The Emperor shrugged ruefully.

‘From the moment Sir Sherlock realised the cape could never truly have been my aunt’s and was designed by her solely with the plot in mind, I knew my plan for pinning the blame on the General alone was never to be. Otherwise...’ he paused, seeking the right metaphor, ‘otherwise I could have killed first one bird and then the second with the same stone and regained my throne.’

Holmes’s and my life in the world of crime had been filled to the brim with ‘ifs’. If I had not turned back early that day at the Reichenbach Falls, Holmes’s life might not have been put in mortal danger at the hands of Professor Moriarty. Here in the Forbidden City, if Holmes had not brilliantly pinned the baleful plot together from clues other than the nine dragons on the beizi, we may not have needed to find a way to bargain for the life of the Guangxu Emperor. The Emperor would have been murdered.

As I wrote of Holmes in The Adventure Of The Yellow Face, ‘Now and again, however, it chanced that even when he erred the truth was still discovered.’

A poem by the famous Scotsman Robert Burns came to mind: ‘The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft agley...’ –that is, ‘The best laid schemes of mice and men Go often askew...’.

If we hadn’t, as General put it, ‘grossly intruded’ in China’s internal affairs, the plot proposed by the Emperor’s ancestral spirits may have succeeded, eliminating both Yuán and the Empress Dowager. For the rest of my life I shall never know.