Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #8. Ron Goulart
write new stories. In France, Harry Dickson’s fame is said to rival that of Arsene Lupin and even the great Sherlock Holmes himself.
While these various series may be fodder for another day, it is worthy to note that the beginnings of Sherlock Holmes pastiche in Europe began over a hundred years ago in Germany, way back in 1907 with a lovely little series of dime novel booklets—or as I have put it—with Sherlock Holmes and the case of the German serials.
SUN CHING FOO’S LAST TRICK, by Adam Beau McFarlane
An unseasonably hot June brought a feverish outbreak of criminal activity, leaving Scotland Yard busy and Holmes cataloguing newspaper articles into albums with paste and scissors. Countless visitors had presented their problems at 221 Baker Street. But that summer, without any client asking him to, Holmes solved a man’s killing after we witnessed it with our very own eyes.
The sun lasted late on Whitmonday and Mary was visiting family, so I asked Holmes to join me at a variety show featuring Sun Ching Foo, the conjurer. I’d hoped that a magic show of impossible acts would entertain a man whose trade was explaining mysteries. With his straw hat and walking stick, he joined me for an evening’s entertainment.
The hall’s benches were crowded with people from all walks of life. The stage was ornately decorated and rigged with curtains. We sat through singers, dancers, and jugglers, and we ate our way through a series of roasted peanuts, Chelsea buns, and peppermint water. Sun Ching Foo was saved for the big finish—though little did we know how big it would be.
Wearing an electric blue robe embroidered with golden stars and moons, Sun levitated his assistant and plucked white hares from his wizard’s cap. His assistant, Lai Way, wore a black gown and long sable hair. Her Oriental face was yellow with dark eyes.
The grand finale was the famous bullet-catching trick. Lai Way asked for a volunteer who was a soldier or a former soldier. I raised my hand. She stepped down and waded into the crowd, picking a man and asking him to go to the stage.
While the soldier made his way forward, she asked for another volunteer. She was not near me, but I raised my hand again. Sherlock looked at me with a slight smile of amusement.
Again, I was not picked. The new volunteer marked a bullet. Lai Way thanked him, dropped the bullet into a pail, then walked the pail to the stage.
When Lai Way reached the volunteering soldier who was now onstage, he introduced himself as Alastair Franklin.
She picked the bullet from the pail. “Is this reel bullet, Alastair?” she asked in halting English. He agreed. Then Way asked, “You see how it marked with skrachis?” He agreed again.
Excitement bubbled inside me. I’d seen the trick before: the volunteer would load a gun and shoot it at Sun Ching Foo. But Sun would catch the bullet in his hand and show it to the soldier, who would recognize it by the scratches made by the other volunteer in the crowd. I thought, let Holmes try and explain this!
Alastair Franklin and Lai Way stood at the left end of the stage. Sun stood on the right end. The assistant handed Franklin a rifle. It resembled the jezail that ended my career in the Army, except this one was white, inlaid with bone or ivory and studded with jewels.
She produced black powder and a ramrod. Angling the gun upright on the stage,
Franklin poured black powder down the muzzle into the barrel. He pushed in the bullet.
Way handed him the ramrod, then he moved the bullet and powder down the barrel.
Once the ramrod was shoved from end to end of the barrel, she motioned for the ramrod. Franklin gave it back, and she stepped away, fading into the shadows in the back of the stage.
He cocked the gun and loaded a percussion cap under the hammer. As Franklin raised the gun, the band begun to play. A drum roll reeled through the air. “Ready!” Sun Ching Foo called out. “Aim!” The soldier settled the gun against his shoulder and peered down the length of the barrel. The wizard shouted, “Fire!”
The shot exploded off the walls as Sun Ching Foo dropped to his knees and cried out, “Thomasina!”
I looked at Holmes, who had a look of uncertainty on his face, then I grabbed his arm and the curtain began to descend.
“Watson, what are you doing?”
“That was not supposed to happen—he really was shot.”
When we reached the stage, Sun lay face-up on the boards with blood coating his costume. “I’m a doctor!” I exclaimed. Tearing the silk, I pulled brass buttons apart from their loops. The bullet had passed through him, leaving a wound hole in his abdomen through to his back.
The stage curtain was a scrim. On the far side of it, we could see the orchestra, the rows of chairs, and the exit doors in the back. The musicians struck up “God Save the Queen” and then the audience stood up to sing.
Sun gasped for air, choking. He coughed and splashed blood from his mouth, then he was dead. His head dropped against the floor, knocking his hat off. His queue severed from his head as a black cloth band slipped from its concealment under against his hairline. Looking at his face, I saw that his complexion and Oriental features were a careful artifice of cosmetics.
I closed his eyelids and looked up. Peering over me, Inspector Lanners stood beside Holmes. “I was in the audience,” he said.
The stage was a grim scene as we huddled around the corpse. People filed out of the theatre. While the body of Sun Ching Foo lay still, couples were holding hands and mothers towed away their entertained children.
Holmes searched the stage. He took out his pocket lens and hovered around the wall. “Lanners,” he said, “the bullet has lodged itself,” he said, pointing. Holmes pried it from the lincrusta wallpaper and turned it around under the magnifying glass. The weapon that pierced Sun Ching Foo had been rendered into a shapeless lump of metal.
“Could it have been from another gun? Someone in the audience or secreted near the stage?” Lanners asked.
Holmes shook his head. “We would have heard a separate shot fired. Sun Ching Foo must have been killed by his own gun; otherwise, the report from another fire-arm would have revealed itself. No marksman could have timed his gun to have fired simultaneously.”
“Would you be willing to join us at Scotland Yard?” Lanners asked.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Holmes responded.
* * * *
The constabulary took the soldier and Sun Ching Foo’s stagehand to Scotland Yard while we followed in a cab. The new Metropolitan Police building was two levels of grey granite lifting red and white stripes of bricks. Windows in gables and dormers looked out from an additional five floors. Lamps along the Victoria Embankment glowed in the settling dusk.
After we arrived, Lanners allowed us to meet with Alastair Franklin. The large man had side whiskers linked to his moustache. White hairs sprouted from his blond hair and his skin had a tanned complexion.
Holmes asked, “Did you know Sun Ching Foo? Any business or relationship with him?”
“No, inspector.”
Holmes held up his hand. “Just Mister Holmes. Had you seen him before?”
“I’m in the navy, just returned from Alexandria the day before last. My wife and our son were at the show—they’ll be wondering what happened to me, I expect.” Despite his sturdy build, his hands trembled anxiously. “I don’t know what happened upon the stage; all I did was as I was told.”
“Did you know that you would be selected from the crowd?”
He shrugged his shoulders, lifting his palms up, while shaking his head. “Now how would I know that?”
Holmes turned to Lanners and asked, “Where is the gun?”
After locking the sailor into an interrogation room, the inspector led us to an office where the muzzleloader