Sherlock Holmes-The Army of Doctor Moreau (2 page)

“We never get the benefit of your company unless the empire itself is in peril,” agreed Holmes. “What is it this time? Treasury lost the keys to the vault?” He paused for effect. “Again?”

He released himself from the clutter of that morning’s mail and walked over to the fireplace to refresh his pipe. Holmes knew well enough that a period of contemplation lay ahead and for him, contemplation was impossible without tobacco.

“Gentlemen,” Mycroft announced, somewhat theatrically, “what do you know of natural selection?”

“Survival of the fittest,” I replied. “The belief that a species adapts according to its environment, Darwinism.”

“In a nutshell, Doctor. Though we’ve come a long way since Darwin’s initial writings.”

“And who might you mean when you say ‘we’?” Holmes asked.

Mycroft shuffled in his chair, something the piece of furniture was lucky to survive. “You are, I assume, suggesting this to be a Departmental affair.” The capital “D” was clearly emphasised.

“Naturally, if only to watch you squirm. Need I reassure you of Watson’s discretion?”

“I would hope not,” I interrupted. After all, given the work I had performed alongside my friend in the name and interest of Queen and country one begins to hope one’s reputation can be taken for granted.

“No,” Mycroft agreed, “I appreciate you know when to discuss your adventures with my brother and when to keep your notebook locked within the desk.” A point that I shall, in haste, gloss over.

“Nonetheless,” he continued, “beyond a handful of individuals nobody is supposed to know of the existence of The Department. As you know, I have often been in service to the government,
applying such skills as I might possess in the furtherance of the national interest. It was only a matter of time before my role was expanded. While my experience and knowledge is suitably wide there will always be the need for more expert services and that is where The Department comes in, a movable list of agents hired— often without their direct knowledge—in order to handle specific threats or research projects. I am the Headmaster as it were, supervising and selecting those needed and acting as the central focus of the network.”

“A central focus in government,” said Holmes. “What will they think of next?”

“I cannot deny that the lack of inter-departmental squabbling and compromise of purpose is refreshing,” he agreed. “In fact it was a deciding factor when it came to my accepting the post. I operate outside the changing tide of policy and opinion, I do as I see fit. Pursuing the matters that seem to me to be of the most importance.”

“And that included evolutionary theory?” I asked.

“Naturally. Whenever a grand shift in scientific thinking comes along it is always the duty of government to lend its attention. You can be sure that other governments are doing the same. Survival of the fittest, Dr Watson, just think of the possible extensions of that thought. Is this a force of nature that can be harnessed? Controlled? Imagine if it were something we could induce rather than endure.”

“I fail to see the advantage.”

“Really? As a soldier I had thought you would. Think of all the places where man is at a disadvantage, the hottest deserts, the deepest oceans. Imagine if he could adapt to that environment, embrace it rather than be threatened by it. There is no country we
could not fight in, no battlefield on which we would not dominate.”

The thought was so repugnant to me that I confess I could not reply for a few moments. Was there no limit to the arrogance of man?

“It is not our place to play God, Mycroft,” I said at last.

“Ah,” he replied with a smile. “What a pleasure it must be to have the luxury of morals. They are things I have had to abandon long ago. In my position, Doctor, you must appreciate that
nothing
is beyond contemplation. It’s all very well my objecting to a principle but what use will that be when the Germans mobilise troops that have a biological advantage over our own? Much comfort my principles will be when our men are dying.”

“But surely someone has to draw a line. Must we all submit to our basest thoughts? Entertain the very worst behaviour just in case our neighbour does the same?”

“Welcome to my world, Doctor.”

“If we could agree to accept the pragmatic nature of your work and move on to the facts?” Holmes suggested, impatient as always to get to the actual data.

“Indeed,” Mycroft agreed, clearly happy to do just that. “Though I will just say that perhaps the doctor would not be quite so affronted by the idea were its medical applications appreciated. Imagine a body evolved beyond the reach of disease—the principle is just the same. In fact I believe that was the initial route taken by the specialist I had contracted to explore the possibility.”

Catching a look from my friend begging me to interject no further, I sank back into my seat and let Mycroft speak.

“I’m sure you do not need me to tell you of Dr Charles Moreau,” he continued, and the images brought out by mention of that man’s name did little to improve my mood.

Charles Moreau had been a prominent and extraordinary physiologist, a man with a reputation for fresh and exciting scientific thoughts as well as a quick temper when it came to expressing them. His fall from grace was sudden and—in my opinion at least—fully justified. It was also wholly engineered.

A journalist, working under false credentials, had secured a position as Moreau’s laboratory assistant. Working alongside the doctor, the journalist was witness to countless vivisection experiments against animals that can have had little grounding in scientific reasoning. Certainly, the pamphlet Moreau prepared discussing his findings—a pamphlet that was to be universally debunked by his peers—couldn’t explain the acts reported. Aware that he must justify his position of allowing the cruelty to continue, the journalist claimed that he could not intervene without betraying himself and he wished to gather enough evidence against Moreau to ensure the man’s public censure, perhaps even enough to bring criminal proceedings. Whether this is true or simply an attempt on the young man’s part to gloss over the fact that he put his desire to get good copy in the way of his moral imperative is neither here nor there.

On the morning of Moreau’s planned publication, the assistant allowed one of the animals to escape. It was a small Labrador, partially flayed, covered in surgical wounds and bristling with needles. The animal’s howls brought considerable attention. A shocked crowd gathering as they attempted to corner and placate the beast. It was in such a state of terror that a passing cab driver could see no other course than to put the animal out of its misery. It set a spark to months of suspicion and rumour amongst residents of the capital, and eventually a mob descended on his Greenwich
home. The atrocities brought out into the daylight that morning damned Moreau’s reputation forever.

The journalist published and his editor took the opportunity to tap into public feeling and whip up a wave of anger against the doctor. It seemed to all concerned that the man had finally lost whatever skills he may have once possessed. London became too small to hold him. He left, setting sail for new shores, a mob of protesters jeering him off.

“Don’t tell me that Moreau was working for you?” I asked.

“Not to begin with,” Mycroft admitted. “But the journalist that exposed him was.”

“To begin with?” Holmes asked.

Mycroft smiled. “We must remember that for all his clear faults, Moreau was a genius and, as reprehensible as his methods may have been, there was no doubt that he was on to something potentially fascinating.”

“From what I recall,” I said, “his published theories were nothing but unscientific tosh. He was a spent force.”

“My dear Doctor,” Mycroft replied, “you really mustn’t believe all you read.”

“I was there,” continued Mycroft, “on the night Moreau left our country. I had thoroughly debriefed my agent as to the work Moreau had been conducting. While most of it was, as you say, so removed from practical science as to be evidence of a damaged personality, some was rather more interesting. The work he conducted after, on a small retainer from me, was vitally so.

“The offer I presented was simple. His chances of legitimate practice had been wholly ruined. If he wished to continue in science he would have no choice but to accept the small budget I offered and the direction I wished that research to follow. I wasn’t blind to his wilfulness and, once out of the country, there would be a limit to the level of control I could apply. Nonetheless, I supplied him with company—an assistant cum caretaker, a man I had worked with on a handful of occasions previously and whom I thought entirely trustworthy. Perhaps he was, though I now also know he was a drunk and, as can be the way with sufferers of that particular
condition, far too easily led if offered a warm bed and a full bottle.

“They worked on a small island in the South Pacific, away from the attentions of civilisation, with nothing but a twice-yearly trip to replenish supplies. They were perfectly isolated. Nothing but the work I offered and the dangled promise of future vindication should that work bear fruit.”

“And what was that work?” Holmes asked.

“He was attempting to define the biological trigger for evolutionary change chemically, hoping to isolate and replicate it. The hope was that he might develop some serum or another that could improve our resilience; increase our immunity against disease; make us more impervious to extremes of temperature; or able to function for longer periods without food or water. The sort of small improvements that, frankly, might give an army all the advantage it needed in order to be victorious.”

“Why,” I exclaimed, “this is incredible! Did you really think such things were possible?”

“My dear Watson,” Mycroft replied with some irritation, “I considered such things entirely possible given the work Moreau had already completed. I am not one to waste Her Majesty’s money. Sadly, it was not to be. Moreau had other plans.

“One day I simply stopped receiving messages from Montgomery, my agent. I confess my first instinct was to assume a natural disaster had befallen them, a storm perhaps or even an attack by natives. Who was to say what dangers might lurk in so remote a part of the globe? It certainly seemed unlikely that they could survive without my financial assistance.”

“Surely you had some method of checking?” Holmes asked.

“I had one of our ships make a casual investigation when sailing
past the island. I could hardly allow the crew to know the reason behind my investigation of course. I allowed an order to pass through navy command asking for the area to be assessed for military use. Included within that order was the need to check for signs of habitation. If Moreau, Montgomery and his native retinue were still alive then I felt sure they would betray the fact somehow, a trace of fire-smoke, fishing paraphernalia on the beach, something must certainly alert the crew. Of course, if they had been found, then my security would likely have been compromised, but I deemed it worth the risk. Uppermost in my mind at all times was the possibility that Moreau had sold his work to another power. Needless to say that is always a risk and one that I would have dealt with to the best of my ability had it arisen. Perhaps it has …”

“You have heard from Moreau?” Holmes asked.

“Nothing so simple,” his brother replied. “But this matter is complicated. Let me continue it in a strict manner.

“In total, Moreau was unheard of for eight years. Then, twelve years ago, the
Lady Vain
sank in the South Pacific, perhaps you remember?”

Indeed I did. The ship had collided with a derelict vessel only a few days out from Callao and, aside from a crammed longboat—later rescued by a navy vessel—all other passengers were lost. I recounted as much to Mycroft.

“All other passengers bar one,” he replied. “Edward Prendick, a wealthy young man who had taken to the study of natural history, as all wealthy men must take to the study of something unless they wish to lose their minds before they are thirty. He was found eleven months after the loss of the
Lady Vain,
adrift in that patch of ocean.”

“He survived out there for eleven months?”

“Indeed not, that would have been exactly the sort of feat of endurance I was paying Moreau to accomplish. Prendick claimed to have spent the time between the sinking of the
Lady Vain
and his later rescue on an island in the company of the disgraced Moreau, the drunk Montgomery and a collection of monstrous creatures, the like of which had him branded delusional before he had even reached port.”

“What sort of creatures?” I asked.

“Hybrids—absurd combinations of man and beast—the results, he claimed, of Moreau’s experiments in vivisection. He insisted that the island had become colonised by them, an entire culture of educated animals, walking upright like men. The creatures had risen up against their creator, with Prendick being the lone survivor.”

I laughed. “And Holmes accuses me of being far-fetched in my ideas,” I replied. “Even I wouldn’t dream of a story so wild.”

Mycroft met my incredulity with stony silence. Eventually he spoke. “Far-fetched or not, Prendick was telling the truth.”

I was quite unable to respond seriously to that. Even Holmes looked startled, staring at his brother through a slowly exhaled mouthful of smoke, perhaps to judge his sincerity. For myself I was in no doubt of that. Mycroft was not a man inclined to lie—though, on reflection, as a secret-service man he must have been perfectly adept at it. When talking to Holmes he was only too aware of the importance of precise facts. If he said a thing was the case, then it was. But how were animal-human hybrids even remotely possible? I couldn’t help but think he must have been mistaken. No doubt Moreau—a man clearly in love with both the scalpel and wild flights of imagination—had constructed a selection of
faux
creatures, like the monstrosities one hears of in American travelling shows. What had made such an
impression on Prendick can have been no more than the absurd “fish-boys” and “bird-ladies” of the freak show. No doubt, to an untrained eye, such things might pass muster. I suggested as much to Mycroft but the large man simply shook his head.