Philip Farmer - The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - The Peerless Peer

“Would you care for some?” he said, and he grinned at us most bloodily.

“Not unless it’s cooked,” Holmes replied coolly.

“Cooked or raw, I’d rather starve,” I said, ungrammatically but sincerely.

“Starve then,” Greystoke said.

“I say,” I protested. “We are fellow Englishmen, aren’t we? Would you let us die of hunger while those Germans are...”

He stopped chewing, and his face became quite fierce.

“Germans!” he said. “Here? Nearby? Where are they?”

Holmes outlined our story, leaving certain parts out for security purposes. Greystoke listened him out, though impatiently, and he said, “I will kill them.”

“Without giving them a chance to surrender?” I said horrifiedly.

“I don’t take prisoners,” he said, glaring at me. “Not any soldier, black or white, who fights for Germany. It was a band of black soldiers, under white officers, who murdered my wife and my warriors who were guarding her and burned down my house around her. I have sworn to kill every German I come across until this war ends.”

He added, “And perhaps after it ends!”

“But these men are not soldiers!” I said weakly. “They are sailors, members of the Imperial German Navy!”

“They will die no less.”

“Their commander dealt with us as an officer and a gentleman should,” Holmes said. “In fact, we owe our lives to him.”

“For that he shall have a quick and painless death.”

Holmes said, “Could we at least make a fire and cook that reptile first and perhaps hear your story?”

Greystoke threw the skelton, which was stripped of most of its meat, to one side. “I’ll hunt something more suitable to your civilised palates,” he said. “After all, they won’t get away.”

He said this so grimly and assuredly that shivers ran up my spine. “And you two stay here,” he said. He was gone, taken in swiftly and silently by the vegetation.

“Good God, Holmes!” I cried. “The man is a beast, a savage engine geared for vengeance! And, Holmes, whoever he is, he was certainly never the child whom we brought back safely to the duke at Pemberley House! [10] The true name of the ducal mansion Watson called Holdernesse Hall in “The Adventure of the Priory School.” A description of the estate is found in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Editor. Why, surely he would have recognised his saviours even though we are older! Fifteen years have not made that much difference in us!”

“But they have in him, heh?” Holmes said. “Watson, there are muddy waters in this stream. I have kept a watch on that family over the years, an infrequent watch, it is true. For some reason, we keep bumping into members of the duke’s family or into people who’ve been involved with them. It was the duchess who shot Milverton, it was Black Peter Carey who, I strongly suspect, murdered our present Lord Greystoke’s uncle, you know, the Socialist duke who drove a cab for a while...”

“In the affair of the hound of the Baskervilles?” I broke in.

“You know I don’t like being interrupted, Watson,” he said testily. “As I was saying, Carey probably murdered the fifth duke before he came to a bad, but deserved, end at Forest Row. I have reason to believe that Carey, under another name, was aboard the ship carrying the fifth duke’s son and his wife to Africa when it was lost with all hands aboard — for all the public knew, that is. Then I was called in again by the sixth duke to find his illegimate son, who, it turned out, settled in the States instead of in Australia. It is a weird web which has tangled our fortunes with those of the Greystokes.” [11] For a fuller description of this involvement, see my definitive biography of Lord Greystroke. Editor.

“I just can’t believe that, this man is the sixth duke’s son!” I said.

“The jungle can change a man,” Holmes said. “However, I agree with you, even though his features and his voice are remarkably similar. Our Lord Greystoke is an impostor. But how in the world did he succeed in passing himself off as the real Lord Greystoke? And when? And what happened to the sixth duke’s son, the child we knew as Lord Saltire?” [12] It is the English custom to address the sons of noblemen with an honorary title, though legally the sons are commoners. The duke had several secondary titles, the highest of which was Marquess of Saltire. Thus, the duke’s son was known as Lord Saltire. Editor.

“Good Lord!” I said. “Do you suspect murder?”

“Anybody is capable of murder, my dear Watson,” he said. “Even you and I, given the proper circumstances and the proper, or improper, state of emotion. But I have a feeling, a hunch, that this man would not be capable of cold-blooded murder. He may be emotionally unstable, though.”

“Fingerprints!” I cried, elated because I had anticipated Holmes.

He smiled and said, “Yes, that would establish whether or not he is an impostor. But I doubt that there is any record of Saltire’s fingerprints.”

“His handwriting?” I said, somewhat crushed.

“He would search out and destroy all papers bearing Saltire’s handwriting, all he could get his hands on. There must be many that he could not obtain, however, and if these could be found, we could compare Saltire’s holographs with Greystoke’s. I imagine that Greystoke has trained himself to write like Saltire, but an expert, myself, for instance, could easily distinguish the forgery. However, we are now in no position to do such a thing, and from the looks of things we may never be in such a position. Also, before I went to the authorities, I would make sure that the revelation would be useful. After all, we don’t know why Greystoke has done this. He may be innocent of murder.”

“Surely,” I said, “You aren’t thinking of asking Greystoke to confess?”

“What? With a high certainty that we might be killed on the spot? And perhaps eaten? I don’t think Greystoke would put us on his menu if other meat were available. If he were starving, he might not be so discriminating.”

I hesitated and then I said, “I am going to confess something to you, Holmes. You remember when we were discussing Greystoke in Mycroft’s office? You said that you had heard about the novel, the highly fictionalised and romanticised account of Greystoke’s adventures in Africa? You also mentioned that very few copies of the novel had reached England because of the declaration of hostilities shortly before the book was published?”

“Yes?” Holmes said, looking at me strangely.

“Knowing your attitude toward my reading of what you consider trash, I did not tell you that a friend of mine in San Francisco — he was my best man when I married my first wife — sent me a copy not only of the first book but of its sequel. I have read them...”

“Good Lord!” Holmes said. “I can understand your shame, Watson, but withholding evidence...”

“What evidence?” I replied more hotly than was my wont, no doubt due to fatigue, hunger, and anxiety. “There was no crime then of which we were aware!”

“Touché!” Holmes said. “Pray accept my apologies. And continue.”

“The American author, and what a wild imagination he has, pretends that the real Lord Greystoke was born in a cabin off the shore of western Africa. In his novel Greystoke’s parents are marooned by mutineers. Unable to make their way back to civilisation, they build a hut and young Greystoke is born in it. When his parents die the baby is adopted by a female of a band of intelligent anthropoid apes. These apes are a product of the inflamed imagination of the author, who, by the way, has never been to Africa or apparently read much about it. To make a long story short, the boy grows up, learns to read and write English without ever having heard a word of English...”