The Undiscovered Casebook of Sherlock Holmes by Ted Riccardi

Author:Ted Riccardi [Riccardi, Ted]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

THE GIANT RAT OF SUMATRA

In reading over the many accounts that I have placed before the public concerning the exploits of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I have noted that their pages contain many references to cases as yet unpublished. For reasons of discretion, almost all of these tales will forever remain untold. Only one of them, “The Adventure of the Second Stain,” did I decide long ago, with Holmes’s express permission, to publish at the appropriate moment.

Another of these cases, I now find, fits the present annals so very well that its publication in them is almost necessary if Holmes’s experiences in the Orient are to be complete. It took place during Holmes’s extensive voyages in the Dutch Indies. The reader may remember that I have alluded to it once before in the introductory words to the strange case of the Sussex Vampire. The story concerns the ship Matilda Briggs and the giant rat of Sumatra, a tale for which Holmes then believed that the world was not yet prepared. No case undertaken by him before or since shows so clearly the dreadful effects of the contact of primitive peoples with European civilisation.

In recounting this adventure, I have chosen to let Holmes speak for himself. The account is written in his own words, the manuscript of which he gave me after his return to England. Addressed to me, it was set down in his careful hand during some moments of calm in Singapore before he boarded a ship destined for the Levant. The prose is in Holmes’ usual laconic and terse style. After an initial reading, I placed it in the tin box that holds so many of his papers at Cox and Company in Charing Cross. Although Holmes has expressed to me a lingering doubt as to whether it should appear now, he reluctantly agreed that its inclusion in the present collection was most appropriate, indeed necessary, if his Oriental adventures were to be complete. The manuscript is undated and I present it here without change.

My dear Watson,

I have decided to record for you, and perhaps someday for the public for whom you have chronicled a number of my cases, an account of events that took place shortly before I arrived here in Singapore. The heat here is intolerable, and I can write only in the early hours of the morning, but I must finish before I leave.

In the spring of 1893, I travelled south in Bengal to Chittagong, where I had booked a passage to the Dutch Indies on a ship called the Matilda Briggs. I had chosen it because of the rather circuitous route it was scheduled to take to its ultimate destination, namely Batavia, the capital of the Dutch colonies. From Chittagong, the ship was to enter the Bay of Bengal, calling at the Andaman Islands, then at various ports of call, first along the southern coast of Burma near Pagan, then proceeding on to Malaya and Singapore before reaching the island of Java. The trip

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.