Frank Thomas - Sherlock Holmes and the Sacred Sword

"You recall that the Limehouse Squad just happened to have a veritable blueprint of every part of Chu San Fu's operations in London. Where do you think it came from? Your files. Rather careless to have such information in your safe, don't you think? I'll wager Chu San Fu will."

"My safe was not opened."

"Wasn't it?"

"Furthermore," he continued desperately, as though trying to forestall the fatal moment, "none of my records were missing."

I actually laughed. It wasn't easy, but I believe I pulled it off rather well.

"They were photographed."

"But that's illegal."

"So it is. You should have a good case. Let's see, who will you sue? The master cracksman who got into your office? The photographer?" I did not choose to reveal that Slim Gilligan had performed both jobs. "Possibly, the man who planned the whole thing?"

"Holmes!" he exclaimed, and the taste of the word was gall and wormwood. Emotion twisted the Chinaman's face as he imagined disaster. Then the spark of cunning reentered his eyes.

"If you could not tell Chu San Fu—"

I used an upright palm to stem his words before he gained confidence by uttering them.

"You can't present him with a dead body. Do you think he would believe that you and those two gargantuans could not take me with ease? Impossible!"

The flicker of hope was erased from Loo Chan's face, and then the passivity of resignation settled over it.

"What is your thought?"

I had of late listened to so much of the history of Egypt from Holmes, Sir Randolph Rapp, and most recently Colonel Gray that I decided to make use of it.

"The ancients of this land made a habit of obliterating from history certain distasteful matters, which is why the reign of some of their pharaohs is hardly known at all. I suggest that tonight never happened. I was never here. If you can control the Manchurians, I see no problem."

I could sense the lawyer trying this thought for size and searching it for a flaw. Evidently he did not find one, for he rose to his feet, indicating the window.

"So be it. Best you leave this way. I will take care of the Manchurians."

While clambering out of a half-opened window in a dark alley in Cairo is not my idea of a dignified exit, all in all I felt that the matter had been well handled. True, I had consorted with the lawless, but surely this was better than filling a shallow grave in the shifting sands of Egypt. Or being the prisoner of Chu San Fu, whose feelings towards me were hardly benevolent.

As I scurried out of the alleyway and hastened back to Shepheard's, it jostled my conscience to accept the fact that I had played the role of the blackmailer. However, I was alive and free, so surely this transgression had been in a good cause.

If I could muster an alibi for my solo flight into dark doings in far-off places, I cannot, in conscience, deny a certain pride that provided me with great joy when I regained the lobby of the hotel only to run into an irate and anxious Colonel Gray.

"Good God, Doctor, where have you been? My men are searching the city for you!"

The high color of his face was more pronounced and the banality of his personality was a thing of the past, a mere cover, as I had already begun to suspect.

I regarded him with a cool manner, tinged with surprise.

"I was conducting an investigation of my own, Colonel. Please explain your concern." It was but a little thing, and yet I shall always cherish it in my memory.

"You were what!" Gray verged on apoplexy. "You realize that they would have handed me my head in London had something happened to you unless Holmes beat them to it right here!" He seemed ready to embark on more of the same when a new thought segued into his mind. Possibly there is more here than meets the eye, he was thinking. This Doctor may be an unknown quantity, and I'd best walk softly. Discipline forced his severe mouth into a semblance of a mirthless smile.

"Forgive my concern, sir, but you are a visitor to these shores." These were but words to cover an awkward situation. Gray knew it and suspected that I did as well. He was grateful to have an escape hatch.

"A Mr. Orloff from the Foreign Office has arrived, Doctor, and has been asking for you. I took the liberty of allowing him entry to your suite."

"Excellent, Colonel. I am in your debt." Gray almost clicked his heels as I made my way towards the lift with, I hope, a preoccupied expression.

Now there was no doubt in my mind regarding the Colonel's activities in Egypt. A squad of men were searching the city for me, and he could maneuver the hotel staff at will. Gray was Military Intelligence. The dark shadow of Orloff had shown up in Cairo. We had been transported by a naval vessel. Obviously, Holmes was not the only one concerned by the doings of Chu San Fu in the land of the Nile.

Outside our suite, I took the precaution of knocking on the door before fitting my key in the lock. Bursting unannounced into a room containing Orloff was no way to insure a safe existence. The rotund security agent was comfortably seated in a chair, the steel-rimmed hat that he so often employed, such an awesome weapon in his hands, close by. I may have detected a smidgen of concern vanishing from his green eyes. There was about him a quality always helpful to my ego. Orloff habitually treated me as an equal, an abrupt departure from his usual good sense, but I always felt the better for his faulty judgment.

"I trust," he said with his lazy smile, "that Colonel Gray knows of your return. The gentleman tends to be excitable."

"Chu San Fu's people are here in Cairo," I blurted out.

"You spotted them?"

"The lawyer, Loo Chan, and those two Manchurian bodyguards, one of whom you laid out like a mackerel as I recall."

"Ah yes, the altercation on Baker Street. It would seem that you have been busy."

"Happy chance. I just happened to spot Loo Chan."

"Or he let you do so," replied Orloff.

"That thought did occur to me," I said, and was thankful that the security agent didn't pursue the matter.

"That Chu would have some of his apparatus here awaiting his arrival is reasonable. I wonder if they know what he has in mind?"

"I doubt it," I said, expressing a thought that had crossed my mind when closeted with Loo Chan in the native quarter. "In fact, I'm not certain his people are too enthusiastic."

"Dissension in the ranks?"

"They may feel they are following a falling star."

Orloff's eyes could not suppress a slight glow.

"There are times, Watson, when you do surprise me."

And myself as well, I thought. Then I wondered how I was going to explain all this to Holmes. The sleuth would insist on the details that Orloff chose to ignore.

The moment of truth was close by, for there was the sound of a key in the lock and Holmes's thin form entered the room.

"Ah ha!" he exclaimed, tossing his deerstalker on a chair. "The eagles gather."

"To do battle with the forces of darkness," was Orloff's contribution, and a surprising one since humor was not prominent in his makeup.

"What news?" inquired Holmes. "You do look much better, Watson," he added as his eyes swiveled to Orloff.

"What you expected," said the security agent. "Voices have been bought and tongues have been wagging. Like the snowball downhill, a rumor has gathered strength. I judge it to be an expensive but effective bit of propaganda."

"You mean the Moslem unrest?" I asked, and noted that both Holmes and Orloff looked at me in surprise.

"There was mention of it in the local paper," I added.

"Do tell," said Orloff.

"An indication of how far this groundswell has progressed." Happily, Holmes elaborated. "In a land, nay continent, where the printed word is in the hands of a few, a tale told on a caravan trail or a whisper in the bazaar carries more weight than the front page of the Times. In Egypt, we are not far removed from the town crier. And when a story goes from mouth to ear, it never loses in the telling."