Alex Auswaks: Sherlock Holmes in Russia

Holmes took me aside and said softly, ‘My dear Watson, there’s one place which we haven’t looked at so far.’

‘And that is—’

‘It could very well be that the gold is in the axle or the shafts, or sealed inside the carriage walls. But it has been hidden so craftily that no outward inspection will reveal its presence. Somehow or other we must deprive him of his carriage and see how he reacts to that.’

‘That shouldn’t be too difficult. Break the axles and wheels.’

‘Hmm, that’s not too subtle,’ answered Holmes. ‘It must be done in a way that is not apparent. I’ll take him inside the post house. Let the mine guard take over. He must order the coachman to break down somewhere along the way.’ He thought for a moment and added, ‘Towards which end, it would help to saw through the axle just a little.’

Saying this, he left me and walked towards Seltzoff. Seltzoff followed his movements with irony in his eyes. Holmes asked him to return with him to the post house, leaving me alone with the mine guard.

Left one-on-one with this keeper of law and order, I passed Holmes’s instructions to him. He nodded his head to signal his willingness, called over Seltzoff’s coachman and began to explain to him what had to be done.

For my part, I promised the coachman a reward of fifty roubles if he could bring the manager’s carriage into a state of utter disrepair and explained that this was being done for the good of his employers. Needless to say, the coachman readily agreed to everything. ‘There is a steep incline not far from here and where it turns there is a mileage pillar,’ he said. ‘Ride into it at full tilt and the carriage will disintegrate.’

I got a little saw out of my suitcase and quickly filed under both axles. A few minutes later Holmes and Seltzoff emerged. Holmes apologized for having caused him so much inconvenience and did it with such patent sincerity that the mine guard and I couldn’t believe our ears. He even appeared to have made friends with the manager.

We all sat down to breakfast together, drank a bottle of champagne and decided to drive to Irkutsk together. We stowed away our luncheon baskets, took our seats in our respective carriages and set off. Seltzoff went ahead and we followed. Sherlock Holmes never took his eyes off the troika ahead of us. And now, at last, the steep incline the coachman had told us about appeared.

As soon as we got to the top of the incline, the horses of the leading troika began to play up. No matter how hard the coachman tried, he couldn’t control them. The sweating horses reared up and raced down. Seltzoff was terrified. But he leaped up, seized and pulled at the reins of the horse on the left. This worked somewhat. Their pace lessened but was still somewhat strong.

The coachman panicked as the troika flew towards the mileage pillar. But just before the mileage pillar he apparently came to himself. The troika zigzagged. The horses escaped the impending disaster, but not the carriage. There was the sound of a terrible crack. The horses came to a halt. The coachman went flying head over heels off his seat. Seltzoff was thrown on the back of one of the horses.

‘Bloody idiot!’ he exclaimed angrily getting off. ‘Thank heavens they are right behind us, otherwise what would we do between two post houses!’ He was walking round his coach, shaking his head in distress.

Our troika stopped beside him and we got down and expressed our sympathy.

‘What’s there to grieve over,’ he answered sadly. ‘I’ll have to abandon the carriage. You, gentlemen, will have to be somewhat a little squeezed.’

‘Of course,’ exclaimed Holmes, ‘but surely you don’t intend to abandon such a carriage!’

‘What am I supposed to do about it, carry it? It will be a lucky find for someone who might even be grateful for such a find.’

The trap hadn’t worked. Seltzoff’s things were stowed in our carriage and, taking only his horses and their harness, we set off. But with five people, the load was too much.

‘I suggest we take turns walking,’ said Holmes.

We agreed to do so. It was decided that two would sit inside and two would go on foot and change over every three miles or so. Holmes and I were first to set off on foot. Having walked the agreed distance, the manager and the mine guard walked and we sat in the carriage.

It was cool and Holmes and I had not tired. Not so Seltzoff. At first he strode along boldly. But just over a half mile on, he was perspiring and his face was red. The next half mile or so he desperately tried to appear as if his energy had not deserted him. But yet another half mile or so and he announced he couldn’t walk so much as he wasn’t used to it and, besides, his feet were hurting.

‘Strange,’ said Holmes with a smile. ‘At work you were on your feet all day and you weren’t tired, and here you become tired.’

‘Strange, indeed! I was thinking along those same lines myself,’ said the manager.

The ironic look in his eyes had vanished and was replaced by a look of alarm.

At this moment Holmes shouted at the coachman, ‘Halt!’ Seltzoff shuddered imperceptibly.

Holmes placed his hands on Seltzoff’s shoulders and said frostily, ‘Well, Mr Manager, sir, you laughed at me in vain. Putting anything over Sherlock Holmes doesn’t come easily. Give me your coat.’

‘But I’m cold,’ muttered the manager.

‘In that case, force will have to be used,’ exclaimed Holmes and nodded at the mine guard.

It took a moment to strip Seltzoff of his coat. Holmes took the coat by its collar and was just about to lift it with his outstretched hand.

‘So you’ve got me then,’ Seltzoff growled angrily.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘What is going on?’

‘Oh, it only came to me because he was getting tired,’ Holmes explained, smiling. ‘The gold is in the heavy cloth of the coat. In its raw state, before it has been worked on to be hardened, gold is pliable and soft enough to be rubbed in its entirety into heavy material. It becomes a fine dust and, as such, it virtually dissolves into the cloth and vanishes. That is preceisely what this gentleman did. He rubbed the gold into the cloth and then all he would have to do to recover the gold is to burn off the cloth. But he wasn’t able to do it, and from this moment he is under arrest.’

We set off again, this time with Seltzoff tied up, though to keep him warm, we gave him another coat to replace the one we had taken away.

Forty-seven pounds of gold were recovered from it.

The story of how the gold stolen from the Brothers’ Mine was found spread like wildfire throughout the whole of Siberia. Sherlock Holmes’s name was passed from mouth to mouth, while tales of his exploits were so exaggerated that he became some sort of mythical hero. Often, he had to listen to the most incredible stories about himself, with which we were entertained on trains by fellow passengers who did not know our surnames. Holmes was terribly amused and entertained by such stories.

The following case occurred half a year after the withdrawal from Mukden, in north-east China, of troops who had participated in the Russo–Japanese War (1904–05). We were on our way to Harbin, also in north-east China, from where we intended to go to Vladivostok, Russia’s port on the Pacific Ocean, and then to return to European Russia via Khabarovsk, Blagoveschensk and Stretensk. This route would enable us to visit all the principal cities of Siberia.

On a grey September day our train stopped at Baikal station, named after the great Siberian lake on which it stood.

The stopover was a long one, so we got off at the station to have lunch, to taste the famous Baikal salmon, extolled by Siberian exiles.