Round Robin Pastiche

a collective effort by the members of RUSS-L

Chapter 2: "And they will come out after us, till we have drawn them from the city"

--Joshua 8:14

by "what a noble mind is here o'erthrown"

Dedicated in love and gratitude to my lost grandmother, Elisheba, a woman of valour; and with thanks and praise to that most excellent of editors, Vestige of Femininity.

So did Sherlock Holmes, his lean length folded uncomfortably in a first-class sleeping berth on the Paris-Vienna Express, remember a precious night at home with his family, three years ago, when his daughter was a year old, determined to run everywhere, beginning to string words together and competently wrapping her father around her little finger.

The years had flown by. Yesterday morning had been unseasonably mild for February, and he had taken Judith out for a walk, enjoying the sunshine and the peaty, salt-air smell of the countryside. They had stopped to admire a neighbor's early calf, picnicked on cold tea and sandwiches, been adorned with many stickle-burrs exploring a hedgehog's nest, and returned home well before teatime.

Holmes helped Judith out of her muddy boots, and she promptly ran up the path in her stockings, to greet the telegraph-man as he approached on his bicycle. "Hullo, Miss Judith, ain't you getting' tall!" he exclaimed. "Now give that to your papa, please you."

"Thank you," Judith said, and tore over to where her father sat on the doorstep, watching her. "This is for you, Papa," she said, and plumped down next to him. "Will you open it right now? What does it say? Is it a case, do you think? Shall Mama work on it too? Are there any dead bodies?"

Judith was possessed of a pragmatic mind, un-squeamish, as fascinated by a gruesomely dead boar, its throat torn open by a rival, as she was by insects of all kinds, snakes, bees and birds. Holmes took her hand. "Let's go in, love," he said. "Mrs Hudson will faint upon seeing the amount of mud coating your legs and arms."

"Will she, indeed? I shall revive her," said the imperturbable Judith, and she flew up the stairs in search of the smelling-salts. Holmes wandered into the study, where Russell sat at the long refectory table that served her as a desk, her spectacles midway on her nose, her ink-stained fingers pacing the lines of Hebrew text over which she pored.

She looked up. "Telegram?" she asked, seeing the yellow envelope in Holmes' hands. She stood, and put her spectacles up on her head, her hands at the small of her back, and stretched. Holmes sat down on the basket chair and opened the envelope.

"COME SOONEST STOP REQUIRE MIDDLE EAST CONSULTATION STOP MUCH AT STAKE END MYCROFT." Russell put her hands on his shoulders and read over his head.

"I don't like the sound of 'Much at stake'," she said. "Yesterday I read a brief from a correspondent who is stationed in Palestine. He says that immigration has swelled to a flood-tide, and there are outbreaks of violence." Her eyes darkened. Once only, she had stood in front of the Western Wall, the last relic of Solomon's Temple, and had felt herself drawn inexorably into the impossibly ancient stones, into the molecules and particles that had felt the hands of the builders, time out of mind, and heard the prayers of hundreds of generations of her people. Enough blood had been spilled; enough lives had been sacrificed for the city that was the heart of the world's three major religions. Yerushalayim shel zahav... Jerusalem, golden city, if I forget thee, let my right hand lose its cunning.

Holmes took her hand and leaned his head against hers. He had left an hour later for London, where he and Mycroft had spent the remainder of the day and most of the following night in conference with an undercover member of the Foreign Service, and the banker Elias Spinosa.

Mycroft Holmes greeted his brother with a clap on the back and handed him a glass of brandy. "Thanks for coming quickly, brother," he noised. "I have been following certain interests which have expressed concern about the worsening state of unrest in Palestine. Jewish immigrants, mostly from Russia, arrive with every steamship, swelling the Jewish population, pushing the Palestinian Arabs out to the edges of the cities. There have been riots, and now several killings."

Elias Spinosa shook Holmes' hand. He was a small, slight man, straight of carriage. He wore a suit that whispered, "Bespoke," a fortune in the making; shoes that an Italian expert had crafted to Spinosa's precise measurements, and a velvet skull-cap on his sparse black hair. They had met twice before: once in Milan, where Spinosa was attending to family matters; and once in Paris at the beginning of the Great War, when the banker nearly lost his life as a member of the Resistance.

Britain had promised to partition the tiny, arid land of Palestine into two states: one Jewish and one Arab, and it had not happened. Instead, the new Jewish Palestinians showed every signs of dominating the miserable strip of desert territory between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. As soon as they disembarked, they threw themselves down and kissed the sandy soil, and then they rolled up their sleeves and got to work.

They irrigated the desert, tapping the rivers, and caused the land to bloom. They examined the flocks of sheep and goats and cattle for ticks and diseases, doctored their sore hooves and runny eyes and gave them extra feed. They pasteurized the milk of the flocks and made great quantities of cheese of all types, most of which they ate themselves. And, most irritating of all to the Arabs, they established schools for both boys and girls, and insisted that every child learn to read and write and figure - Jew and Arab alike - in Hebrew. They bought up the ancestral dwellings of Palestinian Arabs, who could no longer afford to keep them, for ridiculously small sums.

The great Jewish bankers, Rothschild and Salomon among others, sent vast sums to Palestine to fund schools, hospitals and businesses. Elias Spinosa, who had been advised that a good portion of these funds never made it to Jerusalem, had approached Mycroft Holmes for help in locating the missing funds, and revealing the criminals.

"May I introduce Abu Achmed," Mycroft stated. Holmes had noticed the man who fitted into the shadows in the corner of the room so closely that he might have been a garment flung on a chair. The garment stood, flowed over to them. The tall, thin Bedouin put his hands over his heart and bowed. When he raised his head, his eyes glittered like hematite. They, and his white teeth, were the only light in his dark, saturnine face. He wore robes of the finest Bedouin wool, unrelieved black with a flash of a white kameez underneath, a white headcloth with a twisted rope to bind it, black, black as ink.

"I am honoured, Mr. Holmes," he said, his voice soft and deep. Holmes held out both hands and greeted the man in Arabic: "O Prince, happy is the hour when we meet! God is great!" The Arab barely blinked. He clasped Holmes' hands in his and replied, "God is good! There is no God but God!"

With the introductions completed, they sat down at the table. Mycroft rang for tea; Spinosa unrolled a map and put it on the table, weighting the corners with a cigarette-box, an ash tray, one of Mycroft's favourite granite paper-weights, and his empty brandy glass for want of anything better.

"On February fifteenth, two motor cars left Jaffa for Jerusalem, on this newly paved road." He indicated the route on the map. "They were carrying a strongbox containing a sum of money to be used for an electric generator at the Jerusalem Hospital. They also were carrying cases of medications and drugs from Paris and one thing more...." He hesitated and stroked his chin. Holmes observed that he had recently shaven his beard, and his hand, unbidden, returned nervously as if he were bearded still.

"Go on, Elias," Mycroft prompted. "What else?"

The banker's black eyes brimmed with tears. He put his head in his hands. "What can cause you such grief, friend?" Abu Achmed asked. His visage softened with pity; Holmes realized with shock that the two men could have been brothers. Both had the same oval black eyes; both, the same aquiline nose and high cheekbones. Once, Elias Spinosa had worn a black beard. Dress him in Bedouin robes, and except for his lack of height, he would have appeared a prince of the desert. Take his desert garb from him; clothe him in Bond Street's best, sober grey with immaculate linen and a fine Homburg, and Abu Achmed could be Joshua Spinosa, Elias' middle brother.

"The collection of sacred objects from the Great Synagogue of Berlin," Elias whispered, in a voice so small that Holmes had to strain to hear him. "The Torah scrolls, and the books, and the gold candelabra, and the silver and ivory set of Sabbath spice-boxes; the Kiddush wine-cups--" his voice broke. "The Eternal Light..."

"What? What happened?" Abu Achmed demanded. He reached into his robes and took out his worry beads. For long minutes, the only sound was the sobbing breath of Elias Spinosa, the clack-clack-clack-clack of the beads, and Holmes' own heart.

"The motors were ambushed. Everything was taken, and the drivers were murdered. They took the bodies and - and--" He could say no more.

Mycroft laid a comforting hand on the man's shoulder. "That's not the worst of it," he said somberly. He poured a cup of tea and pressed it into Elias' hand. "They wrote in blood on the wind-shield of the first car: 'The Jews will be no more.' They tore the Torah scrolls into shreds and left them on the road in a heap of camel dung."

Spinosa composed himself with difficulty. "God bless your kindness," he whispered to Mycroft. "And yours," he said, his gaze taking in Holmes and Abu Achmed. "My family has been threatened. My brother has disappeared, and his wife was beaten." Again, he covered his face in shame and chagrin.

"Which brother was it, Elias?" asked Mycroft.

"It was Samuel, my youngest brother. His wife, Elisheba, is - was pregnant. Her family is an old one, from Safed."

Abu Achmed looped his worry beads over his arm. "Elisheba is the daughter of Aaron Levi of Safed, who is of the long line of scholars that established the University there, the first in all of Arabia." He accepted a cup of tea from Mycroft, sipped briefly. "Safed has been stricken. There have been fires. Some of the library is taken. Elisheba is gone."

Holmes rose, clasped his hands behind his back and paced to the window. He held the curtain aside and scanned the street below. He turned back to the men at the table. "How can I help you? There has been a robbery, a murder, and a woman is missing. These are crimes that the local authorities are perfectly capable of handling."

"There's more to it, Holmes," his brother said.

"You keep saying that, Mycroft," the detective replied, his voice rising a notch with irritation. "What more is there that dragged me from my home to no discernible purpose?" He took his pipe from his pocket and began to fill it with tobacco. He struck a lucifer against the slate top of the mantelpiece and lit the pipe, puffing furiously until it caught. Then, exhaling a cloud of blue smoke, he sat at the table.

"I must apologize, all. I know that the theft of the religious objects from the Great Synagogue has a significance that goes beyond the loss of antique treasures, further than Berlin and even Jerusalem. Although Germany lost the Great War, the aftermath is far more menacing. There are interests in Germany that have their tentacles in cities all over the world, and when they are ready, they will strangle those who do not support their goals."

Elias Spinosa helped himself to another cup of tea. "My cousins in Berlin, Zurich and Paris have been warning me for some time about the new doctrine that has become popular in Germany; I should say, the new craze."

"It seems to me," Holmes remarked dryly, "that every age has its crazes, its cults and its fanatics, and as they come, they go. But, Elias, you are correct: there is reason to watch closely. This particular doctrine is not new: there have been elitist movements in every country since ancient times."

"Yes, I know," Mycroft poured brandy into snifters and passed them around. "There is more evil waiting to pounce than ever I've seen before. Have you heard the speeches of the latest demagogue, a former house-painter called Adolf Hitler?"

--2 September 2002 The River City Kid, "what a noble mind is here o'erthrown"