The Giant Rat of Sumatra Part V

"You've heard of me?" Vittoria Donna Gina batted her eyelashes at Sherlock Holmes.

"When I was a boy," Holmes emptied the ashes of his pipe on the floor and put his pipe back in his pocket, "I did have a fantasy about running away and joining the circus which was cured the day I did visit a circus and stepped in some elephant dung. I did follow the career of some circus performers however. And when you burst on the carnival scene 5 years ago as the Singing Lion Tamer, I followed your career. I heard you had the voice of a nightingale. And I loved the way you used the whip on those lions in your photos."

"She no longer tames lions," said a man wearing a golden mask that resembled the face of Tragedy from the old Greek dramas, "she's assumed a more submissive role."

"Sounds like an article from The Pearl," Dodd stated referring to a notorious underground erotic journal of the day, "or at least that's what I've been told by others." The lawyer blushed.

"I'm surprised that being a lawyer, you'd still suffer from a sense of shame," Fred Clegg quipped when he noticed the blushing solicitor.

Holmes gazed intently at the Man in the Mask.

The Man in the Mask blinked his eyes under Holmes' gaze and explained, "My face was burnt in a fire some years ago."

"This is Hemlock the Magician," Vittoria Donna Gina introduced the Man in the Golden Mask.

"My stage name," the masked magician offered his hand to Holmes but the consulting detective didn't take it to shake it.

"I didn't think your parents would give you a Christian name like that," Holmes retorted sourly, "unless of course they were modern German philosophers who would naturally despise the father of Socratic reasoning."

Anger seemed to flare in the eyes of the Man in the Golden Mask.

"I haven't read of your exploits for quite a while," Holmes' gaze turned back to the lovely Vittoria Donna Gina.

"I've been touring in the Far East," Vittoria explained, "Shanghai, Manila, Bangkok, the East Indies."

"And you're no longer an exquisitely dressed singing lion tamer with a whip?" Holmes looked disappointed.

"She's now a magician's assistant," Hemlock the Magician broke in, "she now SERVES under me."

The atmosphere of tension in the air between the two men- Holmes and Hemlock- could be felt by all.

"What say we go down to the lower decks and view the animals in their cages?" Clegg suggested.

"And hopefully we won't come across any drunken Noahs in their nakedness." Holmes' walking stick seemed to deliberately touch the bottom of Hemlock the Magician's cloak.


To be continued.