Sherlock Holmes (32 page)

“Ha.”

He pressed his fingers down again in the same configuration. And again. And again.

“Ha. Ha.”

Insistently, rhythmically, the syllable issued forth from the voice cabinet.

“Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

It was laughter.

The most ominous and inhuman laughter.

Moriarty repeated the sound until I felt like covering my ears and begging him to shut up. Couldn’t Holmes just shoot him? End the infernal racket?

In the event, my friend slapped Moriarty’s hand aside. The voice cabinet fell blessedly silent.

“You laugh as though you have won,” he said. “How can you possibly think you have won, when you have quite so clearly lost?”

The hand climbed back onto the stenotype.

“When is spider most dangerous?” Moriarty asked.

“I’ve no patience with riddles,” Holmes retorted.

“When fly lands in middle of web.”

Moriarty’s hand slipped to the side of the chair arm and touched something there, something that let out a sharp
click
.

Behind us, the door began to close. Tomlinson and I leapt to hold it back, but it was heavy and driven by some sort of hydraulic ram. We fought but could not prevent it from slamming shut.

Next instant, the walls around us came alive.

Rods began shooting out horizontally. Propelled by pneumatic pistons, they jabbed and retracted, jabbed and retracted. Each was a good three feet in length and fashioned of brass a half inch in diameter, and each carried enough momentum to pierce a man’s flesh, as Inspector Tomlinson discovered almost immediately, to his cost. A rod bored clean through his thigh, pulling back to leave a neat, bloody hole. As he collapsed to the floor with a bray of pain, clutching his leg, a second rod speared the meat of his shoulder from behind, its tip protruding above his collarbone before withdrawing back into the wall.

“Watson!” Holmes cried. “Duck!”

I didn’t hesitate. I dipped my head, just as a rod flashed out above me. I felt it part my hair. A split second slower, a hand’s-breadth lower, and it would have drilled through my cranium.

All at once, the interior of the Thinking Engine had become a scene of pain and blood and chaos. The rods spiked out here and there, apparently at random. Some were positioned high, some low. They sprang from the interstices of the machinery. There were no obvious slots or recesses, so one could not spot where any might emerge. They came thick and fast, from everywhere, so many of them, too many of them to keep track of, criss-crossing, swift, unpredictable, deadly as rapiers. One even knocked the revolver from Holmes’s grasp, with an accuracy that would have seemed spiteful if it hadn’t been pure chance. The gun skidded away, fetching up in the corner furthest from any of us. Whatever advantage it might have offered was lost.

We had walked into a death trap, and now every moment was a struggle for survival. We had to move and keep moving in order to steer clear of the rods. There was only one place safe from them, and that was the exact centre of the Engine where Moriarty’s chair lay. Here, in this “eye of the storm”, Holmes’s nemesis sat serene, untouched. Quantock stood to the rear of him, pressed close to the chair’s back, also out of the rods’ reach, just.

The switch on the chair arm which had set the death trap going would also be the means of shutting it off. Holmes tried to get to it. The rods thwarted his efforts, however. Every time he gained ground, he had to retreat or else be impaled. It was the same for me. We were engaged in an unending dance with the rods, and any misstep could be our last.

Meanwhile Tomlinson was groaning and flailing around, stricken by his injuries. It seemed only a matter of time before another rod stabbed him, perhaps fatally. I was too busy making evasive manoeuvres of my own to go to his aid. Worse, I could feel myself tiring. It was incredibly taxing, dodging the rods. It took every ounce of strength and agility I had, and I could not afford to stop and rest for one moment. I was continually writhing, hopping, bending, recoiling, avoiding. My breath started to come in gasps and I knew I was beginning to weaken. Soon I would be exhausted, unable to carry on. I would get careless, clumsy. I would stray into the path of a rod. One was all it would take. Even if it only delivered a disabling wound, I would be left fully at the death trap’s mercy.

Moriarty beheld the three of us, his hapless victims, with an imperious disdain. He had locked us inside a sophisticated modern version of an iron maiden and, unlike the torturers of old, he could actually watch us as we suffered and died in it. He had the best seat in the house.

Holmes, as far as I could tell, was tiring like me, his stamina waning. I prayed that even as he contorted himself around the rods, he was looking for a way to outwit the trap.

Finally he appeared to alight on the solution. He braced himself, then lunged for one of the reference works, a large, heavy leather-bound tome. Thanks to the rods, the book had been toppled from its perch on a lectern beside Moriarty. Holmes snatched it up and used it for a shield as he made a last-ditch desperate bid for Moriarty’s chair.

He almost got there without mishap. A rod thudded against the book’s thick binding, slamming it into Holmes’s head. He reeled and lost his footing, but quickly he was up again and running.

All at once he had a clear view of the side of the chair where the switch was set, a simple toggle switch of the kind used to operate an electric light. Holmes hurled the book at it spine-first. Before the book struck home, a rod lashed out and caught him on the temple. It was, luckily, a glancing blow, but it tore a crease across his skin and was forceful enough to send him spinning to the floor.

The switch clicked. The rods ceased their in-and-out pulsations, shrinking back as one, vanishing from view. The walls were no longer a mass of lethal darting brass lances.

Moriarty’s hand crept down to the switch to reactivate the trap. I spied the revolver some half-dozen yards from where I was crouched. I dived towards it, scurrying on hands and knees, caring little for elegance, only for speed. In one single swift motion I grabbed the gun, rolled, and took aim.

“No!”

With that cry, Quantock swung himself in front of Moriarty. I had already fired. The mathematician took the bullet square in the chest. He slumped back against his crippled confederate, stone cold dead. His head fell into the lap of the man whose life he had just saved at the expense of his own. Sightless eyes stared up. A mouth loosely lolled.

Moriarty looked down at him, then lowered his hand to Quantock’s brow and gave it a brief, fond stroke. For the space of some seconds the two of them remained fixed in this tableau, the mutilated criminal mastermind and his self-sacrificing minion, like a ghastly parody of a Pietà. Then, once more, Moriarty attempted to restart the rods.

Holmes intervened, wresting Moriarty’s hand away from the switch. Moriarty resisted, but it was a one-sided battle. He had neither the muscle power nor the leverage to compete with Holmes. An infant would have fared better. Holmes slid the arm inside one of the straps supporting Moriarty’s torso and fastened it in place by tightening the buckle. Our captor was now our captive, helpless.

“I should like to crow over you,” Holmes said. “It feels as though the moment merits it, and you would do the same were our roles reversed. However, all I see as I look at you is a pathetic wreck, a mockery of your former self. How tragic that, even after the ordeal you went through, you learned nothing. Instead you continued to pursue your mad fantasies of power. Could you not have been content as a mathematician? Your brilliance in that field is indisputable. You showed it when, as the Engine, you gave the Reverend Dodgson help with his theorem. You could have gone through life garlanded with academic laurels, earning the plaudits of your peers. Why wasn’t that enough for you?”

“Money,” Moriarty gasped out. “There’s… little… wealth… to… be… earned… in… academe. But… also… if… the… world… rejects… you… then… you… must… teach… the… world… a… lesson.”

“Rejects you?” I said.

“You… wouldn’t… understand… Dr… Watson. You… have… not… been… an… outsider. You… have… not… felt… alienated… from… your… fellow… men… by… virtue… of… your… unconventional… looks… and… your… uncommon… intellect.” He gazed down at Quantock’s corpse. “Malcolm… understood. He… knew… how… I… feel… in… a… way… that… no… other… could. I… did… not… ask… to… be… a… pariah… but… if… I… must… be… one… then… why… not… be… the… greatest… pariah… ever?”

“Not all men who fail to fit in with society become society’s enemy.”

“Do… not… judge… me… by… your… own… moral… standards. I… am… not… like… other… men. I… am… Moriarty!”

“No,” said Holmes. “Moriarty is dead. He has been dead for four years. All you are is his faded image, like a photograph left out in the sun. You screamed as you plummeted into the Aare Gorge. The last echoes of that scream are here with us today, and are soon to be lost.”

“Gentlemen, if I may just interrupt a moment.” Tomlinson beckoned with a limp hand. “I am not feeling any too clever. The attentions of a doctor wouldn’t go amiss.”

“Of course.” I knelt by his side and examined his wounds. “No major organs have been perforated, as far as I can tell, and no arteries nicked. Still, we must bind up your leg and get you to the Radcliffe Infirmary.”

“That’d be most—”

“Holmes!”

The name was bellowed from outside the Thinking Engine. The voice belonged to neither Lord Knaresfield nor Slater.

I looked at Holmes and he at me.

“Moran,” we said in unison.

“Holmes!” Moran bellowed again. “Come out where I can see you. I have something for you.”

Moriarty put on that awful rictus smile again. “Not… quite… checkmate… yet… Mr… Holmes,” he said. “I… have… one… move… left. My… knight… is… still… in… play.”

“Holmes, I know you can hear me,” said Moran. “There’s two gents in front of me who aren’t in the happiest frame of mind at present. Hardly surprising, considering how nobody much likes having a shotgun aimed at ’em.”

There was the thud of a blow and a yell of pain.

“Nobody much likes getting hit around the head with a shotgun stock either,” the old shikari added. “I’m giving you to the count of ten. If I don’t see your fizzog by ten, one of these chaps loses a portion of his grey matter. Newspaper proprietor or journalist, nobleman or prole, I’m not bothered. Either’ll do fine. One! Two!”

Holmes hastened to the door of the Thinking Engine.

“You’re not seriously going to go out there,” I said.

“What choice do I have?” he replied.

“But Moran will shoot you as soon as you show your face.”

“And if I don’t, he will shoot Knaresfield or Slater.”

“Five! Six!” Moran shouted.

“Better them than you.”

“You know I cannot just let them die, Watson. You know you cannot either.”

“Eight! Hurry up, Holmes. What’s keeping you?”

“I’m coming!” Holmes called out. “You’ll have to be patient, though. There’s no obvious handle on this door.”

“Look for a knurled wheel, about waist height,” said Moran. “One full turn of that anticlockwise releases the locking bolts.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Nine!”

“Watson.” Holmes pulled me to his side. “We shall get only one chance at this. Don’t prevaricate. The instant the door is ajar, fire. Doesn’t matter where you aim as long as it is shoulder height.”

“But I might not hit Moran. I might hit one of the others.”

“They will be on their knees. Or lying on the floor.”

“You don’t know that. What if they’re not?”

“Moran was a soldier. Military prisoners always are put in submissive positions, the better to subjugate and control them. Just aim high like I said. Whether you hit him or not, it’ll put him on the back foot and buy me a few seconds.”

“Holmes?” said Moran. “I just said ‘nine’. Did you miss it? You know what number comes next and what happens after that.”

“Knurled wheel,” Holmes called out. “I have it. I’m turning it.”

I was faced with an unenviable dilemma. Holmes was probably correct in his supposition that Moran was standing and Knaresfield and Slater were not. Shooting blind was a gamble nonetheless. I might injure one of the shikari’s hostages, or worse.

The little wheel made a full revolution. The bolts clunked back. The door began to swing open.

I sent up a small prayer to the Almighty, then thrust my revolver through the opening and fired.

“Aargh!”

I couldn’t tell who I had hit, only that I had hit someone.

Holmes was through the door like a panther. I followed, to see an alarmed-looking Knaresfield on his knees, cringing, with his hands behind his head, and Slater sprawled on the floor beside him. A trickle of blood ran down Slater’s neck from behind his ear, and for a moment I thought he was the one I had shot.

Then I saw Moran, and realised that fortune had smiled on us. The blood on Slater came from where Moran had thumped him with the shotgun. By some miracle my bullet had found its mark in Moran himself, catching him in the left arm. His sleeve was torn and a chunk of flesh was missing from his biceps.

That arm had been rendered useless. Moran was, however, far from incapacitated. As my friend sprang at him he raised the shotgun, preparing to fire it one-handed. I foresaw Holmes receiving a cartridge’s worth of pellets full in the chest at point blank range, and my revolver barked again.

The shotgun went off a split second later. Both reports were deafening in the confines of the Thinking Engine chamber. Both shots hit their intended targets.

In Moran’s case, my bullet struck his hand. In Holmes’s case, Moran’s shotgun blast winged him in the shoulder.

Both men were sent reeling.

My immediate thought was my friend’s welfare, and I dashed over to him. He lay on his back, the shoulder-pad of his jacket shredded and speckled with blood. I ripped jacket and shirt open, to discover that the damage was not as bad as I’d feared. There were perhaps half a dozen pieces of shot embedded in him. The rest had missed entirely.