WGAw# 793123
SYNOPSIS: The “Eye of Rama” a large sapphire, a gift from the Sultan of Utar, is mysteriously stolen from the Wakefield Tower in the Tower of London. One of the Witnesses died from fright. Lestrade calls Holmes and Watson to investigate. Holmes deduces the likely “home base” of the perpetrator—A hotel in Southwark.
Lestrade identifies a likely suspect and follows him. Lestrade mysteriously vanishes when he follows the man into a tavern basement. Lestrade’s disappearance is another mystery to solve.
Holmes searches the suspect’s room and finds several interesting clues—One puzzles him—It is a MODERN electronic notebook calculator. Holmes lets his friend Nicola Tesla examine the calculator. Nick is mystified. Holmes and Watson re-visit the basement a week later and encounter a red cone of light. They think little of it, but soon are surprised by two MODERN security guards.
They work for J. TREADWELL, CEO of a communications research lab. Holmes and Watson convince Treadwell who they are and he sets them up in rooms on a company owned country estate—To ‘protect them’. His adult daughter, Melissa helps the men to adjust to the new time and serves as their "guide".
One of Treadwell's researchers, MILHAUS, has apparently stolen part of a “time machine” device and had to obtain a natural sapphire to have a complete system. A red ruby light can be used to move back to the “present time”, but a Sapphire laser is needed to go to the past. Milhaus destroyed the company’s own Sapphire to prevent anyone following him to Victorian London where he planed to steal his own. Holmes and Watson were caught in the timer equipped beam that Milhaus planed to use to get back to his own time. As the gem is a vital element of the system, the Sapphire MUST be found or Holmes and Watson will remain trapped over 100 years in their future.
Holmes’s deductive powers fail him in the modern world and he becomes depressed. Watson Convinces Holmes to use the resources he used in his own time—newspapers, etc.—Holmes locates Lestrade in a psychiatric ward and rescues him. Lestrade identifies Treadwell’s other assistant, STANTON, as the perpetrator, not Milhaus. Milhaus was framed and murdered. Stanton flies to the US. to retrieve the Gem hidden in the London Bridge in Arizona. Holmes and company take the CONCORDE and beat him to the prize. Holmes sets an ambush and takes Stanton back with him to 1898—Not to face charges but to be locked away in an insane asylum.
COMMENTARY: "The Eye of Rama" is not the cliche "Moriarity stealing the crown jewels" type Holmes plot, but an original story that starts out closely paralleling the style of the original Sherlock Holmes. The clues to the dissapearence of a large sapphire and later, Inspector Lestrade himself, get stranger and stranger until Holmes and Watson literally stumble into a one way doorway into a new world.
Although the idea of Sherlock Holmes transported in time to in the present day is not a new one, doing this with a Holmes who is more true to the original Conan Doyle character is. Could Sherlock Holmes survive in the eary Twenty First Century? Could he solve the mystery of the missing gem, which is the key to getting back to his own time? And what about Inspector Lestrade? What has happened to him? Can Holmes still function in a world where his powers of deduction seem to fail him at every turn?
