Sherlock's Secret War (3)
(From The Air-Gun, Volume 1, Issue 5, August 1985)
By Brad Keefauver

Summer. With its usual recreational demands, the warm season also brings with it an occasional visit from that ancient mystery Pader Vlkoslak. Just where he comes from I've never been able to find out. He is evasive about such things, for reasons "he dast not speak of, even. to whisper." But Pader is a family friend from my grandpa on down, as well as one fascinating long-talker, so finding myself on the porch steps with him for an evening is never unwelcome. Pader, among other things, is a Sherlockian. In fact, he claims to have been one of the original Baker Street Irregulars. Not the Morley/New York Irregulars -- the original original Wiggins/London Irregulars. And from time to time he's dropped stray facts that only a member of Holmes's street urchin corps could have known, as far as I can tell. So upon his last visit I was taking all the mental notes my too limited faculties could hold. The subject had turned to a certain matter in the last issue of The Air-Gun:

"Holmes chasing down the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, eh? I wondered when someone'd tumble to that. That wasn't the wildest one either, not by long odds . . . especially once he found his way from the Golden Dawn to the . . . no, you're too young to be carrying that kind of haunt around in your head. Better to be my age with death starin' you in the eye.

"I'll tell you of one bunch Mr. Holmes did run up against time and again, though -- the gipsy masters. Most folks think the gipsies have no masters, and they don't, truth to tell. But they do have masters of their special arts, and those are as close to gipsy royalty as the wanderers have. Though they bend knee to no man, every vista on earth has a need for the expertise and wisdom of the Nom on occasion. And the Nom, that's what the gipsy masters call themselves,they hated Mr. Holmes, hated him with all the passion their dark blood could raise. Most of the 'glars, Simpson especially, thought the Nom hated Holmes because of the way he killed Grimesby Roylott with his own snake, Roylott being a special friend of theirs. But an old Gitano once told me otherwise. The Nom, he said, claimed Holmes stole his powers of observation and deduction from the Nom's master fortune-reader. Sounded like the old woman just lost her touch and needed someone to blame.

"You know gipsies, though. Ask them the same question five times, you'll get five different answers. The Nom had all kinds of reasons to be mad at Holmes. He put away John and Archie Clay, the grandsons of Royal Duke Thomas, a living legend among the gipsy masters. You remember that 'white acid splash' on John Clay's forehead? Well, his brother had it too. That white patch was the birthmark that gipsy superstition claimed marked a true Nom. And they were, those two. As young men they were well known among their people for their ability to move freely among the gorgio, the non-gipsy, that is, and for their hand at metalwork. The Nom each develop their own specialties, you see, and the Clay brothers' metal-working talents were in coining. It's said they taught Fritz Reuber the poshrat all he knew about the business.

"Sakes, you know Fritz. Called himself 'Colonel Lysander Stark' for a time. Cut that guy's thumb off. Sure you do. But don't let me wander . . . where was I?

"Ah, no matter. The Nom hated Holmes so much that they eventually started trying to put a gipsy jinx on his cases. When they heard Mr. Holmes had been sent for after the Duke of Holdernesse's son was kidnapped, they purposely had some of their folk steal one of the boy's caps and pretend to make off with it. That one might not have worked, but I sometimes think that there were one or two that did, like the famous Silver Blaze case. I wouldn't say for certain, but I've heard that there was a kumpania of gipsies out in Dartmoor near the spot John Straker was killed. Gipsies respect horseflesh more than anyone, and the sight of a horse about to be cut by its trainer might have caused an immediate reaction that ended Straker's life. The Nom would have covered up any traces of their brethern's guilt, covered it so well that even Sherlock Holmes missed it.

"They fenced back and forth more than once, the Nom and Sherlock Holmes. The time the Szgany asked for their aid had to have been one of the worst. The Szgany were an olden time off-shoot of the Nom who'd taken to serving a lesser dark god. And when that god wanted to come to England . . . well, that tale's been told many a time. Hamilton Deane did it best, I thought.

"What? You don't know of Ham Deane?"

With that Pader launched into one of his colorful sidetrips on London's past, this time concentrating on the theatrical district. Neither Sherlock Holmes nor the Nom came up again that evening, though I did my best to steer the conversation that way. Another night perhaps, but I don't let it worry me too much. What Pader told me on his last visit -- about the true nature of Mary Morstan's pearls -- now that worries me. Maybe I'll try to remember enough of that night to get it on paper. Maybe not, for everyone's sake.

Rest easy, while you can.