The Giant Rat of Sumatra Part X

Vittoria Donna Gina looked into Sherlock Holmes' eyes, "Oh Holmesey dearest, I feel like a naughty schoolgirl standing in your presence. Will you give me a good spanking?".

Holmes fidgeted for a giant hairbrush, "And when would you like this spanking, Miss Vittoria?".

"Well n..." Vittoria was interrupted.

"Another ten minutes," someone banged on the door of her dressing room.

"What?" Vittoria emerged from her daydream to gaze at her red corsetted figure in the mirror.

"Ten minutes to showtime," the little dwarf stage manager called out.

"Thanks," Vittoria stood up and put on her black silk nylon stockings.

Then she put on an exquisitely beautiful green velvet dress and some intensely shiny black spiked stiletto high-heeled shoes.

"Oh, Holmes, what does your other pipe look like?" Vittoria moaned in ecstasy to herself as she stood there smoothing her dress, "show me."

She looked up at her own reflection in the mirror. And then noticed someone else behind her standing at the open door.

It was the dark haired dark bearded dark eyed man in the tailored suit carrying the fancy walking stick. The one she had last seen standing on the shore near the Liverpool wharf where the Matilda Briggs had docked.

The one that her boss Hemlock the Magician had always referred to as "that thief".

The one that Sherlock Holmes the world's greatest consulting detective had said was "probably Italian in his nationality".

"Miss Vittoria, there's something you need to know..." the man spoke.

Vittoria screamed.

And screamed.

And screamed.

"It appears someone else doesn't like the cook's disastrous attempt at French onion soup either," one of the clowns on the circus campsite grounds said to the Sumatran orangutan Darwin as he heard the screams.

The clown spit out the onion soup from his mouth and when Darwin reached for the clown's bowl and took a sip, he immediately did the same.

Holmes and Clegg meanwhile upon hearing the screams rushed to Vittoria's dressing room.

"Oh, Mr. Holmes," Vittoria fell into his arms.

Clegg looked around outside and spotted the man that Hemlock had identified back in Liverpool as a circus thief walking stealthily away.

A sourly old Scotsman who was the local maker of meat pies in town stood outside one of the tents drinking from a bottle of William Grant's Scotch Whisky.

The man raised his finger when he saw the dark haired dark bearded dark eyed man in the tailored suit and started shouting, "Antichrist. Antichrist. I renounce you as Christ's Enemy and Antichrist."

The Scotsman tried to hit the tall dark stranger over the head with his still nearly full bottle of Scotch whisky.

Thus one wouldn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that the Scotsman obviously detested the well-groomed dark haired dark bearded dark eyed stranger.


* * *


After a good sound slapping from Holmes that seemed to bring Vittoria Donna Gina back to reality (not to mention a deep blushing rosy red colour to her cheeks as well as a strange passionate glow to her smile and a peculiar gleam in her eyes), she was ready for the show.

The first act involved Hemlock the Magician placing Vittoria in a box and sawing her in half.

As Holmes sat in the audience watching the show, he noticed that Hemlock had changed his mask.

Instead of a golden mask showing the face of Tragedy (from the old style ancient Greek dramas) that Hemlock usually seemed to wear, for these bloodcurdling routines of his magician act, he wore a golden mask showing the face of Comedy from the old ancient Greek dramas.

"There's a time to laugh and a time to mourn," Holmes recalled the words of Solomon in Ecclesiastes, "yet where there is joy, Hemlock shows the face of Aeschylus and Sophocles, and where there is intense pain and suffering, he shows the face of Aristophanes."

The next was a knife throwing act in which Vittoria in her green dress stood against a marked background of the human body while Hemlock threw knives at her.

The knives were as close to the potential victim as Holmes had ever seen in a knife throwing routine.

And as Hemlock threw each knife, Holmes thought he detected in the glowing radiant eyes of Hemlock (which seemed to glow and radiate more and more with each throw of the knife) a smile even wider than the huge smiling face of the mask of Comedy.

The next was the arrow through the apple on the head trick.

As the small circus band started to play Rossini's William Tell Overture, Vittoria Donna Gina was tied to a large prop that resembled a tree in the forest. She was then gagged. As the midget stage manager for the circus then stood on a stool to tie a blindfold around Vittoria's eyes, Hemlock the Magician waved him off.

"She shall see exactly what is coming towards her," Hemlock laughed.


The distance between Hemlock with his arrow and Vittoria with the apple on her head was about 30 feet.

In the middle from the top of the circus big tent, a banana tied to the end of a rope was suddenly lowered from the ceiling.

Darwin the Sumatran orangutan was brought on to the stage where he tried to leap up and grab the banana but it was too high for him.

Hemlock then raised his hand.

The band stopped playing the Overture.

He then waved his hand.

The drummer started playing an intense drum roll.

Hemlock then placed an arrow in his cross-bow.

He then took aim.

The arrow then cut through the rope allowing the banana to fall into the waiting anxious arms of Darwin the orangutan.

It then passed through the apple atop Vittoria's head.

Vittoria squirmed.

Holmes noticed that some lovely black locks of hair fell out from atop her head as she was untied.

He then noticed a man came up out of the audience and grabbed those fallen locks of hair.

Holmes did not get a good look at the man but he knew from the elaborate walking stick and the exquisitely tailored texture of his suit- he knew exactly who the man was.

Outside the big circus tent, a heavy and seemingly drunken thick Scottish brogue could be heard hollering the words, "Antichrist. Antichrist."


To be continued.