Sherlock Holmes (4 page)

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Holmes, Diggs, and I all testified at
Marshall Prince’s trial for kidnapping, and were duly sued by his
lawyers, not only for slander but for breaking and entering,
charges which were summarily thrown out of the California
courts.

Prince was convicted, and sentenced to twenty
years’ imprisonment; nevertheless, Julian and Diana Li left San
Francisco and re-settled in the Chinese community in New York, from
which residence they continue to send myself and Holmes small notes
and Christmas greetings each year.

Holmes’s eventual discovery that Hollis
Connington’s entire persecution had been arranged by the railroad
magnate himself, as a means of purging his family and corporation
of disloyal members, resulted in Holmes leaving his employ a few
days after the Prince trial – and in Connington’s repudiation of
the Palace hotel bill. Fortunately, we had purchased
return-tickets.

On our return journey across country to take
ship for Liverpool, I had occasion, in Omaha, Nebraska, to look up
Oscar Zoroaster Diggs, and learned – rather disconcertingly – that
the Professor Diggs we had known in San Francisco was something of
an imposter himself. The original OZ Diggs, who had indeed vanished
in a ballooning accident in 1861, had been at that time some
sixty-three years of age, making it impossible for our Professor
Diggs to have been one and the same man, unless of course one
believes that a man stranded for forty years in Fairyland does not
age. Who he really was – and why he had taken on the earlier Great
Oz’s identity – I never learned.

As for Professor Diggs himself, he vanished
the following year, during another ballooning expedition in Central
California. I have often wondered whether that remarkable little
madman – far saner than the madman Prince whom he had helped Holmes
bring to justice – ever in fact managed to find his way back to his
City of Emeralds.

I can only hope that he did.

About the Author

Since her first published fantasy in 1982 -
The Time of the Dark
- Barbara Hambly has touched most of
the bases in genre fiction. She has written mysteries, horror,
mainstream historicals, graphic novels, sword-and-sorcery fantasy,
romances, and Saturday Morning Cartoons. Born and raised in
Southern California, she attended the University of California,
Riverside, and spent one year at the University of Bordeaux,
France. She married science fiction author George Alec Effinger,
and lived part-time in New Orleans for a number of years. In her
work as a novelist, she currently concentrates on horror (the Don
Simon Ysidro vampire series) and historical whodunnits, the
well-reviewed Benjamin January novels, though she has also written
another historical whodunnit series under the name of Barbara
Hamilton.

A lifelong fan of Arthur Conan Doyle’s
Sherlock Holmes stories, over the years Hambly has been asked to
contribute to a number of Holmes anthologies. When the character
went into public domain, she added these stories to her
collection.

Professor Hambly also teaches History
part-time, paints, dances, and trains in martial arts. Follow her
on Facebook, and on her blog at livejournal.com.

Now a widow, she shares a house in Los
Angeles with several small carnivores.

She very much hopes you will enjoy these
stories.

Other Sherlock Holmes stories by Barbara
Hambly, available on Smashwords:

The Dollmaker of Marigold Walk (narrated by
Mrs. Watson)

The Adventure of the Los Boy (Sherlock Holmes
meets Peter Pan - narrated by Mrs. Watson)

The Adventure of the Antiquarian’s Niece
(narrated by Dr. Watson - this story was written for an anthology
of Sherlock Holmes in H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos)