Free Mandala of Sherlock Holmes by Jamyang Norbu Page A

I waited for a moment behind a pile of empty boxes, while a couple of sweating coolies carried large slabs of ice through the rear entrance of the hotel. When they left, I crossed the alley and entered the building. I climbed up the dark stairs and hurried down the brightly-lit corridor. There was no one about. I knocked sharply, three times, on the door of Room 289. An irate Strickland opened the door and practically dragged me in.
    ‘Do you have to make such an infernal racket? Come in quick, man. He ought to be here any minute now.’
    We concealed ourselves behind a grilled marble screen between the room and the balcony window. I was curious to know why Mr Holmes had posted Strickland to guard his room, and the identity of the mysterious intruder who was expected; but if my years with the Department have taught me anything, they have taught me to hold my water when ill-temper rules the roost; if I may be permitted the expression.
    We remained standing silently behind the screen. Through the grille of the screen I could now discern the shadowy outiines of the objects in the room. Strickland sniffed suspiciously.
    ‘What a horrible smell,’ he whispered irritably. ‘You wouldn’t by any chance be using some kind of perfume, would you, Huree?’
    ‘Certainly not, Mr Strickland,’ I whispered back crushingly. ‘The aroma happens to emanate from a brand of hair-lotion of which I make daily applications on the scalp. It is a very superior and expensive medicant, retailed at one rupee and four annas a botde and manufactured by Armitage and Anstruthers at their modern plant in Liverpool. I highly recommend it, Mr Strickland, it would do wonders for your coiffure’.
    He sighed. We resumed our vigil in dignified silence. Suddenly Strickland gripped me strongly by the arm. There was a slight rattle of a key opening a lock. The door opened noiselessly and for a moment a man’s outline was clearly silhouetted by the gas lights in the corridor. The door closed quickly. The figure, furtively, made its way across the room to the bed. A match was struck. The glow revealed the fat nervous features of the Portuguese desk clerk. He lit a small candle and placed it on the dresser near the head of the bed, then quickly moved a table from the corner of the room (the very same table Mr Holmes had commented upon yesterday) to the side of the bed. Picking up the candle he climbed on the bed and then onto the table. He reached out for the brass elephant hanging over the bed and pulling it close to him he proceeded to perform a series of furtive operations whose exact nature we could not clearly discern from our coign of vantage.
    The awkwardness of having to hold a candle in one hand, and arrest the swing of the elephant with the other, made his face shine with sweat and twitch with anxiety. He extracted an objectfrom his jacket pocket that looked like a small container, and transferred something fromit to the lamp. Finally he lit the lamp on the howdah of the brass elephant and let it swing gendy back over the bed.
    Then he got off the table and, placing it back in its corner, proceeded to wipe his face with a large handkerchief. He then left the room furtively, locking it behind him. Strickland and I stayed behind the screen for another ten minutes till three sharp raps came from the door. Strickland opened it with a key that he drew from his pocket. Mr Holmes walked in and looked up at the lighted elephant lamp that now swayed only imperceptibly.
    ‘Ha! I see we have had our visitor. Capital, capital,’ he remarked, rubbing his hands together. ‘Oblige me by turning up the gas. We may have to entertain again this evening, and this time it would not do for our friend to view the consequences of his deed only by the light of this remarkable lamp.’
    Mr Holmes’s cheeriness did not dispel my fears. The lamp was definitely not your usual objet d’art, and being in the same room as it made me a trifle nervous.
    ‘I hope it is not