Warlock Holmes--A Study in Brimstone (2 page)

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I suppose I ought to be seeking a job or… common living arrangements of some sort, but…”

I looked up expecting to see pity in Stamford’s eyes. Instead, I found him wearing an inscrutable expression that encompassed both hope and guilt. He licked his lips and mumbled, “So many misfortunes, Watson… Ought I to add one more? It is cruel, yet it also seems you may have been sent as the remedy to my own woes.”

Let me admit that I didn’t care for his tone. I said, “Add to my misfortune? What an extraordinary thing to say. What are you speaking of?”

“Well… that man I was complaining about before, at the hospital. Oh, he is the damnedest fellow, but if you need an inexpensive place to rest yourself, he may be just the man you need.”

“If he is, that would not be adding to my misfortune, it would be an unexpected boon,” I said. “Tell me about him.”

“Awful fellow. A loner and a skulker. Loves the macabre. Always breaking into the hospital to hang about in our morgue. He has a devil of a time getting anyone to lodge with him. Well… trouble keeping them, I suppose. He was complaining of it only this morning. I said I would help and I made a promise I should not have and I got myself rather tangled up in the whole affair. I’ve been drifting about all day, wondering how to get out of it.”

For a moment, the man sounded revolting to me. Yet, as Stamford spoke, I began to reflect that I myself was far from an ideal living companion. Not many Londoners craved the company of a shoulder-shot, gut-sick invalid who would mope around the house, complaining of life’s treatment of him, occasionally screaming when he heard a loud bang or suffering an attack of nerves if he realized his blanket was Afghan. Also, having become destitute over the concern of this one meal, my need was dire. I swallowed my pride.

“Stamford, I am intrigued. I would very much like to meet this… what did you say his name was?”

“Warlock Holmes,” Stamford replied, wincing as if the name alone were enough to undo all my interest.

It was not. “I should very much like to meet this Warlock Holmes. When might it be arranged?”

A look of profound relief broke across Stamford’s face and he turned to the wall clock above the bar. “If we rush, we might intercept him now!” he said. “Hurry, hurry! Get up! Let’s go!”

I was loath to hurry. I had no money for a hansom cab, and no strength for the walk. I related this regret to Stamford and suggested that perhaps I should come around the next day and that our current attentions were best devoted to lunch.

“No!” he cried and slapped the soup spoon from my hand, spattering the table with second-rate beef consommé. All heads turned. He immediately demurred and added, “Ah… what I mean, Doctor, is… why waste a day? Certainly, I would be happy to provide us with a cab. Wait here. Don’t move.
Do not leave this spot
, do you hear me?”

He disappeared out the door, only to reappear a few moments later, feverishly beckoning me to follow. One side of his suit was torn and dirtied. Apparently the fastest way to get a cab on High Holborn was to run into the road and be struck by one, then insist that you would summon the police unless the driver took you where you wished to go. As soon as we were settled in his ill-gotten cab, Stamford shrieked that he would like to be taken to St. Bart’s Hospital as quickly as possible and shoveled the driver twice the usual fare. Once, during the ride, he gave the man an extra shilling, enjoining him to hurry, lest we arrive too late.

Alighting at the hospital, Stamford practically shoved me down a small flight of brick stairs, through an aged side door, towards the morgue. As we neared it, the sound of an argument came to my ears, though I could discern only one of the participants’ voices.

“Absolutely not! Brains are the natural property of the individual in whose skull they reside. They are the seat of our very identity. A man’s brain is his kingdom!”

The voice had a high, strident timbre to it, but lacked the haughtiness of a true gentleman. In a few moments, I heard it again, saying, “I have already told you: I am unwilling to part with it. Good day, sir.”

A second later: “I said
good day
, sir!”

Something crashed to the floor and the sounds of a distant scuffle reached my ears. The voice said, “Unhand me! You have your own brain! Be content with that, can’t you? Ouch! You cad! Very well, you have brought this upon yourself!”

Now the combat began in earnest; a series of bangs and wet, fleshy thuds echoed down the corridor. Stamford, who had grown ever more nervous as we approached the source of the noise at last suggested, “You know, Dr. Watson, perhaps tomorrow would be a more ideal time…”

I disregarded him and pushed past, intent on discovering the nature of the disturbance. I rounded the final corner into the morgue and beheld, for the first time, my future friend, Warlock Holmes.

He was an excessively tall man, easily the better of six feet. His face was hawkish and thin. He stood in his shirtsleeves, his long jacket discarded across a nearby chair, his sleeves rolled to his elbows to keep them from interfering with his current study. His striking green eyes were wide with the physical effort he was engaged in, which dewed him, brow and arm, with sweat. On the table before him lay the corpse of a gentleman who must have perished in the last week or so. He already displayed the bloating and discoloration that comes as decomposition sets in. The hospital winding sheet on which he lay was spattered and stained with almost every bodily fluid one could name. Some of it may have leached out naturally, but you didn’t have to be a doctor to see there was a more immediate cause for the majority of it. Holmes was repeatedly striking the corpse across its chest and face with a dented cricket bat, crying, “Stay down! Stay down! Stay! Down!”

“By God! Whatever are you doing, man?” I gasped.

Holmes froze for a moment, mid-swing. His guilty eyes locked with mine and his mouth began to move as if to formulate a response, but no sound emerged.

Stamford stepped in, offering, “Holmes is a scientist… of sorts… greatly interested in forensic studies. Doubtless, he is conducting some… experiment or other to… erm… Ah! To determine whether and to what extent bruising can be caused, post mortem. Isn’t that right, Holmes?”

Holmes stood frozen a moment more, cricket bat raised. A look of consternation crossed his features and he wondered aloud, “What
are
you talking about, Stamford? What was all that?”

“The perfectly reasonable, scientific explanation for your
extraordinary behavior
, Holmes!”

“Oh! Yes! So it was. Yes… thank you, Stamford.”

Holmes began to look about the room, searching—I suppose—for somewhere he could lay a battered, bloody cricket bat, where it wouldn’t look out of place. Finding none, he lowered it to the floor and slid it under the autopsy table with one foot, as casually as he could manage. Once this was accomplished, he gave me a half-convincing smile of welcome and said, “You see? There. It’s gone. Now… um… who is this, Stamford?”

“Stay down! Stay down! Stay! Down!”

“Ah! This is Dr. John Watson. He has given me to understand he has an immediate need for shared lodgings.”

At this, Holmes’s bright green eyes flashed up at me and for a moment I had the sensation of being held in place by a giant but invisible hand. When I next exhaled, it seemed to me as if it contained not only discarded air, but the complete truth of my person and position as well.

“Dr. John Watson,” Holmes intoned, his voice suddenly two octaves deeper than it had been, his expression remote as if lost in thought or struggling to hear a conversation being held at great distance, “late of the British Army, having been wounded in the left shoulder in Afghanistan, currently residing at the Hotel d’Amsterdam, on the Strand.”

The feeling of restriction left me, but I stood aghast nonetheless. After a moment I breathed, “By God… By God, how did you do that, man? Why, it’s almost supernatural.”

“What? No! Supernatural? No, no, no,” said Holmes.

Again, Stamford endeavored to explain. “No. It isn’t. Holmes is particularly observant. With the merest glance he can glean facts that elucidate a man’s entire history. Though it may
seem
supernatural, it is an entirely explainable phenomenon. Isn’t that right, Holmes?”

“Oh. Yes. Of course, that’s it. Why I merely observed, my dear Watson… I merely observed…” he gazed at me searchingly, almost desperately, “your left arm hangs limp, but not stiff, indicating a wound, but not to the arm itself. The shoulder then. You have a sad expression, so of course, you must have been to Afghanistan. Any doctor recently wounded and recently in Afghanistan is bound to have been attached to the British Army. As to the Hotel d’Amsterdam… well… Ah! Observe the red mud caking your left shoe, sir! It is of a very specific type, unique in London to one particular puddle, just outside the Hotel d’Amsterdam, on the Strand.”

He gazed at me with an expression of triumph and relief. My eyes wandered to my left shoe. It was indeed caked with mud, but not of a reddish hue and definitely not from my hotel. In fact, it was from a wet patch that Stamford had dragged me through, just outside the hospital. It occurred to me that a truly observant man might have realized that it was still wet. As it was not a rainy day, this small quantity of mud would surely have dried on the journey from the Strand. Nevertheless, he had guessed exactly and I had no means to refute him.

“Ahem… Holmes?” Stamford interjected, “I think you said you have already found lodgings?”

“I have,” said Holmes. “A fine suite of rooms at 221B Baker Street.”

My heart sank. Though Baker Street was not the most fashionable area of London, its central location and proximity to Regent’s Park assured it would be beyond my meager means. Nevertheless, with flagging hope, I inquired, “What should be my share of the rent?”

“Oh, a sovereign,” Holmes replied.

What did he mean? A sovereign a month would be nice, but so would having a passing leprechaun present me with underwear, woven of solid gold. The two phenomena were equally unlikely. Most probably, Holmes meant a sovereign a week. Yet, the more I reflected on it, even that figure seemed optimistic. Surely not one per day, I hoped.

“A sovereign… how often?” I asked.

“Just once,” he said. “One sovereign, once, and you may stay however long you please.”

My jaw dropped. Surely, he was strange company, but what other company was I fit for? And here—here on the proverbial platter—was presented to me the cure to all my present woes. The leprechaun, it must be said, failed to appear. Yet might that not be a blessing, too? When one considered the advantages of cotton over gold, as an undergarment material: durability, breathability, ease of cleaning… not to mention the difference in weight…

“However,” Holmes continued, “there are some circumstances you should know. Are you averse to the smell of strong tobacco smoke?”

“Not at all,” I said.

“What about sulfur?”

This, I presumed, would be a result of his scientific pursuits, so I nodded my agreement and informed him that—should I establish a medical practice—I might also need to bring home odorous chemicals or medicines. He agreed immediately.

“Let’s see… let’s see… what are my other faults?” he said, beginning to pace. “You must be constantly wary of poisons, for I seem to have some always about. I am sometimes the victim of periods of melancholy or elation that have no apparent cause. Also, I play the accordion. When I say I play it, I mean with no warning, at whatever hour I must. I shall endeavor to keep this to a minimum, and make it up to you if I should begin it at untoward hours, but… well… there is the truth of it. What do you say, can this arrangement be satisfactory?”

For the cost of one sovereign’s rent—ever—I should not have cared if he had the entire London Philharmonic strapped to his back, perpetually blaring “Aunt Petunia’s Pepper Pot.”

“Absolutely,” said I, then blushed to have to mention this in front of Stamford, “except that… owing to a few outstanding obligations, and the daily demands of my belly… ah… it may take me almost two weeks to raise the sum of… a sovereign.”

Even as I said it, I could scarce believe it, but that was the fact of the matter. But it did not seem to bother Warlock Holmes in the least.

“That is of little consequence,” he said, “so long as you are willing to move in at exactly midnight tonight and agree to step backwards over the threshold the first time you enter.”

Hmm… Odd… Odd but not impossible and—as my own situation seemed more desperate every time I stopped to consider it—I agreed that I could. At this point, Stamford leapt between us, jabbed his finger into Holmes’s chest and declared, “I think you must admit, Holmes, that Dr. Watson here outstrips me in every criteria that is of value to you!”

“Indeed,” Holmes agreed. “I doubt you should have lasted the week.”

“Take him then,” Stamford urged, “and release me.”

Holmes fixed me with his searching, green-eyed gaze and asked, “You’ll do it then, Dr. Watson? You’ll move in tonight? At midnight? Backwards?”

“I shall,” I said, with more relish than I felt.