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

He turned the glass eye over to Mycroft, who sent it on to his superiors. That was the last we ever heard of it, and since the SB was never used, I surmise that the War Office decided that it would be too horrible a weapon. I was happy about this, since it just did not seem British to wage germ warfare. I have often wondered, though, what would have happened if Von Bork’s mission had been successful. Would the Kaiser have countenanced SB as a weapon against his English cousins?

There were still three years of war to get through. I found lodgings for my wife and myself, and, despite the terrible conditions, the air raids, the food and material shortages, the dismaying reports from the front, we managed to be happy. In 1917 Nylepthah did what none of my previous wives had ever done. She presented me with a son. I was delirious with joy, even though I had to endure much joshing from my colleagues about fatherhood at my age. I did not inform Holmes of the baby. I dreaded his sarcastic remarks.

On November 11, 1919, however, a year after the news that turned the entire Allied world into a carnival of’ happiness, though a brief one, I received a wire.

“Bringing a bottle and cigars to celebrate the good tidings. Holmes.”

I naturally assumed that he referred to the anniversary of the Armistice. My surprise was indeed great when he showed up not only with the bottle of Scotch and a box of Havanas but a bundle of new clothes and toys for the baby and a box of chocolates for Nylepthah. The latter was a rarity at this time and must have cost Holmes some time and money to obtain.

“Tut, tut, my dear fellow,” he said when I tried to express my thanks. “I’ve known for some time that you were the proud father. I have always intended to show up and tender my respects to the aged, but still energetic, father and to the beautiful Mrs. Watson. Never mind waking the infant up to show him to me, Watson. All babies look alike, and I will take your word for it that he is beautiful.”

“You are certainly jovial,” I said. “I do not ever remember seeing you more so.”

“With good reason, Watson, with good reason!”

He dipped his hand into his pocket and brought out a cheque.

I looked at it and almost staggered. It was made out to me for the sum of thirty thousand pounds.

“I had given up on Greystoke,” he said. “I heard that he was missing, lost somewhere in deepest Africa, probably dead. It seems, however, that he had found his wife was alive after all, and he was tracking her into the jungles of the Belgian Congo. He found her but was taken prisoner by some rather peculiar tribe. Eventually, his adopted son, you know, the Lt. Drummond who was to fly us to Marseilles, went after him and rescued his parents. And so, my dear fellow, one of the first things the duke did was to send the cheques! Both in my care, of course!”

“I can certainly use it,” I said. “This will enable me to retire instead of working until I am eighty.”

I poured two drinks for us and we toasted our good fortune. Holmes sat back in the chair, puffing upon the excellent Havana and watching Mrs. Watson bustle about her housework.

“She won’t allow me to hire a maid,” I said. “She insists on doing all the work, including the cooking, herself. Except for the baby and myself, she does not like to touch anyone or be touched by anyone. Sometimes I think...”

“Then she has shut herself off from all but you and the baby,” he said.

“You might say that,” I replied. “She is happy, though, and that is what matters.”

Holmes took out a small notebook and began making notes in it. He would look up at Nylepthah, watch her for a minute, and record something.

“What are you doing, Holmes?” I said.

His answer showed me that he, too, could indulge in a pawky humour when his spirits were high.

“I am making some observations uopn the segregation of the queen.”

THE END

The reference on page 31 to the speed of the Handley Page was really in knots, not miles per hour. The editor has converted this to make it more intelligible to the reader.

The use of the word “queer” by Mycroft on page 26 has been criticised as not being realistic. Some Sherlockians have maintained that an Englishman in 1916 would not have known the word in its referent of “homosexual.” However, that is the word Watson uses when he quotes Mycroft. So we must believe that some Englishmen, at least, were aware of this American term. Or, possibly, Watson’s memory of the conversation was faulty. Since Watson had spent some time in the States, and had, like Holmes, picked up some Americanisms, he may have used this word because it was part of his everyday vocabulary.

The vulgarism, “a*****e,” on page 41, needs one more asterisk. That is, it does if Watson was quoting the English term, which Holmes probably did utter. If Holmes was using the American word because he was speaking about an American, then the number of asterisks is accurate. We’ll never know.

BY WIN SCOTT ECKERT

Sherlock Holmes lives!

Or at least he still might live, as Philip José Farmer points out in his Foreword to The Peerless Peer , noting that there is no record of the Great Detective’s death. Farmer observes that the idea that Holmes lived, and still lives, thrives with an almost “religious belief” among his followers. Farmer slyly omits that he’s one of the true believers, but it’s clear he is.

It is fortunate indeed that Watson’s manuscript survived. As Farmer relates, the good doctor’s battered tin dispatch-box had been removed from the vaults of the bank of Cox and Co. at Charing Cross before the bank was bombed in World War II. It was stored for a time in Holmes’ cottage near the village of Fulworth on the Sussex Downs, and thereafter, in the 1950s, came into the possession of the seventeenth Duke of Denver.

As everyone knows, the seventeenth Duke was better known as Lord Peter Wimsey, also an amateur detective of no little note, and a distant relative of Holmes. Lord Peter’s cases were chronicled in a series of novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers.

In 1973, the Duke of Denver authorized Farmer to edit Watson’s manuscript for publication, and The Adventure of the Peerless Peer saw print the following year in a limited edition from Aspen Press. The Dell mass market paperback was issued in 1976, at which point we may suppose that Farmer was contacted by the Jungle Lord. As I’ve noted elsewhere, [17] The Evil In Pemberley House , Philip José Farmer and Win Scott Eckert, Subterranean Press, 2009. Farmer had been under some pressure from the Ape-Man since the publication of his biography Tarzan Alive (Doubleday, 1972).

Farmer already knew of the Jungle Lord’s deception (described in The Peerless Peer ), or deduced it, based on his “An Exclusive Interview with Lord Greystoke” which took place on September 1, 1970. Or else he knew it from the extensive research which formed the basis of his Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke . Or both. At that time, the Ape-Man persuaded Mr. Farmer to suppress certain details, such as his impersonation of his late cousin.

In 1974, when Watson’s lost Peerless Peer manuscript was released and revealed that Sherlock Holmes had discovered the impersonation back in 1916, the Ape Lord was apparently not overly concerned. Perhaps an expensive and limited edition hardcover novel was not perceived as harmful. In addition, in late 1974, the Lord of the Jungle authorized Farmer to edit and publish memoirs in which he freely admitted to the deception (“Extracts from the Memoirs of ‘Lord Greystoke,’” Mother Was a Lovely Beast , Philip José Farmer, ed., Chilton, 1974; Tarzan Alive , Bison Books, 2006).