4 October 1881

In the wee hours of the morning, I was awakened by a strange thumping sound. George was resting easily, and the governess was lightly snoring. Had I dreamed, or was there, again, the sound of a dull thump in the corridor?

Perhaps, the tsar was returning to see his son, but then the sound was gone. I went to the door and listened, but there was nothing...

Then, I heard something which sounded like a faint rattle. Was it the wind stirring a tree branch? An animal scratching in the garden? I listened for a long minute. There it was again, a faint rattle.

I took the single candle from its holder and gently opened the door into the corridor. There, immediately at the entrance to the tsar’s bedroom, his personal guard was unconscious on the floor with a gash on his forehead. At first, I thought he must have fallen and cracked his skull, but he was a healthy young guardsman and there was no smell of liquor. Someone had attacked him.

Before I examined him, there it was again - a faint rattle from within the tsar’s bedroom. The scene in Pavlov’s laboratory, with snakes sinking their deadly fangs into the poor old caretaker, rose like a dread scene from hell in my mind.

I had no weapon, was in stocking feet, but sensed there was a rattlesnake in the tsar’s bedroom.

The candle flame flickered from the slight draft as I opened the door into the tsar’s small, plain chamber. Was it a hallucination? No.

Why was a uniformed British officer in the tsar’s bedroom?

A single oil lamp in a far corner cast a flickering, yellow light over a garish scene. I guttered my candle with two fingers and moved further into the room. The figure in the uniform of a British officer set a large basket on the floor and, with the tip of his boot, lifted the top. The rattling increased, then there was hissing and, finally, the scrape of scales on the basket. I watched, as if in a hypnotic trance, while a reptilian head as large as my fist rose from the basket.

In the dim light, there was no mistaking the flat head and dull, venomous eyes of a gigantic Texas rattlesnake.

As if responding to a charmer’s melody, the snake rose from the basket, its head swaying back and forth. The entire seven-foot reptile coiled, uncoiled and, in a nightmarish moment, was suddenly at full length on the wooden floor.

It was only then that I saw the massive bulk of the tsar resting, fully clothed, on the top of an oversized soldier’s cot in the far corner of the room.

Unfortunately, I was too far away to stop the venomous creature and no match for a deadly rattler. The tsar was out cold from the laudanum, on his back, with one arm hanging almost to the floor.

With a sibilant hiss, the snake raised its head as if sampling the air, hunting for food. I should have cried out, aroused the palace, but there was no time and the tsar was still deep under the influence of the laudanum. The snake, as if sensing the helplessness of its prey, raised its head and flicked its tongue.

I huddled with my back to the wall, in the shadows, as the officer picked up the basket and slowly backed away.

I waited, then threw an arm around his neck with a stranglehold. He struggled. I administered a short chop to the back of his head. He wilted in my arms.

With his head thrown back, I stared at his face. My God, it was Dmitri, the caretaker from Pavlov’s laboratory. Why was he dressed as a British officer?

Could this man be David Campbell, the British officer who had sworn vengeance on the tsar? Aye, my mind was in a whirl.

Ivanov had deliberately placed him in Pavlov’s laboratory. I had not been mistaken when I heard him muttering in English. Penelope must be behind this diabolic plot. Who else could have helped him gain access to the tsar’s quarters?

There was no time for idle thoughts. The great, horrid snake made the sibilant rattle, his warning of an impending strike. The creature was within a foot of the tsar’s dangling arm. It seemed helpless, but I had to save the tsar.

Ah, the whistle, the whistle Dmitri used to call the snakes for food. At first, I couldn’t produce a sound from my parched, pursed lips, but I finally managed a feeble, high-pitched tone. The snake did not respond. It was again coiled, its great head moving back and forth, on the scent for food. I whistled again and, slowly, the head turned. Was it my imagination, or were those dull eyes searching for new prey?

It was an utterly terrifying moment. I whistled again. The snake turned and, with one coil after another, silently moved in my direction. The snake’s primitive brain had followed a dim Pavlovian instinct to find food in the direction of the whistle. I had saved the tsar. For now...

Unfortunately, it appeared as if I was now the chosen food source. I pushed the unconscious officer, Dmitri - or was it David - into the corridor. I retreated, completely terrified and without a notion of how to save myself from the snake that kept slithering faster and faster towards me.

For a moment, I thought of slamming the door, leaving the snake and the tsar alone. But then, I thought of the tsar holding his son just as any loving father and backed further into the hall.

I stumbled backward onto the felled guard. He groaned and rolled over. There, beneath his body was a rifle with a fixed bayonet.

The snake was now halfway out the door and into the corridor when I, with trembling hands and not a moment to lose, took up the guard’s rifle and commenced a terrible dance with the poisonous beast. We parried, back and forth, now thrusting, now retreating. The whole time, I fixed my focus on those awful fangs.

The rifle was a short cavalry carbine, so even with the bayonet, my reach was not even as long as that terrible, thrusting body.

In short, I had only made the reptile angry.

The snake had ignored the two unconscious men; the eyes in that flat, deadly head were only for me. I whistled and retreated down the hall where the only light came from a single candle in a wall holder. Any further and I would be in total darkness. The guard groaned and, for just a moment, the snake turned aside.

I thrust the bayonet behind the creature’s head but missed the vital spinal cord. He struck with lightning speed and barely missed my leg. With one more thrust, I drove the tip of the blade through the body and impaled the writhing snake to the wooden floor.

It was still alive, writhing and striking out but unable to slither forward or back. Yet, the open mouth and deadly fangs were as dangerous as ever.

The snake struggled, but the bayonet did not give. I had a moment’s reprieve. I removed the light dress sword from the guard’s scabbard and, in one fell swoop, I severed the snake’s head from the body.

Now, what to do with the mess? A dead snake, an injured guard, and a sick English officer. The tsar, even after a heavy dose of laudanum, would rise at first light and the palace would come awake. I wrapped the snake’s body in bedclothes soiled by our patient’s vomiting.

Later, I convinced the governess the bundle was infectious and must be burned. A dash of medicinal brandy on the face of the unconscious guard provided an explanation for his dereliction of duty.

That left a very sick, dazed English officer who I had known as Dmitri but was almost certainly the missing officer, David Campbell. His trousers were not so different from a Russian officer. Perhaps, without his jacket and British insignia, he might pass as a palace guard. I dragged his limp body into a corner of the sick room and covered him with a quilt.

Little George opened one sleepy eye and said just one word. “L’eau.”

I held his head while he sipped from a cup of water. The governess awoke immediately and took charge of the boy. It then occurred to me that the poor guard would be shot for neglecting his duties. Out of sympathy, I roused the poor man, put a bit of sticking plaster on his wound, propped him up, and replaced the carbine into his limp hand. If needed, I could claim the brandy was a wound disinfectant.

All in all, it was not a bad night’s work.

Nothing was amiss, when, at the crack of dawn, the tsar tramped into the room on heavy feet and swept little George into his massive arms.

An hour later, Dr. Bell arrived, as fresh as ever, and after examining George, allowed the boy to go with his governess to his own room. We were alone with nothing to do but to pack our instruments and leave.

“Sir, we have a problem,” I said.

“Oh come now. It is a fine morning and our patient is recovering nicely,” he said.

“I believe I have discovered the English officer. He is there, under a quilt.”

I carried the poor man to the oak table. He was light as a feather and clearly suffering from a chronic illness.

“He is very near death,” Dr. Bell said.

I related what I knew of Dmitri’s headaches, confusion, and loss of memory. Dr. Bell commenced his usual sleuth-like examination, noted the scars on both hands, more scars on his torso indicating old bullet wounds, and the emaciation. “Ah, Doyle, he is certainly the British officer. What do you make of this?” He had pulled down the lower lip to expose a blue-black line on the lower gum, just beneath the teeth.

I recalled an old patient, a lead miner, in the insane asylum. “Burton’s line!” I cried. “Lead poisoning.”

“Very good, Doyle. Excellent. Sadly, his brain is affected and he is near the last stages of the illness. If his kidney’s fail, he is a dead man.”

“But why?” I asked.

“The wounds, Doyle. Think about it. From the looks of these old bullet holes, he has one and possibly two lead balls within his body.” Bell set about, with his long, sensitive fingers, to palpate every inch of the man’s torso. His index finger came to rest high in the officer’s armpit. “It is here, lodged in the subscapularis muscle. We must remove it.”

“Shall we take him to a hospital?”

“There is no time to lose, and there is no better operating room in all of Russia than right here. Quick - carbolic and open the instrument case.”

It made sense. The sooner the lead ball was removed, the better his chances. The royal family and the entire household was either with little George or at breakfast. We had the room to ourselves for at least an hour.

Bell kept his finger on the place where he had located the bullet while I splashed carbolic on his hands over the patient’s chest. He needed only a probe, the sharp curved scalpel, and a rat-toothed forceps to remove the bullet, a .65 calibre musket ball.

Our patient uttered a sigh but scarcely moved during the brief operation. “Now, fetch that young aide-de-camp; demand a carriage and four fast horses.”

We told the young man that our patient was a visiting physician who had swooned at the sight of the great tsar. He understood completely and helped us carry the English officer to the carriage.

“We could have used Mr. Tatum,” I said. “Where is he?”

A look of exasperation - or was it worry - passed over the professor’s face. “I am sorry to say that he never appeared this morning. It does not bode well for him.”

Indeed, there was no Mr. Tatum at our quarters either. During the rest of the day, I forced tea, broth, and water into our patient with the intent of washing the lead from his system.

He roused a bit by late afternoon, but by then, and even late into the evening, Mr. Tatum was still missing.