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

Suddenly, as Holmes completed his obscene dance for the seventh time, the swarm flew forward. I cried out, expecting to see him covered with the huge black-and-white-striped horrors. But the mass split in two, leaving him an island in their midst. And then they were all gone, and the Zu-Vendis were running away screaming, their bodies black and fuzzy with a covering of bees. Some of them dropped in their flight, rolling back and forth, screaming, batting at the insects, and then becoming still and silent.

I ran to Holmes, crying, “How did you do it?”

“Do you remember your scepticism when I told you that I had made an astounding discovery? One that will enshrine my name among the greats in the hall of science?”

“You don’t mean...?”

He nodded. “Yes, bees do have a language, even African bees. It is actually a system of signals, not a true language. Bees who have discovered a new source of honey return to the hive and there perform a dance which indicates clearly the direction of and the distance at which the honey lies. I have also discovered that the bee communicates the advent of an enemy to the swarm. It was this dance which I performed, and the swarm attacked the indicated enemy, the Zu-Vendis. The dance movements are intricate, and certain polarisations of light play a necessary part in the message. These I simulated with my magnifying glass. But come, Watson, let us get our clothes on and be off before the swarm returns! I do not think I can pull that trick again. We do not want to be the game afoot.”

We got the duke to his feet and half-carried him to the pass. Though he recovered consciousness, he seemed to have reverted to a totally savage state. He did not attack us but he regarded us suspiciously and made threatening growls if we got too close. We were at a loss to explain this frightening change in him. The frightening part came not so much from any danger he represented as from the dangers he was supposed to save us from. We had depended upon him to guide us and to feed and protect us on the way back. Without him even the incomparable Holmes was lost.

Fortunately, the duke recovered the next day and provided the explanation himself.

“For some reason I seem to be prone to receiving blows on the head,” he said. “I have a thick skull, but every once in a while I get such a blow that even its walls cannot withstand the force. Sometimes, say about one out of three times, a complete amnesia results. I then revert to the state in which I was before I encountered white people. I am once again the uncivilised apeman; I have no memory of anything that occurred before I was twenty years old. This state may last for only a day, as you have seen, or it may persist for months.”

“I would venture to say,” Holmes said, “that this readiness to forget your contact with civilised peoples indicates an unconscious desire to avoid them. You are happiest when in the jungle and with no obligations. Hence your unconscious seizes upon every opportunity, such as a blow on the head, to go back to the happy primal time.”

“Perhaps you are right,” the duke said. “Now that my wife is dead, I would like to forget civilisation even exists. But I must see my country through this war first.”

It took less than a month for us to get to Nairobi. Greystoke took excellent care of us, even though he was impatient to get back into action against the Germans. During the journey I had ample time to teach Nylepthah English and to get well acquainted with her. Before we reached the Lake Victoria railhead, I had proposed to her and been accepted. I will never forget that night. The moon was bright, and a hyena was laughing nearby.

The day before we reached the railhead, Greystoke went up a tree to check out the territory. A branch broke under his feet, and he landed on his head. When he regained consciousness, he was again the apeman. We could not come near him without his baring his teeth and growling menacingly. And that night he disappeared.

Holmes was very downcast by this. “What if he never gets over his amnesia, Watson? Then we will be cheated out of our fees.”

“My dear Holmes,” I said, somewhat coolly, “we never earned the fee in the first place. Actually, we were allowing ourselves to be bribed by the duke to keep silent.”

“You never did understand the subtle interplay of economics and ethics,” Holmes replied.

“There goes Von Bork,” I said, glad to change the subject. I pointed to the fellow, who was sprinting across the veldt as if a lion were after him.

“He is mad if he thinks he can make his way alone to German East Africa,” Holmes said. “But we must go after him! He has on him the formula for the SB.”

“Where?” I asked for the hundredth time. “We have stripped him a dozen times and gone over every inch of his clothes and his skin. We have looked into his mouth and up...”

At that moment I observed Von Bork turn his head to the right to look at a rhinoceros which had come around a tall termite hill. The next moment, he had run the left side of his head and body into an acacia tree with such force that he bounced back several feet. He did not get up, which was just as well. The rhinoceros was looking for him and would have detected any movement by Von Bork. After prancing around and sniffing the air in several directions, the weak-eyed beast trotted off. Holmes and I hastened to Von Bork before he got his senses back and ran off once more.

“I believe I now know where the formula is,” Holmes said.

“And how could you know that?” I said, for the thousandth time since I had first met him.

“I will bet my fee against yours that I can show you the formula within the next two minutes,” he said, but I did not reply.

He kneeled down beside the German, who was lying on his back, his mouth and his eyes open. His pulse, however, beat strongly.

Holmes placed the tips of his thumbs under Von Bork’s left eye. I stared aghast as the eye popped out.

“It’s glass, Watson,” Holmes said. “I had suspected that for some time, but I saw no reason to verify my suspicions until he was in a British prison. I was certain that his vision was limited to his right side when I saw him run into that tree. Even with his head turned away he would have seen it if his left eye had been effective.”

He rotated the glass eye between thumb and finger while examining it through the magnifying glass. “Aha!” he exclaimed and then, handing the eye and glass to me, said, “See for yourself, Watson.”

“Why,” I said, “what I had thought were massive haemorrhages due to eye injury are tiny red lines of chemical formulae on the surface of the glass — if it is glass, and not some special material prepared to receive inscriptions.”

“Very good, Watson,” Holmes said. “Undoubtedly, Von Bork did not merely receive an injury to the eye in that motor-car crash of which I heard rumours. He lost it, but the wily fellow had it replaced with an artificial eye which had more uses than — ahem — met the eye.

“After stealing the SB formula, he inscribed the surface of this false organ with the symbols. These, except through a magnifier, look like the results of dissipation or of an accident. He must have been laughing at us when we examined him so thoroughly, but he will laugh no more.”

He took the eye back and pocketed it. “Well, Watson, let us rouse him from whatever dreams he is indulging in and get him into the proper hands. This time he shall pay the penalty for espionage.”

Two months later we were back in England. We travelled by water, despite the danger of U-boats, since Holmes had sworn never again to get into an aircraft of any type. He was in a bad humour throughout the voyage. He was certain that Greystoke, even if he recovered his memory, would not send the promised cheques.