Sherlock Holmes: The London Terrors by William Meikle Page 3

He hushed me to silence and sniffed again. “It is gone now, but it was there—the same tang I smelled in Green’s dressing room. The answer is here somewhere. It has to be.”

  It was only that that I noticed the light was going.

  “We had best be leaving, Holmes,” I said. “The driver will not wait, and it is a long walk to Baker Street.”

  Holmes had another look around. His head jerked back to one of the church windows; then he pointedly looked back at me.

  “I think you are right, Watson,” he said, loudly, as if wanting anyone in range to hear. “We shall return to Baker Street and see if we can ascertain what manner of poison did for Mr. Green.”

  He took my elbow and almost frog-marched me away.

  “Do not look back,” he whispered. “We are being watched. Let us see if they take the bait.”

  Chapter Five

  EF

  To my great surprise, the carriage driver had been as good as his word and waited for us, although he appeared eager to be on his way.

  “Jump in, gents. It’s time to go.”

  Holmes had a quick look round to see if anyone was watching our departure, and then we were off and flying back to Baker Street with the same inordinate haste with which we had come. Holmes leaned out to check behind us at each turn and junction, but shook his head each time—it seemed we had not been followed.

  Once back in Baker Street, the cabbie pocketed Holmes’ money quickly and doffed his cap.

  “Many thanks, gents. I won’t be making that trip again in a hurry. I’m off for a few pints of porter to wash the taste of the place from my mouth. If you have any sense, you’ll do the same.”

  The carriage clattered away towards Paddington.

  “Actually, Holmes, that is not a bad idea …”

  Holmes once again took my elbow and marched me inside. “We will need clear heads. If I am right, we will have a visitor before this night is out.”

  We spent the evening in the Baker Street apartment at Holmes’ workbench, applying a variety of tests to the sample that had been taken from the teacup in Green’s dressing room.

  “I may have been a trifle hasty in my assessment of Green’s death, Watson,” Holmes said just after the tall clock struck nine. I sat back from my so-far-fruitless study of the fluid to hear what he had to say. “It is partly a toxin of sorts. I believe it to be similar to an extract from jimson weed, one of the milder forms of nightshade.”

  “Datura stramonium?” I replied. “Yes, I can see the basis for your speculation. But that is primarily a hallucinogen, is it not?”

  “In China, I believe it to also be used as an analgesic, to render patients unconscious during surgery.”

  I nodded, “I have heard of that on my travels. But that still does not explain the fact that the man was as dead as anyone I’ve seen.”

  “That is why I said that the Datura was only partly responsible. There is some other chemistry at work here that I cannot yet fathom. But as I said, we may have been premature in our assessment—I believe there is a good chance that John Green is still alive.”

  3

  Shortly after ten, Holmes had me turn out the lamps, and we sat in darkness by the fireplace, the only light coming from the flare of tobacco in our pipes as we puffed.

  “There was definitely someone in the church watching us? You are sure?”

  “I’m sure, Watson. Just as I am sure that they will want to know what we have discovered about their poison. Now, quiet—we do not want to scare them off.”

  We sat there as the city went silent—or as silent as it ever became. The rumble of carriages in the street diminished from a constant noise to only one every few minutes, and we heard the occasional murmur of subdued conversation from the pavement beneath the open window. Mrs. Hudson went to bed, as regular as the tall clock itself, on the stroke of eleven.

  Holmes retreated into his shell of concentration. I did not have his mental resources, and I admonished myself for not at least having a glass of Scotch at hand to ease the boredom of our vigil. After what seemed an interminable time, the clock struck midnight. I moved slightly in my chair, intending to fill a fresh pipe. At that very moment, a darker shadow crossed the main window and I heard the slight scrape and rustle of someone pulling themselves inside. Had we been abed rather than by the fireplace, he would have been in and out, and we would have been none the wiser. He made his way to the workbench, as quiet as a cat on a hunt. There was another scrape and the flare of a struck match as he searched the contents of the table. It was only when he struck a second that Holmes leapt from his chair, taking advantage of the burst of flame to jump across the room and grab the intruder.

  “Quick, Watson,” he shouted. “We need some light on the matter.”

  I did the best I could while Holmes and the burglar scuffled behind me. Finally, after much fumbling in the dark, I lit the lamp and turned, just in time to see Holmes floor his opponent with a perfect left jab to the chin.

  I walked over to help lift the man into a chair. Holmes had me tie him securely, hands behind the slats, before lifting the lamp from the table. He leaned in close to examine our captive.

  “I thought I might know you,” Holmes said as the man’s eyes came back into focus. “But you are a stranger to me—you are not one of the city’s petty thieves, at any rate. So tell me—who are you, and who has sent you here?”

  I went round and lit up the other lamps in the room. The man squinted against the sudden brightness, but showed no sign of answering Holmes’ question. Holmes smiled, pulled up a chair and sat down opposite. He took his time lighting a pipe before speaking again.

  “I would remind you that I am a personal friend of Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard,” he started. “But even though that would be enough to ensure you three years in Pentonville, I can see that you are determined not to talk. So let me tell you what you have already told me.”

  All I saw was a slightly disheveled man in cheap working clothes, but I knew Holmes’ methods, and tried to look more closely. As always, Holmes saw more than I could—more than any man would.

  “You were the one watching us in Hackney today. There is no sense in denying that fact, as the stone dust at your knees and shoulders shows where you leaned against the walls of the old church—a most distinctive schist I have rarely seen this far south. You work in a coal-yard—that much is plain from your fingernails—but honest toil is not enough for you, so you have turned to crime. You are not, however, accustomed to this line of work; otherwise, you would not have been so easily fooled by our ruse of merely sitting in the dark and waiting for you, so the logical deduction is that you were either paid for or persuaded into this petty burglary. Tell me—did you take the ring off at home, or is it in your waistcoat pocket? The mark of the band is plain against the coal dust.”

  The man still hadn’t spoken and showed no signs of doing so.

  Holmes leaned forward and, with nimble fingers, made a quick search of the man’s waistcoat pockets. It was no surprise to me that he did indeed retrieve a ring. I was too far away to see any detail, but it was gold and chunky, and not at all the kind of adornment I would expect the man before us to favor.

  Holmes held the ring up to the light. The man twitched for the first time since we put him in the chair, but still didn’t speak.

  “So the ring is more important than your personal freedom?” Holmes said softly. “That is interesting. What is also interesting is this ring itself.” Holmes threw it to me. It felt heavy in my hand. “I have seen such things on the fingers of our Masonic brethren. But this is something new to me.”

  The main device on the broad outward face of the ring was of a lion rampant—which made me consider a Scottish origin—but on closer examination the face pivoted on a cunning swivel and turned under my finger. If Holmes had not already inferred otherwise, I might have expected to see the square and compasses, but this was something entirely different.

  The surface seemed to be jet, or some equ
ally dark stone, inlaid with silver streaks, the workmanship being of the finest quality. Lines of various length radiated out from a central point which containing a small but most brilliant diamond, one that seemed to gleam with its own internal light. It drew me in, enticing me to look deeper into its heart. I came over slightly faint, as if something sucked at my very life force, and indeed I might have succumbed completely had Holmes not spoken up rather sharply at just that moment.

  “Well, Watson,” Holmes said. “What do you make of it? Is it anything you have come across on your travels in foreign climes?”

  I turned the ring back so that the lion rampant was once again facing outward and any influence it might have had on me faded as quickly as it had come. I threw the ring back to Holmes; in truth I was glad to be rid of the thing.

  “No idea, old man,” I replied. “But there are certain Far Eastern cults …”

  Holmes nodded. “I believe you are on the right track. Our man here worships at no Christian altar.”

  Something thudded on the roof above us. We are occasionally plagued with dancing pigeons—a necessary evil when dwelling in the city, but if this was a pigeon, it was a jolly big one. And pigeons do not tend to bring immediate terror to the face of a man who had not so much as blinked at being tied to a chair.

  “I ain’t saying nothing,” the man whispered, his first words since entering. He repeated them, shouting, as if needing someone to hear of his loyalty. “I ain’t saying nothing.”

  A strange vibration filled the room, starting as a deep, not unpleasant hum that quickly rose in pitch to a high whine. Holmes’ old violin rang in sympathy just before the glass face of the long clock cracked from top to bottom. I was driven to my knees, fearing my head would burst under the pressure. I turned towards Holmes but instead found my gaze drawn to the man in the chair. His eyes bulged, straining in their sockets, and blood showed at nostrils, lips and ears, just before his head slumped forward and the vibration cut off, leaving us once again in silence.

  By the time I managed to stand and check on our captive, he was dead.

  3

  Holmes had not waited for my prognosis. He left at a run and I heard his footsteps clang on the iron fire stairs that led out onto our roof above me.

  I followed at a more sedate pace and found him standing on the empty rooftop looking over the city.

  “That’s twice he has been too fast for me, Watson. It will not happen a third time.”

  As we turned to go back downstairs, Holmes stopped and tugged at my arm. “There, Watson, do you smell it?”

  And this time I did—a taint of acid, like vinegar in the nostrils.

  Chapter Six

  EF

  Lestrade was not at all impressed at being summoned in the early hours of the morning—even less so to find a dead man bound to a chair in our rooms.

  “By rights I should have the bleeding pair of you locked up for this,” was the mildest of his many utterances as his men took our statements and the police doctor confirmed my diagnosis—an internal hemorrhage of the brain.

  “It’s hard to say,” the young doctor said as he finally stood back. “But it looks almost as if his brains have been turned to liquid.”

  After all the hubbub died down—and after we had administered some medicinal Scotch to Mrs. Hudson in enough quantities to put her back to sleep—Holmes, Lestrade and I once again sat around the fireplace. Holmes gave Lestrade most—but not quite all—of the story.

  “You think this has something to do with Green’s disappearance?” Lestrade asked. He puffed on a pipe—the offer of a pouch full of Holmes’ best Turkish blend had mollified him considerably after his earlier belligerence.

  Holmes nodded. He showed Lestrade the ring and turned the face to the strange sigil on the inside. “Have you seen anything like this before?”

  Lestrade bent forward and studied the ring, so intent that I thought he, like myself, had fallen under some kind of charm. It was only after Holmes turned the face back to the lion rampant that the Inspector blinked, as if waking from sleep.

  “Can’t say as I have, Mr. Holmes,” he said. “Some kind of a secret society, do you think?”

  “Or a cult,” Holmes said seriously. “This may be bigger than I first thought.”

  “And you never saw the man before?” Lestrade asked, looking first at Holmes and then at me.

  “Never before today—although it is no coincidence that we were visiting Green’s house when we were first spotted. Green saw something—I am now more sure of it than ever.”

  We sat, the three of us, going over and over what we knew so far, but even Holmes professed himself at a loss as to why the man might attempt to burgle us, or what he might have been after.

  By the time Lestrade took his leave the first light of dawn was growing in the eastern sky. I was too fraught with excitement and tension in equal measure to even consider sleep, so I sat by the fireplace and smoked a succession of pipes. There was little conversation—Holmes had retreated back into his head. He had the ring in his palm, and would look at it occasionally, turning it over, studying the band, and every now and then perusing the strange jet-and-silver sigil.

  “We need to get back to Hackney, Watson,” he finally said when a noise from the scullery below told us that Mrs. Hudson was up and about, only an hour later than usual.

  “Not me, old bean,” I replied. “At least, not today. I have patients to attend to.”

  “Very well,” Holmes replied. “I shall report any findings on your return this evening.”

  3

  As luck would have it, I had the busiest day I’d had for several years, and I was as tired as an old dog after a long walk by the time I returned to Baker Street at seven that evening. My mood was not improved by the sight of Holmes sitting by the fire with a face like thunder.

  “It did not go well, Watson,” was all he said at the time. “The trail has gone cold.”

  I only pried the gist of the matter out of him in dribs and drabs over the course of the evening. His visit to Hackney had been fruitless; there was nothing of note to be found in the church or its grounds. No one in the area—of those few who would deign to speak—knew the identity of our dead burglar. To cap it all, Mrs. Green seemed to have taken a turn into early senility, proclaiming that her John was perfectly fine, as she had been hearing his voice telling her so in the night. And as a perfect end to a frustrating day, Holmes’ carriage driver had not been as patient as our man from the previous day, and Holmes had been forced into a long walk home in sweltering heat.

  “Green saw something,” he said, several times during the evening. “It is the only possible explanation. But without a trail—or a body—I have nothing to follow, no facts to digest.”

  I have seen Holmes frustrated in the past, but rarely had a case vexed him so mightily as this. That first night he took to the violin, sawing away mournfully long into the night. If Mrs. Hudson or myself had our sleep disturbed, we were too experienced in Holmes’ moods to broach the subject in the morning.

  Until his next case—which thankfully came within the week, Holmes spent long hours in the armchair by the fire studying the ring—the only tangible piece of evidence in our possession. But no amount of examination would force it to yield its secrets. Once the new case caught his attention, I believed that Holmes had put the matter aside, but one evening in October I came upon him at his study table, hunched over the ring once again, examining it with his large glass.

  “There’s not a single jeweler in the city who professes any knowledge of this blasted ring, Watson,” he said as I entered. “And no goldsmith knows how, where, or why it was made. I cannot find another representation of the sigil in any book, magical tome or artwork from any civilization in history, and the diamond in the center isn’t a diamond at all, although there is no expert in jewels, mineralogy or crystallography who can tell me what it might be. It draws at the mind somehow, a draining sensation that tests me, Watson. It tests me sorely.
”

  That night I managed to persuade him to leave the apartments and take in a show. The operetta seemed to divert his attention readily enough. On returning home he did not mention the ring again, although I noticed in the morning that it was no longer on his desk.

  It was near Christmas before the ring and the story behind it came back to mind. Knowing Holmes, I doubt it was ever far from his, but I had pushed it away under the pressure of other concerns and was taken somewhat by surprise at the next turn of events.

  Chapter Seven

  EF

  I was still abed, having spent the previous night at the Officers’ Club with too few old friends and too much gin, so I was not best pleased to be woken on a frosty December morning by Holmes banging loudly on my door.

  “Get up, old man. We have somewhere to be.”

  I washed and dressed as quickly as possible, but even so, Holmes was almost beside himself with irritation. I had time to grab two slices of cold toast before he was off and away down the stairs. By the time I reached the street outside, Holmes had already hailed a carriage. We hopped inside, and he took his time in lighting up a cheroot before deigning to explain matters to me—not that his explanation made me any the wiser.

  “Lestrade has what he has called ‘a right peculiar corpse,’ for us to look at, Watson,” Holmes said through a fug of smoke.

  “And what in blazes does he mean by that?”

  “We don’t yet have enough facts to form a theory,” Holmes said. “Indeed, we only have one fact, but it may prove pertinent. The body was found in Hackney.”

  3

  I have had occasion to visit the morgue at the Yard numerous times. It never gets any more pleasant. Cold gripped me on entry, a damp chill that ate deep inside and was worse than any night watch I had ever endured in the Afghan foothills. It never seemed to bother Holmes. He strode forward, ignored Lestrade and the three officers alongside, and started a study of the body on the slab in the center of the room.