The voice was that of Sherlock Holmes. The glasses came off, revealing the familiar, deepset grey eyes of my old comrade-in-arms.
Chuckling at my initial dismay, Holmes switched back to the high-pitched voice of the soothsayer who had so skilfully relieved me of my money: ‘So you will be beware the odd months of this year, won’t you! You will meet with some dangers and slight losses, though in the fullness of time two male phoenixes will be accorded to you’.
Within minutes Holmes and I were seated over a cup of tea.
‘How did you discover I was on my way to Kashgar?’ I asked.
‘I would like to say I snuffed the air like a bloodhound and caught a whiff as you stood aboard the ferry from Dover to Ostend but the fact is one afternoon in July I had an unexpected visitor. A man you may recognise if I describe his dress.’
Over puffs of his favourite briar pipe he continued, ‘He wore a long silk coat embroidered front and back with a white crane.’
‘A long silk coat...with a white crane?’ I parroted.
Holmes nodded.
‘There’s only one man I know who fits that description,’ I replied. ‘A Chinese General by the name of Yuán!’
‘The very same. I was putting out some lemongrass oil in a box with an old dark comb to encourage my overcrowded bees to abscond from their hive when there he was, on my verandah. As though he had popped up from beneath the soil. He started with, ‘Sir Sherlock, I’ve come to you for advice. I heard from Grand Duke ______ how you saved him in the _________ scandal. I also know of you because your famed Scotland Yard calls you Europe’s most supremely skilful investigator’ - to which I responded, ‘Well then, it’s true even Scotland Yard gets things right once in a while’. I said, ‘I beg you to enter my humble abode where you can draw up a chair and favour me with the details’.
‘It is no ordinary case,’ the man emphasized as we entered the house. ‘No cases which come to me are ordinary,’ I assured him. Then the General told me he was exercised by worrying rumours swirling around the Forbidden City.’
‘And those rumours, Holmes?’ I asked with keen interest.
‘An impending assassination.’
‘Directed at?’
‘Either the Empress Dowager Cixi or the Kuang-hsü Emperor, he couldn’t be sure which. He asked if I would travel to the Forbidden City to investigate. He feared the murder of either could trigger a civil war and a speedy intervention by a foreign power. Given the parlous state of his Army any such excuse for invasion should be eliminated with all possible urgency. He had no need to fear England’s intervention. Edward Grey had given his word that we had no intention of expanding our Indian Territories though even Sir Edward was far from convinced Berlin, St. Petersburg or Paris - Tokyo even - would be so restrained.’
‘From your presence here in Kashgar, Holmes, I deduce you accepted the offer?’
‘With two stipulations,’ he replied.
‘The first?’
‘I should have six weeks to learn Mandarin.’
‘And the second?’
The deep-set grey eyes turned on me.
‘That my old comrade-in-arms should be offered his own remit such that we should come together in Peking. Dr. Watson is, I told the General, the man I trust more than any other on earth. I suggested your medical skills from the Hindu Kush and Afghanistan could be of value to his army. Within minutes he came up with a plan. He would commission you to help establish the first Imperial Army Medical company. He warned it would expose you to great danger. Would that be acceptable? I said you have the pluck of a hundred bulldogs. He pointed out the travel to a score of isolated garrisons would be arduous for a man half your age. At that I stretched the truth a little and said you were among the fittest men in England. ‘Done!’ he said.
In turn the General suggested I could visit China officially as an expert advisor on reforms of China’s criminal justice system. He told how courts achieve verdicts by torture, how the accused is made to kneel on red-hot irons, how they wind and twist his arms around a pole while being beaten with a five-foot long bamboo club or a half-inch thick snakeskin whip, or he suffers the excruciating pain of the thumb-screw. If the accused foolishly persists in declaring his innocence, they just increase the torture. The General said the Imperial High Court understands this way of dispensing justice is no longer viable. More to the point, the barbarity of the practice has become another likely excuse for outside Powers to invade.’
I spluttered, ‘But how on earth did you... I mean, meeting up at that railway stop!’
‘I knew you would encounter heavy going. I calculated I had time to take Mandarin lessons and continue them aboard a fast ship to India. On disembarking I caught the mail train to Rawalpindi, then a bumpy ride by cart through your old Army stamping grounds to Srinagar, and on to Gilgit, Hunza and Sarikol, and finally on the backs of coolies over mountain tracks too bad even for ponies.’
‘But why the disguise?’ I asked. ‘It was a formidable performance even by your standards!’
I knew from long experience Holmes was a master of the false appearance. ‘A good many of the criminal classes begin to know me,’ he told me early in our friendship, ‘especially since you took to publishing some of my cases. I can only go on the war-path under some simple disguise.’
Disguising a face with make-up for the theatre or other in-door setting is far from difficult. It was Holmes’s mastery in ordinary daylight which marked him out as exceptional. As he remarked, ‘Off the stage you can’t get by with a celluloid nose or a tie-on beard.’ It was amazing to see how with a little paste he could alter the shape of the nose and the whole character of his face. His real genius lay not solely in the use of wigs and make-up but in supporting that skill with a suitable manner and voice. At least twice he fooled me (a medical doctor) with his workhouse cough, playing an impoverished old man.
He could probably impersonate a minister of the Church of England better than most genuine ministers except that under English Law it was a criminal offence. Dressing as a minister of a cult different from the official religion of the State, such as his amiable and simple-minded Nonconformist clergyman, was not.
‘But knowing how to find me,’ I continued. ‘How...?’
‘Cathay is not like Africa,’ came my comrade’s response. ‘Henry Morton Stanley was directed village by village to his encounter with Dr. Livingstone at Lake Tanganyika. But here in these turbulent and suspicious regions no local would supply an outsider with information, even though it was clear to me everyone in the whole of the northern region, including St. Petersburg’s and Berlin’s spies, knew exactly where you were and precisely what you’re up to. If I had not assumed the disguise of a Chinese fortune-teller I would have found it impossible to track you down. The locals would deliberately attempt to mislead me, such is their contempt for us long-noses. When I disguised myself and told them I planned to charge you 50 taels to tell you ‘your present lustrum is not a fortunate one but it has nearly expired and better days are at hand’, they split their sides laughing at my little joke. ‘Go to that railway station, he’ll soon be there,’ they said.’
He stood up.
‘From what you tell me, both our missions are urgent. Yours requires another three or four weeks. Mine calls for me to get to the Forbidden City as fast as I can. We can join up there. By then I shall have got my feet firmly under the table.’
I went to my room and opened the package. It contained my orders from Yuán. From Kashgar I was to head towards the Yili Garrison in Xinjiang Province, keeping an eye open for bandits. After that, I was to work my way to the Manchu military garrison camps at Ningguta in the Hurka River valley where I would meet up with the General and Staff officers. Ningguta was once guarded by the six grandsons of Möngke Temür. These memories mattered, it seemed. At least to the ruling Manchu.